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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/229/3374/ClarkeC2.10.16.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/229/3374/AClarkeCH170304.1.mp3
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Title
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Clarke, Charles Henry
Charles Henry Clarke
Charles H Clarke
Charles Clarke
Charles Henry Clarke
Charles H Clarke
C H Clarke
C Clarke
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. Three oral history interviews with Air Commodore Charles Henry Clarke OBE (1923 - 2019) and one photograph. Charles Clarke volunteered for the RAF when he was seventeen and flew operations as a bomb aimer with 619 Squadron from RAF Woodhall Spa. His aircraft was shot down on his 18th operation and he became a prisoner of war. He was held at Stalag Luft 3 and took part in the long march. After the war, he was posted to the Air Ministry for Aircraft Production, and then to the Middle East. He left the RAF as an Air Commodore in 1978. He later became the chairman of the Bomber Command Association.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-08-06
2016-06-02
2017-03-04
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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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Clarke, CH
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TO: Right, er, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever the case may be. We’re recording this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre and the gentleman I’m interviewing is Air Commodore Charles Clarke. My name is Thomas Ozel and we’re recording this interview on the 4th of March. Could you tell me a little bit about where you were born and where you grew up?
CC: We’ll start when I joined the Air Force.
TO: OK.
TO: The — I joined, I volunteered for the Air Force in 1941 and, er, we had to report to Lord’s Cricket Ground. Well, Regents Park Zoo, which was the Aircraft, er, Aircrew Reception Centre. We were billeted in flats, in my case Hall Road, about six of us in an ordinary bedroom in this flat. We used to dine, if dining’s the word for it, in the, what is now, the restaurant of the zoo and it’s little changed. It’s quite recognisable. We were only there for a couple of weeks whilst were given elementary drill and, at the time, even corporals and LACs were like gods. We were kicked around. I think I had three haircuts in about two or three days until the corporal was satisfied that my hair was short enough. We were inoculated and vaccinated, er, the — I’m sure all of us with the same needle. We then collected our kit from a garage just off the Edgware Road. And seeing we’d just been inoculated and vaccinated it’s no surprise carrying all our kit, that’s boots, great coat and kit bag and everything, that some of the chaps even passed out on the road, on the main road. After two weeks we were, er, allocated to some Initial Training Wings and we all wore a white flash indicating that we were UTA, Under Training Aircrew. And Initial Training Wings were located at seaside resorts and towns where there was, where there were hotels that were little used, like Paignton, Torquay, Aberystwyth. I was posted to, er, Scarborough and we were billeted in Scarborough College, in the main hall of Scarborough College, because I remember our beds were very close together and I was just under the, er, the stage. We were there for a while. We were instructed in hygiene, law and order, administration, navigation. Then, er, signalling, both Morse and Aldis lamp, and the Morse signalling was done on the seafront at Scarborough. Once again we had taken over small hotels. The lamp part of it, the Aldis lamp was along the seafront and I think we had to reach six words a minute, if I remember rightly. Halfway through we were for some reason we were moved from Scarborough College to old Ayton School. It was inexplicable but there must have been a good reason. Many years later I tried to persuade Scarborough to dedicate a weekend, a dead weekend, so inviting, er, some former UT aircrews to come back. It would have been good publicity for the town but they were too stupid to recognise the advantage of it, so it never happened. After Scarborough — oh, by the way we used to march up and down from the seafront to the school and there a slope and one chap who actually died of a stroke I think on that particular march. We, from there I was, we were all posted to Heaton Park, which is in Manchester, which was a holding unit and we were expecting to go overseas and our kit was marked accordingly. To my surprise some of us were posted to a UK training schools and I was posted to, er, Carlisle and fl— where we flew Tiger Moths from Stanwix, Stanwix, which is now an industrial site. After a while there I caught mumps, of all things, and I was put in a hospital along town with — I think I was the only patient and about seven nurses and I was there several weeks. When I came out I found that I’d been posted and back. Because my course had gone I was posted back to Heaton Park. Once again I expected to go overseas. It was a time the Lancaster was coming in and they were desperate for crews so I was reallocated to be navigator PW. Having joined up wanting to be a pilot, I actually cried. It was, you know, I was so disappointed but looking back it was the best thing that happened to me because so many of the pilots were killed because they were the last to get out of the aircraft. If you look at the veterans around there are very few pilots today, even today. Anyway, um, I was posted to Dumfries, where we flew in Bothas and Ansons. Now Botha had the shortest, shortest career ever of any aircraft and in fact I’m sure most people wouldn’t even know of it. We were there for a couple of — I don’t remember how many months. The weather was pretty ghastly at the time. And then we had our examinations at the end and to my surprise I was, I was given a piece of paper to go buy a uniform. I was commissioned. That was the only training that I had. I suppose the training at ITW was the sort of training you’d give an officer anyway. I then collected my uniform and overnight I became a pilot officer. We were then posted to North Luffenham, where they were flying Wellingtons, and you picked up a crew there. Now, the crewing system was very sophisticated. You put a bunch of people in a hangar and said, ‘Sort yourself out.’ And if you liked the look of a chap he was the chap you were crewing up with. I mean it was really like dating. And three of us got together. There was a Canadian pilot. A very old navigator. He was twenty-six. He looked, you know, I thought he was queuing up for his pension at that age because we were so very young. Anyway, the three of us got together. We flew — I remember flying with Jock Reid VC at one time. After completing a course there, we were posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit at Swinderby. The — where we were flying Lancasters. And there again we picked up the rest of our crew. That’s the two gunners, the radio operator and the engineer. So we were then were a crew of seven. The — after qualifying there we were posted to a squadron and I was posted to, or we were posted to 619 Squadron at Woodhall Spa. Now Woodhall Spa, the officer’s mess at was the Petwood Hotel which was the best officers’ mess in the country. It’s still — it would have been a Grade 1 Hotel if it had a swimming pool but it was sort of ideal. I mean, we were very fortunate. If you read Gibson’s book it tells you how he found this mess for his crew, er, for his crews, or discovered it. But, of course, that’s absolute nonsense because if 57 were there for a while just before us and then we moved in. The loss rate was fairly high and I think we lost about three wing commanding officers in a very short period of, of time. Anyway, we did, I think we did about eighteen operations if I remember rightly and of which six were to a heavily Ber— a heavily defended Berlin. It was certainly not the time to be in Bomber Command because that was when they experienced, the period when they experienced the greatest losses. Equally he weather was foul. Interestingly for you, at the Petwood Hotel, there was a so-called ‘Kinema in the woods’ at the back of the, of the grounds of the hotel, and many [emphasis] years later, sort of probably about 1990, I received a letter that had been written by a friend of mine on the squadron at the time to his sister, saying that he’d been to the Kinema in the woods with Charles Clarke, and then there was a bit about his girlfriend. It came at Christmas time and my daughter and her husband were here and I said, um, how immature the, the writing was and she said, ‘Well, I’m sure you were immature at the time.’ Because we were only eighteen, nineteen. He, he actually was a dedicated Salvationist and he was shot down on one of the Berlin raids and I went to see his parents. They were officers, Salvation Army officers, in Tunbridge Wells and I remember saying [unclear] he could be a prisoner of war but sadly when I came back after the war I learned that he’d been killed with all of his crew. In fact he jumped. A brother, who was, when I went to see his parents, was dying to join the Royal Air Force, or to join the services any way, eventually joined. I always assumed [?] the guards as a musician and became a musician for the Salvation Army. The — anyway we were — as I said the weather at that time was still very bad — we were one particular raid we were all scattered. We couldn’t get back to our own airfield. This was general and we landed at Pocklington and I remember sleeping in someone else’s bed and going into York wearing flying clothing which was all he had, to the disgust of the RAF policeman. By coincident only this week — I’m chairman of The Bomber Command Association, as you know, among many other things. One of my committee, a civilian, who worked at the museum said that he had — one of his relatives, young relatives, had said that their relative was on 619 squadron and, er, he said, told me the name. Well, I remember him well and he was one of those who was in an aircraft when we were scouting about and landed at Pocklington and he had to bail out with his crew. I don’t know whether really — they obviously run out of fuel and when he got back to Woodhall Spa found that he’d been awarded a bar to his DFC. Now, he didn’t even know he had a DFC and he went along wearing a drawing pin on his uniform. We had some interesting visitors at that time. Anyway on a raid to Schweinfurt we were hit by a fighter. The aircraft caught fire, the wing was dropping off, er, but it’s worth remembering that it didn’t matter how good your crew was — the fact that your three COs with their select crews. It didn’t matter how good your crew was if there was a fighter loitering near you, you were almost certain to be shot down. So the fighter had probably been coming from a warm mess thirty minutes before. Your gunners had probably been sitting there for about six hours, freezing. The visibility was limited, the fighter had upward firing guns so the rear gunner wouldn’t see him, his calibre was probably .5 an inch, whereas we had 303 so he knew he could shoot while he was still out of range. Furthermore, he could home in on your equipment. For example, we had a Monica on board, which was similar to what you have on cars, for their parking and things and, in fact, we did the trials at Defford on the visual monitor. Originally we did just peeping or audio and they, I’m sure they homed on that. So, surviving was a matter of luck rather than skill. Anyway, we were shot down and the amazing thing is that I knew roughly the area we were shot down. Only this morning I got a telephone call to say that someone had located the site, there was a memorial had been being built, that — for the three people in the aircraft who were killed, and actually they were amazed that someone was still alive and have invited me back to the town. I was always, I intended to go some day. I never got around to it. I’ve always been preoccupied. But I would have been very cagey about declaring my interest because it could be that aircraft could have landed on a block of flats and killed hundreds but obviously there will be a welcome there. Anyway, er, I came down. I bailed out. Four of us bailed out and three were killed. And I landed in the snow. Another one broke a leg. I mean, we didn’t see one another. I kept disappearing in the snow drifts and I could imagine myself being found in the spring. Remember, I was very much a tomboy, a young, a youngster. I’ve done a lot of skiing since, I mean, really skiing right into old age. And there were footprints, or animal footprints, around. I thought they were wolves but of course subsequently I, I learned they were mountain goats [slight laugh]. But anyway I kept, I was thoroughly exhausted, kept going in snowdrifts. Eventually, I found a mountain hut where I sheltered. I tried to — I was obviously very cold and exhausted — and I tried to light a fire in this mountain hut. I, er, I got out my — oh, by the way I’d started walking in the direction of Sweden — I got out my escape matches and they broke. They were useless. They were about an inch long. So then I decided I’d probably cut off slivers of wood from a bench and, er, start a fire that way. The knife broke so that was useless. I should also explain at this stage that we were very — we had a hell of a lot of training for parachuting. I jumped off a six foot ladder once onto bail of straw. That’s the only training I ever had. Anyway, eventually I had to get down onto a road because I was just passed caring at that stage and I came round the corner. The road ran along by a river and there was a, a detachment of Germans and when they — I looked, I wondered if I could run across the river because it was frozen but when they fired a shot, I decided that for me the war was over. The — interesting their reaction. They were — they cordoned off that area because they thought, well, they knew an American aircraft had crashed there and they were after the American crew and their, their reaction was interesting. It wasn’t particularly hostile. They were absolutely amazed that the RAF were employing children [laugh] because I looked very young anyway. Well, I was [emphasis] young but they were employing children, I mean, these terra fliegers. I was then taken to a prison cell and dumped into a cell. I started shouting in the hope that the other crew might be there and the Germans quite impolitely told me to shut up and keep quiet. So, I wondered what, what I could do to get over this problem. Now, about a week before I was shot down I’d been to a film London and I think it was called I think “Orchestra Wives” and in it was a song which was so appropriate. In those days the high spot of social life was the Saturday night dance. There was nothing and one of the songs in was “Missed the Saturday Dance” because they crowded the floor “Can’t get on without you. Can’t get around anymore” and I started singing that and I got a re— someone else joined in and so I, I believed there was another, sort of allied airmen, either Canadian or British or something, er, in there, in the, in this prison cell but I really didn’t know him. I was then taken to, er, somewhere anyway. We finished up in a guard room of, I think, an airfield and we were in this little guard room with a Feldwebel NCO and a couple of German soldiers for him and one, one was holding Sten gun or Sten type gun, like that, and he pulled the trigger and I thought he was going to murder me and I shouted at him but the Fedwebel NCO shouted at him so it was obviously an inadvertent firing that you would expect a young recruit might do in England. From there I was taken to Dulag Luft which was the interrogation centre for Frankfurt on Maine. We were put in tiny cells. Kept there I don’t know how many days where you know they, sort of, you had a shout if you wanted to go to the loo and try to exercise in this few square yards you had. After the war, er, some Germans were prosecuted for overheating [peep sound] the cells which apparently had asbestos linings. From there — I don’t know, I was there a few days. I can’t really remember. From there I was taken to Stalag Luft III with an escort of two or three airmen or, you know, German airmen. I was glad to have them I think when we were at Stuttgart Station because people were spitting and wanted to tear me apart because, well, to them I was the terra flieger. We went by train from there to Sagan railway station and, in fact, the railway station has little changed, you know, it’s quite uncanny in a way. And I can’t remember how we went from the station to the camp, which is about a mile away, whether it was by truck or we walked or — when we got in the camp — and the prisoners used to call new arrivals milk bottles because they were white. I mean, we were flying at night. We didn’t see much daylight. And I was questioned. We were all questioned to see whether we were plants by the enemy and then we were allocated a room and a knife, fork and spoon and things like that, which I still have actually, although the fork, the prongs have broken off and the knife is broken hallway because I used it as a, what we described, as a ‘pranger’ to make tin plates, as a hammer. Anyway, after I’d been there a little while the ‘Great Escape’ took place. I mean, I was not directly involved. I meant, it had been going on for months. The people that went out were mainly people who’d been prisoners for a long time or prisoners who’d been directly involved in the digging or, er, were continentals, could speak a language and had a better chance, for example, a chap named Tobolski, who was a Pole, and “Wings” Day went out together and the, the night before those who were in the lead of the tunnel, going first, were moved into the huts so there wouldn’t be too much turbulence and our hut was crowded. We knew the escape was taking place and we heard a shot in the night and realised they had been discovered. We, I’ve heard people say they, ‘I was in the tunnel and the only reason I was saved was because there was a bend in the tunnel otherwise the bullet would have hit me.’ Absolute rubbish and one of our members was so incensed with this correspondence in the newspaper, a very distinguished digger, who became a digger because he was Welsh and they thought all Welsh people were miners while he’d never touched — he was a tough character but he — I remember [cough] Ken Reece [?] phoning me and saying, ‘Charles, if all those who say they were involved got together in the camp there wouldn’t be room for them all.’ And it’s perfectly true. You know, I’ve heard so much rubbish. And the — another interesting thing, the chap in charge of the tunnelling had [emphasis] been a miner, so — but he was Canadian and, in fact, he acted as the technical adviser on the film “The Great escape”. He had been a miner but an opencast miner so — anyway he was in charge, Wally Floody. We were — life in the camp was pretty tedious and we never knew what was going to happen to us. Oh sorry, the night after the tunnel, escape had been discovered we were held out on the parade ground. It was bitterly cold, all day virtually, while they counted and recounted to establish how many people had escaped. And they counted and recounted with little help from us because we kept moving round deliberately and then I think they stopped food coming in and lots of things like that. The — we were fortunate, the senior British officer — an interesting thing about the camp, in officer camps the senior British officer by seniority was the boss, for want of a better description, but in NCO camps they were voted in a man of confidence, whether he be Army or Air Force, I mean Dixie Dean was a man of confidence that most people will remember. Anyway we, er, during the rest of the time in Stalag III we didn’t know what was going to happen to us after the shoot— I’m sorry, I really should have said about the senior British officer was a group captain and he was about to be repatriated on the Gothenburg (I think there were two repatriations during the war) and this was a few weeks after and this was fortuitous because he was able to give the information about the shooting, the murdering, first hand, to the extent that Anthony Eden stood up in Parliament and said, ‘We will exert exemplary justice on them when we find the culprits.’ And in fact, the wing commander, who was an ex-policemen, who did the investigation, post-war called his book “Exemplary Justice” and in fact, many moons ago he was given a OBE, many moons afterwards. His OBE was stolen and after he was, he died the RAF, we held a ceremony at Henlow, at which we presented a duplicate OBE to his family, and they in turn gave it back to the, er, the Service Police Department, detachment there, because that’s, they are based at Henlow and its probably still there. Anyway, food was very short, cigarettes were plentiful. When the Germans were beasty they, apart from stopping the, stopping the food coming in, they also punctured the tins so we couldn’t hoard them for escaping. Although escaping had been forbidden by the senior British officer anyway. We followed — when the invasion came we expected to be home the following day, kind of thing. Of course, it went on and on and on. We were very disappointed. We followed the invasion progress. We had a BBC radio and the news used to be read every day. The, the Germans also had their news bulletin. And the map we kept up, it was, er, updated by the German news and not by us, and it was a popular story that the commandant at the camp asked the senior British officer, ‘Where exactly are the British now?’ Whether it’s true or not I don’t know because he knew we had the radio. One story about the radio, there was a Church of England, an Anglican priest, minister, in the camp. He, er, was Army because obviously RAF chaplains don’t fly. He, er, as I say, he was doing his chaplaincy or ministry. He was Anglican. Another chap turns up who was Presbyterian and he was Army. He came into the camp and in his book it was interesting. It said, ‘I met the other chap, the minister. He greeted me warmly but his sermons were dull.’ When the — people often don’t understand why there were no Americans in the film “The Great Escape”, well — rather not in the film, in actual, there were no Americans killed. The reason was the Americans were involved in the digging but before the escape they were moved and there was a story that it was wondered how they would get the news across the wire. The Americans in their new camp would take time to either build a radio or scrounge the parts. And somebody hit upon the idea of just shouting it across the wire. Now this seemed to be insecure but, er, the, er, oh gosh, it was — the answer is very simple and I’ve just forgotten the word for a second. It was shouted across in the Scottish language, Gaelic, that’s right, Gaelic, the — and of course there was no hope in hell of any German speaking Gaelic. That particular chap, the Scot, came back and, in fact, we’ve seen him ministering in Bond Street Church, just off Sloane Square, Sloane Street, and eventually he became he Moderator of the Free Church of Scotland and when he died Brown, the former Prime Minister, attended his funeral because Brown’s father was a contemporary of, of this minister and, in fact, I think the minister christened Brown’s child. Anyway, we, we were very short of food, so much so that if we got a loaf of bread that was made of wooden, er, made of sawdust virtually, there was one bread cutter on the camp and with a bit of luck you might book it, I mean, and you would then cut as many slices as possible. You’d bring it back, and put it on the table and you would cut cards for the choice of slice just in case one had a more than the other. If we had what we called ‘glop’ which was running with weevils, occasionally, we’d do the same. We would ladle out the glop in bowls and then cut cards just in case one had a spoonful more than the other. Then we’d cut cards for who would lick out the container. As I say, cigarettes were plentiful because they were duty free in Canada and America and the Germans were quite illogical in a way because they seemed to let them in when they wouldn’t allow food. The cigarettes were used as a currency. Every — we had an exchange shop called ‘Foodacco’. When I say shop, it was a local room, and you could buy any sort of commodity that came in a food parcel but it was priced in terms of cigarettes and, if I’m not mistaken, I didn’t smoke. I believe a two penny bar of chocolate was a thousand cigarettes and I remember saving up and eventually getting a — it was a Hershey bar, a hard chocolate, and breaking it up, and cutting the knobs of chocolate in half and cleaning my teeth (we had no toothbrush] and getting on my pit, as we called our beds, and with lights out at 10 o’clock and putting this bit of chocolate on my tongue to see how long I could make it last. It was sheer luxury. And we dined as a, within the room so we pooled all our, our rations. And, er, you had one stove in the room which threw out very little heat and you could just about boil a kettle on it. But you were allocated a half hour and it rotated for the one kind of cooking stove in the hut and so you had to have everything ready to throw on the stove and off again in the thirty minutes. We had two or three people in the room who were reasonable cooks, well at least, were prepared to cook. At night, as I say, the shutters came down at dusk and we were locked in. Interesting, every day we a had a quiet period and I think it was either between 1 and 3 o’clock or something like that, where you were forbidden to make a noise, to enable people to write or rest or read or do whatever they wanted to do. It was good discipline. We had two parades a day and usually when we were on parade the ferrets would become particularly active, searching rooms, and anyway after the invasion we thought we would be home the following day but it didn’t work out that way. We wondered what would happen to us, whether we would be held as hostages or whether we would shot like the fifty. And then in January we had a kind of prior warning on the grape vine that we would be moved. Well, the Russians were only twenty miles away and we could hear their guns and we were hoping that the Russians would overtake us that would have been disastrous. But anyway suddenly we were told we’d be on the road. We were going to be marched out and we left the camp at about two o’clock in the morning. I’d made a sledge like that there and, in fact, there’s a copy on the memorial. The, er, Germans had made no provision for food or accommodation on route. We were not equipped for that sort of thing. The temperature was minus thirty degrees centigrade. It was the coldest winter in Polish living memory and it’s been confirmed since. And there was a blizzard. It wasn’t a march. It was a trudge. People often say do you recognise this when you passed? All I recognised was feet, the person’s feet in front of me, you know, sloshing along and it was, as I say, thirty six hours before we got shelter. We were put in a barn. Those that didn’t get in got frostbite. Those that took their boots off had difficulty getting them on again because they were frozen. We got up the next morning, no provision had been made for anything and then we marched and this went on two or three days. One stop I remember we were very fortunate. We were in a glass factory so it was warm. I remember I had a little pot of something that I put in the kiln to, to — remember, we were carrying our blankets and our cooking pots and the — we also stayed at an artillery barracks and, when say we stayed, I think we only stayed a few hours. I don’t really remember that. We got to Spremburg which was the border between until recently, well, still is the border between Germany and Poland. Well, at one time it was manned but it isn’t now. And Spremburg hadn’t changed very much until about two years ago. Because every time we go there we hold a service and the buildings were still there. Occasionally, the Germans in recent years had always been helpful. We had a German escort for our — when we simulate the March. We, we had some interference with a few Germans but the German police have a wonderful way of dealing with it. They put the, they pick up the chaps concerned, put them in the back of a truck, drive them twenty miles outside Spremberg and dump them. It’s amazing. The mayor turns up and things like that and at Spremberg we were loaded into cattle trucks. I think fifty of us, something like that, in the cattle trucks. There was no room to stretch out. Some of us had dysentery and we had one bucket between us so you can imagine the stench but at least it was en-suite. Then the, er, we were there for several days. We parked up overnight and often we wondered whether we’d be victims of our own bombing. You know, we heard the bombing. The, eventually, we came to a place near Bremen, Tarmstedt, and we were pushed out and then had to walk about six, six hours or something to a camp. And certainly it was raining or snowing and it was cold. They seemed to search every one of us and when we got into the camp it had been wrecked completely. It had been a camp for mariners, either Navy or Merchant Navy. And they had wrecked the joint completely. They’d broken the windows, broken the beds, the boards, smashed the stoves. All we had was wet straw. And the reason they did that, yes, our own people, was they thought they were evacuating the camp to make way for refugees from Hamburg and Bremen and, of course, little did they — I don’t know how long we stayed there, probably a month or something. I remember spending a whole morning sitting on my haunches on a cinder path, picking up little bits of coke, you know, about an eighth of an inch, quarter of an inch, to fill a can to — so we could make a reasonable brew. On, on one occasion we saw or heard, knew that there was a bread van coming and we were obviously quite excited. The trouble was a Tempest or a Typhoon shot it up when it was near the camp. But if that aircraft had come down we would have lynched him. It was one of our own. Anyway, after a time we were going on the road again but this time we were living out all, all the time. We were sleeping in fields at night. We put out our towels to show POW for any aircraft. I mean, escape would have been easy, apart from it being [unclear] it would have been easy. But then you’d got to go through German lines and British lines and you were just as likely to have been shot by either of them. We crossed the Elbe and on the other side was a barge called the “Capella” and I went on to try and scrounge some food and the captain wanted me to stay as a kind of hostage but as I said the British were [unclear] on the side, the other back, so I mean the chances of surviving that were pretty remote. Anyway we went on. We were supposed to be going to Lu— to a camp at Lübeck but there was typhoid or typhus in the camp, er, in Lübeck so instead of after a lot of negotiation, we were dumped on a farm outside Lübeck, once again living out in the open, so just making shelters for ourselves. I remember there was a lake there. The Germans, the 21st Army Group, eventually crossed the Elbe and caught up with us but before that, er, a reconnaissance vehicle, one of these little things and you don’t know whether it was going or coming back, with two men in it, usually an officer and an NCO, came into the camp and we mobbed him. I mean we really mobbed him and I don’t think he was the advanced party. I have an idea he’d lost his way but anyway eventually the main body, the troops, came up and we were told to wait there. And so, the main, the main force came up and then they give us transport, buses, to be flown back to England and that was the end of captive world. Well, not quite the end. What’s going to happen to this? Is it going to be published or, or what?
TO: If you’re, if you’re OK with it being published some of it can be viewable online for people can watch. If you’re OK with that.
CC: Yeah, yeah. I won’t tell you — when it’s switched off I’ll tell you how I got back to England. But that’s a different matter.
TO: OK.
CC: Turn that off.
TO: Shall I turn it off?
CC: Yes. OK. Andy Wiseman, he, was born in Berlin. His father was in the embassy, of Polish extraction. He spent his first thirteen years there. He went home crying because, er, they wouldn’t let him join the Hitler Youth and so his father said I must tell you a thing of two. Ian was also a lad he used to go to school with, he said, ‘I can’t walk with you because you’re Jewish.’ Anyway, he came back to England. It was claimed he couldn’t speak English but I don’t believe that. He, er, joined the Air Force at eighteen and by that time he was a remarkable linguist. He spoke French, English, Polish, Russian, um, anyway he, er, died. He was coming to me, with me. I invited him to come with me to the Defence Academy because I was giving a talk there and, er, he eventually wrote his book or had it ghost written and phoned me and he said, ‘Charles, would you write the foreword for me?’ I said, ‘Well send me the proof.’ And I think it was the Christmas before, probably Christmas before last, I was going to Oxford and I said, ‘I’ll take it with me.’ I didn’t read it. I wrote, wrote the foreword. I didn’t need to read it actually but when he asked me I said, ‘I’ll write it on one condition.’ You know he charged by the word because he was Jewish [slight laugh]. Anyway, the sad thing is he died before seeing the foreword, before seeing the book.
TO: Right.
CC: And a lady friend he had, who was about ten or fifteen years longer, younger, a couple of days after he died she had a stroke. And I’m in touch with her still. Anyway —
TO: I was wondering, when you were growing up were you interested in aircraft?
CC: Oh, yes. Ev— everyone was. I mean, I saw the Hendon Air show so, I mean, and I can remember being very envious of an Air Cadet (Air Defence Cadet because it was before the Air Training Corps) directing the traffic [slight laugh] under the control of a, a Service man, so, you know, when I go back to Hendon I think of that.
TO: So was your father in the First World War?
CC: Yes, he was but as I said we start with me.
TO: OK. Fair enough.
CC: He was actually. He was in the Machine Gun Corps. He was wounded and gassed.
TO: So, just to check? What year were you born?
CC: 1923. So long ago I’ve forgotten.
TO: Can you remember the Munich Agreement at all?
CC: I remember Chamberlain and all that, yeah.
TO: And what do you think of Chamberlain, looking back?
CC: It’s so easy to be critical after the event, you know. You could argue that he gave us time to prepare for war. You can argue any way. A neighbour of mine, who’s elderly, Len, I remember him saying something about history. Before you, when you look at history, you need to read two or three books for the three opinions and it’s perfectly true. I mean, you look at companies, as I know only too well. You look at the Chairman and think why doesn’t he do this? But he can only run as fast as the rest his committee or board and people forget that.
TO: And were you in London during the Blitz?
CC: In the early days, yes. I witnessed the Blitz.
TO: Is there anything that stands out for you from that time?
CC: Well, the bombing, the devastation, the fact that walking around, coming, walking around at night you didn’t — the bombing was not the main the problem. It was the shrapnel. You could hear the tinkle, tinkle. I mean, there were many more pieces of shrapnel than bombs.
TO: And, er, what kind of medical tests did you have for being aircrew?
CC: When I volunteered it was quite amusing. As a child I’d had, was told I had a weak heart so there I was at the medical trying to persuade them how fit I was. At the same time there was another chap being examined trying to proving a hole, saying how sick he was, because he didn’t want to be called up. No, the — it was quite strange the medical at the time.
TO: And, er, do you remember when America joined the war?
CC: Not specifically? I mean, I must have remembered but well, obviously a relief, because you know that we had an ally with us but probably at that age I wasn’t as involved in politics as I am now.
TO: What do you think of Churchill?
CC: He was remarkable man. Once again, I mean, you hear of his detractors but whatever you think, he had a remarkable command of English language. Disappointing that he — he probably had his reasons — the fact that he tried to back out from any responsibility for the bombing campaign. I get cross when people try to reinvent the time and, er, criticise Dresden. We — there’s no need to apologise for Dresden. Dresden was a transportation point. Furthermore, it was bombed at the direct request of Stalin. Stalin wanted so many transportation points bombed to ease the pressure on his Front. Three cities were chosen but I think it was Eisenhower who decided it was Dresden and the Americans bombed it at the same time. I got from the radio that Harris was in America at the time, I’m not sure. Once again, another remarkable man. I mean people, we always referred to him as “Butch” Harris but it was term of endearment, not criticism. I, er, I or we always thought the reason he chose our targets was that he was in bed and there was a map of Germany on the wall and he threw a dart [slight laugh] but I’m sure it’s not true. In fact, in one of the messes — let me think? Is it Cranwell or Henlow? They’ve got books of target maps of all the air bases that were bombed. About a year or so there was a book published so I got a copy (it was about forty pounds) showing, er, the site of every bomb that were dropped in England or probably London during the war. It, it is really quite interesting. Also, sorry, another thing about Dresden, people often say that, you know, it was near the end of the war. No one knew it was the end of the war and the Germans were still raining V-2 rockets on England whether it was nearly the end of the war or not. I mean, my wife and I were walking to Kingston, which is about five miles, and we deterred at one stage and I came across a memorial where a V-2 had landed, somewhere between here and Kingston.
TO: What did you think of other RAF leaders, like Charles Portal?
CC: I, I think we were very well served by them. One of the, we got to Sagan this year. We’ve been to Sagan. We go every year. We try to repeat the Long March. I emphasise about fifty officers and airmen, er, including the chief air staff. He came with someone on one occasion and this previous, this last chief air staff, was coming but he had to drop out at the last moment. I emphasise this is the first stage of the Long March. We only marched to Spremberg and nigh on a hundred miles and we stay in the barn we stayed in, which is still there, but they have camp beds and mobile cooking and things, heating and things like that. But, er, what was I thinking of?
TO: RAF leaders.
CC: Oh, the RAF leaders. The, the troops have to put on, what they call, a stand. They have to — they’re given a particular subject to talk about. One of the, er, subjects that often came up, I mean, would Bushell be sixteen [?] in the post-war Air Force? Obviously it’s no. You know, horse for courses.
TO: And —
CC: Just on leadership. I think the RAF have been lucky to have the chiefs we’ve had. I mean, all of them have been good. I can’t think of anyone that you’d say, ‘God, how did they get there?’
TO: And what’s your opinion on Harris?
CC: Harris was remarkable man. I mean, I met him. I’ll show you. Strangely enough, when you came I was just upstairs. I was going to photocopy something. On Monday, yes Monday, I’ve been asked to go to the RAF Club where someone is going to present the RAF Club with a picture of Harris. I’ve got a picture there. A signed picture of Harris. I’ll dig it out. There are some things that would interest you. But he was certainly a great man. I mean, he was single-minded. He was articulate. You couldn’t have wished for a better chap. It’s just unfortunate that he got the so called approbation [?] of the bombing campaign but certainly there should not be any apology for the bombing campaign. After all, the Germans invented area bombing by Rotterdam and Guernica and places like that. I mean Guernica was in the Spanish Civil War.
TO: And just as a side note I have something I have with me that [unclear]
CC: Pardon?
TO: There’s something I have with me that you’ve probably already seen it. There’s a speech Harris gave in 1977 about Bomber Command that I give to all the veterans, Sir. You might want to have a read of that later.
CC: Oh, I’d love to. I’ll have a copy of that if I may?
TO: That’s why I brought it, Sir. You might have heard it yourself right from him.
CC: Er, just turn it off just for a second.
TO: OK, sure.
CC: I [pause]
TO: Do you remember what films they were showing at the cinema during the war?
CC: Certainly. I mentioned one earlier “Orchestra Wives” and in fact we, in the prison camp, er, we had one film, I remember, shown in all the time I was there and what I remember about it is either the, either, the power was cut off or the projector broke. It was while someone was singing a song [unclear] and so we never did hear the end. It was a very popular tune at the time but, er, I suppose Judy Garland, Shirley Temple, things were popular at the time.
TO: And how was morale in the Air force during the war?
CC: It was very good. We were young and fit and I’m talking about aircrew really — young, fit, filtered — I mean to get in the POW camp you’d been filtered so many times. You had volunteered, selected, examined, interrogated, and then shot down. You’d survived and you’d got to the camp and you were still alive so it was a great filtration system and I don’t think there was any problem with morale. And I have people often ask me about lack of moral fibre. I never met anyone that I had were classed by LMF. One person I met after the war intrigues me because I’m sure, er, he was commissioned and then he became a flight sergeant. His story is that he decided that he didn’t he wanted to be an instructor. I can’t believe that’s true. That’s the only one where I expect that might be the case but I could easily be wrong. The other thing too is, er, survival after the war. The — once again, we were all young and fit. We didn’t have post-war stress, but I know two people who actually went in a mental home. One was a friend. One was in the POW camp. He was put in a mental home and there was another one who died recently. I went to his funeral. He had two or three sessions in a mental home. So some people were affected.
TO: How did you feel you feel when Churchill announced that the RAF would begin its bombing campaign?
CC: He what?
TO: When, when Churchill announced that, er, the RAF would be beginning the bombing campaign against Germany?
CC: Oh, the bombing campaign really existed throughout the war. There was no start to it. I mean, the — there were POWs who were shot down in Hampdens, you know, in the early days, and Whitleys and when I, when I joined the Air Force in Oxford we were accommodated overnight in what was a cinema or a theatre in the High Street. It was full of beds about six inches apart, Safari camp beds. The chap in the bed on my right was a sergeant air gunner from Abingdon, flying Whitleys, and he horrified me with his stories [unclear] I was beginning to wonder whether I was doing the right thing, volunteering, and then a few weeks later I saw a film “Target For Tonight” and the hero was Pickard, who was a squadron leader then. He was acting squadron leader. And once again I was wondering whether I’d made the right decision but that was the only time I had any doubt about my survival. Pickard became a group captain eventually and was shot down on the, er, Amiens raid I think.
TO: And what did you — did you see news reels at the cinema?
CC: Sorry?
TO: Did you watch news reels at the cinema?
CC: Certainly, yes. Whilst I was in England, yes.
TO: Yes. Did you ever wonder if they were being truthful?
CC: Oh, I think it was pretty obvious they were being faked. They had to be, I mean, even then. And if you read, if you read the Telegraph today, the despatches from the First World War, and you read them and, er, we won every day but the war went on for four years. It’s interesting to see how — there was very famous commentator. There was a film about him. He came, he came with the squadron and flew on one occasion and he presented us with a, a rather swish radiogram which was all singing and all dancing in those days and subsequently when the squadron moved to Coningsby there was an argument whether the radiogram was presented to the squadron or the mess. Oh, what was his name? He was very — I mean, you would know him.
TO: Was it Ed Munro?
CC: Ed Munro?
TO: Murrow.
CC: Ed Murrow. Yeah, it was Ed Murrow.
TO: He gave the broadcast during the Blitz.
CC: That’s right. Yes.
TO: And do you, er, remember hearing about the raid on Hamburg?
CC: Surely. That’s why, I mean, a great deal publicity was given to it because you have to remember that this was the only way the country could fight back at the time and it was certainly a morale booster to think something like that was happening.
TO: And do you remember the thousand bomber raid?
CC: Yes, I do. Yes. Once again it was a remarkable feat. Then when you hear, subsequently, the efforts that were made to get a thousand aircraft in the air it was quite something.
TO: And, er, how did the mission briefings work?
CC: It, it was to a formula. It went very well. You didn’t know until the day where you were going. You had some indication from the, the great [unclear] there was a few of those so you knew roughly the distance. The briefings were all done very correctly. And, er, in fact there’s a company that does briefings now. They dress up as airmen and they do it very, very well. I can’t remember the name of the group. I saw them performing at Duxford and I thought they were remarkable.
TO: And, er, what was the procedure for when you actually you left the briefing area and you began to prepare for the mission?
CC: Well, after the briefing you left the briefing you went back to the mess to read prior to flying and, yeah, obviously, recognising there was a greater danger going to Berlin than anywhere else. What is interesting about — once again, going back to the mess, last year I went to Potsdam where the forty-eight, the fifty are interred. If you look along the graves there are three or four at the end that are not in order, you know, in a straight line. I looked at them and thought, you know, just the crew together. I, when I left I looked at what you call a [unclear] a long list of names and I found that they were on my squadron, not only that, they were on my squadron whilst I was there and the fact that I didn’t know them, didn’t even remember, indicated they could have been on their first trip. I could have been on leave while they arrived. It indicated the short life. I mentioned this chap who I said went into a mental home twice, he was shot down on his first trip. He was —
TO: And do you — could you tell me about your first ever mission over Europe?
CC: It was to Mönchengladbach and I always — it became the headquarters of the Royal Air Force of the Forces in Germany as it became later. So much so, I laid a foundation stone there because I bombed it. But I remember it very well and was very satisfied I got back but, I say, we never expected anything to happen to us. It’s silly really when I look back.
TO: And what was, what were your duties specifically on the bomber?
CC: Well, I was the bomb aimer, map reading, bombing generally, acting as look-out on the front. There was a, there was a turret and I heard of, of people say they sat in the turret all the time except for the bombing. Pretty pointless because, I mean, eighteen thousand feet nothing there was going to happen from the front turret.
TO: So, where did you sit, near —
CC: Well, in the bombing nose in the front.
TO: And what were the conditions like aboard the Lancaster?
CC: Cold, hungry, you know, difficult to get to the loo if you wanted it, er, noisy. When I say noisy, um, about twenty years ago the Government gave ten thousand pounds to everyone who complained about being partially deaf from what was called “Lancaster Ear”. Strangely enough, I mentioned it to an audiologist, was it yesterday or the day before? I went and had my hearing tested and I mentioned this thousand — I never got it myself but I know people who applied for it at got it with little argument. So obviously the noise level was exceptionally high. I say, the aircraft was very cold.
TO: Did you have any heating in your section?
CC: No. We had — we wrapped up warmly. Then they brought in an electrically heated suit which was good. It improved things.
TO: And what was the flight procedure for take-off?
CC: Oh, you got out of the nose and propped yourself up against the main spar.
TO: And do you remember what your thoughts were during a mission?
CC: Pardon?
TO: What were you generally thinking about during the mission?
CC: Well, you were so busy looking out, you know, the — put it this way there were no deep thoughts [laugh]. Survival thoughts more than anything else.
TO: And was there heavy flak during the missions?
CC: Partly. You’d go through heavy periods and you heard a heavy thump and the aircraft would rock if it was near. I don’t remember actually being hit but once again it was a matter of luck. Occasionally you’d be caught in a searchlight and there was a, the, there was a thing called, oh, “corkscrew” to sort of evade being shot down. I don’t think it did much good.
TO: Did you ever have to ask the pilot to correct his course?
CC: Oh, all the time. I mean, it was a mutual thing. I mean, the navigator and yourself knew more than the pilot and certainly over the target you were aiming for the target markers.
TO: Was this left by the Pathfinders?
CC: Pardon?
TO: Were these target markers that were left by the Pathfinders?
CC: Yes and one time being shot became a kind of game which was terrible but we must have been foolish but we certainly wasn’t very popular with our own crew?
TO: What was, what was your duty once you got over the target?
CC: Well, to pin-point the target and drop the bombs.
TO: Could you see anything other than the flares that had been left?
CC: Oh, well, I mean flak all round and searchlights and aircraft blowing up too. I didn’t realise, I said earlier, that when we were in the prison camp they used to close the shutters when there was a raid but on the march, for the last time, when we slept out in the open we’d see the raids, the American raids and our own raids. And you’d see the aircraft shot down. Some would explode immediately, some would catch fire and you’d see some of the crew bail out and if they didn’t you knew how many were in the crew and you’d think the poor devils, you know.
TO: Were you ever — were your missions always at nights?
CC: Pardon?
TO: Were your missions always at night?
CC: Yes, yep.
TO: And what were the targets generally be?
CC: Mainly Ruhr targets. I remember Stettin, Mannerheim, Schweinfurt, Berlin, Mönchengladbach, you know, typical.
TO: And what did you think of other bombers like the Wellington?
CC: Compared with the Lancaster it was third class but it was what we started with at the beginning of the war and the great thing is it could be patched up more easily because it had geodetic construction with fabric and —
TO: And what about the Halifax?
CC: Halifax, well, was once again inferior in performance. It’s height and range inferior to the Lancaster. I mean, we were lucky to be on Lancasters. There’s no doubt about it. And even earlier on, Whitleys even more — and even earlier Hampdens were shot down.
TO: Were the missions to Berlin the most dangerous ones you could have?
CC: Yes. I mean, you could argue, like the dams’ raid, but they were exceptions rather than — well, I mean, one thing that’s forgotten about Berlin, there was a heavy concentration of anti-aircraft guns. Those anti-aircraft guns, they were the same type as were used for anti-tank purposes.
TO: And when you got back did you think about the losses that had been suffered or did you just carry on?
CC: You couldn’t help thinking about them because usually it was someone you knew but, I mean, it was a well organised system. Very quickly they swept the room and all traces were remove almost the same day.
TO: And would you say you were good friends with everyone in the crew?
CC: Yes. I mean, once again, it’s quite remarkable. As I said, we became almost forced marriages in a way but we certainly I never regretted the crew we had. We were remarkable.
TO: What is your best memory from the war?
CC: Coming home after the war. [laugh]
TO: OK. And do you think there was anything the RAF could have done to reduce the losses they suffered?
CC: No. Everyone was working to achieve a reduction of the losses. I mean some of the best friends in the camp were working on it and it certainly had priority over other things. With hindsight you could think of things but certainly at the time it was impossible to do that. I mean every development from the development of aircraft to the equipment used in the aircraft were designed to reduce the loss rate.
TO: And what, did your, was window ever used on your missions?
CC: Oh, every time, or practically every time as far as I was concerned, and it was effective, particularly at the beginning.
TO: Was there anything that Germans have anything to counter it?
CC: Not that I was aware of but I’m sure they did.
TO: And what do you think was the most important campaign of the war?
CC: I think the Berlin campaign. People who criticise the bombing effort should listen to chaps like Speer, who was the armaments minister, and if you look at his quotations and interviews he had no doubt they were effective.
TO: On the missions were you given a specific target or was it just a certain area that you were bombing?
CC: We were given a specific target and it was marked by the Pathfinders.
TO: And what did you think of the aircraft that the Germany was using?
CC: I had no knowledge of it except they were effective. I mean, someone said the, the aircraft that shot me down or shot us down was, I can’t remember the type, but it was a heavier type, more like a bomber than a fighter, so probably a medium lighter bomber with guns fitted to it so obviously it was a more superior performance than the Lancaster but the attrition rate was such that the Germans were doing quite well. I mean the fact that, what was it? Fifty-five thousand bomber crews, a very high prop— proportion, and people often forgot the ten thousand prisoners of war that were shot down.
TO: And aside from the mission in which you were shot down which mission stands out the most to you?
CC: I, I can’t think of any one. They were all the same, you know, I think the Berlin ones. I suppose the one where we were scattered coming back and had to land at Pocklington and others were bailing out left, right and centre.
TO: And did you have an escape hatch where you, near where you sat?
CC: Sure. Yes. The escape hatch was in the news, in the nose and that’s why you find more bomb aimers survived than pilots and the first thing when the aircraft was aflame and I think it was a mutual decision. I don’t quite know how it was, who said, ‘Bail out. Bail out’. I can’t remember how that happened. It was always — but I, I opened the hatch, got rid of the hatch, and just waited a second until the first person behind me came because I had no intention of jumping out and then finding that I was the only one out and the aircraft got back.
TO: Did you, so did you have to wait until the pilot gave you clearance before you jumped?
CC: Yeah. I don’t quite know how the decision was made. I think it was pretty mutual. The aircraft was ablaze. I’m sure he said, ‘Jump.’ But, you know, I can’t remember specifically.
TO: And did you wear your parachute at all times?
CC: No. And you got to remember, the, er, rear gunner was interesting. The — I hadn’t realised until after the war and I should have known. The rear gunner’s parachute was in the body of the aircraft and he to get out he had to rotate his turret so his, the exit of the turret was aligned to the fuselage, then had to reach for his parachute in the fuselage, get out and put it on. Well, now, if the hydraulics had gone he’d have to wind it by hand. So, once again, it was not easy for a rear gunner to survive. I didn’t realise that until I was looking at the Lancaster Museum at — just outside — oh, gosh. Anyway, just outside the Canadian city — I’m just trying to think what it is — I think the museum is at a place called Nankut and its devoted entirely to the Lancaster.
TO: So, where was your [emphasis] parachute stored?
CC: In a rack. I should think somewhere to the side and, of course, you’re all plugged in to the intercom and electric suit you were wearing so you had to get rid of those at the last moment.
TO: Is there anything more you remember about when the aircraft was attacked?
CC: Just the noise of the shells pumping in the aircraft and the flames, that’s all. Oh, yeah, the only other thing I remember bailing out and as I say having had so much instruction in parachuting I remember counting because I was afraid, I mean it’s unbelievable now, I was afraid the shroud would get caught in the aircraft. I mean, it seems unlikely but I did count before pulling the chute rip cord to extend the chute.
TO: How high do you think you were when you opened the chute?
CC: I’m guessing about ten thousand feet.
TO: Could you see anything below you or around you?
CC: Not really. It was night time. It was a survival frame of mind. I can’t remember looking down as I came down.
TO: When — what happened during the landing?
CC: I just fell in the snow and then I took the parachute harness off and buried it and, you know, covered it with snow. And slavishly cut a piece of material out of the parachute, which I mean, when I look back, I think as crazy. I’ve still got that piece of parachute somewhere, so much so that my sister in law embroidered on it sort of the name of the target and things like that.
TO: Were you on your way back to the target or on the way there?
CC: On the way there and when we got there we jettisoned the bombs too. That was one of the first decision that had to be made.
TO: And what time of year was it that this happened
CC: February and bloody cold.
TO: And what actually was the terrain like around you?
CC: As I say, mountainous, covered in snow, probably a ski centre in — it would be interesting to go back.
TO: And when you’d actually — I don’t know if you could see much around the area but could you see any huts or villages?
CC: No. Only when I came across this mountain hut. That’s all I saw.
TO: And what about the other people who bailed out? What happened to them?
CC: One broke a leg. The others were picked up but I don’t know their individual stories. I mean, looking back, it didn’t occur to me. I mean, were all had a similar experience. I mean, a great friend of mine — we’ve just arranged to go to Buckingham Palace — he’s about four years older than me. A great friend. About fifteen years ago or twenty years ago, he suddenly said, ‘Charles I didn’t realise you were on the Long March.’ I mean, it’s uncanny in a way but he was not aware of it because he was not on the March.
TO: And did you have any rations with you when you landed?
CC: Only a few — oh, we had, I think we had some Horlicks tablets or something. Emergency rations and probably a few boiled sweets or something.
TO: And when you landed were you worried how the Germans would treat you?
CC: Pardon?
TO: When you were captured were you worried about how the Germans would treat you?
CC: Well, naturally. I was amazed and admittedly it was probably more in the country than the town. As I say, the abiding memory I have of them is their amazement of the children the RAF were employing to fly.
TO: And did you see any civilians when you were captured?
CC: Mainly they were servicemen there.
TO: And were you, did you have to go through an interrogation after that?
CC: Well, that was the interrogation centre at Dulag Luft, Luft, which everyone seemed to go there. My son-in-law had to go to Frankfurt to speak at a big medical conference and I told him to start off by saying, ‘Hands up anyone whose father was employed at the interrogation centre.’ [slight laugh] I’m not saying he didn’t but it was a thought, I mean, a thought but you know [unclear] interesting about the Germans, you see, I met Germans sort of ten years ago who are afraid to come to England because they are afraid of the reception we would going to get. Equally go back to the Long March — I’ve been going back for the Long March — I’m amazed at the warm welcome we get by the Germans. In the area of the camp or in Sagen itself. In Sagen, it’s now Sagen with a ‘Z’ but it was Sagen with an ‘S’ and although it’s listed as Stalag Luft III it was an offshoot of the officers’ camp. I think of all the people I’ve met there I think only about two people who remember the POWs and they were children. I think one tells the story of how he was given some chocolate by a POW and he said, ‘Hey you. Inside I’ve got two brothers and sisters.’ I’m a Freeman of Sagen now and I opened a big school nearby of about a thousand pupils. The, the Germans have quite a — I don’t know if you’d call it a celebration — but they mark the 24th of March. They have sort of, er, parades and things like that. It’s interesting. Of course, its tourism too for them. The school, when they asked me to open it, said they wanted to call it the “School of Martyrs”. I said, ‘No way.’ And, er, we compromised. The “School of Allied Aircrew” and I, I remember my wife saying, ‘What are we going to do in the afternoon after the service?’ I mean, there were ambassadors and Uncle Tom Cobley was there and, um, when they had the service of, a three hours service, in the church and they said, ‘We don’t expect you to sit there for three hours. Come for an hour and we’ll reserve a front pew for you.’ And, er, we went in and the guard of honour that had been parading during the unveiling ceremony for — there’s a tablet — the guard of honour was in the church, in the aisle, oh with their rifles, bayonets and things and I remember saying, ‘See you afterwards. Are you there to force people going in or stop them from leaving.’
TO: And how did the guards treat you in the camp?
CC: The — we were, as I said, we were not encouraged to talk to the guards. The guards — there were specific contacts that were appointed to keep in touch with individuals, that helped the bribery and all the rest that goes with it. And the ferrets in the camp — these were what I had in mind. They were army outside, you know, they were manning the sentry box and things but the so-called ferrets, who they used to probe round because the huts were raised on bricks so they could probe around underneath them. Anyway, as I say, they had people allocated to them which was a jolly good move really. One chap told me a story, Andy Wiseman, but then he had so many stories I’m not sure it’s true, said a ferret came to his room and said, er, he was looking for, what was it? Maps or something. And Andy said, ‘I’ve got this and now I’m looking for maps.’ Whether that’s true or not I don’t know.
TO: And how did the guards seem when the news of the shootings came through?
CC: I have no direct knowledge of that but I can say the commandant was shocked. And, in fact, I was sorry to hear he was court-martialled after that. One of his crimes was there was an acoustic device that rings the camp and it was not working. It was being repaired or something and that was one of his crimes. The story goes that he was from a good English family, a good German family, and because of that he was put into a mental home to escape the court-martial. Now whether that’s true or not I don’t know and well, he, eventually he was released and in fact returned to the area as second in command of the French force. Now, whether that’s true of not, but what I think is true that this chap who became Moderator of the Free, Free Church of Scotland, er, kept in touch with him after the war to the extent that he officiated at his funeral. Now whether that was at his request or the request of family, you know —
TO: And how did you and the others feel when you heard about of the news of the executions?
CC: Shocked because we always said that in the early days in was very much easier. I mean, you’ll hear, there’s no doubt about it, escaping was a sport in the early days, but you know, come the time of Stalag III and things like that it was no longer a sport. The Germans — and I’ll show you later — put up a notice that said ‘Escaping is no longer a sport. You’ll be shot’. Nobody knows how the fifty were chosen. It was quite inexplicable. No one’s really — that is a depiction of the tunnel. [background noise] I’ll pull it out if you want to — and all around it is the, all the pictures of fifty that were murdered. Now, that was Tobolski who was caught in Stettin with “Wings” Day. Tobolski was murdered. “Wings” Day was put in Sachsenhausen. Once again, there’s a remarkable story. Tobolski — now I can’t remember at what stage they were moved from camp, but anyway, Tobolski’s widow and his son Paul used to come to our reunions. When the widow died Paul, the son, commissioned that in memory of his father and it’s a limited edition and I was given a few, which I’ve distributed to messes and the RAF club. I mean, I could sell them for a fortune, um, but I’ve got some pictures there of the Long March and other things. I’ve got lots of pictures there of sorts.
TO: I recognise some trivia here. I’ve been to — I was in Jersey with my cousin a few years ago and they actually had a board up about Scheidhauer, the one who was captured with Roger Bushell, the French one.
CC: Strangely enough, the Governor of Jersey is the former chief air staff.
TO: Is he?
CC: Yeah. I think he’s just taken over.
TO: Would it be OK if you turned back this way, Sir.
CC: Sorry?
TO: Would it be OK if you turned back this way, Sir.
CC: Sorry?
TO: Would it be OK if you rotated your chair — there, thank you. And when, when you arrived at the camp how long was it before you heard about the escape plans?
CC: I couldn’t remember that. No, I couldn’t remember that.
TO: Do you remember how you felt when you heard about it though?
CC: Not really. I mean, I was so new, relatively new, it was very much a new period of my life. I was very much the new boy. There was no way I could probably — there were some who were very proficient in international languages and so stood a better chance of getting home. There was a very good theatre in the camp too. A number of them became quite famous after the war. I mean, Mayberry [?] was at — Rupert Davies was a typical example and I know there’s two or three that’s still acting. Certainly one I know is still acting.
TO: And what are your thoughts on Roger Bushell?
CC: Well, I didn’t really know him. I met him so it’s very difficult to judge, but from his reputation I don’t think he would have succeeded in the Air Force. He was too much an individual but that’s just reading. I mean, it’s not for us [unclear] he was a remarkable man but once again the, er, I went down to Brixham after the war. It must have been, must have been about ‘55 I suppose and much to my surprise there was a fishing trawler in the harbour called the “Roger Bushell”. I often wonder what the connection was.
TO: And what was your daily routine in the camp?
CC: Exercising each day, walking round the, er, so-called bashing the circuit, walking round the outside grass ring. Reading. There was a good reference library. It was a good library anyway with lots of books. We’d play cards, rather, I say a lot of reading and, er, you got your own chores, your own laundry and we made a daily stake out of a tin can. When you had a pair of them [unclear] when you washed you had a pale of water, hot water, to do your daily — you had to get it from the kitchen, so-called kitchen. You do your — you had some very hard German soap to do the laundry, your — and then trying and hang it up. Drying it was difficult. In the winter you put it out on the lawn on the, on a line, and then you’d bring it in and you could stand it up against the wall. It was frozen to that extent so — and that was a struggle to get it dry. I mean we didn’t have much to do, just our underwear and shirt, socks and things. We didn’t have a lot of gear.
TO: Sorry, just going back. I meant to ask you this earlier. What, what kind of clothing did you have when, er, you landed, after you bailed out? Was it enough to keep you warm?
CC: Reasonably warm. The — I mean, after all, we’d go this electric — probably got a sweater and an electric suit. I mean, we were given Irvin jackets but I mean you never wore those. They were too bulky. What, what did we have? We had an inner suit and then an outer suit, you know. I think, er, some of them were called Sidcots, if I remember rightly.
TO: And did you hear anything about what was happening in Britain with the V-2s and V-1s?
CC: Yes, well we had the BBC news although, of course, the BBC news was guarded because they didn’t want to give the information to the Germans so, you know, it was obviously limited.
TO: And what — and just before the Long March becan, I think I read somewhere, maybe it’s wrong, that Stalag III was kind of more or less dismantled by the prisoners, was it?
CC: Stalag III?
TO: Was it, was any of the camp dismantled before the March began?
CC: Dismantled? I mean, I used an old Red Cross box. Our, our seating was made out of kind of tea chests, the Red Cross tea chests. I put a couple of runners on a Red Cross box and they were, er, two bed boards and we had no tools. I think, I mean, I sort of got some nails out of the wall and hammered those in. I mean, it wasn’t dismantled. We didn’t have time or the inclination to worry about that. We had lots of cigarettes, not me personally, but the cigs had been held in the Foodacco for example. We, er, tried, I say we generally, tried to make them unusable and, of course, but they won’t burn. cigarettes won’t burn so people were urinating on them to make sure they wasn’t used. It was a silly problem we had after how short we had been. We had after, you know, on a Sunday we had lots of lectures of sorts, from psychology to metrology. I mean, people put on kinds of things, I mean people — I’m trying to think — a very famous Chancellor of the Exchequer took a law degree in the early days in an NCO camp. I’m just trying to think of his name. In the library the most popular book, funnily, was, “The Sex Life” — it was illustrated — “The Sex Life of a Savage” and I think there was a two year waiting list for that. [slight laugh]
TO: And did you get Red, Red Cross parcels delivered?
CC: Occasionally, spasmodically. There was no regular supplies. Sometimes the Germans would often have half a Red Cross parcel per man, not that we split it. I mean, we pooled it in the room, all the, er, Red Cross parcels. They weren’t given out individually, you know. The, the Germans were quite illogical in a way but certainly they stopped them at times like the Great Escape and things like that. And yet the cigarette came in.
TO: As the war continued was anyone worried at all that the Germans might start executing the other airmen?
CC: Oh, sure. That’s what I’ve said earlier. It was the uncertainty of what would happen to us at the end. Having murdered the fifty anything was possible. We didn’t know whether we would be murdered, held as hostages or what and, even now, I don’t think anyone really knows what he intention was, whether they were going to use us as hostage or not.
TO: And what — could you tell me a bit more about the morning when “Harry” was discovered?
CC: Well, we were put on the, er, parade ground and kept there nearly all day in the, in the — I mean, it was freezing, whilst they recounted and recounted us to establish how many were missing and the Red Cross parcels stopped and things like this.
TO: This may or not be a true story but I saw an interview with someone, I think Jack Lyon his name was?
CC: I know him.
TO: He says the commandant was threatening to shoot a prisoner who was continuing to move around or something? I don’t know if that’s true or not.
CC: It’s possible. Once again I haven’t heard that one. Tempers were short. I mean, you can imagine the frustration of the Germans to think that fifty had got away or a number had got away from them.
TO: Did you think it was a good idea at the time to try and get, well, fifty out at once?
CC: To escape? [sneeze] Yes, I mean, when you think they had to memorise the whole country to search for them. That idea in itself was worth it, I think, you know. They put in a lot of effort on the day.
TO: And, er, what kind — during the Long March did — were the Germans short of food as well?
CC: Were they what? Short of food? No, I don’t think they were but they didn’t know where they were going. I mean they were as mystified as we were, I think, to my knowledge anyway, but I, whether the officers knew what was planned I don’t know. What was — another interesting thing about the first march was is that a rugged — in my room there was probably the toughest, scruffiest man I ever met. He had been, er, boxing and billiards at fairgrounds in America. He joined the Marines and was in their Golden [unclear] team and eventually I think he was stationed at the Panama Canal and then he joined the Air, Royal Canadian Air Force and then, I mean, he was certainly a rough and crude chap. He had three — there was hospital for VD people in England. I think it was at Brighton or Spilsby and he’d been there three times so you could see his character. He was a keep fit expert in the days before the days keep fit was popular and he had a home-made bell bar which he used to use and then in the same room we had a chap whose legs were like sparrows. He was once again in the Canadian Air Force but on the march, um, the sparrow like character survived and Jack Fielding didn’t. I mean, fell out some time ago. Last I heard of him was from a Canadian who is director of television of Ottawa I was talking to. I think he said Jack had finally settled in Toronto and, er, he was American and had a wife and about three kids and had a flag pole in his garden and used to fly the flag every day. I often wondered whether his wife knew of his background. He was a rough and tough character, Jack Fielding.
TO: Did anyone or did you see anyone try and scavenge for food during the march?
CC: Oh, sure, yes. I don’t know whether you saw a film on television the other night about the Russian football supporters. It was horrific. I mean, on the train they behaved like animals. [unclear] what [unclear] must think. But why I mention that, as I say, I mentioned cigarettes were plentiful. I’ve seen up there somewhere on the march a butt of a cigarette and seen the Russians fighting for it like dogs. I mean, scavenging, I can remember going into a [unclear] and picking out the [unclear] tops that had been put aside for animals and cleaning those up and boiling them so we were very short of food. The Long March — there’s a very good video of the Long March made by a chap who was based in Bromley. He actually came with us on one occasion and filmed us on one of these staff rides, as we called them, and it’s quite a good film but then he wanted some extra footage so he went back to take pictures of the railway station and he wanted people forming up by the wayside to give it impact so, as I say, he got some film extras but after I said to him afterwards, it was a con because these extras weren’t carrying anything. We were carrying our blankets, our cooking pot, any other stuff we had. One of the films — people often ask me about “The Great Escape” as [unclear] did until he died. Yeah, people often ask me about the “Great Escape” film. My answer every time is this. It’s a good film, an entertaining film, but there’s too much saluting, too much of an Oxford accent all [emphasis] the time, er, the — too many uniforms. I mean, we didn’t have them. There were some uniforms chaps had sent for in the early days of the war but — and of course, Steve McQueen wasn’t there but who would remember the fifty who were killed without that film, “The Great Escape”? I think, I mean, equally, people moan about that it took so, so long to, er, get a recognition of Bomber Command crews and I advocated our use for the Bomber Command medal with some little support from surprising quarters. Eventually, there was a — they agreed to the bar to the, er, to the medal, rather than a medal itself. It really saddens me talking about that. [unclear] Anyway, what is often forgotten too is that once we were there and I wondered whether to raise the subject with the Daily — Sunday Express were here but I hadn’t finished with it yet, it’s probably the wrong time, while we were there, I didn’t know at the time but subsequently I discovered that some of our pay had been deducted. Did you know about this? The POW pay had been deducted and I didn’t know about this until I went to Canada and was invited to go on television to talk about it and there was a flight lieutenant who had retired to Canada was moaning about it. I remember saying I couldn’t really criticise my country when I was in someone else’s, some other country, but anyway they deducted some of this pay, on which income tax had been paid, and it was ostensibly to provide necessities for the POWs. It never happened. It was going to be given to the protecting power except a small amount was given for an NCO camp and this was officer pay which was deducted so it was fair enough. After the war I became involved in the arguments to try to get it back and I remember, even in about ’64, being dragged along to a press conference with the Minister of Defence and I remember a chap with me, a Naval captain who tried to draft the press release, and it was — I re-wrote it I know. But anyway, subsequently, I had four people working on this: a group captain who was in the Battle of Britain and was one of Churchill’s pall bearers, the Naval captain who was in charge of the conflict during the Cod Wars, Blenheim’s squadron leader and a lieutenant colonel (I don’t know quite how he fitted in this) but I had the four of them working on it full time and we petitioned the Government so many times and, er eventually the four of them wanted to return their DFCs and their CBEs and things like that to the Queen but I argued this would be pointless because the Queen didn’t directly influence this. I, when the last of the four died, I was left with a couple of, er, tea chests full of documents, er, which are somewhere around. Really I don’t know where they are now, left with a relative one of them. I say, I had three choices: to give it to a law form to pursue on a pro bono basis, give it a newspaper to make a scene of it, or go back to the Government again, this fourth one. Anyway, I raised it again with the Government about a year ago, a year and a half ago and got a nasty reply that it had been looked at before and dismissed and this time I suggested that obviously POWs couldn’t be recompensed because some were dead anyway and I suggested giving a, a sum of money — I wanted to put token sum but I decided not to put token because they might give you a penny — a sum of money to me or The POW Association of which I would give half to and half to the Benevolent Fund and half to the POW Association. I got this standardised reply from this Minister of Administrative Affairs and I’m now going to have another go. I seriously, I say, I seriously considered raising it when the Sunday Express people were here but I decided I’d give it one more go and start the press thing. I decided I’m going to wait, er, [unclear] put me back a bit. I’m going to write to the Prime Minister. She was once very helpful on another thing through one of her constituents in Maidenhead I think. And I’ll try and there are two things in our favour. Firstly, there’s the Libor money which is available now and being given to charities and secondly there’s a move now to confiscate all accounts that have stood for fifteen years into the — for charity. I mean, but if someone claims subsequently, they still get a refund. I had some of money, strangely, I had a sum of money last week. I got a letter from a company, would I confirm my address? Well, seeing as he letter was addressed to me at my address it seemed pretty pointless and I thought it was a scam and I then, er, checked on the internet and found they were a legitimate company and they, they collect money on behalf of companies or trace. I then saw that they charged to do it and so I then phoned — it begins with a X- something. They keep a record of all, all investments and I said could you tell me what shares I have in various companies. They started to tell me and I said, ‘No, stop there. I don’t really want that as a question. I want to know anyone that I’ve not been in touch with.’ And they came back and said, ‘Yes. Abbey National.’ And there was some money in it from about, it must be about 1970 or something like that. So they said, ‘We’ll charge if we recover it.’ So, I thought to hell with that and so I went along to Santander and raised the matter with them and sure enough I got the money back but I had to pay thirty pounds. I mean, money I didn’t know existed. It wasn’t very much but it was worth having.
TO: Do you mind if we pause there for a bit? Is it OK if we pause there for a while?
CC: Yes.
TO: So how did you feel when you heard the war was over then?
CC: Elated, obviously. I mean, it was hard to believe that at long last it had happened. We’d waited for so long for it but probably at that stage it was still a surprise even though we’d been waiting for it.
TO: And on the Long March did anyone get frostbite?
CC: Sure, yes, and some fell by the wayside. What happened to them I don’t know but I do know a chap who was an artist who wrote the Long March, a book called the Long March, he actually fell out halfway through, a Canadian. He’s dead now. I think he went into hospital. I, I’ve got his book somewhere. Buckham I think his name was, Phil Buckham.
TO: Was there anyone who tried to stay behind and be liberated by the Russians?
CC: I’ve heard of someone who did but of course it was a bad move. The think the prisoners at [unclear] but one of the camps, they were not on the Long March and were liberated by the Russians but were kept there several weeks afterwards whilst, er, the Russians wanted to, were trying to barter them for other prisoners that they wanted to exchange them for and I, I think they were delayed by several weeks and Andy Wiseman, the chap who was a Jew and was born in, er, Berlin, he was an interpreter with the Russians, because he could speak Russian, and he was quite amusing about this story about going to greet the Russian tanks.
TO: For some reason it [background noise] so can you tell me about the role you played in getting the memorial in Green Park?
CC: Most of the Royal Air Force — I’ve forgotten [unclear] take it back. Take it back.
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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AClarkeCH170304
Title
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Interview with Charles Henry Clarke. Three
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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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02:11:34 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Tom Ozel
Date
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2017-03-04
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Germany
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Oberursel
Poland
Poland--Żagań
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Charles Clarke volunteered for the Royal Air Force when he was seventeen years old and flew operations as a bomb aimer with 619 Squadron from RAF Woodhall Spa. His aircraft was shot down on his 18th operation and he became a prisoner of war. He was held at Stalag Luft 3 at the time of the ‘Great Escape’. He talks about some of the men who took part in the escape and what happened to them. As the Russians were advancing the camp, he was evacuated and he gives an account of what became known as the Long March.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Christine Kavanagh
619 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
anti-Semitism
bale out
bomb aimer
bombing
Botha
crewing up
Dulag Luft
escaping
final resting place
Lancaster
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Heaton Park
RAF North Luffenham
RAF Swinderby
RAF Woodhall Spa
searchlight
shot down
Stalag Luft 3
the long march
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/18/1563/ADarbyC150630.2.mp3
da9e5105946763a779ff81714d32e118
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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Darby, Charlie
C Darby
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-06-30
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. The collection consists of an oral history interview with Charlie Darby (b. 1924, 1897788 Royal Air Force), his logbook, a poem and two photographs. Sergeant Charlie Darby flew 30 night time and daylight operations in Halifaxes with 466 and 462 Squadrons from RAF Driffield as a rear gunner.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Charlie Darby and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Identifier
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Darby, C
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: Right, so my name is Chris Brockbank and I'm here to interview a gentleman on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre and the interviewee is Mr Charlie Darby and we've got here his wife Barbara as well and ably assisted and interrogated by Tony Lee their son-in-law.
CB: Okay Charlie it's running now, so here's Charlie Darby and please tell us about your life, Charlie.
CD: I'm Charlie Darby, I was born on the 26th May 1924 from a family of six boys, three girls and went through normal schooling. Went to work at fourteen [pause] er and when I became seventeen I was directed labour a government scheme that you had to fall in line with. If you didn't, there were two other choices: down the mines or prison. So, I took the job on which was at Mirdam [?] Ways, High Wycombe dismantling Churchill tanks. And I stuck at that for eighteen months and I just did not want to know any more about it [laughter]. So there was only one thing to do; that was to volunteer for the forces. And that's how I became to join the Royal Air Force. Now, having joined the Royal Air Force, or rather prior to that, I had to have an attestation which I took at Houston House, Houston Square in London. Got the result, I was passed to go into aircrew. Now, I waited my call up which came the 20th of September '43. I had to report to St John's Wood, London, for two weeks initiation. The same day of joining, I had to go down to Lord's Cricket Ground to get kitted out. And from there, I went to Bridlington ITW (Initial Training Wing) for eight weeks training. From there, number 3 EADS Bridgnorth, another eight weeks, from there, that was EDA Elementary Air Gunnery School. From there, to a place in Scotland, I don't know where they got it from but I was there. [background laughter] A place called Castle Kennedy. Never did see the castle. Eight weeks there was the AGS which I successfully passed and I was made aircrew and presented with brevet and I then awaited call to my next station which was Moreton in Marsh Gloucester, 21OTU and this is where we crewed up. There was one day we were assembled on this bit of green, [cough] and three officers came and approached us NCOs and my pilot, navigator and wireless operator were the three officers. And Les, my pilot, approached, we accepted and we found out afterwards: 'How did you do this, Les?' 'I went to each section and looked at your, your pass marks' and that's how he took judgement on us. Because we had our names on our breast and he knew where to go, he knew the names he was looking for. So therefore that is the way we crewed up. But, you never had an engineer, that came at a late a stage er at Heavy Conversion Unit. Which is what we did, er, [pause] yes just after that. But prior to that even, still in Yorkshire, we went to a place called Acaster Malbis and did a battle course. That was living rough, think that was the only, the occasion arise, you got adapted to it. Anyway, we went on to Riccall, near Selby, to 1658 Heavy Conversion Unit and did our first flying on four engines. And from there, we went to my operational station of Driffield where 466 was. Did er, training from there prior to operations [pause] yeah but-
CB: Okay we'll stop there for a mo. What I'd like to ask you to do please, Charlie, is to explain so we can understand what's coming next, how you were trained, so what happened at your initial training and in your gunnery training? So, how did that go?
CD: Dis-dis-discipline and er squad marching [pause] that it?
CB: Okay.
CD: Only two weeks of it.
CB: Right, then gunnery? So you had initial gunnery and then main gunnery.
CD: Initial training wing a little bit more extra started to pick up Morse code.
CB: Right
CD: That's something we had to know as a gunner to help the navigator. We had to know Morse at a simple rate of eight words a minute which was what occults and pundits flash at the rate of. A pundit flashed two red letters which were the letters of the aerodrome but an occult flashed one letter in white, that gave a navigator a bearing. So if you saw an occult flash, you called up your navigator and told him 'occult flashing so and so'. And then I guess I've got the bearing, we're not, we're about a mile off track. That sort of talk. Right then that it?
CB: And you're gunnery, so how did the gunnery training go?
CD: Very good.
CB: So what did they do initially?
CD: They started off with -
CB: Shotguns, was it?
CD: Yeah, yeah, started off with a point two two, a little pallet of a shot. At short range, yes, did quite a lot of clay pidge shooting, er, learning deflection. And from there, we didn't, we didn't go on to the main guns until we got to um [pause] er OTU. We were there on Wellingtons, oh may I add that, at this stage we haven't got a flight engineer. That came when we met with four engines, 'cause you didn't need a flight engineer on a Wellington.
CB: No.
CD: A pilot did all his -
CB: Yeah
CD: fuel changing. So we are now at Riccall on heavy conversion work. The normal day light, night time, cross countries, air-to-sea, air-to-air, firing and er -
CB: Were you firing live or with a camera gun?
CD: If we having fighter attacks you had a cine camera twenty-five feet of camera. And they assess you on the radical [?], on the film. To see whether you were on target or not. Er -
CB: And they had towed targets, did they? They had towed targets for you to shoot at?
CD: Yes the drogues I forgot that.
CB: Drogues
CD: I forgot that, I should have come up with that and erm -
CB: So that was live ammunition?
CD: Castle Kennedy, yes, at Castle Kennedy we were on Ans- I sh [?], I can't think of it all the time -
CB: That's alright, that's okay
CD: I can now, we were on Ansons, and an Anson took six gunners up at the time. And the one that sat next to the pilot wound the wheels up. Twenty-three turns, I might add. [laughter] Anyway, the drogue was towed by a Martinet, just above you, in front of you. So all you had level with you and behind was the drogue. Now, each gunner had a colour and the tips of those bullets for the space of two-hundred rounds I would think at the time, blue, red, etcetera etcetera. So if you were blue, they knew you were blue, bad aim [?]. And if you fired at this drogue, they'd count the number of blues and cut them in half, because it's going through the drogue, it's making two blue marks so it's gotta be halved. That's how they assessed how many hits you had. [pause] er this -
CB: I'll just stop you a mo. [beep] Right, so we're restarting now, with Charlie.
CD: I was -
CB: Johannson [?] wheels.
CD: At Castle Kennedy AGS and we were six to a plane. Six to an Anson. And the last one in sat next to the pilot who and then you had to wind the wheels up for him and [pause] I er, rather premature in that respect whereby I started to wind the wheels up far too soon for the pilot, not 'No no no!' he said 'I have not trimmed it yet'. By the way, he was a Polish pilot [laughter].
TL: Now carry on.
CD: And now, I finally passed the exam to become an air gunner and I went on leave waiting for posting to 21 OTU Moreton in the Marsh. This is where we crewed up, man-to-man, assembled on the grass. People approached one another, and that's how crews were formed. [pause] er less, a flight engineer, as you didn't need them on twin engines air craft. That was selected when you went to RCU - HCU - (Heavy Conversion Unit). The one we went to was 1658 Riccall, near Selby, Yorkshire. This was where my pilot selected his engineer, from thereon, we were fully crewed. Went on to four engine training, did the right exercises, then went from there to squadron. We were put to Driffield where 462 was, 466 was rather, beg your pardon, and in the time of pre-training operations, 462 came from out of the desert and reformed at Driffield. Ah, by the time we got operational, our first operation was with 466 and then, the time we come to our second operation, 462 was formed. Australian, yes, these were Australian squadrons by the way, and when we got through our second operation, 462 were ready formed up and started and we did our second op on their inauguration on the squadron. From there on, we did our operations. We did twenty-three in all on 462. And they were then posted down to Foulsham in Norfolk, on RCM work (Radio Counter Measures) which was in 100 Group. As we had only seven to do, they put us back on the 466, it wasn't worth sending us down there to do seven operations. They switched us back to 466, and there we completed our tour, which in January 1945. Now, the nitty gritty bit is, I ended up going into hospital halfway through my tour, which put me behind my crew. So, it eventuated that I had one trip to do at the time when my crew had done the last trip which was Hanover one the 5th of January. From there, I was placed on a battle order the next night with a crew strange to me by the name of Flight Lieutenant Stewart. And it was a hair raiser, [laughter] things like we were just set course, and one shouts to the other 'Throw the cigarettes up then, I threw them up last night!' Now, our pilot’d had gone beserk if we'd have smoked on an aircraft. With hundred octane petrol about, not good is it? Not good for life. However,[background noise] I managed to get through that operation [background noise] I went on these then I had to report to ACRC Catterick (Air Crew Receiving Centre) as we were being made redundant to be put on a ground staff job. Thus, what we did to the day I was demobbed.
CB: So, just going back now, to the HCU.
CD: Yes.
CB: When you're at the HCU, how did the programme go to create a crew that was operational?
CD: We did the right designated exercises to do, so many affiliations with the fighter, at night and day, to resemble an operation. Now, coming back to my initiation at squadron, we were on a cross country, a daylight cross country, which took us the last [pause] part of the er, cross country. We took a leg up to Belfast. We turn off at Belfast down to Fleetwood, near Blackpool. Well, we got to Belfast the while, the flight engineer said 'We're going down to the Elsan, Snowy' That was the pilot's nickname, Snowy. Okay, so we get down there and all of a sudden four engines cut. [laughter] 'Jock [?], where the hell are you?' [laughter] 'Down at the Elsan], Snowy', 'For Christ's sake, get back here soon! Sooner than that' he says. [laughter] We were icing up, because there were icicles on my gun that night outside, and everybody was getting to stations of bail out [background laughter]. We are now over the Irish Sea, heading towards Fleetwood, and Jock rushed back quick as he could and changed over and all the four engines picked up, just like that. In that time, all four engines had cut and we'd lost 5000 feet, fell like a tree. Everything righted itself. The explanation was for the engineer was he thought, he thought that the dials indicators were frozen. He said he checked them before he left his post but they were showing still fuel in the tanks but it wasn't so. [laughter] However, all was fair, we managed to get back to base, and that was the start of operations for you. That was a lift that, wasn't it?
CB: Now, were you mid-upper or were you tail-gunner?
CD: Rear. I was tail.
CB: Right, so did you come to choose that yourself?
CD: Well -
CB: How did you decide which position to be in?
CD: I favoured the dr- rear to be honest, and, we don't come on to operations. We are now, our second operation, the first on 462, was the flying bomb site at a place called Waddon [?] just the side of Dunkirk. And we did that one Friday evening and daylight. Succeeded with that, got to, I think, number seven. We went, we were designated to Kiel, U-boat pens , that was a night trip, very bad weather round the target area. But coming back we somehow had a fracture of the oil pressure. We're coming back over the North Sea and the pilot realises that he's got one wheel down and one up. The whole of the distance across the North Sea, he was up and down up and down with the good wheel hoping for something to happen. After about an hour, it succeeded. It dropped the good wheel and they both went back together and that was solved, just like that. That was Kiel. Now, we're coming now into September, we went to a place called Neuss in the Ruhr - N E U double S. On leaving the target, a hazy target as well because there were plenty of fires. Dead astern of me was this 1-1-0 or 2-1-0 it didn't matter, literally identical but for a small [inaudible] unrecognisable one from the other. Oh, I butted on here because, going back to my training, the instructor would always say to you 'traverse your turret'. Now after, between there and becoming operational, I sat sometimes and thought a lot. Now, if I'm round there, he could be coming from there, I can't see him. So, I decided in my mind, I'm just gonna sit there, and look. You pick things up and you cover a bigger area than you would by doing this. Because, by doing that, he could be there, it only takes seconds. You wouldn't know anything about it. So that's what I, I kicked that one out of the window and I always sat dead astern, looking dead astern, and looking for everything that's coming from those quarters, because that's where it comes from. And coming back to this, where I sighted this 1-1-0, 2-1-0, whatever, if I'd have done what my instructor had told me, I probably wouldn't be here now. To the point that I saw him, and I kept my eyes on him, and I had already informed the pilot 'prepare to corkscrew' it's gonna be port because he was dead astern of us and they're at our height [?]. So I let him get nearer, and then I gave the order to corkscrew which was to port. Now, there's one advantage there by going to port, it helped the pilot who was sitting on the port side, as he goes down to come back up, he can see going down and he can see going back up. Didn't fire, I always held fire because on your ammunition belt, every fifth bullet was -
TL: Tracer.
CD: Tracer. And with the speed of the guns firing eight hundred rounds a minute, that tracer becomes a red line and it immediately gives your position away. And that's one thing you should not do, give yourself away. [phone rings] You, you er, you er, [background noise] [pause] yes, you must not give your position away. I'm there to defend the aircraft, I don't attack, I only attack with bombs, so therefore, you do not [phone pings] put yourself in that situation by what they call firing in anger. I didn't believe in it and I never ever would but I never did it. And I think on those, on those terms, puts us on the right side of success. You getting through?
CB: This was in the night, was it?
CD: Eh?
CB: This was in the night this 1-1-0, 2-1-0 were coming at you.
CD: Yeah, at night, yeah. But in the day light totally different. They can see you, you can see them.
CB: Exactly.
CD: You adopt a different attitude then.
CB: Do you think he'd seen you?
CD: Hum?
CB: Do you think he had seen you?
CD: Oh yes, without a doubt. He had probably honed onto us. He was going that fast, it was this [pause] a matter of seconds, eight seconds, and it was all over. He never fired, by the way. So it just shows you how things happen so quick and once we did that, to start down on the corkscrew, it went, Dennis ran right us and said 'There he goes' I said 'I know Dennis I've been following him all the way along.' As we went down on the corkscrew, he went over the top of us. Now, my pilot comes up and we're in a bubble of corkscrew, I won't, I won't say the complete statement but he said 'Let's go back up and see where he is' I says 'You stop down here'.
TL: Or words to that effect.
CD: Plus a few more syllables. [laughter] Deathly hush, deathly hush because I chewed him. [laughter] And I, I'm now saying to myself, 'What have I said?' Sat in that turret thinking ‘I'm really heading for it now’. Not a word was said and between there and getting back to base, I made up my mind, if he doesn't say anything, then I won't. Let it just calm away. That's just what happened. Nothing was said. I think, I think, in a nutshell, he knew I was right. Well, I know I was right, because we were told in training, back in training, a pilot is always the captain of the aircraft but in a situation where you're under attack, he takes orders from you. That's why I did it, that's why I said it. But, having said that, I still, I still blinkering [inaudible], what am I heading for [laughter] because I could really have been brought upon the coals about this. But no, it petered out.
BD: You dropped your bombs.
CD: Yeah.
CB: What do you think was in his mind?
CD: Well, being a naughty, I think he being a bit of a daredevil. Or, he was making a joke of it. But it was the wrong time of day to make a joke! [laughter]
CB: So what other incidents did you have that were-
BD: What about when, when erm, chap shot the mid-upper, nearly shot you?
CD: Yes, I'm going back to pre-operation training-
CB: Right.
CD: At Driffield. After a daylight operation, beg your pardon, a daylight wide cross country, we had to go out into Bridlington Bay, do some air-to-sea firing at nought feet. He's shooting the foam to get deflection. He said, my mid-upper said, 'Do you want me to fire first?' I said 'Yes, okay Dennis' so he fired his five hundred off, he said 'I've finished now' and I went to go traverse round onto the beam to start mine, and I heard this zoom, and there's an on and off oxygen dial just slightly above my head to the left that hit that and went somewhere in the turret [laughter]. What was it? It was a cooked round from one of Dennis's guns. When the guns finished firing, they should always stop in the recoil position so they're clear of a round. So every time a breechblock goes forward, it takes a round with it up the spout of the gun. Hence, what they call a cooked round. The bullets in the barrel, the heat of the barrel sets it off. That's what happened. I did not fire one shot [background laughter]. It was straight back to base, to get inquiries on it. The gun, the gun was faulty. It er, it should have stayed at the recoil position but it just did not. Hence, the cooked round.
CB: So of the thirty operations you did, how many were in the dark at night, and how many were daylight? Roughly?
CD: Twenty-three daylight and seven night, I did.
CB: Other way around?
CD: No beg your pardon, that's wrong.
BD: It's the other way round.
CD: Twenty-three on 462, seven on 466. No, I did fifteen on each. Fifteen daylights, fifteen nights. At one stretch there I did ten in nine days I think it was.
CB: And how often did you have to use your guns?
CD: I didn't. I say, I did not fire in anger. I made my mind up on that one. This is the trouble with, I think, I may be wrong, but I think that by firing away willy nilly at something they got a hold on you. You see that tracer? Why expose yourself?
CB: What was the purpose of the tracer?
CD: If you were guidance. Give you, give you a guide to what you were shooting at. And, I would never, ever fire in anger. And I think, in my mind, I think that's where we lost quite a few aircraft. Not saying I'm right, but I would think it inclinates that way.
CB: How often were the aeroplanes hit?
CD: How many?
CB: How often were the aeroplanes hit by flack or fighter?
CD: Varied. I, there was one instance at a place called Bochum this was on November the fourth, fifth, where I saw one of ours over the target. It was on fire from wingtip to wingtip and it came to pass in the aftermath and later years that it turned out to be Joe Herman and with the descriptions that I know of now, that resembles Joe Herman's aircraft. The one where he finally went out last but it was blown out. The plane then blew up. I never saw the explosion, but I saw it from wingtip to wingtip. On our course, it wasn't spiralling out of control, it was still going along you know. But I can't keep looking all, too long, you've gotta look after yourself. So it was a question of just that and concentrate on your own, you know, it's, and that's what happened. It blew up. And it blew Joe out of the aircraft without a parachute. And, he went down, down, down, grabbing at anything possible. And he finally grabbed something and it was the legs of his mid-upper gunner on his chute. They went down together and they were talking to one another on the way down but he said 'Just prior to hitting the ground, I'll release myself' which is what he did, and he broke his leg doing it. Vivash [?] came out of it alright. And, er, but the others had already bailed out, they were the last two to go and Harry Nott the flight engineer was, he he was asked, told to put the fires out, the small one in the fuselage. Well, he did that but then the whole kaboosh was alight, wing tip to wing tip. So he bailed out and he hid in the forest for five days, eating anything he could put his hand to. But he decided to cross the Rhone [?] and that's where he was caught. He was made prisoner of war and the other three, four, Vivash and Joe heard gunfire. It came to pass over latter years but quite recently in this day that the, the blokes were shot by Gestapo. That was, one bloke was Underwood he was the bomb aimer, Wilson, someone else and, how this has all come about now whereby I've got young enthusiasts of 462 and 466 that have taken me up in the last two years back to Driffield and has encouraged me to go with them and tell them all the things that I've been telling you now. And Paul Nott was the great-nephew of Harry Nott the engineer on Joe Herman's crew. Now, Paul, as an enthusiast he is, he's a private pilot himself. He had this painting done by someone in Shrewsbury. He flew up and collected it. Went over to Aces High in Wendover and had it framed. And now he's got it hung in his office at Ascot. In my plane he's put above it between two searchlights because I told him I saw that plane on fire. It could onl- the description that he gave was identical to what I saw it could be no other. And that's how it's now become we're close friends with the Australians, Tiana Adair the lady. Her father was a pilot I think he was, and all these things of years gone by have all come together with someone being a relative of someone. And this is what has happened. I went, only this April on Anzac day (April the 25th) and we went to Driffield Gardens and we had the memorial which we dedicated in 1993 and Joe, Harry Arnes and myself, he's a prominent air gunner and he was on his second tour. Incidentally at Driffield he was on his second tour and I've met him twice since and last year we laid the wreath at the Gardens memorial and he came this year again but he had to get away quickly because he was going the next day to Drongen in Belgium to another parade. So, things went well. So the point, yes, it renewed our old way of living as regard being air crew in World War Two.
CB: So what was your pattern of living? What was the pattern that you went through? You got up in the morning.
CD: Yes.
CB: What happened?
CD: You went to, you went to your section and did a DI on your, on your turn (daily inspection). You cleaned your, you cleaned the Perspex with special Perspex polish to cut out all spots from the engine you get exhaust oil splashes the like and believe you me if you got any like that you think well that's an aircraft that one and that spot of oil on the air on the Perspex. So it was down to you to keep your turret clean. It's your vision, you rely on it. So-
CB: What about the guns?
CD: Yes.
CB: What about the guns? How did you clean those?
CD: You clean those with what they call four by two.
CB: Wooding?
CD: Yes, a cloth, like a flannel. You had a pull through. We cleared the flannels. Yes.
CB: So after the DI, then what?
CD: Well, you went back to section. And then if the battle orders come out, you look up and saw upon the jar the DROs and you destined. Report to briefing at so-and-so time. From there on things worked.
CB: What's a DRO?
CD: Daily routine orders.
CB: Right.
CD: Sorry.
CB: Okay.
CD: And each section line pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, went to their respective section, did a flight plan after briefing. And the gunners, engineers just sat and wait and report to parachute rooms at such-and-such a time. From there on it was on the, the bus to the perimeter track to dispersal point got up your aircraft. In my case, set my guns to fire. There's a fire and safe on each gun so you had to put it on fire, from there on hold it there.
CB: 'Cause you got four 303s you didn't have the retro fitter point fives [?]
CD: Yes I had round a minute they fire. So you got three thousand two hundred a minute. But you'd never fire it for a minute, just short sharp bursts. Yes, so-
CB: So what time would you normally be going on a raid? Did it vary a lot?
CD: Anytime. Any time of day, yes. Daylights. When we, when the, [pause] when the [pause] erm, the army was for-, going forward in France, we were always bombing the French ports because that was the last of the resistance from the guards, the German army, and they were really dug in, they were very hard to get out, suss out. And [background noise] to do a daylight, early morning, you were up at one o'clock, two o'clock. You were called by someone in the guard room came round your billet woke you up. From there on breakfast, briefing, the [inaudible], airborne, drop your load and back you come. Now, as I say, that varied, as my log book shows. Any time of day, any time of night. And I might add, every time we came back and entered the debriefing room, there was always that man stood there by the, by the tea urn [laughter] and the biscuits. And the station padre, no matter what time of day or night, he was always there. Something I noticed, it always sticks in my mind, how dedicated that man was. Yeah.
CB: How did the crews feel about that? How did the crews feel?
CD: Well about like, about the same as me I think. Such dedication, this, this is what went through all aircrew as well. You know, you had to do that to survive.
CB: What was your crew like?
CD: Very good, very good. My, especially my navigator, he was quite exceptional. And Tom, the wireless op, yes, good man. Lost him quite young, he was, he was the daddy of the crew. We were twenties and he was thirty-one. And he died when he was forty-two, back in '54. Terry and I and the bomber, we went to his funeral in London. Yes. And pilot, Les, he came over on two occasions. He was married to a New Zealand girl. He got married, lived in Australia, and his home town of Cowgill [?] Cowgill [?], yes. And she wanted to go back home, she couldn't stand the heat. This he did, [background noise] and when we went and met him on our fiftieth wedding anniversary, my son-in-law, daughter, two sons and two grandsons put us on an air ticket and we had two weeks in Brisbane with her cousin, the other two weeks in North Island New Zealand with Les my pilot and his wife. But sadly since then, they've both passed on, and my wife's cousin. And at that stage, we're now left with one two three four five. In turn, they've all died off to the point now that where there is only two of us. That's Derry, my navigator and myself.
CB: As a crew, what did you do when you weren't flying?
CD: My first and foremost job was and I did it every day like a nut, I used to write to her, yeah.
BD: Her?
CD: Every day. Can you imagine that? I think I should put it on a rubber stamp because it's the same old things I would say [laughter].
CB: We're talking about Barbara here.
BD: Yes.
CB: And what a lucky lady she was. [laughter]
CD: Yeah, well there you go you see.
CB: We're just going to stop for a cup of tea now.
CD: Okay.
CB: And pick it up in a minute. [Beep]
[At 50:20 there is a break and the recording seems to start again on another day]
CB: Right, my name is Chris Brockbank, listeners, and we're now on the 7th of July and we're with Charlie Darby and Barbara Darby and Tony Lee their son-in-law. And we're just going to pick up on where we finished up last time really which was the end of the war. And then we'll pick up on some other items. So, Charlie, we came to the point where the operations finished, what happened next? You'd done your thirty.
CD: After leave.
CB: Okay, so how much leave did they give you?
CD: Oh, there was about six weeks.
CB: Right. Yep. And then what?
CD: We then had a telegram to report to Catterick on ACRC [background noise] (Air Crew Receiving Centre) as we were going to be made redundant, they would issue us with a ground job. And, that was it. I went in on to a course called aircraft finishing which was a coating of paints and so forth, putting on [inaudible?] on aircraft. I went on a course down to Locking in near Weston-Super-Mare for that. And along came the end of the war. And from there on I just went from pillar to post, station to station, and things were never, did never happen as regards that course. So as I've told you earlier, we were just a person not needed.
CB: How did you feel about that?
CD: Well, depressing.
CB: Was all, were all the crew members together?
CD: No, no, we all went respective ways. My pilot is now already on his way home, all’s finished with him as far as that was concerned. The re-, Derry, the navigator, went to Morton in Marsh as navigation instructor. My other gunner, he went down to Wales-
CB: What was his name?
CD: On the bombing site-
CB: What was his name?
CD: Dennis.
CB: Dennis.
CD: And in the end, he turns up marrying a Welsh girl and that's where he stayed. And that's where he died, in Wales. Don, similar aspect, but then he went on the, the er Elizabeth Line.
CB: Was he the bomb aimer?
CD: No, he was the flight engineer.
CB: Right.
CD: [background noise] He went as a steward on the Queen Elizabeth and something else. Arthur, the bomb aimer, he went on a bombing site. He was sol- a practice bombing site. He was sole charge of that, somewhere up in the Midlands, and that just about covers it.
CB: And the signaller-
CD: The wireless op-
CB: Wireless op, yeah-
CD: I never did know what he went in to. And then, as I said before, shortly after that he died, not many years after this.
CB: He was the one who died - he was the grandpa of the crew and died at forty-two?
CD: Yes that's correct, yes.
CB: Right. Now, your rank when you were flying most of the time was flight sergeant?
CD: No sergeant.
CB: Sergeant.
CD: Sergeant.
CB: When did you become flight sergeant?
CD: About, it came in about a year's time, a step up.
CB: Okay. And then you became a warrant officer, when was that?
CD: Yes. That warrant officer, that was between '46 and seven. Immediately I got it, immediately they took it away. That sort of time.
CB: And put you back to what?
CD: Sergeant, basic sergeant.
CB: And what happened to your pay?
CD: Still the same.
CB: You still get flying pay?
CD: No, no. The rank of whatever.
CB: But the flying pay stopped when you stopped flying did it?
CD: So I. Yes. I think so.
CB: How much did you get paid? Do you remember?
CD: I think it's something like fifteen shillings a day. Something like that.
CB: And then the flying pay. How much?
CD: [Pause] Tough to say.
CB: Okay, doesn't matter. Now, going back to the early days-
CD: Adding to that, mind you-
CB: Yeah?
CD: We had a donater by the name of [pause] he was, er-
BD: Nuffield?
CD: Pardon?
BD: Nuffield.
CD: That's right, Lord Nuffield. He gave money to operational aircrew and you received that every leave you went on while operating. To the, to the tune of fifty shillings, something like that, every six weeks. And that fund is a trust fund still running today. Yes. I had the pleasure of meeting him once on the golf course up here at Flackwell Heath. Yeah, anyway that's another point.
CB: After the war?
CD: After the? No. No, during the war.
CB: Oh.
CD: It was on my first leave in '43. Amazing isn't it?
CB: Yeah.
CD: Then were we? I was on a ground job, yes, but it didn't materialise as I thought it was going to do. Like Dennis, Arthur, they had a distinct job of doing something on a bombing range. Well, that didn't happen as far as I was concerned. It just didn't have an end to it. I was in the end just doing silly jobs. You can't describe really.
CB: So how did they - when did they demob you? And what was the process?
CD: They demobbed me in '47, May '47. I had to go to Lytham St Anne’s near Blackpool where I was issued with civvy clothes and came home on leave, the something about leave, and then that stopped. In other words, go and get a job.
CB: So what did you do?
CD: From there, I went into Hoovers. Hoovers Limited. It was like engineering. In the time I was there in twenty years my, my bit of fire service experience before I joined up came to light again as they had a fire crew within the works and I was able to join that. Which is what I did.
CB: That was as an extra? Or full time?
CD: That was during the work time. Any fire on the building, you went to it at the same time the local fire engine was coming up. Yes. We were paid a, extra and they used us funnily enough to collect the wages every week. Down in the town, down the bank because we were insured as firemen so that allowed them to insure - to use that same insurance for us to go down the bank and collect the money. Every Friday, I had to wear a mackintosh. Along, along, a - with weather like this or even hotter, I had to go and pedal into work with my mate 'What the hell you got that mac for?' I says 'It might rain, you know?' I dare not tell him the secret was I had to wear a poacher's jacket underneath which held all the paper money. And we used to go down to the bank, the man used to taxi us, conveniently had his business right outside the bank where he drove out of and he came out. We could see him coming, we went out the door as he pulled up by the pavement and we go on in one movement and all way. It was all done. And people working next to me never ever knew what I was doing.
BD: Did I?
CD: I think I told you whilst I shouldn't have done.
BD: Ooh God.
CD: Yeah. [background noise] The money I've carried was nobody’s business.
CB: So, you worked there twenty years?
CD: Yes.
CB: So that gets us into the later 60s. What did you-
CD: ‘67.
CB: ‘67, what did you do then?
CD: I still kept in business when back to BroomWade where I did the tank work. I did precision grinding there. And then I moved to a small business in Beaconsfield, Oppermans, did work for Martin Baker. I told him [inaudible] for he had yet to see. And then from there, I went on franchise work, from the bakery, the local bakery. And he made me redundant. From there, I decided to set up myself, then I went painting, decorating. I went on a course created by Margaret Thatcher to encourage people to do that sort of thing. And I was tax-free for a year, wasn't I? I think.
BD: Forty pound a week.
CD: Something like that. And after a year, it stopped. But then I was, I'd established a little bit of a business, enough to keep me going. And this is what I did to the end of my working days. I was working right up to seventy-five, even longer I think.
BD: And now you've stopped.
CD: Even longer. And that was it. And now we're at this stage and I'm still working.
CB: Quite right. [laughter]
CD: They say when you retire, you'll be able to play bowls, yes [laughter] no way.
CB: Let's go fast backwards to when you joined.
CD: Yes.
CB: So, when you joined, where was it, and what type of people were there who joined with you?
CD: What, people with me?
CB: Yeah. To the RAF.
CD: Well, we were only there a fortnight.
CB: Yep.
CD: At St John's Wood. So you didn't get a lot of time to get personalised. Bit more introductory, check you out on your health. You had to see the dentist, he was the other side of Hyde Park [laughter] it's true.
BD: It must have been a big job for this.
CD: And did a fortnight there at St John's Wood, then went to Bridlington, ITW (Initial Training Wing).
CB: So, what sort of people were with you, were they all Brits? Were they people from abroad?
CD: Yes, all Brits.
CB: Okay. And what sort of backgrounds? Were they technical type people or office based or what were they?
CD: I wouldn't know to be honest.
CB: Right. So when you got to -
CD: Pretty general like me.
CB: Okay.
CD: Workers in the day.
CB: Yeah. And at Bridlington, then what? What were they like there? What sort of people?
CD: Well, as I say, a bit strict on the instructional side. But they have to be, don't they, to deploy discipline? Early morning start, 06:30 parade, it was very, very civilised. We paraded down by the Spa Hotel which was our mess deck, in other words. The ball- dance hall floor ballroom was the mess. And the theatre side of it was used for Morse code and semaphore flagging, flag and signals. If the weather was fine, would they use the beach. You stood at one end, and he stood the other, about a mile away, and you did your exercises there. Small arms fire, shop frontage people that have sold up or what and they've taken it over because they took over all the, all the boarding places for holidays. That were taken over for us to be housed in. And each course was sixty strong, you kept that sixty all the way through. And that was eight weeks there, seven day leave. Next place was Bridgnorth, number three EAGS. You did a bit of squarebashing there.
CB: So EAGS was gunnery school?
CD: Elementary Air Gunnery School.
CB: Air gunnery school. And what was the elementary training? Was that with shotguns or what was it?
CD: Yes, shotguns. You didn't get to the big stuff 'til later.
CB: So shotguns and clay pigeons?
CD: Clay pigeons, yes. We did quite a lot of that, especially at the next station, AGS. That was the one in Scotland, Castle Kennedy. And that's where you went for your rigorous- The main subject to think about was aircraft recognition. Because, if you didn't know your aircraft, you could be shooting at one of your own. So you had to, you had to know the characteristics of all aircraft and when you sat in the classroom, they would put up on the screen a flash of a sighting of an aircraft no matter what distance, not close up, never close up, and, a hundredth part of a second and you had to write down on a sheet of paper what it was. And you were told afterwards so that was a vital subject. It was before, it was placed before, learning the Morse code. You had to know your aircraft. It happened so many times, people had been shooting their own. Not by me! [laughter] Success at the end, having passed, as you saw in my log book, eighty-one point five percent out of one hundred. I finished third of the sixty. The remarks were above average as you saw.
CB: Yeah. Now, did some of the course of sixty not get through?
CD: Some, well, they, I don't know what they did, they just, they're not required for aircrew.
CB: That's what I mean, they weren't all selected for aircrew because they couldn't see or shoot. Was it?
CD: No, no. You went for that and from the word go.
CB: Right.
CD: Their testing found you out.
CB: That's what I mean. Yes.
CD: Yes. Sorry.
CB: Yeah. So, what I meant was, it was a very high standard-
CD: Yes.
CB: [Background noise] And some of the people didn't pass so they went to other jobs.
CD: Yes, for whatever, ground job, it’d be anyway. But one, one day, at the AGS I was called before the gunnery leader. I thought 'What the hell does he want?' Referring back to our last interview, I mentioned about firing at drogues, didn't I?
CB: Absolutely.
CD: And they recorded your hits by the colour of the paint on the tip of the bullet. Now, I was called before him and he said 'I've called you in,' he said 'because you've got an exceedingly amount of extra bullet marks.' I said, he said, 'What's your answer to that?' I said 'Well' quick thinking, I said 'Well, it can only be one thing, I'm must be nearer the drogue than I should have been.' And I said 'I'm not in control of that, that's the pilot's job.' 'Good answer,' he says and it ended like that. Now, I get pulled up, it doesn't make sense to me, I get pulled up for having too many hits. [laughter] Does that make sense? No. But that's what happened, that's what passed. He accepted what I said, but he had to, I had no other answer.
CB: What sort of range was the drogue being towed at from the aircraft you were in?
CD: Well, about one hundred yards I suppose, maybe a little bit more. It was always above you. The martinet was the one in front of you, it was a long tow rope for obvious reasons. [laughter] I'd be shooting the martinet down! [laughter] Yes, that's how it worked and the pilot of your plane, he did that. So you got more movement to make more deflection so it made it harder to hit the drogue.
CB: So, could you just describe what is deflection shooting?
CD: Well, deflection shooting is, you have two moving targets, the object and yourself. So, you've got to lay it off in front of the actual movement of the object. You never aim straight at it for obvious reasons. It's that. So you had to be in front of it and it goes into it. Now, the most common attack on an aircraft by a fighter is the curve of pursuit, what they call the curve of pursuit attack. From, from the b- er, the quarter, it comes in like that now-
CB: In a curve.
CD: You have to lay off your aiming point in the front of it, always. That is deflection.
CB: Right.
CD: And a good idea of that registering up there is doing a lot of clay pigeon shooting. Because, when they shoot those clays out, you've got to be in front of it, although you're stood still, your arms are moving. You've got to fire in front of it. There's no good aiming dead on it. You must - that's allowing the speed of the object and the speed of your bullet to be there at the same time. And that's how you register your hits. That's my term of deflection.
CB: So after you'd been at the AGS and passed that, you then went to the OTU?
CD: Malton in Marsh, after about a month's leave was a, a little [background noise] an extra for what you've done. We reported there, and after I suppose about two weeks we were all assembled on this big piece of green, some people went in hangars, and that's [background noise] where you selected your crew. Always the pilot, he was always the one that approached because he's the leader of the aircraft. And I say, he came, Les, the pilot, Derry, and Tom they were three officers. They came and approached us fellows who were stood all as one and Les, the pilot, as I said earlier, he went to every section and checked on the pass marks and the remarks of any individual and it turned - and it came to pass, he was looking for me because I'd got my name on there, everyone got their name on there. And Dennis, [background noise] because he'd been with me from day one, and Arthur the bomb aimer and that's where I met him and we were pretty close together there and it made it easy for Les. Well, he literally asked us all three stood together, if you get what I mean? Flight engineer comes into the, into the quota when we go on to four engines. Because on one engine, you didn't need a flight engineer. So, that was made easy by him, by doing what he did.
BD: Sorry.
CB: So Les had done an initial selection of his navigator -
CD: The crew, correct.
CB: And bomb aimer.
CD: Yes.
CB: When he came to you, he was an Australian.
CD: Yes.
CB: But, when you were in the hangar, he checked on the scores, you said, but he didn't know where the people came from, or did he?
CD: Well, yes, it would be English on your papers.
CB: So-
CD: Your service number would show that anyway. An Australian Air Force number was different to us.
CB: Because at that stage, they were, were they, Royal Australian Air Force, whereas originally, they joined the RAF?
CD: No, no they still come in as R double A F.
CB: They did?
CD: Yes. Yes. They came here with their Air Force number from Australia where they trained. Yes. Dennis, my other gunner, he came in with his ATC number. That started with 301, seven figures. Mine was 189, seven figures. I used to pull his leg, I says 'With a number like that, you want to get some in' [laughter] Yes. Anyway, I couldn't run that one too long.
CB: Just expanding a bit on the OTU before we have a break.
CD: Yes?
CB: You've now got the crew.
CD: Yes.
CB: Les has. When you started training, each of you is doing something different, so what were you doing as the gunner?
CD: Doing the exercises that was required. You saw in my log book, exercise one 'till three, whatever. Yes.
CB: So did they -
CD: Air-to-air, air-to-sea firing, pretty well the same as the other stations.
CB: Yeah.
CD: We were still on learning Morse and we were getting taught the essential aim of oxygen, why it's so specially needed. We were shown the proof of that by six of us getting into an oxygen chamber, compression chamber, the instructor outside looking through the port hole. And one of you not wearing the oxygen, the other five wearing it. Now the instructor would say this is the proof of what that oxygen does or if you haven't got it, it does it the other way. And we will show you now. And the man that hadn't put the mask on is now getting a bit dreary like. He said to the one sat next to him go to his pocket, take out his pay book. He looked down, he didn't, he didn't know he had taken that that log book. Afterwards, when they put him back on oxygen, and he'd come to his senses, and the fellow said 'Did you see him take anything from your pocket?' and he said ‘no’. That's, that drove it home, so essential that oxygen was. Now, [door creaks] talking on the oxygen side, we, especially at night, we always had oxygen on from the ground and going up. Normally, you can leave oxygen off up to ten thousand feet, but rather than make the contrast high up we did it at ground level. But you were okay without oxygen up to ten thousand feet, so they told us. But especially on operations you had it on, it comes on automatic anyway on four engines. With the, with the Wellington, you had this, this situation of get putting the oxygen on yourself, i.e. before getting into the turret there was a circle in, up here on the oxygen line and that had a cotton reel pushed in to close it off when not needed. [laughter] And that cotton reel is tied on a piece of string and you pulled the cotton reel up away and it just dangled and you then got the flow of oxygen. Then in the turret, you got on off tell tale. But one night, we were on a cross country and after about quarter of an hour I'm, I'm feeling, I'm a bit, I'm a bit drunk - a drunkenness had appeared you know? Light headed. And it suddenly dawned on me I hadn't pulled that cotton reel out before I got in the turret. Honest. I'll letcha go. So when he opened the door and pulled out I came round. None of the others ever knew, I just didn't bother to tell them, would have felt ashamed to. [laughter] And one, there was one exercise we had it was called a bull's eye. It involved, it was on Bristol and Derry, we had been together now what, a week I suppose, green horns, and it came to pass we got there and it was all over Derry was about quarter of an hour late. And that worried him stiff. ‘Derry boy’, the nav leader said to him 'Go and have a good drink, Derry, don't worry about it.' And from there on, Derry used to have his half a pint because he never drank before he met us. He was a lay preacher, he'd been a lay preacher for fifty years after that [laughter] but he liked his drop of sherry. [laughter] So I bought him a bottle when we left. And yes that was it, we were too late for the bull's eye. And then from there, we're going on up into the Yorkshire area now. We had to do a f- two weeks at a place called Acaster Malbis about three miles outside York. It wasn't an aerodrome it was just a plain battle course training. They took you out in the day, live it rough. One night we went out, we had the choice, we stopped at a farm, we had the choice: sleeping in the barn or under the far wall. It was a nice hot day, like one last week, not as hot as that but it was a hot day, so we proposed, [laughter] we proposed to lay under the brick wall with our ground sheets. [unclear] in the barn, went down the pub, had a couple of drinks, came back, slept under the wall, woke up the next morning, oh that bloody great cob horse stood over the top of us [laughter], oh dear. The things that went on. Did that a fortnight, then we went down the road, not far, to a place called Riccall 1658 HCU (Heavy Conversion Unit) and that's where we picked up with our, Les had a choice of flight engineer. Which is what he did. Got together, now we're now fully at strength, seven personnel starting on four engine aircrafts. Going through all the courses again, exercises, cross countries, day and night, fighter affiliation, mock attacks. Used to do that with cine camera, twenty-five feet cine camera. And then, as I say, cross country. We did, we did one and it took us up, I told you before I think, it took us up to Belfast, and the next leg back was to Fleetwood and from Fleetwood over to base, straight across. And we got to Belfast, Jock, the engineer says 'I'm go down to the Elsan, Snowy.' Okay, we barely got down there before all four engines cut. We were at freezing alt - we were icing up, had icicles that long on my guns. Daylight, cloudless sky, yeah, eighteen thousand feet, icing up. He just about gets down to the Elsan to do his necessary and they cut. All four engine cut. 'Jock where the [pause] are you?' 'I'm down in the Elsan, Snowy.' 'Well for Christ's sake get back here quick as you can' [laughter] Back goes Jock [inaudible]. He switches his tanks over and then all four had picked up just like that. But, in the meantime, we had dropped five thousand feet. Fell like a tree. Twenty-five tonne of aircraft, won't stay there, will it? [laughter] So, we were all prepared to ditch because we were over now over the Irish Sea but it didn't have to happen. Eventually got back. [background noise] On another occasion, we did a cross country, we had to go out into Bridlington, Bridlington Bay and fire air-to-sea. From Bridlington to base it's probably about twelve miles, so, nothing, just- And Dennis fired his five hundred first, he said 'I'm finished now', I said 'Okay' and I went to swing round to, to port beam, port quarter rather, and I heard this zutt. I looked up there and there was the mark, the bullet's gone I don't know where. Left me in a state of [laughter] 'What's up?' they said, I said 'For Christ's sake, something’s gone wrong here.' And it came to pass on me that Dennis, one of his guns was faulty [background noise] it stayed in the forward position. When going forward, it takes a round on the face of the breechblock into the, into the [background noise]
TL: Barrel.
CD: Barrel [laughter] into the barrel, hence, the heat of the barrel ignited the detonator the pull it [?]. Should I have gone onto the beam a fraction earlier it could have been - we marked it on getting back to base, it could have been anyone there. It was there, you see. Because it went round with the turret, it [pause].
CB: So on that -
CD: That was the obvious conclusion of it.
CB: Right.
CD: And it was called, commonly called, a cooked round.
CB: Right. So when you landed, the ground crew then-
CD: Well, we were notified then what had happened, and little doubt had then to recti- probably the recoil spring on a rod, it was a long rod like that, and the recoil spring was over it. It's probably that that snapped at the. You see, a browning [?] gun can fire eight hundred rounds a minute, for a solid minute which you never did fire a solid minute. But that was the rate of of shot. So it [unclear] the mechanism, it's amazing how it works at that rate of knots. And well you can think of many things I suppose, it's probably more technical than what I can think it can be to suggest yes that did it. But no, no-one came back to us so we assumed its righted itself in their knowledge.
CB: I think we'll take a pause there, because you've done well and we'll start another track in a minute.
CD: Yeah my tongue tells me that.
[Beep, background noise]
CB: Right, we're restarting after our tea break. And what I'd like to ask you to do please, Charlie, is to talk about a raid. So, how did you prepare the raid and, the sortie, how did it work?
CD: Well, you were first brought up on battle order, then you knew you'd got to go and do so-and-so so-and-so, then the respect of pilots, navigators, bomb aimers. After briefing, which we all went to, after briefing, they went to their respective sections and did their flight plan. Other people like the flight engineer and gunners you just sat and waited because you had nothing to do until you get to the aircraft and then you prime your guns ready to fire in action if any. You went for operational meal, then to briefing, then to respective sections and wait for take off time. In that time, ground staff are loading up with bomb, required bomb load, to each aircraft. You go to parachute room, collect your chute, empty your pockets and wait for the liberty bus to take you to your respective aircraft. Get aboard, do your pre-flight checks, pilot so-forth, gunners, breach your guns up, put them on to fire, when you press the slot to put them on safety, you get airborne and you put them back on to fire, and you were ready for any action, if any. Some occasions, it was a straightforward flight, on other occasions completely opposite. Lone situations and situations you can see from other aircraft but you never ever know what is the problem but you saw it happen, you know what I mean? I.E. the one about the Lancaster. Coming off from the target, a gas incursion. It was flying very strangely, it was veering here and there which gave it the impression there was something wrong with the works. I.E. the rudder for instance, I don't know, it's pure guesswork. There was no smoke, no flame, this this was the foxing part of it all. Anyway, it suddenly went up and over onto its back, and went down into a dive, and in that time, four parachutes came out, unfurled. And went further down and not much further it just disintegrated [?] no explosion whatsoever. It just, just fell apart. Now on the chutes, shown so, it guess the ultimate. On another occasion, the one on Bochum, where I saw Joe Herman's plane, that was alight from wingtip to wingtip. It was still on course, still able to go, it was below us, but still with us, and I had to take my eyes off him because I've got to look after my aircraft, our aircraft, so there wasn't much chance to sit and gaze. So therefore, I never saw the explosion which happened. Three, four, four of the crew have already bailed out. This is in the aftermath, it's all in the squadron book. Harry Nott, the uncle, the fellow I know and recently Paul Nott, his great nephew, who lives in Hartford, he's one of the enthusiasts of the squadron, young enthusiasts, and it tells you what really happened when Joe went for his chute. The plane exploded. It blew him out the aircraft, and he just floating down, grabbing at anything that he could put his hands to. Suddenly, he grabbed this fella, his mid-upper I think it was, he grabbed his legs, and they both went down together on the chute. They arranged it, prior to hitting the ground, that he would release himself from his legs to lessen any dead fall. And they did that, but in that throw, he broke his leg, Joe, the pilot. Anyway, he got, he got the piece of the parachute and Vivash had got an injury to his ankle. He rips some of the parachute up, and wrapped it round his foot but then they decided they'd got to give themselves up, he couldn't try to escape with a broken - he broke a bone up here as well as one in his leg, so they were forced to give themselves up. They heard gunfire and it came to pass that, they found it out since the war, one of, one of the, it must have been a farmer, he had a horse and cart with one of the crew on it. He was injured. I think it was the bomb aimer, it wasn't the bloke called Underwood, Australian. And in the presence of I think there was an army bloke, a German army bloke, and up came a Gestapo. And he didn't mince his words whatever, he just pulled out his gun and shot Underwood. That is the glowing report from the farmer with the horse and cart. They, those two, heard gunfire so went seems the match what really happened. Yeah, there's four of them who were eventually in one cemetery from that particular instance, incident. [pause] Others, there was one after we'd finished our operations. One was coming in at Driffield one foggy morning in April '45. It was on the circuit over at Kirkburn Grange which was a farm right on the circuit of Driffield. He went round and he asked permission again because it was thick fog and they requested him to go to Carnaby just up the road, ten miles up the road, to a crash landing site. He said 'Well, I'll give it another try.' He did. At this farm, there were cops of about three hundred yards, and narrow too, about three hundred yards long, and he hit that, ploughed right through it. Right by the farm house. And the present farmer in '83 was the son then. He was five years old and he didn't know a thing. That plane exploded, what, just at, about fifty yards from the house. We went over there on the '83 reunion, in a cab [?] of cader [?] cars and the squadron leader Riverton [?] he went with us and he took the Halifax book and presented it to the farmer. He wondered what was happening I think. Coming there was [?] about six or seven car loads of us. [Laughter] Anyway, we went to the site and I took a photograph of it from memory out of the book. And I wasn't far out. I leaned over the hedge of the ploughed field and I took that photograph and it was as I say as near as I could get it. But I've loaned the book out to someone with that photograph in it and I can't think who. No, that won't have gone [?]. If he'd have taken the orders right, and accepted from the control tower go to Carnaby things would have been different. But no, he wanted to do it again. Inexperienced pilot apparently, and he got people on there with DFCs, people on their second tour no doubt. [background noise] It just blew into pieces. [pause] I told you the one -
CB: Any other trips you remember when you were doing the bombing of Northern France for the flying bombs?
CD: Yes. What?
CB: What height were you and what sort of experience did you have with those?
CD: Well, that was only our second one you see and I [laughter] erm [pause] there was - it didn't happen in our squadron, but we got to know that one of the aircraft on that raid, one of the crew, must have been the engineer I would think, he's the only one who seemed to walk about, and he lifted the, the inspection panel to look and see the bombs go. It - he unscrewed the panel, got down on his knees and looked down through and a piece of shrapnel hit him in the throat. The thing, hard luck story there to the point, you're going about two hundred miles an hour and something comes up through a hole about that big, and hits you in the throat. It, now, that was the crew, it wasn't on our squadron but we got to know about it. There's another incident you see I would never ever have known about it other than getting it from our people. And [pause] that's encouraging [?]. One of those two days that we did, went there consecutively, I forget which one it was but turning, we had to turn round onto the target. And I looked round to see where we're going and this block barrage it was like that just a solid black wall of flack. At our height, dead heights, and I said to myself 'Christ we've got to go through that?' Only we did, somehow. I have said to Les the pilot afterwards he said 'I just climbed above it.' Well I didn't know that at the time you see, still had flack going around you at various heights but this block barrage, well it was just like looking at that screen. It was a massive black wall of flack bursts. I don't know how many guns had to do that, probably about fifty rapid firing. I don't know, pure guesswork. But, that was an incident and I, I don't know whether that was the same one when I saw that Lancaster do what it did because we went there two days running, yes. Seventy years ago it's tough to remember what day it was so. That was that incident. [Pause] er.
CB: Which did you prefer, flying at night or flying in the day?
CD: Well, safety wise, well obviously day light. Because when these turning points as I was saying in that Bockholme one that Bockholme bay was seven-hundred and forty-nine aircraft. And you all, you're all converging on Aufitnez [?]. You're all coming at different angles so, I had it written down here. [pages turning] [pause] First turning point whereby all aircraft were coming in at all angles to turn off onto the next heading. [cough] Incidentally, all navigation lights are turned off so you're in a complete darkness which helps towards a hazard. Within our crew, we found an idea to help to overcome this. Derry, our navigator, would call up and notify us, the gunners in brackets, ten minutes before turning point and ten minutes after the turning point. This about covers the time it takes [cough] seven-hundred and forty-nine aircraft to pass through. We, you could do a raid of a thousand bombers in a quarter of an hour over the target. So that ten minutes each side of that turning point served a good purpose. [background noise] But there was this raid where I saw two aircraft collide at the first turning point, Orford Ness .
CB: And what happened to them?
CD: Well, they just hit one another and that was the end of the story. Just a vivid blue flash.
CB: Oh was it?
CD: And a black pall of smoke to follow.
CB: You couldn't see-
CD: Joe Her- incidentally, Joe Herman saw that same one. That happened just off the North, from Orford Ness in the North Sea. Yeah.
CB: So you didn't see them before they collided, just the explosion 'cause it was in the dark?
CD: No no no it was just above us too.
CB: Was it?
CD: So you wouldn't see it above us.
CB: No.
CD: No, you couldn't help but see it. Just a blue flash.
CB: Yeah. So if we go forward a bit, you've now completed the sortie and you've landed. What happened next?
CD: [background noise] You go to debriefing. First person you saw, and always saw every time no matter what day or night was the Padre, the Station Padre. He was stood there just inside the door with the tea urn and the biscuits. And welcomed us back. And then we went and sat in our crew at one table, crews at another table, [background noise] and you systematically interviewed and told what you saw, [cough] things happened. The navigator was always logged in so as, right that aircraft went down at so many degrees east or whatever. And the others gave their remarks and that was it. You went down to the mess had a return meal, no matter what time of the morning or night. From there to bed.
CB: Was it as standard meal, you always got something?
CD: Egg, bacon and chips. [laughter] Yeah, egg, bacon and chips.
CB: Okay.
CD: Some used to craftily get in there and get a meal and weren't on operation. They, they sussed that one out. So the WAAF behind the co- the hot plate, had a list of all the crews that were in operation and they used to ask you your name and if you weren't on there she didn't give you a meal, which is fair enough. How other way are you going to defeat it? And that's not all they did, tried to do, they did until they found it out. Yeah.
CB: So you've had your debrief, you've gone to bed, how long were you allowed to rest or sleep for before you had to do something else?
CD: We, you just got up and if it was too late a day to go and do a daily inspection then you didn't do it. You were probably on battle orders again the next night. I'll give you an instance, [background noise] they were very, the discipline to help the individual himself rather than not break his morale, they let discipline slide a bit. Whereby there was none of this saluting when you passed an officer and all that, as it was in training. I remember once in training at AGS, Dennis and I were walking up to the section and there were two officers coming down the drive. I says 'We'd better sling them one up, Dennis.' 'Oh, bugger him' he says, 'Bugger him' he says. I went up and he didn't. He got seven days [laughter]. 'That's alright for you.' I says, 'All you had to do, Dennis, was that.' Anyway, we came back to twelve noon again, and then, simple as that. That's strict discipline, that, you see and that, that didn't occur in- I'll give you the instance why. We had a billet inspection by Wing Commander Shannon, Dave Shannon, and we're all stood at the end of the bed, waiting for him and his entourage to come in and inspect, and Bob Elliott, the Canadian, he was in that far corner and he's still in his bed, he'd been on ops the night before. So immediately Shannon went straight over to him you see and he woke him up. [laughter] Elliott went like that on his poliasse, paliasse rather, 'What're you doing on that bed?' he said, 'I was on ops last night, sir', Oh well, alright, well get up and sweep this bit of bed fluff up.' [laughter] That's all that happened. Now, if he'd have done it the army way, he'd have blown the bloke to hell, wouldn't he? So they never, they never inclined to go down that road. In the army, his feet wouldn't have touched the ground. You know that. He'd have been in the glasses. But no, he just laid him back there 'I was on ops last night, sir.' 'Well alright, get on and sweep this bed fluff up.' I was stood down the other end, yeah, heard it all. That, that was the sort of discipline on the squadron.
CB: 'Cause we're talking about-
CD: We had to be at a level otherwise you'd have broke, you'd have broken up-
CB: Yep.
CD: You know what it is.
CB: Yeah.
CD: I don't have to tell you, do I?
CB: So, the accommodation is an H-Block.
CD: Yes.
CB: At Driffield.
CD: Yes.
CB: So that’s real comfort, relatively.
CD: Yes.
CB: Then you go to Foulsham, when did you get there?
CD: I remember, Nissen hut, wasn't it? I've got an old photograph of it in that other book, pimpernel book.
CB: Was that, what was the condition of that like? Comfort?
CD: Well Nissen hut, you had that all the way up in your training. [pause] I had a tortoiseshell stove and a mirror on the hut [laughter]. I always picked the bed away, yes, picked the bed away from there because they would all sit along the edge of your bed near the fire. [laughter] So I kept well away. But, oh, I had an incident at Bridgnorth. There was this farmer bloke, he was a farmer really, all Gloucestershire boy, you know. And he'd been out and had a few and he came back I was, I was half asleep I just got into bed. I hadn't been out. I never ever went out anyway, I was always religiously learning up, swotting up all the time. Plus, the letter writing, it all takes your evening up, doesn't it? So, I got into a habit. I never ever went out. Anyway, this night he comes back a bit worse for wear and I think he had a bit of encouragement from others and [background noise] he came and tipped my bed up. What does one do? I got straight up and hit him one. Only hit him once, honest to God, yeah, yeah. 'Oh uh buh' [?] he went, I thought 'Yeah.' I had every right, didn't I? And he had my left. [laughter] That was one of the incidents.
CB: What was the food like in general?
CD: Pretty good. Yes. Pretty good. Another, another incident there at Bridgnorth, you remember that advert, Chad? It was a head looking over a wall and a long nose hanging over the wall. Well, our, our instructor was a bloke called Firth, and he was, he was Jewish and he'd got just one of those conks you know [laughter] and in the ablutions up over the taps was: 'Beware, Corporal Cashew watching you' and that he was Corporal Cash, beware Corporal Cash is watching you pissing [[laughter]. Nobody was ever pulled up, what could they do about it?
CB: Banter.
CD: Another instance, going back off a weekend leave to Locking [?], Weston-Super-Mare, we always used to-
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Title
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Interview with Charlie Darby
Description
An account of the resource
Charlie Darby joined the Royal Air Force in September 1943 and recounts in great detail, his training as an air gunner/wireless operator on Wellingtons and Ansons at RAF Bridlington, RAF Bridgnorth, RAF Castle Kennedy, RAF Acaster Malbis and RAF Riccall. He explains how he crewed up at 21 Operational Training Unit, RAF Morton in the Marsh, before being posted to RAF Driffield with 466 Squadron, where he served as a rear gunner. He recounts operational experiences, including an operation to Bochum. He discusses discipline and living conditions. At the end of the war he was transferred to ground work and moved between a number of stations before being demobbed in 1947. He worked for Hoover and other companies before setting up his own engineering business. He recalls what happened to his crew after the war and his participation in the unveiling of a memorial in Driffield Gardens in 1993.
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2015-06-30
2015-07-07
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Bethany Ellin
Heather Hughes
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01:57:04 audio recording
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eng
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Sound
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ADarbyC150630
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
Germany--Bochum
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Atlantic Ocean--Irish Sea
England--Orford Ness
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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.
100 Group
1658 HCU
21 OTU
462 Squadron
466 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crewing up
demobilisation
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
memorial
military discipline
military ethos
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Acaster Malbis
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Carnaby
RAF Castle Kennedy
RAF Driffield
RAF Foulsham
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Riccall
sanitation
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/218/3358/PBruhnKC1601.2.jpg
b0c77fbb6618767952dab43db30881d6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/218/3358/ABruhnCK160430.2.mp3
321d7a40559b9dbb0b3d5005882da99b
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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Bruhn, Clarence Keith
Clarence Keith Bruhn
Clarence K Bruhn
Clarence Bruhn
Keith Bruhn
C K Bruhn
C Bruhn
Description
An account of the resource
Nine items. An oral history interview with Flying Officer Clarence Keith Bruhn (437927 Royal Australian Air Force) documents, photographs and his log book. He flew operations as a navigator with 463 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Keith Bruhn and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-04-30
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Bruhn, CK
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Keith Bruhn who was a 463 Squadron navigator during the Second World War. It’s the 30th of April 2016. My name’s Adam Purcell. We’re in Novar Gardens in the suburbs of Adelaide. That’s, that’s the spiel. Let’s begin. Can you tell me something Keith of your early life? What you were doing growing up and how you came to join the air force?
CKB: Well, I attended Unley High School and quite a few, the other, you know in older classes had been joining the air force. So when the, when I turned eighteen, I left high school at seventeen and studied accountancy for the interim before joining up and then having turned eighteen they sent you a letter that you had to report to so and so and so. So I thought — oh I will. There was quite a few of the blokes I knew were joining the air force so I decided that rather than join the army they were supposed to travel on their stomachs weren’t they? The army or something. And the navy had a girlfriend in every port and I didn’t think I could handle that [laughs]. Anyway, and also a few of the people in our area we lived at Hawthorn and you’re a Melbournite are you?
AP: I am.
CKB: Yeah. So you wouldn’t know our Hawthorn. You’d know your Hawthorn. Anyway, I decided to join the air force. I think I was about seventeen and a half then. I applied and we did, went along to the [pause] you know went along at night school to study a bit in preparation. And then the call up came and we, I was picked to go to Somers. You know Somers? Down there on the Mornington Peninsula is it?. Yeah. That’s where we did our ITS. From then we, well at the selection committee I sort of thought everyone wanted to be a pilot so I thought if you were refused that you sort of automatically became a air gunner or, or a wireless operator perhaps. And I was pretty good at maths so I decided I think I’d like to be a navigator. So I mentioned that to the selection committee and I was made a navigator. So that worked out all right. [laughs] From ITS at Somers we went down to the Air Observer’s School at Mount Gambier. That would have been probably three or four months. You don’t really want to know what happened at some of these? It might take —
AP: Oh definitely — tell me everything. Tell me the whole story.
CKB: Anyway. Oh nothing much. Yeah. Well, well actually I can remember one thing at Mount Gambier. The staff pilots at a lot of these places were a bit [pause] what did they used to call it? Well, they were daredevils anyway. Some of them. Anyway, we were on a navigation trip somewhere up to Northern Victoria there where we had a do, write down what we saw, you know. And coming home this pilot decided he’d give, there were three or four navigators. There was an Avro Anson and he decided to give us all a bit of a thrill. So we came back via the Glenelg River and he came down to below tree top height. I can still remember there were ducks flying all over the place and I thought [laughs] and anyway that was — I can still remember that because I think that would have been our probably first or second flight in a — and we thought ooohh you know.
AP: First or second flight ever you mean?
CKB: Well, yes in the air force anyway. I had been. That’s another story I won’t —
AP: That’s alright.
CKB: We won’t go into —
AP: I’ll ask about that later.
CKB: I had flown before and yeah it would have been probably — I can’t exactly remember. First, second or third flight. So that was a story at Mount Gambier. From there we went to — there was a Bombing and Gunnery School at Port Pirie and that’s where we got our wings. That was [pause] oh end of ’43. Yeah. 1943. From there we ended up, we went over to Melbourne and we were stationed on the MCG. Now, I’m going to brag here. That was sort of a holding place where you moved on from and the curator there decided he’d prepare a pitch for us and we got a bit of sort of scratch team together. I think we, everyone bowled one over and batted one over. And I thought well the cricket pitch was a crossways on the MCG. As you probably know. And that’s the shortest boundary. And I thought I reckon I can hit a six on this. So first ball I had a swing and missed, I think. And I think it was the second ball I managed to collect. It just cleared the fence. So I can brag and say I hit a six on the MCG.
AP: Excellent.
CKB: Anyway, the next ball I had another swing and got clean bowled I think. So that was a bit of fun there.
AP: Where at the MCG did you actually stay?
CKB: Yes.
AP: [unclear]
CKB: That was a staging camp before you moved on. You know.
AP: So while you were, while you were at this staging camp where did you sleep? Like where was your accommodation?
CKB: [laughs] Under the grandstand. Yeah. They had you know a big open area as you went up through the, yeah, and they just had stretchers there and I don’t know how many. It would have been a hundred. A hundred, I suppose, of us. And the, and the bars we all had. Where the bars were set up that was our mess and I think we were there probably a fortnight. And then we had entrained we had no, oh the funny part about it was we were issued with tropical gear. Uniforms. As well as a normal winter uniform. And then we were entrained and headed north. So we thought oh we were issued with tropical uniforms so we thought we were going up somewhere up New Guinea or somewhere. Or the islands or somewhere. So we ended up in Sydney and once again went to the staging area camp. At Bradfield Park I think it was. For probably a week again and hopped on a train up, further up north and ended up in Brisbane at Indooroopilly I think it was. There was a camp. A tented camp there. Stayed there a week and still wondering. We didn’t know any idea where we were going. No one told you anything. So there, we were there for probably a week and the next minute we were told that we’d get all our gear together. We were heading for a boat. So we ended up down, I can’t remember whether it was a victory ship or a [pause] what was the other ships they made? Anyway it was a Yankee. American boat. And there were a lot of Americans, injured Americans were going back to the US. So about a hundred of us logged on there with about a few hundred American servicemen who had been injured. And a story — we took off. The story about that. There was one bloke. An American. I remember this. He couldn’t go down to the mess. He had, he was missing both legs and one arm. So the whole journey they set him up on the deck and he sat there the whole journey. They brought food to him and he played [pause] what are they? Craps I think they call it. And he just sat there with the dice and that’s what he did the whole journey. The poor beggar. And I can still remember that. Anyway, so we ended up, we still didn’t know, well we sort of knew, because each day they had a map on the side of the boat and we could guess how many miles, daily miles they did. They showed us where we were going so that would have taken, I don’t know, probably about a week or a fortnight. So we ended up in San Francisco. And then over there we went to another staging camp where all the Americans went before they were choofed off to the Pacific. Angel Island I think it was called. In the San Francisco Bay. And an interesting thing there, Angel Island was there and as we caught the ferry in to San Francisco we passed Alcatraz. That was a bit of an interesting point. So we were there about a week and then entrained. Headed off [pause] well we knew we were going eastwards. You can’t go westwards. Yeah. Well, that was Pullman carriages. This was all knew to us, you know. The negroes were, they’d pull our beds down at night and I mean these sort of things didn’t happen in Australia. That was all new to eighteen year olds, you know. And that was quite enjoyable I suppose because these negroes attendants were happy blokes. They were very, you know, laughing all the time and carry on. So eventually we went, well on the way I woke up one morning and looked out the window of the train and, ‘You are now passing,’ — it was all snow outside, ‘You are now passing the highest railway point in America.’ I think it was fourteen thousand feet. I think it was. Over the Rockies. That was just a thing you notice. And we ended up in Chicago, in these cattle yards because there were trains going all over America during the war and you had to stop sometimes. We’d stop overnight, and it we could hardly sleep because the cattle bellowed all night. You could hear this bellowing of cattle right in the middle of the stockyards. So then we eventually ended up in New York. Crossed the river to another staging camp I suppose it was. And we stayed there another week and had a few days in New York. We were looked after. I think they were Jewish people. We stayed a few nights and had breakfast. And that was the first time I’d ever heard of, ‘How would you like your eggs? Sunny side up?’ [laughs] That’s the first time, the first time I’d ever heard that expression. So we were there a couple of nights and then went back to the camp a few more nights and then back again. And we were, I can remember looking across the other side of the river where the liners were and there were big boats everywhere. We still didn’t know what boat we were going on. Anyway, it turned out to be the Queen Elizabeth so — I don’t know whether you know the story. When that was built it was never fixed out as a liner. The war came so they made it, turned it into a troop ship virtually. So there were about a hundred of us and seventeen thousand Americans got on board. And, you know on the trip over to England we never saw one American. We saw where they slept. You know, like the decks. And on the side of the decks — one, two, three, I think there were about four layers of stretchers and I don’t know how many decks would have been on there. There would have been six or seven and you know, there was about two hundred yards. So they were up and gone and they had their stations to go to during the day. By the time we, we were camped in, I don’t know there were rooms. What they would have been I don’t know, and there were about a dozen of us in each of these. In sort of decks too. And the meal times were twenty four hour meal times. You had your time to go down to the meal. It was just twenty four hours of serving meals to serve everyone. So eventually we ended up in [pause] Gourock. That’s the Glasgow port and got off the boat there and a bit of a story there. We all lined up on the railway station and there were Scottish — I think they were church, some church ladies. Guild or whatever they were called were serving morning tea or whatever it was. They were asking us what we’d like, and we couldn’t understand a word they were saying in their broad [laughs] Scotch accent. Like, you know, ‘Do you want milk in your tea?’ Or things like that. It took a while. Mind you going back, going through or go back to San Francisco it was almost the same story. Their accents were, I can remember we went into a restaurant, had a meal and there were three or four of us and this gum chewing waitress came along. ‘Where are you all from?’ And we said, ‘Australia.’ She stood there. It was ticking over. ‘Oh where’s that state?’ As much as to say, you know what, in America, what? That’s just a side thing. Yeah. Well I’m back to Glasgow and the next minute we’re down at Brighton. Well, originally, before us they used to go to Bournemouth but that got a bit dangerous apparently. They were bombing that before we got there. So we went to Brighton for about a week or two. Then we, by this time we got over there the attrition rate had dropped fairly well and there was a bit of a backlog of, you know, so they chooked us off to an aerodrome just outside Guildford. A grass aerodrome for the pilots and navigators to get used to the countryside. We flew Tiger Moths. Map reading and all this sort of thing in Tiger Moths. And I even learned, being a navigator, to fly a Tiger Moth because there were English pilots learning to be instructors they, so I got to take off and land, but I didn’t do solo or anything like that. That was a bit of fun. We used to take off, you know a couple of hour journeys every now and then and that was for another week or two I guess that was. Now, where did we go next? Oh we went up to Navigation School up in Scotland. Can’t think what that was called. Anyway, up on the west side of, west coast of Scotland and when we went on leave we could catch a bus up the west coast up, and we used to do a pub crawl. We’d drop off at every town, have a couple of drinks and then catch the next bus up to the next [laughs] and there were about six towns, so I think we had a pint or two in each. Not that that was much because English beer wasn’t like our beer, so. I mean they’re the sort of things, I mean, oh I’ll get back to the fun side of it before we got in to the nitty gritty. You know, you, well you had to have a lot of fun. At this stage we didn’t know what was ahead of us anyway. So that’s what we used to do up there. And then we went to the Operational Training Unit at Lichfield. That’s right. Yeah. We were getting nearer and nearer now to operations on Wellington bombers. And while we’re there we did quite a few, dropping Window raids, to get us used to, you know the Window. Yeah. We’d go out over the English Channel and into France a bit and drop these before the other bombers. To confuse the enemy I suppose. We did quite a few of those and then later on we did a few in Wellingtons. A few decoy raids further into France to get us all used to it. And finally we did our OTU and finished that. Then we were posted to a Conversion Unit for pilots. A lot of the pilots had only been flying twin engines, so they had to convert to four engines. So we converted there to Lancasters then, and I don’t know how long we were there. Probably a month but that was mostly for the pilots anyway and the navigators didn’t do much really there. So eventually from there we got posted to Waddington. This is early February ’45 so we were getting, you know, within three months to the end of the war virtually. That’s how long. It took us almost a year by the time we arrived in England to get to a squadron. So we were there a while before. Then we did our first op. And then the last op which was the third to last op that the squadron did on April, oh it must have been April the 16th I think it was — we were shot down over Stuttgart I think it was. Anyway, I’ve got the report of that raid here. That’s the [pause] that’s our report. That great big report there. I’ve looked through all the reports and we got the biggest mention. I don’t know whether that means anything. But we — this was after D Day so the emergency ‘drome that night was Juvincourt. That was just north east of Paris a bit. Or near Reims. So we headed for there and we had trouble maintaining height so we dropped all the bombs. Everything we could drop. We still couldn’t actually — we were shot at twice and the first time we were shot at as far as the powers can be can — would all what we said and what clues they had they worked out that an aircraft from Skellingthorpe was the ones that had shot at us. So we were virtually, well they suggested that we were probably shot at from friendly fire and that put an engine out. But about another quarter of an hour later we were shot at with one of those upward firing ME210s, I think they were. Anyway, that was a quarter of an hour later. That put another engine out. We were down to two engines at this stage. So we were on, we were going to bomb a roller bearing works at Pilsen in Czechoslovakia. So we only really got to Stuttgart. And that’s where we were shot at. So the pilot was down to two engines and he couldn’t maintain height so he decided we’d turn around and head for Juvincourt. So all the navigation aids were gone so all we were back to was the P6. The pilot’s P6 compass. That was the only aids we had as far as [unclear] I thought I’d look approximately where we were, and I thought I’d get the directions to Juvincourt and I looked at my star maps and I found a star that was approximately on the course we were supposed to take. So I said to the pilot, ‘Well head for that star and get your course on the compass.’ And I had my fingers crossed. Anyway, blow me down, about, oh I don’t know how long it took us but we eventually got to Juvincourt. They said they could see. This was about 6 o’clock in the morning I think. ‘We can see the lights. The lights of the runway.’ So I thought thank goodness for that because there was no way we would have made even the English Channel. We were losing height all the time. Anyway, we were down to about seventeen hundred feet at this time and the pilot, he had his left rudder roped up because he couldn’t, something had broken, you know. Had broken. But he had to do a right hand turn in order to land, I think it was and he found he couldn’t do it. And according to, I’ve just read it before but I’ve forgotten a lot of it. I can’t remember which— the right wing, or [pause] was still on fire. And near where one of the tanks and the pilot, there was flames, and he said, ‘She’s going to go up any minute. The whole thing.’ So we all, he told us to get out smartly. So we all managed to jump out. I’m the last one out. I looked at the pilot. I said, ‘Are you ok?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’m ok.’ So I went. And he got out and busted his leg a bit. Eventually we all, we all ended up headed for the [pause] most of us landed within oh, I don’t know, 5ks of the Juvincourt I think. And I remember coming down. We were, I looked down, I could see, oh before this we were supposed to count to three before we pulled our rip cord. I counted to one and a half I think and pulled mine and anyway my chute opened and I was floating down. I looked down and there was a canal and I thought this will be good I’m going to land right in the middle of the canal. And we were told that if we want to move we pull on something. I’ve forgotten what you do but I pulled the rip cord somehow and managed to miss the canal by about fifty yards anyway. But in the meantime I’m doing this there was a bit of ground mist and you couldn’t really see the ground and I’m sort of doing this. And the next minute whoop we’d hit the I’d hit the ground [laughs] and being no wind that’s the worst, that’s the worst landing you can make. If there’s a breeze you can almost run with the [laughs] anyway I remember my kneecaps went past my ears I think. So we got down and eventually everyone dribbled, dribbled in. The pilot — he’d done his leg in. The flight engineer — he was a nervous wreck I think. They had to sedate him. He ended up in hospital. I can remember going to see him. They’d sedated him because he was a shaking mess. It affected him a fair bit apparently. Oh, what happened we were about five Ks from the aerodrome and this was 6 o’clock in the morning and they were all warming up to go and do their strafing or whatever they did and I headed for the noise and I’m walking along. Out of the corner of my eye I see a negro standing there. About six foot six tall with a carbine in his hand. He was on guard duty you know. There was an American transport company on the outskirts of the aerodrome. And I thought I’d better go over to him otherwise I might get a [unclear]. So I went over and introduced myself, ‘I’ve just been shot down. I’m an Australian.’ And he looked at me. I think he thought now is it Austrian or what? Anyway, I said, ‘Oh will you take me to someone in charge?’ Yeah. So we walked along and I noticed he kept walking a bit behind me. He wasn’t quite sure who I was, and he had this carbine sort of [pause] Anyway, he eventually got back to the camp, where they were all camped and he took me to the officers where they were having breakfast and here they were. You know they hadn’t that long gone, probably a few months they’d taken over the airfield and here were all these Americans sitting down to bacon and eggs. You have it. Where probably the English were having bully beef or something. And he said, ‘Oh you’d like some breakfast.’ And I said, ‘No.’ I was a bit churned up myself, you know with all this going on, and I said, ‘No, I’m not —' And eventually they took us to this aerodrome. There was an RAF representative there. Like I said all the crew eventually dribbled in from wherever they’d landed. I think one of— the mid upper gunner had landed in a tree I think, so he’d had a bit of fun. But most of us were not too badly hurt. So we were there a couple of days and there was a flight sergeant in charge of whatever — for the RAF there and he took us, drove us to where the aircraft had crashed. And apparently it had come down reasonably level like this, right across a Frenchman’s potato patch. And apparently, according to this flight sergeant he wasn’t very happy. There was a great swathe of, you know, he’d only, he’d probably only just planted it all. No it was up. What I remember they were up about that high. But there were bits and pieces lying everywhere. Bits of my maps lying everywhere. And there was no sign of any engines or anything. They’d apparently dug in to the ground because it was fairly soft, the ground I think. So that was alright. So the next the next thing this bloke took us on a Cook’s Tour around the area and there was a village, I forget the name of it and he was, he had a girlfriend whose father owned one of the — what do they call these drinking places. Bars. The French call their bars. I don’t know. I forget. Anyway, he took us there. The French owner was very happy to see us and he went down the stairs and came up with a clay pot of Cognac. Cognac. And he said, ‘Oh we kept this down here especially, you know for when the war was over,’ sort of thing. I thought, I remember afterwards saying to myself I bet the Germans had a bit of that too. Who knows? You don’t know. But I think but this flight sergeant was on with the daughter. Oh and another thing that happened. Parachutes. I hope the powers that be aren’t listening. I’ll be up for a charge or something. He went around to collect all the parachutes and we were supposed to bring them [pause] well supposed to bring them back. Anyway, we eventually found ours and this flight sergeant, he was on a good thing. He knew all the [lerks?] he was, he said, ‘Leave it with me. I can —,’ You don’t have to, you know, I forget the words he said but he ended up with it but what he was doing was making money out of. They were making shirts or whatever out of these. So I had to claim that I couldn’t find my parachute. Which some of the others did too and they couldn’t find their parachutes so that was all right. But he was on this, he was on a good thing this bloke. And another thing he took us down to, we were about twenty k’s from Reims which was Eisenhower’s headquarters. General Eisenhower’s headquarters. So we went for a trip down there. And that that’s where I first came into contact with their, what we call them [unclear] They were just toilets, you know, in a park. All they were, were for men, all they were sort of a grill sort of thing. You could see their feet underneath and a bit of a trough and [laughs] in the middle. We’d never struck anything like that before. So eventually we ended back at the aerodrome and I think it was about three days later they came and came and got us from a squadron in a Lancaster. Took us back home. And by the time we’d reported all the accident and all the, whatever went on we went on leave for about ten days I think it was. By this time the war was nearly over so we didn’t do any more trips. The war finished. And all those who’d done their tours, probably they were alright. All those who hadn’t finished a tour — we went on to Tiger Force. Changed from 463 to 467 Squadron. So we were there. We shifted to Metheringham which was only about ten k’s from Waddington. One thing about that — I had a photo. I don’t know what happened to it. When we shifted all the ground staff had bicycles that they used to drive around and there were about twenty of them. So when we shifted they put all their bikes in the bomb bay. And I had a photo of the bomb bay full of bicycles. And it was only a five minute trip virtually. By the time you’d taken off you were there. So we shifted our Tiger Force training there for — by that we were on so called embarkation leave in August. In August. I think they knew the war was going to end. We went down to Newquay in, in Devon I think it is. Newquay. The Australians, it was good surf down there. All the Australians used to go down there to surf. So we ended up down there and the war with Japan finished so we did the town over that night. I can remember one chap had a motor vehicle and we were, there was about a dozen of us hanging from a motor vehicle screaming up and down the main street of Newquay. And the locals must have thought we were all nuts because their war had been over for six months and they thought what’s going on here? I can still remember that. But we were due to transfer — what they called them — long range Lancasters. That was the pre-runner of the, I forget the name. Lincoln bomber. That’ right. Yeah. And we were due to fly them out to Okinawa. Or not Okinawa. There was an island fifty miles, fifty k’s east of Okinawa that the RAF were going to operate from and the Americans were going to operate from Okinawa. That was the story anyway. I think that’s right. But thankfully that never happen. I wasn’t looking forward to bombing Japan. I think it would have been a different story to bombing Germany if you’d baled out. I don’t think that would have been much fun. So that’s probably my story in the air force I suppose. Eventually we went back down to Brighton waiting for the boats. Which boat to. This was about October ’45. I can remember there was one bloke. He liked to do seances. He liked to get us all together to work out what boat we were going to go home on. So we had the seance. There were only about four boats I think, operating, and he knew the names of them all. So here we were with this and he’d been putting our hands towards whichever side [laughs] if you believe in seance. But he was dinkum about them. He sort of — but no. We had a quite I think we were there for about a month waiting for a boat and we used to go up and play a few golf links up east of Brighton. We used to go up there and play golf. That was good fun for about a month. And eventually we got on the Athlone Castle which was a South African boat, headed off through the Mediterranean. Through the Suez. Ended up in Bombay where we picked up [pause] there was quite a few, you know servicemen coming in from Burma and all around. One of them was Vic Richardson. Do you know Vic Richardson? Vic Richardson the cricketer.
AP: Yeah.
CKB: The Chappell brothers’ uncle.
AP: Oh.
CKB: [laughs] Yeah. He was one of them. We knew Vic very well reasonably well. We lived near him at Hawthorn. He was one bloke who came on board. An interesting thing in Bombay those days all the beggars from I don’t know how far around in India knew that all these boats were coming in with servicemen. And they’d apparently come into Bombay, and anyway we had a day to go and look around Bombay. But we had to walk of course, and it was about a two kilometre walk I suppose, and I reckon it took us two or three hours to walk through this wall to wall beggars that were lining the road with their hands out like this. But eventually we got back to I suppose was the main part of Bombay. But we had an hour or two there and then we decided we’d go back a different way. So we took some back streets and I can remember the bloke’s everywhere you went there were these little droppings everywhere apparently. All over the — there was a park area and apparently, they just used to go over to the park area. Do their business. In various stages of the dryness, some were quite dry [laughs] and that was another shock that you know, you don’t see that every day of the year. So that was an interesting little episode there. Eventually we got back to Perth. This was about December the [pause] about four days before Christmas I think we arrived in Perth. And a few of the, got rid of a few of the chaps, were offloaded in Perth. We had Christmas Day in the great Australian Bight heading for Melbourne. We didn’t call in to Adelaide. There weren’t enough getting off I don’t think. Called in to Melbourne and we were home. Then I had to catch the Melbourne Express back here. So virtually when you think about I had an around the world trip. Went, went that way and came home that way. So, you know, you think about it we were eighteen year olds who probably hadn’t been out of the state or, you know. It was all, sort of, you know, something to do. It was an experience. And I mean it had its moments but I often think three years in the air force I reckon I aged ten years. You know. With that experience. So in the end went on leave when we got back. Eventually we were called in to find out what was going to happen. Wanted to keep in the air force. ‘Do you want to stay in the air force?’ ‘No. No I don’t want to stay in the air force,’ [laughs] and then we were demobbed so, and that was the end. Oh going back to when the war ended over in England it’s a funny feeling that there was a mixture of [pause] a mixture of relief and disappointment if you know what I mean. You’re doing something and all of a sudden you’re not doing it. And I can remember, I suppose all the others were the same but at least we had, we continued on in the Tiger Force so it wasn’t so bad. But I can remember even when we got in to the Tiger Force I thought do we have to be doing this. Everything was dropped. But it was an interesting time doing Tiger Force because it was very relaxed and most of the time we played cricket or, or football. I can remember we’d got one football match arranged but they didn’t get enough for AFL type football so there were probably a third of them were rugby players. I can still remember going for the ball and the next minute whoosh [laughs] these blokes came at you and you’re flat on the ground [laughs]. That was, that was, I mean you can imagine a game of football. A mixture of rugby and Australian rules. Crazy. Oh dear. Yeah. And then we played quite a few cricket matches. What’s the name of the RAF station? Their headquarters virtually. Down there. I forget the name of it now. Two or three times we went down there and played matches. But in between we went on training. Mostly the training was, all they did was, navigation wise because we were going to go overseas. Mostly away from where we were to be stationed. We took off from Metheringham. Went straight out the Bay of Biscay for approximately the same time it would have taken us from the island to Japan. About four hours I think it was. Only using dead reckoning navigation and you had to fly back doing the same thing and hope that you were near where your base was because that’s what it was going to be like where we were going. So that’s all our training consisted of virtually and [pause] but that’s about it I think.
AP: Alright. We might go and fill in a few gaps.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: If you’re alright with that.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: Going back to the beginning where were you when you first heard the war had been declared and what did you think at that time?
CKB: 1939, I was in [pause] ’37 — third year at high school, Unley High School. Yeah. I can remember it. When was that? September wasn’t it? Was it September?
AP: Yes, September the 3rd
CKB: Yeah. I can remember it. I can even remember sort of discussing, you know, discussing it with your fellow pupils, but I don’t know. I think it’s sort of we might have said, ‘Oh well,’ and the funny thing about that was, leading up to the war, just going back with my name. I can remember the history teacher. I got praise for being a very good speller. And he said, ‘Oh you’ll, where did your parents come from?’ And I’m sitting there and war’s imminent. My mother I think came from East Prussia somewhere. My father’s, no, not he. They didn’t come but their parents came. And my father’s parents came from somewhere in North Berlin. Mecklenburg. There I am sitting in this class where [pause] but, you know there were a lot of people of German, German names in the war. When you think of it half the Americans were of German descent. So I mean I could have been, we could have been bombing some of my people I’m related to or something way back or something. But I mean that’s war. I mean I had no compunction in joining up. You’re living here. I was Australian. My parents were Australian. So I mean you’re that. Yeah as far, as far as that goes, at school, I can’t remember. We just talked about it I suppose. But I can’t ever remember like the teachers saying much about it. You just went on with school. That was ’39. ’40. I was leaving. ’41 leaving honours. Yeah. Life just seemed to go on when we were kids. But I knew then, you know, as I said the ones ahead of us like David Lester was two years. He went to Unley High too. He was two years ahead of me. We knew he’d joined up and there were a few others that were already joined up in the air force. Yes. One of those things.
AP: Can you remember much about the actual process of enlisting?
CKB: Sorry?
AP: Can you remember much about the actual process of enlisting? So where you had to go to do the interviews or to sign up. Or the actual process.
CKB: Oh well that’s a bit of a story. When I, you had a form to fill out when I enlisted, and I listed — I knew my mother had diabetes. Somehow I’d written down that both parents had had diabetes and when I went for my medical without even — they just, because both parents I’d put down. They didn’t even carry on with the interview. And then I thought [pause] no. No. No that’s not right. I think they, I think I did take a urine sample. Gave them a urine sample. But they didn’t even bother with it, they just, because I’d put down both parents and I was rejected. Course I was a bit disappointed so I complained about it. They said, but they said both your parents. ‘No,’ I said, ‘No.’ There was only my mother. I had to talk a bit, fairly well out of that. I eventually talked them into having a urine sample and that was clear. So I was alright. So I nearly didn’t make it because of that. But like I said I was only about seventeen and a half then I think. And then a couple of nights a weeks we had to go to the teacher’s college to these lectures and the funny thing about it one of the lecturers was our physics teacher at Unley High. So we just carried on, you know. Virtually they were just talking about what flying was about and the navigation side of it and I mean it wasn’t — but there were a lot of, probably lads who weren’t as educated as I was perhaps or had probably had only done kind of intermediate grade or something like that. So I suppose they just had to, probably needed more [pause] you know a little bit more training but that was for about six months. I can remember we used to go in, I used to go in with — I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of Bonds tours. No. You wouldn’t. He was on the air board actually Bert Bond. And they lived just up the road from us and Max Bond who joined up with me he, he his father was Bert Bond who owned this, and he was on the Air Board and he — I’m getting back to my first flight now. While we were waiting to be called up there was, on South Road there was what they called Castle Plaza Shopping Centre. It was named after, there was a castle, a castle like residence there and a bit up the road was a box thorn covered paddock and Bert had carved out a bit of an airstrip there and he had a Fairchild. He’d imported a Fairchild plane out. And so when we used to, every weekend when the first trip, Max said, ‘Oh come on, we’ll, my father’s going to go up for a bit. He’s going to shoot up some friends we know in the Adelaide Hills.’ I thought oh, shoot up? That’s a bit of a worry this shooting up business. So anyway, we hopped in and away we went, and I’m a bit apprehensive about the shooting up business. And anyway all he did was a few tight circles and waggled his wings and that’s all it was [laughs] I sort of imagined that he was going to go down and that sort of carry on. So we did that two or three times. That was my first trip in an aircraft. So I had been in an aircraft before I actually joined up. But I’ve even got a photo of that aircraft. It’s now over in Temora.
AP: Oh fantastic.
CKB: It had been kept here for quite a few years. And then it was a bit of a wreck I think apparently. And this bloke [pause] Temora is a [pause] what is it? It’s a sort of, I think they have — I’m not sure. Anyway, it ended up over there and they put a new engine in it and it’s flying. So that after how long? Seventy years. Yeah. I can show you if you’re interested.
AP: Oh yeah.
CKB: I can show you that. I think it’s, I think it’s in here somewhere.
AP: I’d like to have a look at that.
[pause]
CKB: It’s the first time I’ve looked at some of this stuff for a while.
[pause]
CKB: This is some of the stuff that happened while we were over in London for that Memorial a couple of years ago.
[pause]
AP: You can have a closer search through it in a little while perhaps.
[pause]
KB: Hey? I’m sure it was in.
[pause]
CKB: Oh well maybe it wasn’t. No. Can’t see it.
AP: That’s alright.
[pause]
CKB: Yeah. Oh well. Yeah. I’ve got all this stuff about that Memorial. That Annette had sent over.
AP: Oh yes. Yeah. That’s what this whole project’s for.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. She’s making the initial approach to people.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: So can you tell me something of, as an Australian in England, particularly a young Australian in England, what did you think of wartime restrictions of the civilian population of just generally life in England?
CKB: Well, it took us, yeah well see the point is there were no restrictions on us like there were the local population. We were eating food that they wouldn’t, wouldn’t see so much of especially when we were flying on ops. We used to get, you know, like fresh eggs and things like that which the local population — but I mean there were restrictions here when we left so that side of it, you know like meat rationing and whatever, but I don’t know we seemed to take it. Going into London you’d see all the buildings sandbagged up. I mean by the time we’d sort of got over there anyway all the mess from the blitz had virtually been cleaned up. There were, there were like empty blocks overgrown with grass and things like that. But I know when we first arrived in Brighton there were still a few odd raids coming over. We could hear the crump crump of the bombs in London from down at Brighton. And occasionally an odd plane or two would fly over. A German plane and things like that but most times we were on, on the camps you know, and we, it’s only when we were on leave that you’d mix with the — apart from going to the local pub perhaps wherever we were stationed. I don’t know. We just sort of took it all in our stride I suppose. I can’t [pause] I think we were [pause] we as far as I was concerned what I liked most wherever we were was just hopping on a bike and going to a local pub or something and having a pint or two or something like that. And we were, we were only eighteen. When we were at home we weren’t allowed to drink so I mean these things were all, you know, that’s what I’m saying. Aging, you know from eighteen you’re doing all these worldly things sort of that you wouldn’t have done if you were at home and there wasn’t a war on and things like that. So, no, there was part of growing up during wartime I suppose. No. In a sense it was all, you know, exciting. I suppose it was to other, you know, eighteen, nineteen, twenty year olds but like I said once you got to the squadron you sort of [pause] you knew that there was always a few who didn’t get back. But by the time we got there it was a lot better than whereas they were losing perhaps anything from five to ten percent a raid they’d only lose the odd plane occasionally towards the end of the war. But we were unlucky. I mean the last weeks of the war, you know but I don’t know how far, with all this going on that we mightn’t have made it. It was pretty iffy there for a while. But it was over my head to a certain extent because I was too busy navigating if you know, that was one reason why I even picked being a navigator. I thought well at least you had, you were working all the time and you’re not, you know, whereas if you’re an air gunner you’re sitting there and you’re looking around you. You’re doing your job but you know. And the wireless operator — the same thing. He had his job, but it wasn’t all the time but a pilot was. His job was, you know, full on. And my job was to, head down and make sure you’re, you’re getting there alright and you but even the navigation later on was totally different to the navigation earlier in the war. What they used to do they’d just say you’re going to bomb somewhere and the navigators or each individual plane used to work out how they were going to get there. You know, they just, but in my time, it was all, you know you had your times were strictly put down that you took off at a certain time. You timed that point was you had to reach by a certain time over target was that time. Not that you could always do it dead on time, but it was all strict because there were that many planes in the air. You could take anything from five hundred to six hundred planes flying to the one target it had to be regulated to a certain extent. But early in the war it was just Rafferty’s rules. They had no idea and the navigation aids weren’t available like they had later on.
AP: Apart from the last one that you’ve already told me about do any of your other operations stick out in your memory in particular?
CKB: Now, we [pause] when we before we did this raid our only operations were virtually limited to even leaflet dropping raids over Holland to get used to — this raid was virtually our first.
AP: Was it? Wow.
CKB: Yeah [laughs] Well, first full raid. Yeah. But we’d, even at OTU we’d done quite a few. We were lucky we didn’t have to do it when they called a thousand bombing raid earlier. They brought them in from training just to build the numbers up. But we didn’t take part in any of those, thankfully. We took part in Window dropping raids to get you used to get you flying in to France and that. No. We were, I was lucky. Who knows if I’d got there another month or two earlier I mightn’t be here now. I mightn’t have got back. So I mean that was what the war — we had a bloke who, I forget his name [pause] put it all on computer. Every raid that 463 and 467 did and there were some, some did their full thirty trips without one incident. You know, they went over, didn’t strike any fighters they, you know they went through the searchlights. A bit of anti-aircraft fire and but they didn’t report in these, didn’t report. They just went, came back, nothing happened. And yet you get someone else. See, what happened — I think once the, once, by the time we’d flown much of France had been, so all the fighters that the Germans had spread over France were concentrated in a smaller area. So even though they might have been a smaller, smaller lot but they were more concentrated so in effect it wasn’t getting any easier I would imagine and they were starting to get desperate I suppose. So that’s what happened. But I mean that was all experience. And even that, when I think back of it you know I — you did everything automatically. You’d think just jumping out of the plane like that. I mean you just, don’t — no panic. We’d been trained what to do so I mean you just do it. But I mean just how close you were to I can remember looking down when the upward firing things came up. There was a big hole in there and there was a big hole up there. Well that hole was only that far from [pause] sort of thing. And I also remember looking down when the pilot was trying to land the floor of the aircraft was awash with glycol fuel which was the fuel for the hydraulics. And I sort of thought then well, even with the you can probably put the wheels down, but would they lock properly, or —? So I mean all these things. If he tried to land and the undercarriage might have collapsed and who knows what. So you don’t sort of think. We did the best thing by jumping out of the aircraft because a lot of things [pause] as a matter of fact in my own mind I thought we should have jumped earlier. What was being fed to me. What was going on I thought well I think we should be [laughs] —
AP: Getting out.
CKB: Getting out. Now I mean, my biggest fear was what if we get to the — we’re losing height and what if we get to the English Channel. That was my biggest fear was crossing the English Channel. I didn’t want to [laughs] even ditching is not a nice thing but having to bale out over water I thought, I think we were better off. But anyway, but I mean the pilot, that’s their decision as to what to do so —
AP: How far inside the allied lines was Juvincourt?
CKB: Sorry?
AP: How far inside the allied lines was Juvincourt? Like how far away was the front line at this point. Or were you already well and truly over nominally friendly territory for like for a while before the aircraft crashed?
CKB: Probably — I’m just trying to think. Juvincourt. I think they’d got to the Rhine. So virtually nearly all of France was [pause] by this, oh yeah well it would have been I think. Yeah. I think [pause] I can’t — I don’t really know. You see the Americans were mostly down south. The British were doing the push mostly up north. I know, Montgomery, he wanted to, he got to the Rhine and he wanted to push into Northern Germany. He wanted to but the Americans held him back. They said no. But they were doing mostly their push. You see what, I think what happened they were trying to beat the Russians, or do.
AP: Right.
CKB: Trying to get as much territory before the Russians. I mean that — there was a lot of funny business went on behind closed doors when you think of it which has come out after the war that you didn’t know then. You knew nothing then about what was going on. But you get the feeling that it was all to do with they knew Russia was, you know, coming over. Yeah it was it’s like the bombing of [pause] you know that last raid they did in February.
AP: Dresden.
CKB: Dresden yeah. Apparently, that was only because Russia, they were forced into it because Russia wanting it to happen apparently. I mean really when you think in hindsight but you don’t know. They could have stopped bombing months before the end of the war. But you don’t know do you? It’s easy in hindsight to work these things out but, and even the good that the bombing did there’s big arguments over that. Whether they did any, shortened the war or what it did. You know, killed so many civilians and all this going, you know but they forget that the Germans did the same to England. So I mean they started out by bombing the wharves but then it gradually [pause] It’s like the, when we used to go on leave in London there was a place in Gloucester Road that was for the Australians to go and stay. It was about a four storey building I think. Anyway, in the event of air raids you’re supposed to go down. There were cellars down below. We used to go out on to the roof to watch when the V1s were coming across. The doodlebugs. And we’d have bets as to where, where they were going to land. You’d see the flash. You’d hear the sound of like chaff cutters coming over, you know. And it would be probably half a dozen a night you’d see. And we’d have bets. Is it going to go there? Is it going to there? And we’d sit up there. That was the poor beggars are underneath the when we dropped. That would be a frightening thing. You’d hear this noise coming over and then they’d cut off and you’d think where was that going to land? But yeah, I never saw any damage from those because they were very – it wasn’t like a bombing raid. They were spread out all over the, you know. It wasn’t sort of like a very accurate sort of —
AP: Fairly, fairly localised as well because there was only one. One sort of small bomb load dropped in one spot. That’s it.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: You could be in the next street and not know.
CKB: Could have been. Yeah. I mean the accuracy of it wasn’t very, very great. I mean they couldn’t pinpoint a target in any way. They just put enough fuel in to cover a certain distance and then it cut out.
AP: Did you encounter any V2s that you know of?
CKB: No. No. No, we were, I don’t think I was ever in London when, they were sort of, after the V1s weren’t they? I can’t [pause] no I don’t think we, I don’t think we went down to London on leave when they were I don’t think they were that many of them anyway. They’d attack there fairly heavy and the fighter bombers they really got stuck into the you know where they took off from. They knew quite a few of the places. They could pick them out where they were, but they didn’t do anywhere near the damage that they thought they were going to do. Thankfully. But I know they had thousands of them ready to go. I mean Hitler thought he could win the war with those.
AP: We’re talking about London. What sort of things did you do on leave in London. What did you do to relax I guess?
CKB: Well, it was, as far as I was concerned we used to, two or three of us always used to get together and it depended who you went with. What their ideas were. Mostly it was just taking in the sights of London and like I suppose we — there was a lot of, you know, we’d call in to a pub and have a few beers. By this time a lot of the places were opening too. Like places, you know, there were cinemas. Cinemas. More of them were opening. I can remember going to a few shows. I can’t quite remember what they were now. But I remember one thing in England. They were allowed to smoke inside their cinemas and I can remember we went somewhere — you could hardly see what was going on. Getting back to that — when we landed in Fremantle in Perth coming home. That night a lot of them went to the pictures. As soon as they got in they lit up. I wasn’t smoking at this time. I used to smoke a bit. Only because we were issued, virtually issued with them. They lit up and they were smartly told to put their cigarettes out. Yeah. I can remember they used to smoke. Well everyone in those days over in England used to smoke. It was, it was, I don’t know, like I said, I remember trying. We used to get issued with so many cigarettes. They were mostly American origin, you know. Lucky Strikes or whatever they were. And I thought — I got one of these cheroots. These big cigars. I thought I’d try those, and I forget where we were. Anyway, I lit up and laid down on the bunk and smoked for about, smoked half of it I think for about ten minutes and I thought it’s alright so I stubbed it out. Went to get up off the bunk and fell over. They were, you know these great, they were about that thick these, you know these big cheroots that the Yanks used to suck on. Because I wasn’t, I didn’t, no I didn’t used to smoke before I joined the air force at all. It was only the fact that I occasionally I’d [pause] even when we were issued with them. I used to have, when we were on leave mostly I used to take a packet of cigarettes with me. It never got to me.
AP: So if you didn’t smoke them what did you do with them?
CKB: Pardon?
AP: What did you do with them if you didn’t smoke them?
CKB: Gave them to someone else I suppose.
AP: I’ve heard, I’ve heard about other people using them as a sort of a currency.
CKB: Yes. Yes. I believe that. Oh yeah. That would have happened I’m sure.
AP: Put a packet on the bar and the drink would for free all night.
CKB: Yeah. Yes. That would happen. But there were a lot of things I didn’t get into. Like that. I mean, I remember when we went on leave there would always be a packet of contraceptive on your bed before you went out. Half the blokes used to blow them up on the train and hang them out the window [laughs] and let them go. But some of them, it’s a funny thing what I can remember. It was always the unmarried ones who used to brag about what they used to do and it was the married ones that kept very silent. So, I don’t know what they got up to. I don’t know [laughs] The married ones were married back home not the ones that were married [laughs]
AP: Yeah.
CKB: No. I wasn’t, I wasn’t in the least interested in the female side of things. I was more interested in being over there in England and you know, taking in the, you know the country itself. Yeah. And when we’d go on leave we’d go all over the shop. I think we saw more of England than most the locals would have seen.
AP: In the same way that when they come over here and see more of Australia than I’ve ever seen.
CKB: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: [unclear] years. Very much so.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: Alright. Getting towards the end of my list here how did you find re-adjusting to civilian life after three years of being in the air force?
CKB: Yeah. I think I found it a bit hard. Mainly because I hadn’t thought about it much if you know what I mean. I thought, ‘What am I going to do now?’ So what I did was — nothing. You know, I had a, we got back in January. New Year’s Eve pretty well. And I just relaxed for a couple of weeks and then two or three weeks and sat about not thinking about much and then my sister was working in the office of Yalumba Wines and they needed — I was studying accountancy and I was going to three nights a week that’s what I was studying at the School of Mines or whatever it is. And, you know relaxing. That was at night time study. And my sister said, oh we need a office, or virtually an accountant, to keep the girls in check. There were about four typists and receptionists. So I thought oh well I’ll go there. So, I ended up there for about four years. In Yalumba Wines. And my wife, Margaret was the receptionist so that’s where I met her. So we got married and then yeah, I got into that job and still kept studying accountancy. And I gave that job up. I thought couldn’t see much future there so I thought I’d give the banks a go so, to get a bit of experience in banking. So I joined the Commercial Bank for about three or four years I think I was there and anyway in this meantime we had farming property up, just up north at Saddleworth and it had share farmers on it. So the share farming agreement had finished so in the end I decided I would go up there and do the farm, on the farm because I would have been involved in it anyway once dad, he got to old so we decided to go up there and we were up there for thirty years. Retired. We’ve been down, retired for thirty years now. My years have been in thirty years. Thirty years living in the city. Had the war. Thirty years up in the farm. And thirty years retired virtually so that’s I’ve had a fairly varied life I suppose which I enjoy. And I can’t envision working in one job. I was probably after the war you were, I think a lot were like that. A bit unsettled. They probably couldn’t settle down to one, you know. Your whole lifetime doing one jobs. I like to vary things. Even on the farm when we were up there I liked to do things in a different way just to find out if they worked better. You know, it’s something like that. Try something different. Didn’t always work out but it was —
AP: So you’ve told me that the three years that you spent in Bomber Command you felt you aged almost ten years. What’s the legacy, do you think, of Bomber Command? For you personally and overall. And how do you want to see it remembered?
CKB: So [pause] what was that again?
AP: So what, what’s the legacy of Bomber Command, both for your personally and overall?.
CKB: Well I know it’s going to — see even I can remember when there used to be I’m going to talk about Adelaide there used to be Bomber Command dinners besides squadron dinners. As a matter of fact I went to Bomber Command dinners before I went to squadron dinners but then we moved to the country and that sort of stopped but the — I can remember at one of the Bomber Command dinners there was someone, they got someone from the air force to talk about like there’s no longer Bomber Command. It’s, you know, that’s gone. That’s finished. ‘There’s no longer bombers that are, you know doing what you chaps did,’ but I think it’s like as we all pass on what will happen to it? It’ll all just go won’t it? It’ll disappear.
AP: I hope it doesn’t disappear entirely which is one reason why we’re here collecting these interviews now, I can assure you.
CKB: Yeah. I’m just thinking that it’s a good thing that Annette and that lot. She does a good job I think to keep it running over in New South Wales isn’t it? Is she’s in Sydney.
AP: Yeah.
CKB: So I think, you see it’s a bit like the RSL. I know that the Vietnam lot it’s all the Vietnam war now rather than the Second World War of course but it would be nice to, you know, as far as I’m concerned get involved in it as much as we can but like I said age but if it’s going to keep going in any form it’s up to younger people though isn’t it? Like you, you know. So if that’s the case — good. Yeah. I’d like to see it you know kept in front of peoples. You take Anzac Day there. They’re thrashing that and that was a mistake. And I don’t know whether Bomber Command was a mistake like some like to say it shouldn’t have happened the way it did but it would be interesting to know what the outcome of the Second World War would have been in Europe if it hadn’t been for Bomber Command. I mean Fighter Command they probably saved Britain in 1940 sort of thing. The fighters. Oh well it’s, c’est la guerre. It’s part of the war. No. I’d like to see it carry on in some form and I’m sort of on the younger edge of [pause] there will be a lot more gone before I’m, I’m the younger group of them and the majority of them will be in their middle nineties now. I’m only ninety one.
AP: Only ninety one.
CKB: Yeah [laughs] and I consider myself reasonably fit but I have my problems. My old legs give out occasionally. My back gives out occasionally. But I, you know, getting back to the war like I said how luck played a part in Bomber Command. Like I said there were blokes did a whole tour without one incident and I can’t understand why that can happen. We, we’ve got in 463 Squadron Peter Giles used to come along to our meetings and, I forget — oh it was a Berlin raid. That’s right. And they were I don’t know whether it was flak or what happened, but the plane exploded, and he was blown out of the rear gun [pause] he can’t even remember putting his parachute on. Anyway, he, he ended up on the ground. His parachute had opened. He ended up in a snowdrift. It was in January or February I think. He was the only one who got out of that and he just died a couple of years ago. He was in one of the Stalags out east and they were released when the Russians were coming. And he, he would have a story to tell because even when they were released and there were hordes of them were moving west and in the middle of winter. And they were even strafed by our own planes because they thought that they were all the enemy sort of, you know. And he would have had a story to tell. And they hardly had anything to eat. They started off with guards with them. Eventually they, as the Russians kept coming and they just disappeared, and they were on their own. Just eventually made it back to [pause] I don’t know whether it was the American lines or somewhere. I know of quite a few instances where planes had blown up and they had no idea what happened. You know.
AP: Yeah. Luck is —
CKB: Luck comes into it an awful lot.
AP: One of my interview subjects wrote a book about his war service. He was actually a liberator pilot, but he called it the survival of the fortunate.
CKB: Oh yeah.
AP: For exactly that reason. He managed to avoid Bomber Command. That was one piece of good luck. There were a couple of others that happened. So, yeah, very much.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: And there was joy that people in the same raid, same operation who had completely different experiences on that raid.
CKB: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Some ran into heavy flak and fighters and some floated through.
CKB: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: So –
CKB: Yeah, it’s got nothing to do with how a good a crew you are or what —
AP: Might have something to do with that. But –
CKB: It’s just, yeah. Oh there’s lots of stories of, you know the books I read that spare crews had gone and one chap’s even done two tours so he was a high ranking bloke thought he’d like to do one more trip or something and that’s the end of him. I mean how long do you test your luck anyway?
AP: Yeah.
CKB: If I’d one tour I don’t think I’d be worried too much about volunteering to another. I’d think my luck had swung my way for long enough.
AP: Yeah [laughs]
CKB: Yeah. Oh I can remember even at OTU we had a few close calls that weren’t that bad but, you know. I was surprised. I was reading somewhere where how many were killed in training. It was tens of thousands in aircrew. I mean your luck’s there all the time but once you start flying but when you think it’s an unusual thing to be doing anyway up there, and you’re reliant on your ground crew as well. How good they do their job with the aircraft and all that. As a matter of fact they’ve got probably they should be complemented more probably than the people who flew the planes. I don’t know. The ground crew. The jobs they did to keep the planes flying. When you consider the state that some of the planes used to come back in. They’d fix them up. Keep going. I know there would have been a lot of accidents through, you know, people killed through bad things that happened on the ground. Ground staff. Ground crew. But that’s just part of it. That’s another thing where luck comes into it I guess. It’s all. I suppose it’s the same with any, whether you’re in the army or the navy. The same thing. Luck comes into it. You take the navy. The Atlantic. Coming over where the U-boats were, or [pause] luck came in there a fair bit too. Yeah. It was all — luck came into it. I mean you go back and whatever happened previously your time frame of what you were doing where you were determined what happened in the future doesn’t it? If this hadn’t happened or that hadn’t happened, what would have happened? It would have been totally different. So that’s — yeah.
AP: Very nice. Alright. Do we have any, any final thoughts?
CKB: I don’t know. I think. I just hope oh one thing I think is that they go on about the atomic bomb but I’m sure if it wasn’t for the atomic bomb there would have been another world war with Russia or whoever. I think that’s the only thing that stopped it. The threat of the atomic bomb. I know it’s a bad thing but I think it stopped, you know, a world wide war. I mean who’d want to start an atomic bomb war or an atomic war. The whole world would be wiped out. I think they’re used, countries only use it for their own to stop, you know they used it as a blackmail threat, ‘If you do this I’ll do that,’ or something like that and stop these little things from growing into big things I guess. And that’s my thought on the atomic bomb anyway. Well, what is it now? Hydrogen bombs is it or —? I mean who wants to load themselves up. In that you know that’d be a stupid thing to do I mean. Any country now that — the only trouble with that is if it gets into the hands of a crazy person that’s where a threat could be that they don’t care what they do. They just go ahead and — don’t know [laughs]
AP: Absolutely. Certainly saved you guys from Tiger Force as well.
CKB: Sorry?
AP: Certainly saved you guys from Tiger Force.
CKB: Yeah.
AP: Right.
CKB: Yeah. I think it is I don’t often talk that much about it at all but it’s good to talk about it I suppose.
AP: I’m very glad you have for the benefit.
CKB: I was a bit worried about whether I’d have anything interesting to say.
AP: Plenty of interesting. I think we’d got about five minutes in and I went oh that’s interesting already.
CKB: Yeah [laughs] but as far as the war goes you’ll find David Lester’s a lot more probably interesting. I don’t know what he state of health is now. I think he’d probably still alright. He can remember most things. Frank as I said he’s his eyesight’s his main worry.
[background chat with visitor]
AP: I think we’re just about to finish off here with the recording so thank you very much.
CKB: Yeah. No. That’s fine. Yeah.
AP: It’s been an absolute pleasure.
CKB: Yeah. Good yeah.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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ABruhnCK160430
PBruhnKC1601
Title
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Interview with Clarence Keith Bruhn
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:48:55 audio recording
Conforms To
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Pending review
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-04-30
Description
An account of the resource
Clarence Keith Bruhn's parents were of German descent. He grew up in Australia and joined the Royal Australian Air Force. After training, he flew operations as a navigator with 463 Squadron. On one operation his aircraft was hit by friendly fire from another Lancaster and by a Me 210 with upward firing guns. He navigated the captain to Juvincourt and baled out over liberated territory.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
France
Great Britain
United States
England--Lincolnshire
France--Juvincourt-et-Damary
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
1945
463 Squadron
467 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
entertainment
Lancaster
military living conditions
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Lichfield
RAF Metheringham
RAF Waddington
recruitment
shot down
Tiger force
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
Window
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1356/22525/PCoombesHS2043.2.jpg
eea433f2d4d40119b197388673169478
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1356/22525/ACoombesDC200306.2.mp3
a287977d72c3f7937dae30d1a2487d18
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
Coombes, Horace
Horace S Coombes
H S Coombes
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Group Captain Claive Coombes about his father Squadron Leader Horace 'Ken' Coombes (1921, 148799 Royal Air Force).
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Clive Coombes 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
2020-01-13
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
Coombes, HS
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
JS: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Jim Sheach. The interviewee is Clive Coombs. The interview is taking place at Clive’s home in Edinburgh, Scotland on the 6th of March 2020. Clive, maybe we could start if you could tell us a little about your father’s life before the war.
CC: My father was born in Birkenhead in 1921. Went to, went to the local school which was the same one that John Lennon ended up going to a few weeks afterwards. They, the family lived in Garston in Liverpool, and my grandfather was a merchant seaman. My grandmother was obviously what’s the official term now, a homemaker? She had six kids that survived, and a couple that didn’t. My father was the eldest and he, following his secondary education joined the Mersey Dock Board with his brother, Alf. And in 1942, if my memory serves he decided that notwithstanding being in a protected employment that he would join up and he joined the RAF as a pilot, and went to training in America. Did all his training at, in Alabama and Florida as a sergeant pilot. Returned to the United Kingdom in ’43. Was immediately commissioned on a VRT commission as a flight lieutenant and joined 582 Squadron Pathfinder Force straight away.
JS: Ok. So —
CC: So that’s his career prior to, you know that takes him up to his first operational mission with 582.
JS: Ok. Spinning a bit in time your, your uncle also has a connection with Bomber Command. Can you, can you tell us a little about him?
CC: Yeah. This is, this is on the maternal side and my Uncle Jack, Jack Hanne or John Henry Hanne was from Llandrindod Wells in, in Mid-Wales but interestingly of German extraction. And he was the husband of my mother’s sister Nancy Vera Morgan as she eventually died, but it was actually Nancy Vera Guildford then. She married Jack and Jack was in the Air Force when they married. He’d actually joined very early. ’34 ’35. Served in Iraq, and was originally a mechanic. I’m not sure if it, I’m not sure exactly what his official trade was but he was a mechanic and having been a boy entrant, so he really was, you know a very young joiner and then was, then converted to pilot and ended up flying in Iraq on 13 Squadron if again memory serves. Came back to UK prior to the war. Still flying. Converted to Blenheims, flew some very early missions in the war and was killed on the 10th of January 1940 flying a 109 Squadron Blenheim from Wattisham on an air raid over Germany. And he was shot down by a Messerschmitt and crashed in the, in the North Sea. So one of the very early casualties and interestingly the first casualty of World War Two from Radnorshire, in Wales. He’s commemorated both at Runnymede, at the IBCC and on his family, sorry, and on the War Memorial in Llandrindod Wells and a couple of months ago on the 10th of January 2020 my wife and I went down and laid a wreath. Sorry.
JS: No. You’re ok. You’re ok —
CC: So, clearly I never knew Jack but I’ve got his medals, I’ve got a lot of his history and I’m quite proud of him.
JS: As you would be. As you would be.
CC: Yeah. Holder of the, he’s got his, probably one of the few of Aircrew Europe Crosses so he’s got the Star. He gave a lot to the Air Force, you know. Joined in ’35 and trained right through and I’ve got some wonderful photographs of his time as a trainer. As an airman. You know. Some wonderful pictures of air crashes and things like that. And then his time in Iraq as well. What I don’t have sadly is any details of his, of his flying time. I don’t have his logbook. I’ve no idea where that went. And strangely, you know Jack is, I mean he died what twenty years before I was born. I think the sad part is that Nancy, my aunt was pregnant when he was killed, and she gave birth to Jacqueline who, who survived for two days. And that was ultimately the only child that Nancy ever had. She remarried a stoker from HMS Belfast interestingly, and I obviously knew him as my uncle. Predominantly not Jack. And he died very suddenly many, many years ago. Strangely at a funeral for one of his friends. He died in the church at the funeral which was a bit tragic.
JS: Yeah.
CC: But Nancy was always I think actually very much in love with Jack and I’ve got some wonderful poetry written by Jack to Nancy and it’s, it’s quite evocative the memories that go with that. So I probably have a strangely close relationship with Jack albeit that he’d been dead for twenty years before, before I was born but I followed it up and, yeah he did some very good things. He did some very good things and sadly lost his life very early in the war.
JS: Early on.
CC: I hope he would have probably gone on to do a few more things but you know it’s, it’s life and death in that environment. But it was a privilege to do the [unclear] which garnered quite a lot of publicity in Wales. It made the front page of three local papers which I was quite surprised about, but, but quite nice. Quite nice. So his legacy lives on and, you know strangely Runnymede and IBCC, it’s nice to have his name on both and I’ve seen both and I’ve visited both and paid my respects there as well. So, no it’s good. Very good.
JS: The memorialisation thing obviously means a lot to you.
CC: Yeah. I think [pause] I guess it’s probably because, you know I’m very proud of what I did. I did thirty seven years in the Air Force. Got to a pretty senior rank. Been decorated. But there’s no legacy because I have no children. I was an only child and when I die my family name dies and so memorialisation as you get older has become slightly more, slightly more relevant I think and I don’t know what to do to commemorate that. I think, you know one of the things I am going to do is contribute to the ribbon at IBCC. And probably ultimately I would be very surprised if the IBCC didn’t benefit from a considerable legacy from the Coombes family. If there’s only some way of the Coombes family, when I say Coombes family, me and my wife of, of memorialising my father, my uncle, and you know in a, could I say entirely altruistic way myself as well because you know I believe that you know over thirty seven years I’ve, I had a pretty good career. I broke a few, a few glass ceilings in what I ended up doing and it would be nice if that was remembered. But there’s, there’s very little legacy in terms of human kind that will remember that because you know I have a half-brother and a half sister who were dad’s kids but they have they have, they have no kids and they’re much older than me. I have no kids. My wife’s sister has one child and they’ve gone different, different, different line. And so there’s nothing, you know. When Coombes, Coombes, this one dies, Coombes name dies which is really sad. So I just feel as I’ve, you know just hit sixty I think I need to do something about it. And this is probably a way of doing it so also —
JS: But, but there is a, the interesting part in this is, if you like long, very long ribbon of service through the RAF from, from your uncle through your father, through yourself.
CC: Yeah. I mean, I think if we, if we look at it between 1942 and 2014 there was only fifteen months that either my father or I were not serving because at the end of the war dad was demobbed. Went back to the Mersey Dock Board, and albeit that I never actually got around to asking him I’m not sure whether it was him who got fed up with the Mersey Dock Board or whether it was the RAF needed QFIs, but he was, he was dragged back in after about fifteen months on a, on a full term normal commission, and re-joined the Air Force as a flight lieutenant and was posted immediately as a qualified flying instructor. And then when he retired it was only a matter of months between him retiring and me joining. So, I think, you know we could probably stretch it to maybe eighteen, twenty months between early 1942 and late 2014 that there wasn’t either my dad or me in the Air Force which, which is interesting. If you then stretch it further back you know with Jack as a family connection, you know it goes back to sort of 1934, 1935. That, that is, you know that is quite a long time serving for three people alone and bearing in mind that Jack’s service was brought, brought to a very sharp end after only five years.
JS: Yeah.
CC: Having been killed. But dad did a full career. Retired at fifty five as a squadron leader. And I did a full career, thirty seven and a half years retiring in 2014 as a group captain. So, you know it’s, it’s something that we’ve given to blue suits. Yeah.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
CC: I’m proud of —
JS: Yeah. Absolutely. You, you spoke earlier about your, your dad doing the training in the US which was very common.
CC: Yeah.
JS: And then coming back and going on a squadron. So, with the [pause] how, what sort of operations was he doing then?
CC: Well, it’s, it’s strange that I mean looking in his logbooks which I’m still privileged to have he, he went, his first operational squadron was a Pathfinder Squadron which I think was probably quite unusual because obviously they, they, you know Don Bennett indicated that what he wanted was the best of the best for the Pathfinder Force and 8 Group. But I’ve no idea why dad went on to that. I’m looking at his logbook, looking at his flight assessments from Gunther Field and various bits and pieces. And interestingly I used to serve in the States and I actually went to Gunther Field fifty years virtually to the day that he graduated from there. Which was purely serendipity but I was, I actually visited the base on duty that, very close to fifty years. But I didn’t know that until I checked it. So he was assessed as above the average in pretty much everything so one would assume that he went back and was sent straight to 582. I go through his, his logbooks and they are standard bombing missions, you know, full time. Dusseldorf on the Ruhr. And they were, you know genuine front line Pathfinder operations. Subsequent to that 582 at Little Staughton, he then transferred to 626 Squadron at Wickenby. Still Pathfinder Force, with the same crew which I have no idea why they, why they transferred squadrons. I know that they used to do that and you know maybe 582’s losses were not high whereas 626’s were and they just transferred crews to 626. But he had the same crew throughout pretty much. One Brit, a couple of Aussies and a Canadian. I don’t know where the others were from. I could check, I think. But, but he flew through. He did twenty four, twenty five missions. I only ever once asked him why he didn’t do the thirty or how he felt not having got to thirty and to get his automatic DFC, and his quote to me was, ‘Had I son, you may not be, you may not have been here.’ But I look at what happened after that, and you know now things come out. You don’t know what, you don’t know the true meaning of it all but he went off to be a test pilot and whether that was because he was suffering from what we now know as post-traumatic stress disorder or whether they needed highly skilled pilots to be test pilots I have no idea. But you look at some of the stuff that he did and it’s quite remarkable, you know. I mean, one day in his logbook he’s got I think Lancaster, Spitfire, Hurricane, Wellington, Mosquito. Pretty much on the same day. If not the same day sort of three days. And you go wow. Hang on a minute. What aircraft am I in today? You know it’s quite remarkable to do that. And yet you talk to friends of mine who I’ve served with over thirty seven years and, you know they have gone through careers commanding squadrons only ever having flown a Bulldog, a Jet Provost and a Tornado. Or a Hawk and a Tornado so you had four types of aircraft. He had five in two days. So, remarkable different world. I guess, I suppose when again I haven’t checked the dates entirely it could well have been that operations had pretty much finished. Formal operations had finished. I know, having checked his logbook very recently that he flew on Op Manna.
JS: Yeah.
CC: So that probably would indicate that formal operations over Germany had ceased by that time. Hence the reason he didn’t do the thirty. But quite surprising Manna didn’t count as an operational sortie. So, you know, that’s, that’s probably why. I don’t know but —
JS: Although, it wasn’t, it wasn’t without it’s dangers either you know.
CC: Correct. Absolutely right.
JS: Many, many aircrew I’ve spoken to flew on Operation Manna and they all talk about that doubt in their minds as to whether they were likely to be shot at.
JS: Yeah. Yeah.
CC: You know.
JS: So, you know he went off and did that and then he did, he flew Mosquitoes in the PRU role before he was demobbed. And then when he re-joined QFI flying Vampires and Meteors from Shawbury, where he met my mum having divorced from his first wife. So yeah, an interesting career and then ended up for the [unclear] he converted to, to what we now call, is it aircrew spine or something like that? But he was spec aircrew but in those days you had to be dual qualified, so he was an air traffic controller as well and on his down, on his ground tours he was deputy SATCO at Wildenrath in the late ‘50s. And then in the early 70s was SATCO at Lyneham. So, you know that must have been an interesting time when you’ve got a SATCO with, with two wings. And then he went back to flying and finished as ops officer on, his last flying tour was ops officer on 10 Squadron. VC10s. So, you know, he had a pretty varied career in, in what he actually did. So it was, there’s lots of flying hours. There’s forty seven different types of aircraft in his logbook which is quite remarkable really when you think about it.
JS: And a very thick logbook I’m sure.
CC: Five of them.
JS: Five [laughs]
CC: Yeah. Five of them. Five different ones. Yeah. So, yeah pretty much ranging from sort of link trainer through to Harvard, through to Spitfire, Hurricane, Lancaster, Wellington, Mosquito.
JS: Yeah.
CC: A Varsity. VC10.
JS: Yeah. That’s not a logbook. That’s a library.
CC: Yes. It is a library. That’s what it is actually.
JS: Very much. Very much.
CC: It’s a very, you know they are quite important documents to me to see what he did. So, yeah. It’s very interesting.
JS: Yeah. Very good. There’s, there’s quite a lot of discussion about how Bomber Command were viewed after the war. Let’s say, sort of just after the war and that part after that. Did, did you dad ever, ever talk about that or give a view about it or —
CC: Not, not to me. And it’s, I think it might be indicative that it probably happened quite a lot that these guys didn’t actually talk about it. Sadly, my dad passed away in 1990 at the age of sixty eight which you think is not necessarily fair given what, what he went through during the war. You know, by that stage I had joined and strangely I was told what must have been two weeks after my dad died that I’d just been promoted to squadron leader and that would have been nice for him to know.
JS: Yeah.
CC: But, you know c’est la vie. Time is everything. So he never really spoke to me about, about that. I did ask him once when I was younger. I was doing a bit of research and clearly, you know his career influenced me quite markedly having, you know literally joined months after he, he retired. I realised at that stage that the Pathfinders were entitled to wear the albatross on their, on their number one jacket, left breast pocket and I asked dad why he didn’t wear his Pathfinder brevet because my understanding was that, you know once a Pathfinder always a Pathfinder and you could continue to wear it for the rest of your career. And he sort of passed it off saying that ‘Well, you know it’s not de rigueur anymore, and nobody wears it.’ And, ‘Well, probably they don’t wear it any more dad is because there aren’t many Pathfinders left.’ And he never really made comment about that. He always wore his medals with pride but it was just the standard four, you know ‘39/45 Star, France and Germany and the other two. The War and Victory or War and Defence. And sadly, stupidly I’ve never as yet applied for his Bomber Command clasp which I frankly should do I must confess. But he never really commented on it. I think he was amongst a crowd of people who were obviously Bomber Command pilots themselves in his QFI days at CFS but I still think he was quite proud of what he did albeit with the fact that he knew that, that flying over Germany however high dropping bombs was going to kill people. But no. He never really spoke about it. I think from my own personal perspective I, I do wish Bomber Command had had more recognition but it goes down to what we, what we as military guys and girls do. You know. We, we do what we’re told to do. It’s not, it’s not for us to question the policies. It’s for us to deliver what’s required. And, you know, you can extrapolate that argument straight up you know to the Falklands and the Gulf War One, Gulf War Two, the whole lot. You know. Was it the right thing to do? Did Saddam Hussain have WMD we don’t know. Still think there’s no proof but the government made the call. You go do it. Ours is not to reason why but ours just get on with it because that’s our job and I think that’s the way dad would have looked at it as well. He, I sense but only sense, I’ve no evidence that he found it quite strange in 1958/59 to be serving in Germany and living in Dusseldorf which is where we did live knowing that only a matter of years previous to that he’d been over it at thirty five thousand feet dropping two thousand pound bombs. That I think was slighty odd as far as he was concerned. And I honestly don’t think they particularly enjoyed their tour, my mum and dad particularly enjoyed their tour in Germany and I think they were quite keen to get home. And when I look at it they only did eighteen months in Germany and during the period I was born there but, but still not the happiest days of dad’s career probably because there was the subliminal issue of, you know, I’ve been here before but at a different height and with a different mission. So, but no he never formally said. I think what is sad, that he never saw the recognition that has now finally come to Bomber Command in terms of the Memorial and in terms of the IBCC. I think he would have been quite proud of that, and I think he would have been very pleased to have attended either the opening of the Bomber Command Memorial or the IBCC had he still been alive. Again, c’est la vie. The way things go.
JS: Yeah.
CC: As for Jack I can’t answer the question. I have no idea.
JS: Yeah.
CC: My aunt kept many, many clippings of, you know what he did because he was on one of the very early raids where a squadron commander got a DSO. They were presented to the King as a result of that because it really was one of the, it was a late 1939, very early air raid. And, and I think that’s in the days where you know before we were dropping, carpet bombing. And, and I think Nancy was very proud of Jack as well but again you know clearly I don’t know what he would have felt about it. Probably slightly stranger given that his extraction was German, you know. One generation German. So, I mean his father was a hotelier in Germany. So, you know, came over prior to the war so I think he would have felt quite strange about it.
JS: Yeah.
CC: But he was staunchly British. I understand that. And staunchly Welsh as well, strangely. So yeah, a different world. I don’t know. I can’t answer all the questions.
JS: That’s alright.
CC: Haven’t talked about it for a long time.
JS: That’s interesting. That’s interesting [pause] Because your dad served in the RAF for —
CC: Thirty five.
JS: That period after —
CC: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: And to a certain extent as you’ve mentioned earlier that you were born abroad when your dad was in service. Then, then at the end of the day, that thing, you’d been embedded for the, within the RAF a lot longer than you served in the RAF.
CC: Oh yeah.
JS: I suppose that was the, the thing is do you think it was always likely that you would join?
CC: Yeah. I think it probably, I think it probably was. I mean, I guess I vividly remember at school I mean I was fortunate I got a, I won an academic scholarship to an English Public School and it was a case of, ‘Well, Coombes, what are you going to do?’ And I think, that’s from my careers master and I said, ‘Well, I probably will join the Air Force, sir.’ And he said, ‘Right.’ and that was a tick. That’s one solved. That’s one less issue to worry about.
JS: Conversation over.
CC: Yes. You know, so I didn’t trouble my careers master for very long and I remember I, I went for a university scholarship or a university cadetship and didn’t get it, but was offered an immediate place straight from school and which I accepted. So literally after finishing school in the July I joined in the September of 1978. And clearly knowing I had a job I didn’t do particularly well at A level, and very much enjoyed my last year at school and then joined up straight away and actually have no regrets about that because subsequent to that the training I’ve done, you know I’ve got my, I’ve got my masters level education through the Australian Air Force having served out there on exchange. And yeah it was probably the easy option for me but I have absolutely no regrets. I mean, I think if I do have one regret it’s that my eyesight wasn’t good enough to, to allow me to be aircrew so I became a personnel support officer. But in so doing have had a very, very varied career. Done an awful lot of jobs, served pretty much all over the world and, and enjoyed my time. I guess if I were to be held down and pinned to the wall saying, ‘Do you regret not being a pilot?’ The answer is, ‘Hell yes.’ Because I know I had the aptitude and I proved, you know I went through Aircrew Selection Centre, and had pilot aptitude but sadly couldn’t see, and and that’s probably a regret. But not withstanding that I served in some great places. Had I been air crew I don’t think I would have been as good as my dad. I probably would have been a journeyman pilot flying maybe Hercs or VC10s around the world. Which would have been a great time. I don’t think I would have been good enough to go fast jet albeit that in my career I have fortunately managed to log about three hundred hours on fast jets because I’ve got some very good friends and I had a wonderful time. But I have no regrets being ground branch officer because you know what I did in the end of my career particularly, the last five years I did jobs that were aircrew jobs previously and ended up managing to convince those that needed convincing that actually a ground branch officer could undertake these jobs satisfactory. And I think, you know irony of ironies I ended up, my penultimate tour was in Germany as the deputy commander of the Rhine and European Support Group based at Rheindahlen, and part of my area of command was the former RAF Wegberg site where I was born. And so I ended up actually being the garrison commander of the garrison on which the hospital that I was born in resided. So it was a bit, that was a bit spooky but, but also quite oh wow you know how the wheel turns. So, you know no regrets about that. And I know full well had I been aircrew I’d never have done that so that little thing sort of comes, comes to pass. So yeah. Interesting. An interesting career for me but very much influenced by what dad did and sadly, you know I’d only been serving for twelve years when dad passed away so it would have been nice if he’d still been around to see me go, you know a couple of ranks above what he did, doing things that he never did. But, but there you go. That’s life. You make, you make your career choices as he did.
JS: Well. Yes. But I’m, I’m sure he knew that your career was on the right track.
CC: Well, one would hope so.
JS: You know. I think in —
CC: I do remember my second, third tour was I was the ADC to the air officer commanding in Cyprus and mum and dad came out to, to Cyprus for, for a holiday and they were invited kindly by the, by the AOC to come and have dinner and dad said to me afterwards, he said, ‘Oh, you know, the boss thinks you’re ok. He thinks you’ll probably make wing commander.’ I thought that wasn’t bad given I was a flying officer so that was, that’s ok. And, and to achieve one more than that was a great, was a great privilege, so that, that was interesting. He, he was quite good. I do remember that quite vividly. He thinks you might make wing commander. Well, thanks. That’s great.
JS: That’s good. You, you spoke earlier about Memorials.
CC: Yeah.
JS: Which was interesting. How, how important do you think memorialisation is to the RAF as a whole and also to yourself personally? I think we touched on that sort of personal thing earlier —
CC: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: But it would be interesting to hear your thoughts as a, as a recent serving officer. What, what you think the view in the RAF is on that?
CC: Well, its again interesting. I mean, I joined the Air Force in ‘78 when there were a hundred and [unclear] thousand, a hundred and twenty something thousand people in the Air Force. I, I left in 2014 when there were just a smidge over thirty thousand. Ok. Roles change. Technology changes and you don’t, you know you don’t have eight man crews on Shackletons, and six man crews on Hercules and you know it comes down to single crew aircraft. But I think sadly, you know this sounds like a really crusty old boy talking the Air Force was not, not the same when I left it as it was when I joined it, and clearly that’s, that’s obvious. But I still, I think that that when I joined it in 1978 it was a career. I think sadly now for most people who join the Air Force it’s a job. And that’s why I hope that, that memorialisation of some kind in whatever form is is continued and indeed improved because these, these things can’t be forgotten. I think, you know the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park is very special. I think the IBCC is a wonderful set up, and having visited it very recently for the first time I am hugely impressed. I’d like to see other things go in there. I’d like to be able to help with that. It’s a long way from Edinburgh to there and you know that but things like the RAF Club remain very special, you know. The memories that are in the RAF Club are absolutely amazing. And Runnymede still takes my breath away. We can’t forget.
JS: Yeah.
CC: You know, we did very well at RAF 100. And I was, I re-joined for a year for RAF 100 as a reservist and did, did a job up here, predominantly with the Tattoo. And it was nice to come back in. I think, I think to come back in when you’re fifty nine years old is quite strange and you know you’re dealing with a lot of young people who have a different ethos to you. And bearing in mind that I spent my last eight years of service, three of them in Germany commanding, effectively commanding an army garrison and five years, my last five years working for the Foreign Office overseas in South East Asia where you know you’re just going home when, when the Ministry of Defence comes to work. I really did notice a sea change when I actually re-joined the Royal Air Force having been out of it effectively for a decade and it wasn’t the same. There was a lot of self-interest, and I know that what we tried to achieve in RAF 100 was, was would have been impossible had it not been for reservists and volunteer reserves and part time reserve service people. Which is quite sad given that you would expect to be able to do what you needed to do with the regular people. Those who were actually serving. So, you know we had a big success with RAF 100 but by jingo if it hadn’t have been for the people who’d, you know served before and come back in as reservist there’s absolutely no way we would have achieved it. I do remember the words of the then Chief of the Air Staff Steve Hillier saying that, you know, ‘It’s a privilege to be the CAS at the RAF 100 but all I’m doing is laying a future for my successors, successors successor,’ blah blah blah, ‘Who will be CAS at RAF 200.’ I just wonder how big the RAF at two hundred will be. Not very big I don’t think. And whilst I won’t be here and none of my progeny will be here I do wonder what it will be like. I’ve got a horrible feeling being probably glass half empty on this one that it will be the Defence Forces of The United Kingdom all wearing green uniform. I don’t know. We’ll see. But you can’t take away what’s there. IBCC is there. Runnymede is there. Other memorials are there. Long may it continue as far as I’m concerned and anything I can do to assist with the memorialisation of that then I will continue to do that, and this is a first step for me. And I’m pleased to be able to contribute. And hopefully sometime in, you know RAF 200 somebody might listen to this and say, ‘Jeez, who was that old boy talking?’ We shall see.
JS: Clive, thank you very much.
CC: My great pleasure.
JS: That’s been fascinating. Thank you.
CC: Thanks very much indeed, Jim. I hope it gets somewhere.
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 Clive Coombes
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
James Sheach
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
2020-03-06
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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ACoombesDC200306, PCoombesHS2043
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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00:37:09 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Clive Coombes grew up on Royal Air Force stations, eventually joining and serving for 37 years before retiring in 2014. During this time, he served across the globe, including in Australia and Germany, as a ground branch officer. Clive outlines his father’s and uncle’s service, as well as his own. His uncle, was born in Llandrindod, Wales and joined the Royal Air Force in either 1934 or 1935, becoming a pilot and serving in Iraq before returning to Great Britain and serving in the Second World War. Originally flying Blenheims, Jack was shot down and killed on the 10 January 1940 flying an operation for 109 Squadron. Whilst Jack did not serve long within the Second World War, Clive retains a large amount of information pertaining to his service, including his logbook and a number of poems sent to Clive’s Aunt. Born in Burking Head, his father Horace 'Ken' Coombes joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 as a pilot, training in Alabama and Florida, before returning in 1943. His first posting was to the 582 Squadron at RAF Little Staughton, flying Pathfinder operations over Dusseldorf and the Ruhr, amongst others. He was eventually moved to 626 Squadron at RAF Wickemby. Throughout his service, Clive’s father flew Lancasters, Spitfires, Hurricanes, Mosquitoes and Wellingtons. After flying on Operation Manna, he was decommissioned and reenlisted soon after as instructor, later becoming an air traffic controller and a reconnaissance flyer, flying Meteors and Vampires at RAF Shawbury. Following his retirement in 1977, Clive recalls his father refusing to mention his opinion on the view of Bomber Command following the war. Clive wishes that Bomber Command would receive more recognition, especially through the efforts of the IBCC and Runnymede Air Forces Memorial.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Shropshire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Cambridgeshire
Germany
Alabama
Australia
Florida
Germany
Germany--Düsseldorf
Netherlands
United States
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sam Harper-Coulson
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-01-10
1942
1943
1977
109 Squadron
582 Squadron
626 Squadron
aircrew
Blenheim
Hurricane
killed in action
Lancaster
Meteor
Mosquito
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Little Staughton
RAF Shawbury
RAF Wickenby
Spitfire
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1303/18066/PDeverellCRE1901.2.jpg
950416d1c0bc8ddd5d7e83d96d0bcca5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1303/18066/ADeverellCRE190722.2.mp3
011ccd66271ee51e3abd56830e71714f
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
Deverell, Colin
Colin Ray Edwin Deverell
C R E Deverell
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Colin Deverell (b. 1923). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 51 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-07-22
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Deverell, CRE
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CJ: This is Chris Johnson and I am interviewing Colin Deverell today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at Colin’s home and it is Monday the 22nd of July 2019, and thank you Colin for agreeing to talk to me today. Also present is Colin’s daughter, Liz. So Colin perhaps we could start by you telling me about where and when you were born and something about your family please.
CD: Yes, well I was born in Thornton Heath, Croydon, on the 28th of November 1923, at number 13 Camden Way. It was a council house. I had a father who was on the buses as an inspector and a mother who worked jolly hard at home doing the washing and everything else in those days. I went to school locally, Elementary school, Ingram Road, that was quite close. It was quite a good school actually. And later on, I failed, I have to say I failed the grammar school, the exam for the grammar school, so I failed that and I went to a secondary school so that was up until I was aged fourteen, when I left. Okay. And then on from there, and on from there what to do as a job. This is the trouble with boys, they didn’t know what they wanted to do you see, but I was very keen on aircraft but at that stage you couldn’t get anywhere with aircraft but I went to, worked at a firm called Oliver Typewriter Company, Oliver typewriters – I have one upstairs actually - and I was making those and that was the best bit of engineering I did really, to learn how to, how to drill through metal, how to put a thread in a hole for a bolt and things like that and stamping out pieces for the typewriter, you know, all the arms that come down, everything like that. So that was, that got me into Imperial Airways, my father worked hard to get me in to Imperial Airways in some way and became a rigger, just an amateur rigger, you know, to start off. Well the reason I’d got there was because I had got all this information from the typewriters, engineering, and I learnt a lot from these aircraft, putting parts into the aircraft, doing this, that and the other, dogsbody, making coffee for the people that worked there, that’s what boys had to do and I watched other engineers soldering wires together and that sort of thing so I learnt from that you see, and that went on, until, well that was all these Handley Page aircraft, big bi-planes with four engines, fixed propellers that didn’t move at all and it flew at about four thousand miles, er four thousand feet at about a hundred and ten, hundred and twenty miles an hour and took two and a half hours to get to Paris. So the steward on board, they had stewards then, cooked them a meal, all of them a meal, they had proper meals. So that was a nice little trip for them at four thousand feet. Well that went on until the war started and I’m afraid it went out of business of course and I was there till about November 1939 and I was told well I’m afraid the apprentice had come to an end, so that was the end of that and I lost my job as well so I had to find something else. I searched round and a lot of little firms at Croydon aerodrome, lot of hangars down there, one of them was called Rollason Aircraft Services, and I went there and yes I got a job there, I was drilling and all sorts of things, working on bi-planes Hawker Hectors, Demons and Audaxes and all obsolete aircraft and that was a wonderful period. Of course the war was on unfortunately. So what happened, by July, July the 10th, 1940 the bombing started on airfields and Biggin Hill and Kempston and Kenley and all these got a bashing. Croydon got it on the 15th of August, 15th of August 1940 at 7pm in the evening. These Messerschmidt 110s came over and there’s a picture up there, and I’m sorry to say, well I was underneath an Airspeed Oxford, it’s a twin-engined wooden aircraft, now we had to get this aircraft out - this was seven o’clock in the evening - we had to get this aircraft out of the hangar by the morning because they were bringing some Hurricanes in that needed repairs, so I was underneath there with another chap doing some wiring when all these bombs came down. At the back of our factory there was a Bourgeois scent factory and about fifty girls got killed there, we lost about, there were sixty were killed or injured in Rollasons, so I was, I mean how lucky can I be [emphasis] to be underneath that aircraft, glass, metal came down, the glass went through the wood, it’s a wooden aircraft, through the wood, into the metal tanks, into the metal tanks to glass [emphasis], thick glass, yeah, so I think I would have died, I wouldn’t have been here if I had been outside. But I don’t know if you want more information on that but thing is, I was covered in muck and glass and stuff, you know, and severely dazed, the place was on fire, the little canteen had been bombed and there was a bottle of Tizer - I found a bottle of Tizer - and took the screw off and poured it over me head and I don’t recommend that to anybody because it’s very sticky! So I had a sticky head, so that’s my Tizer. Anyway, I had a new bike, my father bought me a new bike for two pound seven and sixpence, two pound seven and sixpence, and I thought to myself where’s my bike. Well this, you know it went on through the evening, we were told to go down to the air raid shelter and went down there and after a few minutes told to come up again, because the siren hadn’t gone, you know, before the raid. No one knew it was happening. Nobody, nobody on the gun, cause a Bofurs gun there, nobody there to operate it to shoot aircraft down. Anyway, so I got on, oh I found my bike leaning against the wall and it was all right so I cycled home and at that stage we were living in Thornton Road, Croydon, a little flat there, and when I got round there I saw my mother leaning out of the window actually, cause she knew the place was being bombed you see, she thought I’d have had it. I mean seven o’clock it happened, it was ten o’clock when I got home. Just imagine, how pleased she was to see me. Sadly for her we were bombed, the house was damaged quite badly and she died on Christmas Day in 1940, all the ceiling in the kitchen came down on her head and damaged her brain, so I lost my mother quite early in my life, which was very sad really. Anyway, I moved to another, to a friend of mine in Streatham, and that’s when I went to this new school, and then eventually. Sorry, I’m going back a bit here, but that’s when I left to go to erm, the, oh sorry, when I went, oh the yeah, sorry, after the raid we, they treated me very well – Rollasons - I went back to them, I was very dazed as you can imagine, being bombed as a boy, I was only fifteen and I went to the office they said and well we’ll keep you on pay for the time being and we’ll let you know what happens. So I went home again and eventually we were told we were going to Hanworth aerodrome in Middlesex, funny little aerodrome actually, it was just a sort of almost a private, just grass, you know. They had a few Fairey Battles there. Anyway, we still continued repairing Hurricanes, but they felt there were one or two bi-planes left over from Croydon, they put these on a lorry and I remember sitting in the cockpit of a, I think it was a Hawker Demon and went all the way from Croydon to Hanworth and I was waving to people as I went by like that, [laugh] and I think they thought it was quite funny. [Laugh] I mean it’s all obsolete aircraft. But you know, went back on to Hurricanes. How did we get there, you know, each day, as I was living in Thornton Heath still, in Thornton Road. They had put a coach on for us, from West Croydon station and any of us living there, took a tram for a penny, a tram in those days, for a penny, up to West Croydon station, went over and sat in the coach and it took us to this aerodrome, and at the end of the day they brought us back again, another penny on the tram back home. So that’s how it went on. That went on all the way through 1941 and I thought to myself I want to join, I’m going to join the RAF to get my own back, my mother died, you know, so I had a sort of grievance feeling about all this. So I went to the Croydon, the Croydon agency and they said well, we’re sending chaps down, down the coal mines as well as the army. I said no, no, I’m working on aircraft, I want something to do with aircraft, I want to train as a pilot. Don’t they all, she said, I remember, she said don’t they all! And there was a three month waiting list, okay, for, to train as a pilot, but she said we’re desperately in need of flight engineers, and they did have them on Imperial Airways actually, so it goes back a long way, on four-engined aircraft. So yes, okay, I’ll do that, so within the week I was called up. I was, I went to Lords Cricket ground, that was fun! “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” was the sign up there. We picked up all sorts of stuff there and we, we went to, were put into flats, in Viceroy Court which is just outside a zoo, so we could hear the monkeys laughing at us and we were there for a couple weeks, or something like that. We went to Torquay from there, Torquay and did all the physical training: clay pigeon shooting, physical training, running, sports, anything, you know, just to keep our mind off things. But I used to like the running, cross country running as I got used to that, you know. Clay pigeon shooting – I got good at that - swimming I was never very good at, but anyway we’ll pass over that won’t we. One of the things we had to do was go to the quayside there, and there was a place there, it was about the height of the ceiling down to the water. And the idea was to jump off there with a Mae West on you see, and to swim to the shore. I wasn’t very happy about that, you can imagine, though I did it and I managed to get to the shore, so that was fine, but I never have been a very good swimmer. Anyway, so I joined up and within a week I was, sorry, I’m getting muddled here, I went down to Torquay, that’s it, Torquay, and I was there for six weeks, did all these familiar things, the running and the sports and everything else. And then as flight engineers we had to train at St Athan in South Wales and we had to choose between a Lancaster, oh no, Stirling, Lancaster, Halifax and the flying boat. The flying boat, what was that?
CJ: Sunderland?
CD: Sunderland, Sunderland. So it was three, four, yes, there were four we could choose from. I don’t know why, but I liked the idea of the Stirling: it had radial engines, I knew something about those you see, so I decided to train on those. So that’s what I did at St Athan, I trained on these Stirlings. It was, you know, a full day, a really full day, training and I was there, I was there for some weeks, I can’t think how long we were there now. Anyway that was in ‘40, ‘42, yes. The Stirling was a strange sort of aircraft really, it was all electric, all the other aircraft were hydraulic controlled and even the undercarriage you had wiring and a solenoid, which introduced a control there I think you’d call it and the flaps. We had fourteen petrol tanks and this was the flight engineer’s job, he had to look after those, all different amounts in each tank, you can just imagine. It was all levers and wheels, nothing, no buttons you know, like you have today and with the undercarriage the pilot switched the switch down, just as we were coming in to land, to get the undercarriage down. No, let’s start off by going up. So if we, the undercarriage was down obviously, we’d take off, the switch goes, switch up, and a lever up like that and the undercarriage should then come up, if it doesn’t the flight engineer would have to go back to the middle of the aircraft, to the control machine there and you had to wind the undercarriage up and it could be up to five hundred, five hundred turns! Yeah, so that’s, occasionally I did the flight in Stirlings, I had to just start it off. This is where you had to be careful, if you started it off, you see, and you said to the pilot try it now and he switched it up or down, whatever it is, the undercarriage, it would go round and round, and the handle and you’d break your wrist and some flight engineers did break their wrists doing that. So you had to tell the pilot: do not touch that switch till I tell you to! So that’s all, that was the operations. You’re in flight coming down, so switch down, lever down, undercarriage should come down, if not, put the switch back again, go back to the and wind it for a little while, then tell, take your hand away and take the handle out and tell the skipper to switch the, there, switch it down, [unclear] so it was quite a complicated business really, so I don’t think anyone recommended the idea of electric aircraft, but they’re all electric now, aren’t they, everything’s electric, even cars! So that’s what we had to do. It’s a very long, long aircraft. There’s an elsan at the back of the aircraft if you wanted to go to the toilet, but who would want to go all the way back there in the dark to the toilet and then be shot at by a fighter, sitting on the toilet so we never did use it, we found other means. It was fairly slow really, I mean we used to cruise at about a hundred and seventy miles an hour, whereas a Lancaster could do much more than that. And height, height was a problem: we could only go up to ten thousand feet, so anyone going to Tunis, Milan, which they did in the Stirlings, over the mountains of course, so ten thousand feet was about the limit really. And of course you took all the flak, you know, if it was Stirlings and Lancasters, as Lancasters we would be up there, we used to be up at seventeen thousand feet in a Lancaster, and the Stirlings were down here, ten thousand feet and they got loads of flak. They lost more Stirlings, including the number that actually flew, they lost far more Stirlings, so that’s the, that was my choice. We went to Chedburgh for training on the aircraft as the flight engineer, and the pilot and we had the instructors with us, we took off and did all that we needed to do at Chedburgh. And then eventually we were appointed to a squadron and on this occasion it was Wratting Common, which is quite close. I don’t know if you have, no, anyway Wratting Common was the place. Oh! Terrible place, it was all mud, it had been raining like mad and it was all mud everywhere and on one occasion I walked through the WAAF quarters as it was much drier and I was told off, oooh you can’t do that, mustn’t do that, ooh no! Anyway, the first operation we did was to the Frisian Islands, the Frisian Islands off Germany there, dropping mines, that was uneventful, came back. The second trip was to Kiel, Kiel Harbour, yup. And we had mines to go down there because the u-boats were in there, you know, and I think probably they hadn’t got the pens completely ready so I think we probably did knock out some of the submarines there. So that was the second. Now the third trip was to Lorient, l o r i e n t Lorient on the south coast of France. Lorient was a place where they had u-boat pens and they had built them there, and they were very, very thick concrete so how they thought we could, well we would, we dropped mines, we were hoping that the submarines coming back would hit one, I mean that’s what it was all about really, but the bombs wouldn’t have done anything to them. But what happened with us there, we nearly got the chop there, because off the island, I think it was about a mile, two miles, two miles off, there was an island called Isle de Croix, Island of the Cross, and our bomb aimer, he took over you see, when we were going to drop the mines, the idea was to go around the island, but we went over the island, quite low down actually and there were all these Bofors guns there, these, like onions, red hot onions on chains coming up each side of us. How they missed us I do not know! We got over the island safely and then we had to go round the island again, round [emphasis] the island and then drop these mines. But that was a close, very close, but that was what the sprog crews do, the wrong thing, you see, that’s why you always get the chop in the early days, I’m afraid. Now what did I do after that? I think we went on to Lancasters after that, we did a conversion, that was it at Tuddenham or Wratting Common. I’ve got an idea that might have been Wratting Common. The Stirling was taken off because the chop rate was so heavy; they couldn’t continue like that, and it didn’t carry much of a bomb load anyway. So that was the end of that. But of course they were in use quite a bit later on – I’ll tell you about that. So what we do we went on to Lancasters, which was what we really wanted really because we knew it was much faster, it went up much higher, seventeen thousand feet was quite usual, we thought we’d be out of the range of their flak, we hoped, so that was what we did. Actually I went to Derby with my pilot to do I think it was a couple of days on the Merlin engine, so that was quite useful and I did that without going on leave. Some went on leave you see, but I decided I wanted to learn something about the Merlin, so that was done, I came back. What was my first trip, was a – can you switch off a minute?
CJ: So what was your first operation when you’d converted to Lancasters?
CD: Well, it took us by surprise actually, it was Duisburg in the Ruhr. Course that was a very important area round there: they were producing aircraft, tanks and everything else. So on the 25th June ‘43 we went to the Ruhr valley, Duisburg which we knew would be heavily defended. We took off from about ten pm and made for the Dutch coast where we met some flak, fifteen thousand feet ahead of us we could see lots of activity in the air as we approached the Ruhr. The Ruhr was important for Germans because it was full of heavy industry and so we need to prang it hard. We had on board four thousand pound bomb, shaped like a large cannister, and ten one thousand pound bombs and loads of incendiaries. The Pathfinders were dropping their coloured flares and the Master Bomber told us to bomb a certain colour – I can’t remember which colour it was – anyway we were now approaching the target when all hell was let loose as flak and searchlights were each side of us, we could hear shrapnel hitting the sides of our aircraft, this is the dreaded moment as the skipper opened the bomb doors, at this stage we were unable to manoeuvre: we just had to keep straight and pray. Skipper says to our two gunners, Dave Maver and Ronnie Pritchard, watch out for any night fighters, not that we could do much about it at this stage. The bomb aimer now took over: left, left, steady, right, steady, at this stage the chewing of gum was speeding up, it was sheer terror. Bombs gone says Epi, our bomb aimer. Skipper closes bomb doors and our chewing reduced in intensity. Our pilot banks to starboard and loses height to get out of the way of searchlights and flak, this is another time when night fighters are looking for us. Our navigator gives a new course for the Dutch coast, but we do a dog leg, zigzags to avoid the enemy fighters. We were watching aircraft going down in flames which makes us all a bit nervy, well it’s not like a holiday flight to Tenerife is it! - I said in brackets - We saw a small aircraft to port and a bit above us but we did not think it had been, had seen, had seen us, this was a German aircraft we thought because just twin engines but then he suddenly disappeared, we were in thick cloud and it was raining. Let’s hope we don’t collide with another aircraft. As for me as flight engineer, I was trying to keep a fuel log in the dark and with all the activity going on it was not easy. I kept a note of throttle changes because that makes all the difference to the amount of fuel one uses, plus temperature outside at our height. As we had eight – I’ve got fourteen – as we had eight [emphasis] tanks I didn’t want one to go dry, causing an engine to stop and possibly create an air lock in the system: my name would have been mud. I also kept control of the engines in orders from my skipper. I’m able to tell you that we got back safely to base and I found out later that my petrol calculations were just about right, we landed back at four thirty am, that was six and a half hours. Just over four hundred Lancs and Halifaxes took part and we lost six point one percent of the force, twenty five aircraft. Later we understood that reconnaissance had shown that much of the industry in Duisburg had been destroyed. We lost one aircraft on our squadron. On 27th of June we were due to go to Cologne, so, on 27th June 1943 we were briefed to go to Cologne in the Ruhr, but it was called off at the last moment because of foul weather over target. We briefed again on 28th of June with a slightly different route to try and fool the enemy. Over the Dutch coast the Germans had dropped chandeliers to light up the sky and so we expected to be mauled by the German night fighters. We climbed to eighteen thousand feet hoping to avoid them, but no such luck, a fighter came up on our rear, probably an Me110, a twin-engined fighter. Ronnie, our rear gunner called to the skipper: corkscrew port skip which my pilot did immediately and we went down to ten thousand feet and came up again in the corkscrew to fourteen thousand feet. Tracer bullets had gone just over the top of us at the beginning of the corkscrew, but when we settled down at fourteen thousand feet, we felt we had lost him, a really nasty moment and very nearly the end of us. We pressed on to Cologne and ran in to thick cloud, the Master Bomber told us to bomb a certain colour and we couldn’t see them. we could see some fires below so we dropped out bombs and incendiaries on those fires and hoped for the best. We returned to England mostly in cloud and landed at about five am. We were shocked to learn that forty aircraft failed to return. The next three nights we were on shorter trips to France. Marshalling yards in Paris and a place called Wizernes where they were making these V2s I believe, if I remember rightly and it was heavily defended. Dusseldorf, went to Dusseldorf on 12th of July. Dudsseldorf was another heavily defended place, because all industry, and if you killed people down there, they were probably working in the industry anyway you see. It was a heavily defended town because of the amount of industry there. We went through the usual procedures briefing and a meal et cetera, I think take off was around ten pm. We met flak and searchlights over over France I remember, and even more so as we entered Germany. Our skipper told us, the gunners, to look out for night fighters as they were bound to be operating. Eventually we could see ahead the Pathfinder’s flares and as usual in the Ruhr, a wall flak and searchlights. As flight engineer I had to do several jobs at the same time: keep looking out of the cabin for the position of the searchlights, help the skipper with the engine controls, keep a close watch on the fuel we were using, and write up my log so that I would know when to change the petrol tanks; all this on twelve shillings per day, and as a bonus we were threatened by death at any moment. Ah well, I did volunteer! Yes, one of the raids we went to was Stuttgart, this was another heavily, sorry, have to cut that out, yes, we pressed on to Stuttgart and dropped our bombs on target. We bombed the coloured flares dropped by the Pathfinders, skipper did a sharp turn to starboard and nearly hit another Lancaster, it was only just a few feet away from us, as it climbed in front of us. We climbed to seventeen thousand feet in clear skies when suddenly Ronnie Pritchard, our rear gunner, shouted over the intercon: corkscrew to port skipper and down we went to twelve thousand feet. It was another case of an Me110 was still on our tail, so up we went to starboard and then down again to port. I think we’ve lost him. Another thing, this sort of activity was not good for ones stomach! And also try to work out the fuel we’d used, anyway, I did the best I could. But that was a pretty grim trip because we nearly crashed into this other Lancaster. Yeah, yeah. On 17th of August 1943 we were given a very important mission. Apparently our spy planes had detected some rockets at a place called Peenemunde, in northern Germany. It had been known for some time that the Germans had been producing hard water at Peenemunde, which is used in atomic weapons, but of course these weapons had not been produced by any nation at that time. But the future would have looked bleak if they had been able to carry on their research, the powers that he, told Bomber Harris, oh the powers that be that he had told Bomber Harris that Peenemunde must be obliterated. Almost six hundred bombers, almost six hundred bombers would take part and we expected heavy losses as we felt it must be defended. We flew by night of course, and the flight arrangement was as follows: two hundred Stirlings would go in first at eight thousand feet, followed by four hundred Lancasters at ten thousand feet. The Pathfinders would be there first, dropping flares to light up the area. By good fortune a feint was going on over Berlin, with twin engine Mosquitoes, the Germans thought Berlin therefore was the main target and sent their night fighters there. The Stirlings went in to Peenemunde and dropped their bombs, and then turned for home without any losses. the German night fighters realised their mistake and turned back to Peenemunde just as the Lancasters went in to bomb the place. I remember a great deal of chaos, as aircraft after aircraft was shot down. It was, [sigh] it was very unnerving to see so many Lancasters on fire, we dropped our bombs on the target and fled the area and got back safely. Forty Lancasters - actually it was forty two – forty two Lancasters were shot down that night, ten percent of the force. Analysis later showed the bombing effort had been reasonably successful. Spy planes would keep an eye on the place in case another attack was necessary. My squadron lost one Lancaster out of twelve despatched. On the next night we were on the flight list again. At briefing found we found subject was Bremen. Well, that was fairly cushy compared with Peenemunde. Yeah. At Peenemunde was a very important town for us to destroy because the V2s they were producing would have been ready before D-Day, and you can just imagine what would have happened if that had happened: the D-day wouldn’t have been possible, you know. As it was, on D-Day one never saw a German fighter because they mostly had been destroyed, but Peenemunde was the, the town to get, we never had to go back there because they moved the whole lot to somewhere else in Germany which we kept bombing later on, but that was the most important one for D-Day, was Peenemunde, okay. At a briefing on the 23rd of August 1943, we learned the worst, yes, the worst, yes, it was to be the first big night raid on Berlin, by six hundred and fifty Lancasters and Halifaxes. Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, had said that no foreign aircraft would be allowed to fly over the capital of the Third Reich, well we’ll have to see if he’s right. We were all rather depressed about this operation as we knew that Berlin was considered to be the most heavily defended of all German towns. We were taken out to the aircraft at nine pm and I remember we sat around the aircraft waiting for start up time and nobody hardly spoke a word. We took off at nine thirty pm and we would be amongst the first wave into the attack. Berlin’s thirty five mile area was dotted with lights, so that it was hard to distinguish the bursts of anti-aircraft shells below from the coloured markers dropped by the Pathfinders. The first thing we had to do was fly through a wall of searchlights, hundreds [emphasis] of them in colours and clusters. Behind all that was an even fiercer light glowing red, green and blue and over there millions of flares hanging in the sky, A huge mass of fires below. If this is Hell, then I have been there. Flak is bursting all around us at fifteen thousand feet, there is one comfort, and that is not hearing the shells bursting outside because of the roar of the four Merlin engines. We flew on and it was like running straight into the most gigantic display of soundless fireworks in the world. The searchlights are coming nearer now all the time. As one cone split then it comes together again. They seem to splay out then stop, then come together again and as they do there’s a Lancaster right in the centre. Skipper puts the nose down, more power he asks, and I increase the throttle and we are pelting along at a furious rate as we are coming out of the searchlight belt more flak is coming up from the minor defences. A huge explosion near our aircraft: it shakes like mad. Skipper asks everybody to report that they are okay. I thought that the aircraft must have been hit somewhere but everything seemed to be working as far as I could tell: engine revs okay, oil pressure okay, petrol gauge okay. Would we get out of this hell alive? Hello skipper, navigator here, half a minute to dropping zone, okay says skipper, bomb doors open, bomb aimer now takes over, okay, steady, right a bit, bombs gone, bomb doors closed, keep weaving skipper, lots of flak coming up, I tell him, going to starboard something hits us, but we don’t know what or where. I report to skipper that a Jerry fighter has just passed over us from port to starboard, our mid-upper gunner also reported a fighter, we keep going out of the main area of searchlights. I take a look at the furious fires below and masses of flak and Pathfinder flares, a mass of other Lancasters and other Halifaxes has to get through. Looking back we can see aircraft going down in flames, thank god we are out of the main firestorm I say to myself. Skipper through the intercom tells everyone to watch out for night fighters as they are bound to be active. I give my log a good check in as we couldn’t be short of fuel at this stage, but everything seems to be okay, the oil pressure was a bit low on two starboard engines, I wondered if flak had damaged them. I report this to our skipper, keep an eye on it he said. Away back over the Baltic, so different to the way we came. There seemed to be flak coming up from all over the place so we are not out of trouble. We knew there were fighters about as they were dropping flares. Suddenly Ronnie, our rear gunner said corkscrew starboard skip, down we went and I fell, I fell out of my seat and hit my head and was stunned for a bit. Up we came to port as tracer skimmed the side of our aircraft, Ronnie took a pot at the German fighter but I don’t think he hit him. We levelled out at eight thousand feet and we were now in cloud and we stayed in it to dodge the fighter. We came out of the cloud over the Channel, oil pressures on starboard engines were getting too low, so it was decided to land at Woodbridge, just on the border of Suffolk, it had a long runway for situations like ours. We landed at five fifteen am after a horrendous night. I thought that Bomber Harris might well obliterate Bomber Command as well as Berlin! Our aircraft had been damaged by flak, including two engines so it was unserviceable. We were taken by coach back to, was this, this is where we went wrong, this is says Wratting Common but it should be Tuddenham I think. The squadron lost another Lancaster, a total of fifty eight heavy bombers were lost that night, fifty eight, and so ended our first trip, and our last I hoped, to Berlin, the big city as it was called. Our aircraft would be out of service for a week, but we were given a new aircraft that had not been flown on ops. Our wireless operator Charlie Higgins didn’t like the idea as he was terribly superstitious, hence the rabbit’s foot in my pocket. Charlie had to come round to the new aircraft, or leave the crew. He came round to it. Right, now this is the crunch, our thirtieth and final operation, but what a momentous time it has been over the last few months: a lot of airmen have died. Once again we were briefed on 28th of August and we were out at the aircraft when it was cancelled. And so back to the de-clothing area, this was always very stressful and our nerves start to give us trouble by a slight shake and very noticeable when holding a cigarette. The 29th of August 1943 was to be our last trip and hopefully we will return. Briefing was at four pm, we all sat down and then stood up when the Group Captain entered the briefing room at four pm. The door then locked, he stood on the stage and said Captain answer for your crew, and beware if you’re not there, you’re in trouble, anybody not there would be in dead trouble. The curtain pulled back and lo and behold the target was Stettin, on the Baltic, a very long trip and so I’ll have to be very accurate with my petrol calculations. Stettin was a large port and apparently the Germans were bringing men and war weapons back from Norway to put to the war in Russia. The idea was for us to blast the ships in port and anything we saw moving. It was going to be a long night with full petrol tanks and loads of bombs, or, no incendiaries, just bombs. Take off at nine pm. Stettin was partly on the way to Berlin, but a bit further to the west and a somewhat longer trip, we hoped the Germans would think we were going to Berlin and send their fighters there. We went through thick cloud at first, but over Germany it was clear skies and we had to watch out for the German fighters. We got caught in searchlights but the skipper managed to weave and corkscrew out of them. Heavy flak, shrapnel shells hitting our aircraft, we dropped our bombs by the reflection of the water, so there were no Pathfinders for this raid. We managed to leave the area safely and flew into the cloud again where it was pouring with rain, better than being attacked by a night fighter when flying in in clear skies. Sadly our Squadron Commander, Squadron Leader Warner failed to return from this op to Stettin, a total of twenty three Lancasters were lost out of three hundred and fifty on the operation. And now my crew sort of split up for a time here, we went on two week post-operational leave. Now, after, I returned to Scotland after some leave and did several weeks as flight engineer instructor. One day, my friend Jack Ralph, a pilot, came up to me and said as his flight engineer had been injured, by shrapnel I believe, would I be willing to do, to be his flight engineer as he only had four operations to do. Jack was somewhat older then I was at the time as he was thirty and I was still nineteen and he had a lot of experience and had earned the DFC. Without thinking of the possible consequences, I said yes. Being so young I didn’t really see the dangers ahead, anyway that was my decision. Jack’s crew accepted me okay and that was the main thing. My first operational briefing with Jack was on 23rd of September 1943, Mannheim, a big industrial town, well in, that was the usual thing; fifteen Lancasters were lost there, and then Hannover, I think we lost an aircraft there. Turn it off just a moment. At this stage in my tour of operations – thirty two to date - I was becoming decidedly jittery, a nervous twitch perhaps. I felt I was getting to the end of what I could take, nevertheless I never showed this in my behaviour, but it was just that I felt it inwardly, after all I was still only nineteen years old. Us bomber chaps often wrote poetry, some have been published and at this moment I would like to quote one of mine. I found it amongst my papers a few years ago, and it was written by me during my tour of operations in 1943. It might seem a bit naive now but it was how I felt at the time. Viz: “What think you airman when you fly so proudly there in heaven’s sky? Do you exalt in your great might as you go onwards through the night? I think of death beneath my wings, and of the load my bomber brings. My spirit flinches from the thought, that of this carnage may come naught. I pray that soon the day will come when at the rising of the sun that man will offer man his hand and peace prevail throughout the land. I face up to my moments’ task, but three things God, of thee I ask: please help my flesh and mind to stand the strain and protect me Lord this once again. And if this cannot be your plan, give me the strength to die a man.” So that. I wasn’t sleeping too well at this particular time, and I had a sort of of foreboding about the future, it was only one more operation to do, strange how the mind works. On the morning of 18th of November, I woke in the usual way and had breakfast. I went to the aircraft and had a chat with the ground engineers. No problem with the engines, there were full tanks, two thousand one hundred and forty gallons and full bomb load. In fact I worked out that our full weight would be way [emphasis] above what it should be, but it was often like that. No chance of survival if we had engine failure on take off. Briefing was at four pm where we found that the target would be Stettin again, on the Baltic coast, a long hard journey ahead as you would know from above. I had been there before. Stettin was a very important town for Germany because it was the embarking point to Norway. Stettin was heavily defended by guns, searchlights and night fighters. At the briefing we found out that we were to use new tactics by flying low over the North Sea, under German radar with a moonlight night and then to sweep across Denmark and up to the Swedish coast and then down to Stettin, hopefully we were told we would hit Stettin from a different angle and take the Germans by surprise. As we left the briefing Jack said to me let’s hope they are right! Take off at nine pm. Fourteen Lancasters from our squadron would take part. We had our supper in the usual way and collected our rations: chocolate and chewing gum. We then collected our flying clothes, harness and parachute. The padre was there to wish us well and safe return. Well that was something to help me anyway. We were taken to the aircraft in the liberty van, as we called it, would take us in to Newmarket, it took us in to Newmarket when we were not flying. We got ourselves into the aircraft and made sure everything was in order. The skipper and I did what we called pre-flight checks, as nothing was left to chance. A very light was fired from the caravan at the end of the runway for take off. We queued up and then our turn came. Skipper opened up the throttles and then I took over to giving him full power as we were overloaded, we sped down the runway, hoping we would make it into the air-and we did. Skipper pulled the aircraft off the ground and did a circuit of the aerodrome, before speeding off and crossing at Cromer and then over the North Sea. We flew at five hundred feet towards Denmark. As we crossed the Danish coast e-boats were firing at us but fortunately missed. We were now on the way to Stettin, we saw one Lancaster crash into a windmill because it much too low. Before I continue I must mention something about Stettin. This town manufactured consumer goods, including cosmetics. At the end of 1943, there were still six million Germans employed in consumer industries. The Armament Minister, Albert Speer, his efforts to cut back consumer output were repeatedly frustrated by Hitler, personal veto. Eva Braun intervened to block an order banning permanent waves and manufacture of cosmetics. Apparently Hitler was so anxious to maintain living standards. Anyway back to our flight. After leaving Denmark we had to climb to fifteen thousand feet, because we were approaching the Swedish coast and they were neutral as far as war was concerned. We were using our new radar equipment – H2S – so our navigator was able to pick up the town of Stettin. We flew over the southern tip of Sweden and apparently the authorities complained about this to Churchill through the Swedish Embassy. We now flew south and I could see heavy flak ahead so I knew we would be in for a pasting. We could see the Pathfinders were there this time. flares and the Master Bomber was telling us to bomb a certain coloured flares. Suddenly we got caught in two cones of searchlights, but skipper Jack Ralph acted quickly and down we went to starboard and we escaped. But was a close run thing again. Flak was bursting all around. We dropped bombs okay on a mass of flames below us. We left the target area which looked like hell below. After a short time the flak seemed to quieten, so we knew night fighters were in the area. Suddenly a loud shout from rear gunner on the intercom, corkscrew port skipper, and down we went, but unfortunately the Messerschmidt 110 night fighter caught us underneath our aircraft. The tracer bullets through, ripped through the underbelly and caught our port inner engine, which caught fire. We also had a fire in the fuselage, just beyond the mid upper gunner. The hydraulic oil that feeds the turret had spilled into the fuselage and that was what was on fire. The turret in fact became useless. Skipper had brought the aircraft out of the corkscrew and levelled off at about eight thousand feet. The fighter did not follow us down. So, what were our problems at this stage of our flight? A – port inner engine on fire. B – fire in the fuselage. C – what damage had been done underneath us? D – mid upper turret not now working. C, sorry, E – losing height and another three and a half hours to home base. F – outside temperature minus forty degrees centigrade possibly too cold to bale out. G – if we are attacked again no chance of survival on three engines. H – have we enough fuel to get home? So the action we took was this: 1 – my skipper feathered the propeller on the duff engine. He operated the fire extinguisher in the engine fortunately the fire went out. All this has to be done within seconds of course. I attached an oxygen bottle and my mask and took a fire extinguisher with me. I found my way down the fuselage to the fire, which was looking quite fierce, especially everywhere was dark. I connected up my intercom and told skipper what I had found. Should we bale out he said? No, I said I think I can put the fire out – [wry chuckle] I had not brought my parachute with me from my position by the pilot! It was stacked up there. I didn’t think I had any chance of survival if the fuselage broke up anyway. Anyway I played the extinguisher on to the fire but it didn’t all go out. The aircraft was full of smoke but fortunately we all had our masks on and I used my official goggles for my eyes. There was some tarpaulin or something nearby and so I placed it on the fire but some of the flames shot up and I burnt both of my hands. I struggled with the tarpaulin and the fire went out. My hands were very painful though as you can imagine, but I wondered at that time whether the airframe had been weakened by the heat. I told the skipper what I had done and what I had, and that I had painful hands. Thank god you have put it out, he said. I crawled back to my station by the pilot. He was trying to keep the aircraft at eight thousand feet, we were then on three engines. Somehow or another I had to write my log to see how much petrol we had left. The navigator said he would be back at base, we would be back at base in three and three quarter hours, keeping in mind that the aircraft was slower on three engines, but of course only three engines were burning fuel. I worked out that our speed at that time, our height and more propeller revolutions and no more corkscrewing we would have thirty minutes fuel left on landing. My hands were now very painful but there was nothing I could do about it as we had no creams to put on them or water to plunge them in to. I kept thinking to myself, why did I volunteer for another four operations? Well, here we go, back to base. We were at eight thousand feet and flying through thick cloud and it is raining hard, we are all wearing our masks and goggles as there was still a lot of smoke in the aircraft. I wondered if any damage had been done to the aircraft framework. Was it weakened in any way? Best not to be negative, I must be positive about getting us back to base. The skipper was aware of the fuel situation, and kept the engine power to a minimum, keeping in mind that we only had three engines working. After two hours we came out of the thick cloud and all the buffeting, we were now over Holland and we could see lots of flak near the coast, so we needed to avoid that. A big aircraft flew near us and we thought it was another Lancaster, we hoped. Our navigator picked up a couple of towns on the new radar H2S, very useful because we couldn’t see anything below due to haze. I checked the fuel situation but it was difficult writing as my hands were so painful. The navigator told the skipper and myself that with our speed and outside wind we would be at base at about one hour forty five minutes. I began to sweat at that bit of information as it was longer than he had given some time before. Anyway, I worked out my fuel usage and then told my skipper that we had two hours twenty minutes fuel left so we should make it okay if something, if nothing else happened. But fortunately nothing else did happen, we got through the flak on the coast of Holland, and we were now over the North Sea headed for England and hopefully safety. Skipper got in touch with control, with the control on my squadron and told them of our situation. Would the wheels come down? We still didn’t know. Skipper was given emergency landing procedures so we crossed the East Anglian coast. We operated the landing gear and it came down okay and locked itself in the down position. In one hour fifty minutes we were down and so my petrol calculations were spot on. At this stage I was beginning to feel a bit faint what with the pain, considerable stress and smoke. When we landed most of the smoke disappeared. I got out of the aircraft at five thirty am, eight and a half hour flight and sat on the ground, exhausted. Skipper Jack Ralph lit me a cigarette, which was wonderful. Suddenly everything everywhere was quiet except for the singing of birds in some nearby trees, the dawn chorus. Two aircraft failed to return to our squadron out of fourteen at take off. Though later we found out that one aircraft had landed at another aerodrome due to damage to their aircraft. Thirty aircraft failed to return all told. I believe four hundred Lancasters went to Stettin. Jack Ralph’s tour off thirty had ended and I had done a total of thirty four operations. I was still only nineteen. What happened to me next? Once I was returned to base, well, I was then taken to the first aid area and my hands were cleaned. I was then taken to the hospital at Bury St Edmunds where I stayed for two days. My hands were treated there and it was found that the burns were first degree and so I wouldn’t need any skin grafts: that was the best news I could receive. I forget what they did, but I remember my hands being wrapped up with bandages and lint. Within three days I was back on the squadron, where I was put on light duties. The bandages were removed after two weeks and I believe, but my hands were very sore and still a bit painful, but being exposed to the air was going to be helpful. After a few weeks I received a call to see the Station Commander at certain time of day. My memory defeats me, I was a bit nervous about this, but of course I went. The Group Captain asked me about my hands, he said that I had done a wonderful job. Now I was told two wonderful things to cheer me up: first offered a commission in the Royal Air Force,, wow, me, an officer in the RAF. He told me all about it and what I would have to do as my extra duties. Also he said to go and see the Station Adjutant as he would give me all the details about buying my uniform and the money. He said I would have to start a bank account once I was an officer, just think of it, me born in a council house, I left school at fourteen and now I’d become an officer in the RAF. An even greater thrill was that I had been recommended for a decoration, namely the Distinguished Flying Medal, for helping to save the aircraft and enabling the whole crew to get back to England. That was definitely the icing on the cake. My skipper Jack Ralph was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross because he displayed leadership as he was an officer, I was a flight, yes I was a flight sergeant, I had a medal. I would meet up with Jack Ralph again in my career. Within a week I was up in London to buy my clothes. [Unlcear] Well I was informed after a time that they were wanting Stirling crews at Tuddenham, my old base. As you will have read above, I had already done some special duties during my tour and so I jumped at the idea and made an important, an appointment to see our squadron commander. He said I don’t know anything about it. Of course, of course that’s what they always say. Anyway he did check up and found it was true. I got an immediate posting back to my bomber station and I met up with my, part of my old crew, so I joined up with them. While there we got a couple of gunners, rear and mid upper, and a wireless operator. I told Doug and Dick about my adventure into the fire what I did on my last trip. I did some revision on the workings of the Stirling as I had not flow them some time. We also did some circuits and bumps. Early 1944 a briefing was arranged and I believe there were twelve crews all together. We were informed that we would have to do a lot of practice low flying over the Norfolk Flats – no hills anywhere - we were also told that the job would entail flying on moonlit nights and between five hundred and a thousand feet. Of course our particular crew had already done a few of these trips as we had already early in our tour so we knew what to expect. It was clear that D-Day was coming soon and so they wanted us, wanted to get as much more, as much equipment as possible to the resistance people, agents were being dropped in France at night from the Lysander aircraft. We started our flying practice during the day, low flying over the flats of Norfolk. We hoped that Dicks navigation and map reading would be as good as hitherto. Well he seemed to find his way around the flats okay. We did many days of this type of flying. I think they thought we were up there having fun, as for me I would have to get my petrol calculations right as I wouldn’t, it wouldn’t do to have an engine failure at five hundred feet, which is what we were going to have to do. We did low flying over long periods to get it absolutely right at night. The night came for us to do our first mission and operation. It was a full moon and clear sky on 21st of April ’44. The technique for crossing the French coast was to cross at, was to cross at eight thousand or nine thousand feet to avoid a heavily defended coast. When our skipper thought it was safe he descended to about five hundred feet. I must say that we actually went all the way down the French coast, not over Pas de Calais because the Germans were still there, so went down the French coast, round Cherbourg, down to Boulogne. It was just below Boulogne where we crossed. When our skipper thought it was safe, he descended to about five hundred feet so we’re over the coast and down we went. At five hundred feet however, all hell broke loose. There seemed to be a gun firing dead ahead and to our starboard. Skipper flung the aircraft to port and he couldn’t do much because we were so low down; we were hit on the starboard side and underneath. Fortunately the tracer was small calibre so not a lot of damage. But there was a hole in the starboard fuselage and a hole near the skipper’s foot. We think [clock chimes] we were hit underneath too, but we were all okay. To the port side of us we could see a Stirling being hit at very low altitude, maybe about two hundred feet and then crashed, fortunately the crew of that aircraft survived and were taken prisoner. Well we pressed on, very low level, as low as two hundred feet at times, towards the eastern side of France, near Lyon. We followed roads and rivers and contours of the land, we knew that we could easily get lost, and some crews did. We had a good navigator and I did a lot of map reading myself when I wasn’t watching the petrol situation, as I said before. I couldn’t let a tank go dry and an engine stall at two hundred to five hundred feet. Anyway, we arrived at the area and the next thing was to look for a torchlight shone by one of the French Resistance, Maquis. If they were caught by the Germans they were usually tortured for information about others and then shot and of course we would easily have been shot down and too low for parachutes. We found the light after circulating the area. I then went to the back of the aircraft and opened the trap door in the floor. On instructions from the pilot I pushed out the big boxes which were on parachute and as we were at five hundred feet they landed reasonably safely, I hoped. After that we made our way to the coast. That was another difficult part because if we crossed at five hundred feet, we could have been shot up by German e-boats which were all along the coast. Climbing to seven thousand to eight thousand meant that we would be easy prey for German fighter planes, but we did climb to eight thousand feet and got over the coast safely and we arrived at Tuddenham, our base, exactly eight hours later, but the undercarriage wouldn’t come down. We tried all the usual methods, like thumping the solenoid and pulling the wires, but nothing happened. I might have mentioned it earlier, just to say that as the Stirling everything, oh yes I have mentioned it by electricity, in the Lancaster it was hydraulics. The final thing to do was for me to go half way down the fuselage where there was a motor winding gear. I asked the skipper to switch off the undercarriage switch on the dashboard and then I started winding. I knew that if I had to wind it all the way down it would be five hundred and forty turns, phew! Anyway, I wound twelve times and I asked the skipper to trip the switch down and wonderful, the undercarriage started to descend and it went all the way down, and locked. What a nightmare, had it not come down and locked we would have had to belly land. We landed safely and we reported to briefing. We mentioned that a Stirling was shot down; it was reported later that it was David [unclear]. The ground engineers on our aircraft found that the undercarriage gears had been damaged by the coastal gunfire so we were lucky to get the undercarriage down. Well two nights later we were due to go again, when the moon was high, so.
CJ: So Colin, after your ten missions on Special Duties, what happened to you next?
CD: Well, I was an instructor for a time, which I got bored with; you had to have a sprog flight engineer. But by July, er, no, August, August 1944, these V2s and V1s were becoming a bit of menace. And so, they’re clever people, they said these are not operations, cause there are no German fighters about but what we want you to do is take over a sprog engineer to train him, and go behind a Mosquito. The Mosquito went in first, okay, he had this new radar called Oboe, and that was marvellous, picked out different places there, and when he dropped his bombs, the idea was we dropped ours. I think there were about four Lancasters at a time went with this Mosquito, and so that’s what we did. So we did that for, er, some time I think. I’m still on aren’t I? Yes. And then eventually that came to an end and I went back on instructors again. I went up to Leconfield, up in Yorkshire, goodness knows what I went up there for, cause I can’t remember I ever did anything! I came back again anyway, to Mildenhall. I was just really an odd bod, an instructor, that’s what I was and I was called an instructor. Oh, yes, eventually, before I went on to Transport Command, we had a, there were aircraft called a York, it was a passenger aircraft, and they wanted to find out what the centre of gravity was because of all the weight of the luggage and everything else on board. So that was my job, with a senior chap. We had all these, all these Yorks in a hangar, several of them, with the tails out, finding the centre of gravity. I can’t remember what I did now, but we found it and I think that did the job and I was made a flight lieutenant for a time, while I was on, to give me some authority. Wasn’t that nice of them! There we are, that’s what I did. But at the end, right at the end, two weeks before the end I went on Manna from Heaven. And there we are, I’ll show you a picture of that. And what we did, these little food parcels, there was sort of some rubberised, they were very good at doing things like that, I think it was probably Americanised, but rubber stuff and all these sweets, powdered milk, powdered egg and all that was inside each one of those. No parachute or anything like this. We were very low, I think we were two or three hundred feet when we went in, and they were warned to keep away because if one hits you it could knock you out you see. There’s another one coming in, another one back there. This went on for several weeks. It was known that some Germans were firing on the Yorks as they flew over, no Lancasters, we were on Lancasters then, Lancasters. They were firing on the Lancasters and the colonel was warned [emphasis] if you allow that to got on you’ll be up in court, you know. So I think it stopped after. The Dutch have never forgotten it. If you speak to a Dutchman now, they’ll tell you: the RAF did us a good thing. I think I’ve got something here from a Dutchman if you’d like to, hang on, here we are, shall I read it. After the war and after Manna from Heaven food parcels arrived, a letter from a Dutch person. “We shall never forget the nights when your squadrons passed us in the dark on the way to Germany, the mighty noise was like music for us: it told us about happier days to come. Your passing planes kept us believing in coming victory, no matter what we had to endure. We have suffered much but Britain and the RAF did not disappoint us, so we have to thank you and the British nation for our living in peace today.” So there we are, that was nice, wasn’t it. So I think -
CJ: So towards the end of the war Colin, where did you go next?
CD: In August of 1945, we as a crew of five with Jack as a captain, Jack Ralph, joined 51 Squadron at Leconfield, near Minster in Yorkshire. We were to have a period of training there on Stirlings, yes Stirlings, our old wartime friend. The powers that be were so short of passenger aircraft that they took the gun turrets out of the Stirling and put some seats down the length of the aircraft. The whole idea was to bring back servicemen from the Far East, including hopefully, some Japanese prisoners of war who had a dreadful time as prisoners. I think the Stirling had about forty seats, down the length of the fuselage with a galley for food and toilet facilities. The aircraft would fly at about eight thousand feet, no oxygen, and so it would have been quite cold and miserable. I remember saying to myself, that if the Japs don’t kill them, then perhaps the Stirling would. But at least they would be coming home and after the business of the Japanese camps I felt they would put up with anything. There was my crew, there were so many pilots back from Canada after training, and the war was over, and of course missing the war, authorities didn’t know what to do with them. Well many of them were trained as stewards, they didn’t like that really, to look after the passengers, to feed them et cetera and so we had one in our crew, but he wasn’t very happy about it. The time came for us to make our first overseas flight. We took off from Leconfield on 20th of August, and made for Stoney Cross, an airfield near the New Forest in Hampshire. We picked up all sorts of equipment, including a refrigerator which was fitted at the rear for use when we picked up passengers. On 22nd of August we took off for Luqa in Malta, which took seven hours thirty five minutes. On landing we were amazed at the bomb damage, we just wondered how they survived. We took off the next day for Castel Bonita, which was an airfield in Libya, North Africa. The temperature in the sun on arrival was one hundred and nineteen degrees Fahrenheit. [Laugh] Phew! We were able to have a quick look at Tripoli, and we were amazed at the number of ships sunk in the harbour. The ships were bombed when the Germans were there in 1942 ‘43. On the next day we took off for Tel Aviv in Palestine; this took us six hours thirty minutes. I was very impressed by, with Tel Aviv, a wealthy town and populated mostly by Jews from all over Europe. We had time to spend an afternoon on their lovely beach, but we were pestered by beach sellers who tried to sell us anything they thought we would wealth, they thought we were wealthy like the population. At that particular time there were battles going on in Jerusalem, so it was out of bounds to us RAF. Their troubles are still going on today, sadly. I mention above about the wealth in Tel Aviv, being a Jewish town, but just outside there was a village called Tel Avivski which was populated by Arabs, who were growing lemons and oranges. Their homesteads were very poor indeed, and what a contrast to Tel Aviv. The next day we took off for Basra, in Iraq which was very much in the news in recent years. The aerodrome was called Shaibah which was outside Basra. Shaibah was a terribly hot place. It was always between a hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit. It had a good population - of flies! The billets were poor and so it was a good thing we were only there one night. Tea had a peculiar taste and the food wasn’t terribly appetising. Have I painted a nice picture I say to myself. I must say that the people were very friendly and of course this was 1945 and maybe they aren’t so friendly today. Any airman ground staff could only stay in Shaibah a maximum of six months of the year because after some of them started to go mental called Shaibah blues. As flight engineer I had to supervise the refuelling of our aircraft. They used what they called a bowser and we just hoped it was filled with a hundred octane fuel to give us plenty of lift and power. At least we could get cold beer in the officers mess, just like in Ice Cold in Alex. The next day, 24th, we took off for Karachi. The badge I have on my, on my coat that I had on just now was bought in Karachi, in Pakistan although in 1945 fortunately it was still in India. The aerodrome was called Meri, Moripoor, this aerodrome was quite modern compared to Shaibah. We would be there for two days and so we had the opportunity to visit Karachi. I quite liked this town, but like all Indian town it was full of markets selling just about everything. Of course you never paid the price they asked and so quite a bit of time was spent bargaining with the vendor but he made you comfortable by giving you something soft to sit on then bring you a glass of coca cola which fell apart, no sarsaparilla, sorry, a coco cola or a glass of sarsaparilla, not so nice. I remember buying a pair of shoes which fell apart in a few days and an Indian wool rug which was very nice, I sold it at home for a good profit. The main street in Karachi was called Elphinstone Street, named after Lord Elphinstone who lived in Hastings and there’s a street named after him there too! This was the end of our first flight abroad which took us four days. On 27th of August we flew back to Stoney Cross, many passengers, mainly army personnel and they didn’t like the cold in the Stirling after being in a hot country, still I am sure they were pleased to get home at last. When we arrived back at Stoney Cross we found that we had been posted to Stradishall in Suffolk. This was, and still is, a pre-war RAF station and so at least we had food, accommodation and a batman. The batman, I had was shared with two officers in separate rooms. It was jolly good because he did lots of jobs for us, cleaning our shoes, looking after our laundry and making sure we had everything we wanted. The real benefits of being an officer! The downside was that we had to do Orderly Officer duties from time to time. One of the duties, one of the duties was checking on the food in the general mess. As I went on the Sergeant of the Day which called out ‘any complaints,’ usually there was silence but on one occasion one of the erks said, I have been given very little meat, sir. It looked very small so I got the cooks to give him another slice of meat. I think the erk had eaten quite a bit before I got it, got there. Of course the Orderly Officer was actually in charge of the RAF station when the Group Captain was away at night time too. So it was quite a responsible job if anything went wrong at the station. We had parties there, with plenty of girlfriends, lots of fun with booze. I think we’ll leave it at that now.
CJ: So on these long trips Colin, with Transport Command did you meet any interesting people?
CD: Well one of the people I did meet was at Cairo. We stopped at a hotel called the Heliopolis, Heliopolis Palace and I think we were on the third floor. Now, King Farouk, he somehow or other he didn’t like the British, I don’t know why, I don’t know why. But he would, you would see him belting through the streets in the middle of two guards in a jeep type of vehicle, you know and be crouched in there. We actually met him actually, at a reception at Helioplolis Palace and he sort of didn’t want to really say too much to us, us chaps chaps. He wasn’t a good leader, he liked pornography, he had loads of pornography, you wouldn’t believe it, stuff he had. Well eventually he was ousted of course, wasn’t he. I think it was Nasser came in after him, wasn’t it. He was dead scared of travelling around, he thought he’d be shot any moment, you know, they didn’t like him. So that’s King Farouk, I’ve met a king, okay.
CJ: So when did you leave the RAF Colin? And what did you do after that?
CD: Well I was there during that very cold winter and it soon after that actually. By May, May 1947, May 1947 I said farewell to my friends at Lyneham, I took the train to Preston in Lancashire and that was my demob station, okay. So I came out and there I am, and that’s what, various documents including identity card, ration book and some money, so that’s what I got for putting my life on the line. But still, it was better than nothing. I’ve now signed off from the RAF and I was given a sort of dowry, but I can’t remember how much it was, but I don’t think I was terribly rich. I came back to London to stay with my, an aunt for a time. I stayed at, I stayed with my grandmother in Beckenham. She had a son that was employed at the Standard Bank of South Africa and I was very friendly with him, because he played cricket and all that, in his job, and he said how about getting into shipping, the Union Castle Line near me, where I am, I know they’re looking for young men. I said yeah, that sounds interesting to me, shipping, well I don’t want to fly again and, and that’s what he did. I went up for an interview and I got the job. I think it was about two hundred and fifty pounds a year. [Laugh] I thought you see, I could train perhaps as a purser eventually and I wouldn’t mind going out to South Africa and stay out there for a bit as I was single, as easy as it was then. So that’s what I did and I started 15th May I think it was, 15th of May. First up yes, I would be employed in an office down, oh I was employed in an office down in the East India Docks for a time, Blackwall, yes, at a salary of two hundred and fifty pounds per annum. I bought a month’s season ticket on the Southern Railway at the cost of one pound fourteen shillings and that would take me from Elmer’s End to Beckenham or Cannon Street in the city. I used it seven days a week, I used it at weekends. Arrived at the office on the first day at nine fifteen am and met up with the manager at the docks office. Really old buildings, it’s real east, sorry about that, just chuck it aside, sorry. Yes, it was very, sort of worn out buildings there, everything was sort of archaic really, you know. Big, it had a big shelf to write on. And a stool. And if you’ve ever seen any Charles Dickens films, just like that really. Goes back to those days you see.
CJ: And what was your job there?
CD: Just as a clerk, to start with, just as a clerk, did a lot of writing, oh and I got the job of going down to the docks to meet the ships, with a senior man first, but then eventually I went down myself, to the West India Dock, King George the Fifth Dock, Queen Victoria Dock in London, don’t exist any more of course, and Southampton went down to Southampton. Yes. That was the most interesting part of being with the Union Castle actually, going down to the ships, so I enjoyed that. Now eventually we were hearing rumours you see, that oh they united with the Clan Line, that would have been a few years after and eventually we could see that the end of the line was coming because people were flying to South Africa and East Africa. We didn’t have an empire any more, you know, Uganda, Tanganyika and all these of places, so I decided I think I’d better change; I had two young daughters at the time and I thought I’d better think about changing. So I got a job with Beecham Research Laboratories in their offices. I did a few jobs outside in hospitals and took on that job, in Kent, that’s why I’m down here. I used to visit the consultants, so that was interesting. Yeah.
CJ: So after the war did you manage to keep in touch with any of your old crew?
CD: Yes I did. I was the secretary, we used to have reunions up at Tuddenham, Tuddenham and there’s a building there that we used to use, it was more convenient than Mildenhall really, although we used to go to Mildenhall. But I was the secretary, so I did the newsletters, it was great and yes, I was given a glass bowl at the end which is upstairs. And curiously those eventually died off and that’s very sad.
CJ: How do you feel Bomber Command veterans were treated after the war, for example by the government?
CD: We were treated very badly. We were treated very badly. Churchill never thanked us, he thanked every other, every other side of the war, Army, Navy, Coastal Command, but not Bomber Command, Fighter Command, but not Bomber Command, never Bomber Command, and yet he was the one that said early part of the war we will bomb every town in Germany and make them pay for what they’re doing to us. That’s what he said, you know, and that’s wanted us to do. But it all came to a head with Dresden, didn’t it. And of course that wasn’t Bomber Harris’ idea at all, he didn’t want to do it because it was too far for his crews, it’s really the Russian general out there. He, he told Eisenhower that the town was full of German troops and weapons, you see. And he said would you, could Bomber Command bomb the place. Eisenhower got on to Churchill and Churchill got on to Bomber Harris and Bomber Harris said well it’s just too far for my troops, I don’t want to do it. You’ve got the order to do it, you must find a way of doing it, so that they get there and back. That’s, you know, that’s the sort of attitude he had you see. So, it came about and of course it was found that it was mainly full of refugees rather than troops, so you know, but that’s the one, if you mention Bomber Command, that’s what people mention. What about Dresden, you know. But it’s no different to any other town, what about towns in England? And if he’d had his way V2s would have obliterated London completely. So yes, I don’t think we, it’s only since we’ve had the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park that things have softened quite a bit now. People, when they hear I’ve been in Bomber Command are quite impressed, you know cause there’s not many of us about are there. So I think the attitude has changed a bit, but I was a great admirer of Churchill you know, during the war, he gave us that feeling of we were going to win, that’s what we wanted really, someone behind us, but he never stayed on at the end. I could never understand why really, never understood why. The Queen Mother always supported us and I went to the, the church in the Strand, what’s the name of that church in the Strand, I can’t remember it, anyway it’s the RAF, it’s the RAF church and it was Bomber Harris’ monument that was being built there, next to Dowding, the two of them there you see. And you wouldn’t believe it, all these layabouts were shouting at us: murderers. The Queen Mother she always supported us and said take no notice of them, I was standing right next to her, actually, take no notice of them. One chap there had got his uniform on, had red, red paint thrown over him you know, that’s how we were treated. Yeah. It was pretty grim really. And the police didn’t do much about it really, they’re just yobs he says, what can you do?
CJ: But on the other hand I gather you’ve been honoured by the French.
CD: Yes, absolutely. I have also at our do on Tuesday night I said I want to send a toast to the President of France, President Macron. So I don’t know if he ever got the message but I you’ve read the letter, yes.
CJ: This is the letter that confirms that you’ve been made a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honeur.
CD: That’s right, Nationale, Legion d’Honeur. First introduced by Napoleon in 1802 and used extensively during the Battle of Waterloo, 1815. He used it for his highest gallantry award. So whether it’s still used as a high gallantry award I don’t know. It wasn’t used in the second world war because they gave in you see right at the start. But it was used in the First World War, yeah.
CJ: So what else keeps you busy nowadays?
CD: The garden! Try to. Well I belong to Probus. I belong to, I’m the honorary president, honorary president of the Royal British Legion, in Tenterden. Church too, I go to church so I made lots and lots of friends there. We have different little dos from time to time. I go to the day centre here on a Tuesday, that’s tomorrow. They come and pick me up, they have lunch there.
CJ: You’re living in Tenterden and there’s a heritage railway I think you had some involvement.
CD: Oh Kent and East Sussex Railway! Oh yes! I’d forgotten about that. In 1967, we came to live here in 1966 you see, and in 1967 well we heard that there was a railway coming along, didn’t know much about it then, down station road, so we thought we’d go and have a look and they had a couple of little engines down there, one was called Hastings and there was another one down there as well. And I went to the meeting, they had meetings to try to get the railway started somehow. Oh, the rows that went on! You know, between the secretary and the president, and the chairman, had different views from each other, you know. They were told: if you don’t get your act together you’ll never run a railway. Of course you wouldn’t, not like that. But eventually it all settled down but interesting meetings. I’ve still got [unclear[, upstairs, amazing!
CJ: You were volunteering on the railway, you were helping?
CD: Yes, I did a signals course in 1968 I think, ‘69 something like that, ‘69, nothing like what they do today, it’s much more. But then they said we really need somebody in the booking office to get it started, so course I’m married, two children, you can’t spend too much time. Anyway, I took it on. I ordered these little tickets, cardboard tickets as you push in the machine: boom boom. It puts the date on it, you know, that’s what it was. Quite cheap as well. At that stage, 1974 it opened, 1974. Bill Deedes came down, he opened it. Just went as far as Rolvenden, that’s as far as we could get. It took another two or three years to get to Wittersham Road. Ted Heath, oh yeah, he came and opened it, Ted Heath, yeah, and to Bodiam and Northiam, so it took many many years, it was quite a few years after. Opened in 1974, about ‘88 something like that I think, it got to Bodiam. The Lottery I think paid for it, paid for part of that between Northiam and Bodiam. But they were always short of money, you know, no matter what. A new boiler costs at least ten thousand pounds you see, for an engine, everything is so costly now, I’m afraid. So that was my job. So I did do things, I didn’t just sit at home doing nothing!
CJ: Well, you’ve certainly led an interesting life, Colin, and thanks very much for talking to us today.
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Interview with Colin Deverell
Creator
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Chris Johnson
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-07-22
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. 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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ADeverellCRE190722, PDeverellCRE1901
Format
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01:38:13 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Colin Deverell was born in Croydon. Upon leaving school, he worked for Oliver Typewriter Company, where he gained engineering skills to become an amateur rigger for Imperial Airways, before finding employment with Rollaston Aircraft Services in 1939. His mother was killed in a bombing on Christmas Day 1940, motivating him to join the Royal Air Force in 1941 and train as a flight engineer. Deverell completed thirty operations based at RAF Wratting Common and RAF Tuddenham. He details the engineering differences between Stirlings and Lancasters and recollects the events of operations to Kiel, Lorient, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, Peenemünde, Berlin, and Szczecin. He then completed a further four operations, filling in for a crew with an injured flight engineer. On his thirty-fourth operation to Szczecin, they were attacked and he burnt his hands extinguishing a fire on board. By 19, Deverell was promoted to flight lieutenant and awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal. In 1944, he undertook ten special operations that required low-flying to release boxes of equipment according to light signals from the French Resistance. In 1945, he took part in Operation Manna, before joining 51 Squadron to return servicemen from the Far East on converted Stirlings. Finally, he recalls his career following demobilisation in 1947, the treatment of Bomber Command, and attending reunions at Tuddenham. As the Honorary President of the Royal British Legion in his hometown of Tenterden, Deverell has also been awarded the Legion d’Honneur.
Contributor
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Tilly Foster
Anne-Marie Watson
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--Croydon
England--Suffolk
France
France--Lorient
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Düsseldorf
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Peenemünde
Germany--Stuttgart
Poland
Poland--Szczecin
Netherlands
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1940-07-10
1940-08-15
1940-12-25
1941
1942
1943-06-27
1943-08-17
1943-08-23
1943-08-29
1943-09-23
1944
1945-08
1946
1947-05
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
51 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Bombing of Peenemünde (17/18 August 1943)
Distinguished Flying Medal
flight engineer
H2S
Lancaster
Me 110
Mosquito
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
perception of bombing war
promotion
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Wratting Common
recruitment
Resistance
searchlight
Stirling
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/257/3404/PFraserC1501.2.jpg
1b37fb0db87bcc24ea45c3ca9410d737
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/257/3404/AFraserC151113.1.mp3
c25ed2496f5e21b68df313bc38956864
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
Fraser, Colin
Colin Fraser
C Fraser
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Colin Fraser (Royal Australian Air Force) an account of his being shot down, a crew photograph and a piece of parachute memento. He served as a Lancaster navigator on 460 Squadron. His aircraft was shot down in April 1945 and he was a prisoner of war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by XXX and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-13
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. 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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Fraser, C
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Col Fraser. A 460 Squadron navigator. The interview is taking place at Camberwell in Melbourne. My name’s Adam Purcell. The date is the 13th of November 2015. Col. I believe you have got something prepared. Let’s go.
CF: Yeah. I was born in Melbourne on 5th of November 1922. My air force number was 435111. And when the Japanese came into the war I decided to join the air force but they had many volunteers and the army wanted me so I went into the army on the 31st of December ‘41 and it took me ‘til March ‘43 to get back into the air force at Number 2 ITS Bradfield Park in Sydney. Where I was then classified as a navigator which is what I wanted. By changing Australia where the system was to have a observer, which means you could be a navigator, a bomb aimer or both depending on the size of the crew. I graduated in February forty — oh sorry. It was ‘43. ’44 sorry. Yeah. I graduated, sorry, in February ’44 as a navigator and had leave and then lived in the Melbourne Cricket Ground grandstand for seven days before I sailed off to England. I arrived in Brighton where the Australians were — had a reception centre, in February, sorry in March ’44. And we were told then immediately that there would be a delay because the fact is that the Bomber Command was not losing the people and aircrew were surplus for the moment there. I took leave courtesy of the Lady Ryder Scheme at a farm in, outside York. And I then returned to the new area of the instruction things at Warrington in Lancashire. And I and my mates spent a lot of time from there looking around various parts of England while we were waiting and we had some leave. At that time the RAF stopped the number of pilots being trained and there were empty airstrips and aeroplanes. So they said the pilots had been waiting a long time, for three weeks down to these airstrips and an empty backseat. They sent the navigators and bomb aimers to learn about map reading in English conditions. I finished up at Fairoaks which is in the Windsor Castle area. And we arrived there in early June ‘44 and we could see with flying at only a few thousand feet around the area that the invasion was well and truly on. And a couple of nights later we were not surprised at the amount of aircraft flying around for the invasion date. The — and then about ten days later we woke up to the sound of the V2. The flying bomb. We were not on the direct route from France to London, but the stray ones often were within our sight and two at least came over our area. We went back to Padgate and there we were split up into navigators and bomb aimers and I, being a navigator went up to West Frew in Scotland. And there we were joined by a section from New Zealand boys and I did my first DR navigation for six months while there. Then we were sent to 27 OUT at Lichfield which was the Australian OTU. And there we met up with our bomb aimer mates who we’d trained with, and I crewed up with Dan Lynch for the following day. We discussed having a pilot and decided we wanted one who was big and strong and had to be mature. About twenty three or twenty four [laughs] so we mixed with the pilots and picked out two pilots who seemed to fit the bill a bit. And we were at the same meal table as them that evening and the following morning when we decided that we wanted as a pilot Harry Payne. Known as Lofty because he was six foot three. So later that morning when we all got in the big hall we sat behind Lofty and were chatting to some gunners who’d also paired up. And when the chief flying instructor said, ‘Righto boys. Crew up,’ we tapped Lofty on the shoulder and said would he like a navigator and a bomb aimer and he said, ‘Yes. Do you know any others?’ and we said, ‘There’s two nice gunners over there. So we had them. They in turn knew a wireless operator from the night before so we finished up with a crew which was Harry ‘Lofty’ Payne from West Australia. Dan Lynch, the bomb aimer from Tasmania and myself, Colin Fraser from Melbourne. Our wireless operator was Bill Stanley from Melbourne. And then we had two Sydney boys as gunners. Jack Bennett, upper, mid-upper and Hugh Connochie known as Shorty, as the rear gunner. We then did ground subjects for a couple of weeks. Everybody. And I was then introduced into the mysteries of Gee. The radar navigation aid. We were taken out to the Wellington aircraft with a instructor pilot and he showed Harry how things were done and then said to him, ‘Now you can take off for three landings and take offs and then call it a day.’ Well, we took off and landed twice and the third time as we reached height the port engine failed and we went into emergency drill which for my position was in the middle of the aircraft where I couldn’t see anything. As we went around I pulled a nacelle cock to get rid of some petrol from the plane. And when Lofty turned in to make the landing he instructed me to pull the air bottle which I did and down came the undercart. The original Wellingtons that would also blow all hydraulics. But the pilots had all been advised that all planes on the station had been adjusted. That this would not happen. However, as Harry went to put down the flaps nothing happened. And he finished up banging the aircraft down halfway down the strip and he ran through the fence, across a road, a fence the other side, a bush or two, and finished up in a ditch with the back broken and up in the air. We all managed to get out of the escape hatches with any trouble, no injuries except a few minor cuts. And we took on, went back to flying the following day. And the only one there the one night the heating failed just after take-off and I had to navigate around with frozen hands. Putting them in gloves and out again. Navigation was a bit sketchy. And when I handed the log in, the instructor said to me it wasn’t too good. I maintained that in the circumstances it was quite ok. His comment back was, ‘In Bomber Command there are no excuses,’ which stayed with me for the rest of the tour. We finished there on the 11th of December and then we went in to Poole which meant sitting around for nothing for a couple of months because it was winter and there wasn’t any flying going on anyway. And we took leave to several places such as Edinburgh and there. Then on the 2nd of February we then went to Heavy Conversion Unit at Lindholme and met up with the mighty Lancaster bomber. As the navigator I met up with the H2S which allowed you to look through cloud and pick up the signals from the ground. It was good on the coast but not too good with towns. And one night when we were flying on a decoy raid which meant you flew within a few miles of the enemy coast and then turned back to make them think you were going to attack them. And that night it turned out that my oxygen tube got twisted and I was only getting half the amount of oxygen, and as such I got — cut out a dog leg we should have done and got back earlier to be noted that they were bandits in the area which was code for German fighters. Anyway, we got down. The last crew in to land while a mate of ours at 460 Squadron, Binbrook was shot down on a training flight and two of his crew were killed.
AP: Col.
CF: There were about a hundred JU88s came back with the bombers.
AP: Col. I’ll stop you there for a minute.
Other: I’ve heard this story.
AP: I haven’t yet.
[recording paused]
CF: Ah yes.
AP: Now where weren’t we?
CF: That’s how it goes. Now, where was I in this?
AP: We were talking about bandits returning from your decoy trip I think. Bandits. You were returning from your decoy trip.
CF: Oh yeah.
AP: And there were bandits.
CF: Yeah. Which meant that therefore we landed. I think we said we landed. And got, Binbrook. That’s right. Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. So we’re as we said before any former on there. We finished on that at Poole, there we’ve got the — ah that’s right we’re at Lindholme. Ok. So Ok. Now where do I start from now when.
AP: Say again. Alright. Have you finished.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Your prepared statement shall we say. Ok. You said you were picked as a navigator and you said you wanted to be a navigator. Why?
CF: Because I’m good at figures. I’m not very good with my hands. I never wanted to really drive a car like all the other kids were fighting to get the steering wheel and I’d say, ‘Give me the map.’ So [laughs] yeah. I haven’t got the co-ordination with my hands. Well the obvious thing is my wife very nicely said to me, ‘You know dear if we lived on what you made with your hands we’d be below the poverty line.’ [laughs]
AP: Fair enough.
CF: No. I’m good at maths and I enjoy doing the figures. And secondly to stare, to sit with your steering column in front of me for five, six, eight, nine hours. That’s deadly. I like, I’ve got figures in front of me. I’m working on this time . Doing it there. So all in all the idea of being a pilot, although I had all the things. In those days my eyes were good for landing and everything. I was pilot/navigator category only because I was six feet one and they would not make you a gunner if you were over six feet.
AP: That’s why you’re —
CF: When I went in for my interview as to what I could be and they said, ‘What do you want to be?’ I said, ‘A navigator.’ And they probably looked at each other and said well that’s a change because ninety percent or more say a pilot. And they had a look at my figures that I had done pretty well in the exams. The mathematics and so forth. So yeah. So I was happy with being a navigator, yes. I wouldn’t have liked to have been a bomb aimer. Again, you would be steering there on a bombing trip for hour after hour whereas, you’re working on it. Mind you, at the same time you have a lot of pressure on you because if you’re not there and where you should be the crew look upon you. I always remember reading memoirs of some fella that when he said they got there and he said, ‘But we’re there,’ and the pilot and the rest of the crew said, ‘There’s no markers down. No, nothing. Are you sure you’re right Bill?’ You know. And then all of a sudden some markers went down and the pilot said, ‘Oh well done. The markers are down.’ He said, nobody apologised for all the queries and suggestions that I’d stuffed up really [laughs] yeah. No I enjoyed being a navigator. Yep. Yes.
AP: Very good. Can we — we might backtrack a little bit actually. Your early life when you were growing up. What, what did you do before the war?
CF: What?
AP: Yeah.
CF: Well I grew up at, in Hawthorn you might say. Down near the Quay on tennis courts on Scotch College where we had the Gardiner Creek winding around and like all the little kids along the Gardiner Creek we played down there when we shouldn’t have probably. We even had a bit of naked swimming there when we were six or seven or eight sort of business there in the creek. And somebody asked me once what was the, your memory of childhood? And I said, I thought for a while and I said, ‘Freedom.’ We were free. There was never any worries about anything sort of business there. Admittedly in the Depression I never gave my parents enough credit for the way they looked after us four kids during the Depression sort of business then. But the point was that as I said at my elder brother’s funeral my first memory of him was mother calling out, ‘Take you little brother with you and look after him.’ And that was the way that it acted in those days. Big sisters and big brothers looked after little brothers and I had what you might — and of course there was no TV. And we played games within the family and with our mates, sort of business, there. I had a great mate who died only a few months ago with a sudden heart attack and I went out my back gate and up a couple of houses in his back gate and vice versa and he was just as much — had two sisters he didn’t [pause] but he was just as much an elder brother as I was for the girls. They just treated me like a brother. He was over so often, he was always with us. Yeah. But the freedom was that was it. I could do what I sort of liked. Mother never said ‘Where are you going?’ Or something or other. I would just say, ‘Oh I’m going down to see Bill Jones or something like that.’ There was no worries that there were going to be any strange men or odd people around about. I had the — and there weren’t that many cars on the road either sort of business. That was it. It was freedom type of business that I had on there. And I was in the, one of the higher ones up in class. Again fortunately I had brains. I had nothing with the hands but the brains. I had the brains. And I can remember at state school you had two, what you’d call, very smart bastards, and I was one of the next three or four after that to get fired over two or three or four of us. But those two were outstanding and then we three or four or so were varied from time to time as to who was the smartest bastard shall we say. But that was it. We had freedom type of business of it there. And what was more. To do it there, more we had security ahead of us. It was obvious that if we’d ever thought about it we would grow up and get married and have kids and have a house. And that was, you know, the feeling was there was life ordained and certainly anybody who took a job in the public service would be, assume that they would see their life out in the public service. Again, if you joined a big company like BHP or something like that you would again, would assume that you’re there. So that was also better. But on the other hand of course as you were growing up you didn’t think too much about security. You just assumed I suppose that there was a instruction. And living in Hawthorn black was black and white was white. It was only when I went into the army I found there was a lot of shades of grey, depending on circumstances and the viewpoints of people etcetera. But in Hawthorn where I was, as I said we had all those. We had all that creek and the open land to run and play and fished and so forth etcetera there and I can remember the actual Quay on tennis courts there being built shall we say on it there. But that was it. It was the freedom of doing things. We might, as I say, Depression we might have had a second hand football or cricket bat or something or other. You had something. That was it, sort of business there. You weren’t looking for much sort of business there, and as I say you had a lot of, a lot of kids in that area I suppose moved at the same time and there was always. You walked out the house and walked around to the next over or you’d run into a couple of kids and you sort of business there. Yeah. Yes.
AP: Yeah. [unclear]
CF: A good childhood really. As I say not a very, not a rich one in any way or form sort of business there but a good childhood of freedom. Yeah.
AP: What— was the army your first job. Was the army your first job?
CF: What?
AP: Sorry. Sorry. Your first job. Was, was that — did you come straight out of school and straight into the military or did you do something?
CF: At that stage, Year 10, the intermediate was where everybody except the, the title used recently — only the swots went past Year 10 and they would be the future doctors and so forth there. The only the very, very smart ones you might say, the top ten percent or something went past Year 10. The rest of but again, looking, you went to work in a big company and when you started out they had — shall we say half a dozen new boys started at the end of January or something and you worked in the mail room. And for twelve months you delivered papers and picked up papers all around and you got to know what happened in the company. And then after that or sometime during it perhaps you then got a job of doing — writing something up or doing something and you stepped up your attitude. And you also went to work — you went to night school to learn book keeping accountancy. Or whatever was the thing of it there. So for two nights a week and maybe a bit of time to do a bit of study you were occupied shall we say. You didn’t have much money so you couldn’t go out much sort of business there. You did the things. Yeah.
AP: So why did you want to join the air force? Why? Why did you want to join the air force?
CF: Well I’d never had much to do with the water so the navy was out for a start. The idea of being on a ship sailing around on water had no appeal. The army — well I had read a few books about World War One. In the trenches and such and again the idea of face to face, shall we say, bayonet and so forth didn’t appeal much to me and so I couldn’t see a place in the army for my clerical skills shall we say. That type of business. So the air force and being a navigator appealed to me. Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Fair enough. You were, I think you said ITS was at Bradfield Park. Your Initial Training School was at Bradfield Park?
CF: Yes. Don’t ask me why they sent a Melbourne boy, like a fella said to me when he went to do his initial training as a pilot, he lived in Adelaide and thought he’d go to Padfield or something.
AP: Parafield.
CF: And no. No. No. They sent him over to Wagga.
AP: Ask not. Just do.
CF: The mysteries of postings. Yes.
AP: What happened at ITS? What, what sorts of things did you — were you taught. What sort of things did you do?
CF: Well you learned the theory of flight was the main thing there. Why did a plane stay up shall we say. You did mathematics for your because later on your skill. You did plenty of PT to keep yourself in good fit there. Incidentally, the fittest I ever was after the army induction because we did marching, drill there. PT. And then we’d finish up at four in the afternoon with a swim in the [Goulburn River?] And at the end of six weeks of that or something like that we, at nineteen years of age you were very fit when you’d been doing all this exercise every day for six weeks sort of business there. Yeah. The [pause], I can’t really think what else you did in there as I say the theory of flight. The theory of there and as I say mathematics. And PT. Yeah. I can’t think of really much else you did in that sort of days. I didn’t ever keep any records of what we did but certainly when you were on the reserve they would send you homework to do on mathematics. Do that there. So we had a reasonable amount of mathematics in there. Teaching up at there. But now I can’t remember really much other than the fact that we did the mathematics and the theory of flight etcetera up at there. Yeah. They might have had something else up at there. I don’t think if that was the question when you know they would ask you how you got up there. Yeah.
AP: So the first time that you ever went in an aeroplane what aircraft was it? Where was it? And what did think?
CF: It was an Anson aircraft at Mount Gambier which was Number 2 Air Observer’s School. So that was where I go on from ITS to Mount Gambier. And we went on [pause] I think it was an initial flying thing. We flew over the land and we flew over the ocean. And I think that was, you might say, showing us what flying was about. I don’t think we did anything other than fly around and see what was there. Yeah. And the Anson. Yeah.
AP: Did you —
CF: And what was more you had to wind it up a hundred and six turns because you were the, you were there. The pilots wouldn’t wind it up. You were part of the crew who had to wind it up. Yeah.
AP: That’s the undercarriage. That’s the wheels.
CF: That was the navigation. Yes. And you flew two to a crew. Two to a crew. One was the navigator and the other was the secondary one who had to take some notes about the countryside. Yeah.
AP: Did you, did you encounter any accidents or incidents in that early training? Did you, did you see any or —
CF: No accidents in the early training.
AP: No.
CF: Australia had none of the training actually till I was a sergeant and I didn’t actually get involved in any accident that time at all. Sort of business there. No.
AP: Alright. Once you got your wings you passed out as a qualified navigator. You then went to the UK somehow. How did you get there?
CF: We actually went to Brisbane and we caught a American twelve thousand dollar victory ship. They were the ships that they were welding for the first time. They had the, what was the seven thousand tonnes was called the something or other. And I was on a twelve thousand tonne called the Sea Corporal. And we went from Brisbane to San Francisco. And the two things I remember was A) I could see a rain storm and I could see a rainstorm had length and it had width but living where I was in the sort of valley a bit really of Gardiner Creek you only ever saw the rain coming at you sort of business there. You could never see the width or the depth of it but then all of a sudden there you had the ocean. Look across there and there is a rain going across and it’s got width and it’s got length. And the other thing. One day we went into the doldrums when the sea is perfectly smooth. There was no waves crashing. Smooth. There’s no, not a ripple on the water. This was what the old time sailors with the sail used to dread getting. I can imagine. That’s it there. I saw that one day. Yeah. It was eerie to watch this, shall we say, waves — not raising high obviously but, you know, up in the air, yeah.
AP: Very nice. You got to the States. Did you spend any particular time in the USA or was it straight across?
CF: Oh we had six hours. We went to a place called Angel Island in San Francisco Bay which was an American camp and we were given six hours from 6 o’clock in the evening till midnight to see San Francisco. That was our time in San Francisco. Then the next day we caught a train. A train across America. And the great thing about that — on the Pullman carriages they had sleepers. Great thing. Yes. We had to sleep sitting up in Victoria. Well in Australia and in England and then we got to outside New York and we got three days leave in New York. And then we went down to the harbour to there and on one side was the Queen Elizabeth of eighty four thousand tonnes and on the other side was a boat, I’ve forgotten the name, fifty five thousand tonnes. And we had never seen a ship bigger than twenty thousand tons. So eyes opened up big and wide. We didn’t know actually we were going to go on, you see. We actually slept in the Queen Elizabeth. In the third class cinema with bunks three high. And they had something like twelve to fifteen thousand troops on. I understand the American soldiers had eight hours each to sleep. That was it. There was only one bed for three American soldiers when they were taking them across. Six were there. So that was — you had two meals a day. And you had about, I think about half an hour you were allowed up for fresh air once a — once a day you got half an hour on the deck to get a breath of fresh air or something. Because the Queen Elizabeth had done that trip, you know, how many times they had the work down to a fine art. You had to wear a colour patch on your uniform and you weren’t allowed to move outside that colour patch except to go down and have your meal. It was a highly organised thing of it sort of business there. Yes it was. Yeah.
AP: How long ago — sorry, how long did that take. That voyage.
CF: Five or six days it took us to get across. Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Not much fun. Not much fun.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Alright. You get to England. This is the first time —
CF: Actually you finish up in the Gourock in the Clyde. Firth of the Clyde.
AP: Ok.
CF: Yeah.
AP: You get to the UK though.
CF: You take the train down and in actual fact you get in the train and you go to Glasgow and then you come to a city that’s got a big castle. And it’s got Waverley. That’s when we asked where we were. ‘You’re at Waverley.’ We couldn’t find Waverley on the map. And of course later on, some a month or two or so later somebody went up to and said, ‘Hey that was Edinburgh.’ Waverley is the station like Flinders Street.
AP: Certainly is. This was the first time you were overseas.
CF: Yes. First time. No. Sorry the army was the first time I was outside Victoria.
AP: Really.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Ok. So as a young Australian, the first time you were overseas wartime England would have been fairly confronting I suppose. What did you think of wartime England when you first got there? What was it like?
CF: Well, wartime. We got there in April which was spring you might say. And we had seen many pictures of England. Of the green land and so forth there. And coming down from Scotland the land was open shall we say and pleasant and the main memory I got down there seeing, for instance all the poles to stop planes landing from the invasion and other matters that indicated there was a war on around the place and England, I read a book. The same thing. It seemed to fit in pretty clearly of what you’d seen in the papers shall we say because you weren’t looking at the slums of London or anything of that nature. We were at Brighton which was the big as you probably know was the big holiday resort with the pubs all along the front. Like something, you might say, like the Gold Coast or something or other like that. And plenty of, actually in peacetime B&Bs behind that, also around places etcetera there. But no England was comforting I would say. There was no problem in there and of course they spoke the language [laughs]
AP: What did you think of the people?
CF: Incidentally, going across to America we had one naive nineteen year old saying to some American officers talking about America and he said, ‘Won’t they think it funny we haven’t got an accent?’ Took the Americans about five minutes to calm down with their laughter.
AP: Fair enough. What did you think of the people in England? Did you, did you have much to do with the civilian population?
CF: Well as they said in the book of, “No Moon Tonight” the author said if there was ever a Commonwealth spirit it was in England during the war. There were no — the Canadian, the English and such and one of the great things about being an Australian was that there were no Australian army troops to stuff it up in England. The air force by and large were ground crew admittedly as well. But by and large the Australians over there were, shall we say middle class and educated and were very popular with the locals and with the girls. That’s it. Yeah. And we were pretty well paid shall we say. Not as well paid as the Americans but we had — yeah.
AP: What — what sort of things, when on leave and these could be at any point when you’re in England. When you’re on a squadron or when you’re in training. What sort of things did you get up to when you were on leave or when you were off duty?
CF: Well, I went on leave with Dan Lynch who — he’d been doing the first year of a medicine course so you might say that we, on leave looked at seeing what we could of England, Scotland and Wales sort of business of it there. So we were always looking for the views and what was there and the old castle and all those types of things of it there. We had a few drinks but basically we didn’t hang around the pubs etcetera there. We, we wanted to see the actual country and as a tourist shall we say there. Yeah. That was my particular little group of, shall we say half a dozen mates and so forth you mixed. In other words you soon found out who wants to, you know, we were friendly with a couple of older blokes who, you know. They were shall we say twenty five or twenty seven or something like that. They’d like to, and they were married they liked to just go down to the pub and just have a drink and a talk. That was fair enough. Whereas we would possibly pop into the pub for one or two drinks and then on to the dance or something of that nature of it there. Yeah. So, like, how things go, when we were at OTU we got a week’s leave and Dan Lynch and I went out and went to hitchhike a ride with the Americans trucks to Brum. Birmingham. And we –they pulled up and, ‘Where do you want to go.’ I said, ‘Birmingham,’ and, ‘That’s ok we’re going to Oxford.’ ‘Could we come to Oxford?’ ‘Oh yes. Hop in the back.’ So we finished up at Oxford. And the following night we went and saw a George Bernard Shaw play which I had never seen one before. But that’s, as I say, a mate of mine. Dan Lynch. He was, that was his culture more so than mine, shall we say, etcetera. Yeah there. Again it was mixed up with you that for instance out of hours, 7 that was what we had to go to get back by the way that we picked up with the English. Bill Stanley and Dan and I would often make a three and go to the dance shall we say. Whereas the navigator Jack Bennett would then be he was a bit of a, he had a couple of other blokes or something. He was chasing the girls and so forth there. And he would, he’d go there and go sometimes with Shorty and the pilot. They tended to do other things shall we say. Yeah. But that was it. You, you soon found the people that wanted to do things that you wanted to do. Yeah.
AP: Did you spend much time in London? Did you spend much time in London?
CF: No.
AP: Not at all.
CF: No. We thought, having had a good look around London on a couple of occasions when we were there. No we didn’t spend, we spent some time there but no we wanted to, when we went on leave we would head down to either Cornwall and Devon or John O’Groats up in Scotland. We never made either place, or land. We didn’t make Lands End. We didn’t make John O’Groats but we would head off with a pass and went off with a thing and we’d stay one day, two days, three days and then all of a sudden realise that we’ve only got two days left. Perhaps we had better in that case make a firm plan where we’d go but that was it. Yeah. We went we made the opportunity. The one little group I sort of mixed around in was to see as much of England, Scotland and Wales as possible in the time. Yeah. In fact, Ireland as well. When the war was over, over there I actually went over to Ireland. Yeah. Where my Irish grandfather came from.
AP: Excellent. What did, what were your thoughts when you finally got out of that Wellington? Or the Wellingtons that kept having engine failures.
CF: Yeah.
AP: And you’re now on four engine aeroplanes. You’re looking at a Lancaster for the first time.
CF: Well, wait a second. When I, when after the Wellington crashed or when we moved in to the Lancaster.
AP: Sorry. In general. When you moved on. So you’ve left the Wellingtons behind.
CF: Left it behind you. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Thank goodness for that.
CF: The old story was that the following day we went flying and that crash was they rolled the Wellington. That’s what happened. We didn’t suffer any and our main thought then was we’d got a bloody good pilot who didn’t panic. He did everything he could to keep the aircraft going and so forth. Safety sort of business of it there. Because as I said they found out that aircraft somehow had not been modified. I never found out why and so forth. Anyway, no, you, we were young. You got on with it and when you got to a Lancaster well let’s face it, let’s say the Lancaster at the Heavy Conversion Unit might have been a little battered but it was better than the Wellington. At the OTU sort of business there. Yeah. And you had four engines too. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. You didn’t worry too much about that.
AP: Can you, can you describe for me what the navigator’s position on the Lancaster is like? What? What’s there when you’re sitting at your desk. What’s around you and what’s it like?
CF: Well a Lancaster you had first of all you were the pilot and the flight engineer stood alongside of each other with the great things in front of them. You, then there was a big black curtain could be pulled across there where [unclear] and you actually faced sideways with a desk in front of you and therefore in front of you you had a compass which theoretically agreed with the compass in the — [paused]. You had to check that there because sometimes it didn’t. And you then had a set for the Gee which you used frequently. You read the thing and you got two, and two things on that and then you plotted on a special sheet which curved and let there. And then you had a, then a thing for the, on the side, for the H2S when you had that equipped on it there. And the rest of the thing of course your tables had your log and most of all you had your flight plan which you drew on as you went along and filled the detail in it there. So you had a couple of pencils and a compass and you had then a, the calculator. I’m trying to think of the name that is that you put your thing on and drew a couple of things on. It was a calculator for navigators to use. I’m trying to think of the name of it now. Yeah. That was it. At that stage you hadn’t, the navigator didn’t have a drift recorder and the ones we had which you had in the Anson and so forth to get there but when you had the Gee in the aircraft you didn’t need that. You had your map on there. Yeah. So as I say you sat on the side and then as I say you had a curtain between you and the, really, flight engineer and then you had a curtain on the other side to keep the light going out that way type of business of it there. So you were in your little cocoon with the light going on. As they said one navigator came out of the second or third raid and had a look at it, and said, ‘Bloody hell,’ and he said he never looked, he never would come out of his cocoon again. He didn’t want to see it.
AP: Did you ever have a look at a target? Did you ever come out and have a look?
CF: No. I went out and had a look. As one navigator said if you’re coming this far let’s have a look. But as they say in my thing that I had down there that on my first trip we were down for a place near Cologne which is in the Ruhr. Where the ack ack is pretty severe and the point was that we got there. We — ok there. Everything was going nice and easily and you’re thinking it’s a nice and easy sort of business there and then you see what’s there. But the bomb aimer’s there and he says everything and then all of a sudden he says, you know, ‘Bomb doors. Bomb doors closed.’ That’s the thing and then he called down a rather, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’ I must admit that the rest of the crew including me were feeling much the same way as he was feeling. This is no, no place to be for us nice blokes. That was straight out of there and say, as we were flying across occupied France and Germans had —half an hour later something after we’d dropped the bomb or something, maybe there, a shot come up and went through our wing and kept on going thank God. And it was dark. You couldn’t see outside and our pilot, having already done one trip as a second pilot said, ‘Oh it’s alright boys. A near miss.’ And about twenty minutes later when daylight appeared the mid-upper gunner said, You’ve got a bloody big hole in the wing,’ [laughs]. But that’s it. We got back home and we felt a bit guilty that, bringing back an aircraft another crew normally flew with a hole in the wing. As if we had been a bit careless about the whole thing. Yeah.
AP: That sort of leads on to the next question. The ground crew. What sort of relationship did you have with your ground crew?
CF: I didn’t have much of a relationship because as the navigator I was working up to the last minute finishing the plan we’d been told and so forth. And I was taken out to the aircraft just before it was time to — I never, never really saw the ground crew at all. And of course when we got back there was a no talk for the crew. So I had no relationship with the ground crew for the simple reason, as I say, that I didn’t — I was not there like the rest of the crew had been out doing a check and so forth etcetera there. But I was a late comer because I was there and sometimes you got you had to then finish your flight plan because you hadn’t had time to finish it beforehand. Yeah. So our pilot had a good relationship with the ground staff. I don’t know about the other crew members that were there as to whether they did or didn’t. I have a feeling that we only did seven trips so we weren’t there a long time and I don’t think, I think basically our flight engineer and our pilot had a good relationship with the ground crew but the other members I don’t think they really had much relationship with them type of thing.
AP: Alright. I’ve done that. Were there any superstitions or rituals that you, either that your crew took part in or that you saw in the squadron? Hoodoos or anything like that?
CF: No. No. I heard of various rituals and odds and sods but as far as I know there was no rituals about you always wore a blue tie or a certain hankie or something or other. As far as I know, in our particular crew, there was never any particular ritual, as you said. Some crews there was a ritual something or other but with our crew as far as I know there wasn’t any.
AP: Did you have any nose art painted on your aeroplane or were you not there long enough? Did you have anything painted on the front of your, on the nose of your aeroplane.
CF: No.
AP: You weren’t there long enough.
CF: No. No.
AP: That’s alright. Just thought I’d ask the question. So oh that was what I was going to ask you. As the navigator you’re working pretty hard when you’re flying. I believe it was fixing a position every six minutes or something along those lines. Can you remember much of the process of the actual physical what you were doing?
CF: Well when you were in England and you had the Gee which gave you your position, as you, I think you mentioned, every six minutes. You had to get a reading where you were and from that you had to work out the wind that had blown in the last six minutes and then readjust your flight plan as to whether to tell the pilot to change course if so what to change to. And you also had to check your estimated time of arrival likewise. Every six minutes. Which meant that you were working steadily shall we say? Yes. Yeah. As I say that was the great thing as I was good at mathematics I could, I could meet those six minutes all right shall we say. Yeah. Yes.
AP: And when, when you were no longer —
CF: And then once you, once you got over Germany and your Gee was jammed or you had difficulty getting a good reading because Gee lines were curved and over a certain distance they tended to merge into each so you could you know could be a half an inch deciding where they actually crossed sort of business there. But when you, after that you were dependant on if the bomb aimer can tell you something and sometimes the Pathfinders would drop a light to say this is the turning point to something of that nature there which I don’t remember ever having that myself. And basically we were flying on what information we’d had and anything we’d had in the first half hour or so or an hour or so of flying. And that’s one thing. When we started operations the [pause] see this was the — we started in March ‘45 the actual operations and the, that stage they were getting into the German border which meant that you possibly had a couple of hours of what the actual wind was that you could do yourself, sort of business a bit there. Other than that you flew on your flight plan and if you were over cloud, well, there and there were at times a wind direction might be come over from the Pathfinders. They might send it back if the wind was so and so and you might get a thing from them. Very rarely we did that but I heard it happened at times. We basically flew on DR. Dead reckoning. Once you got past the, into the German jamming and so forth there. Yeah. And of course it was always nice to see the Pathfinders drop the markers and you got off the course. Or you could see them ahead of yourself. Yes.
AP: The [pause] alright, what was the drill if one of your gunners spotted a night fighter and said, ‘Corkscrew. Port. Go.’ From your perspective as a navigator what happened next?
CF: Never happened to us fortunately there but as a navigator you mean when they said, ‘Go.’ Well, as a navigator you just sit there and grind your teeth or something or other. Or say, that there is nothing you could do and the only great thing what you had to do was to make sure that the, your gear on your desk when they flew into a steep curve didn’t go flying anywhere. And particularly because I remember the first time when we’d been practicing doing it for the first time when the pilot flew it down and the bomb aimer for some reason was having a rest on the bed, the rest bed which went along the aircraft. And my compasses flew up in the air and was flying towards him. And he was trying to push away this compass coming at him. At that — so I learned from that that if there was at any time the first thing I would do would be yes to put my hand on my gear and hold it there.
AP: Hold on for dear life.
CF: But fortunately I didn’t have to do that. Yeah.
AP: Ok. You mentioned something when we were at the RSL at Caulfield the other day. At the EATS lunch. You came up and you said something happened on Anzac Day 1945.
CF: Happened on —
AP: Anzac Day 1945. You haven’t told me that story yet.
CF: Well that’s what I’m getting on to later on. That was the, in actual fact that’s the day we got shot down.
AP: That’s what I was hoping you’d say.
CF: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: Please tell me about that experience.
CF: Yeah. Well I’ll tell you about the whole story. That’s part of my story.
AP: That’s part of your story.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Well ok.
CF: In actual fact I did that for this group, did one and I got for what turned out to be would I have my photograph taken and I said yes and I turned up like this and the, I found out that there was a team of five or six people. Not just one from the publicity. And one wanted the story and one wanted a photograph and so forth there. And I finished up getting my medals out and having a photograph taken and then they said, ‘Would you say a few words?’ I said, ‘Well a couple.’ A few words turned into, ‘Will you make a ten minute speech?’ So I finished up making a ten minute speech which described what happened from the day before when we were on the battle order which was the, picked like lead teams. That was the team that picked for the following day which was Anzac day. And my story lasted from there till the time that [pause] where does that go? Till the time we got to the Stalag. That’s right. Yeah. Ten minute speech. Yeah.
AP: Well I’ve got to the point in my questions now where we’ve been talking about operations so this is probably an appropriate time to carry on with your story if you —
CF: Yeah.
AP: If you’re happy to do so.
CF: Yeah. Yes. Well as I say. Right. Ok. Well now. Where were we? We’d got [pause] oh we got to Heavy Conversion Unit. I got introduced there, that I forgot to mention the fact that we picked up a flight engineer there. English flight engineer at the, when we got to Lindholme we picked up a English engineer. He had been, he was one of those fellows who’d been trained as a pilot and been sitting around for eight or ten weeks doing nothing and therefore he volunteered to go to go to a six weeks to be flight engineer and therefore get into operations. So we finished up, as I say a bit there that he was happy to fly with an Australian crew and we were happy to have him as a second pilot shall we say because he was a qualified pilot on it there. And he did a little bit of flying of the Lancaster while we were there and while we were at 460 so that he could take over if anything happened to our pilot. It was reassuring to have him. Yeah. Yeah. So then we get to, let me see, then we get to the 460 in March. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Ok. We start on that now?
AP: Yeah. Go for it.
CF: While at the start of our Heavy Conversion Unit we met up with our new flight engineer required for a Lancaster. He — name of Rick Thorpe and he came from Sheffield in Yorkshire. He was happy to join an Australian crew and we were happy to have him as a flight engineer and second pilot if necessary. We finished our training at HCU in March ‘45 and was transferred to Australian squadron number 460 at, near the village of Binbrook in the Lincolnshire. We did a training trip and the [pause] our skipper then did a second dickey trip with an experienced crew over Germany and after he came back about three days later we were on the battle order for that night. And we had the briefing. Found out we were going to bomb [Bruckstrasse?] which was a town close to [pause] what was it? Cologne. Everything went well. We took off at about 1.45 in the morning. Flew to [Bruckstrasse?] Started our bomb run. Everything was going nicely along. Nobody was saying anything. There was radio silence except for the navigator. The bomb aimer giving directions. And then the bomb aimer said, ‘Bombs gone. Bomb doors closed. Let’s get the bloody hell out of this,’ in a rather excited voice. And the rest of the crew felt that they had the same feelings. It was time to go. And on the way back across occupied France the plane got a shudder and the pilot told us that it was a near miss but it was dark at the time. Twenty minutes later when daylight came they found out that they had a hole in the wing that the shell had gone right through. We went back somewhat shamefaced that we’d injured the plane that was usually flown by one of the more experienced pilots. We then did several more trips and went ok. And then we went to Potsdam which was our longest trip to that date and as we dropped our bombs on Potsdam we were grabbed by the searchlights circuit and that’s very dangerous because the guns keep following those searchlights. And we dived very, very smartly and very steeply and heaven knows what speed we got to but we got out of the searchlights and flew back home. We did a trip to Bremen and as we were starting our bomb run the word came over, the code word, ‘Marmalade,’ which means cancelled. No bombs. So we had to dodge over Bremen to miss the flak and come home and land with a five or ten tons of bombs. Then on the 24th of April we were on the bomb order for the following day which would be our seventh flight. And wake up time was 2.15 am. So an early night. Up next morning, breakfast, flight plan, briefing and we were going to Berchtesgaden area. Not the town. In two waves. The first wave of a hundred and eighty planes was to bomb the houses of Hitler and all the Nazi leaders who’d also built their holidays home there and the communication centre and administration buildings. The second wave, of which we were one were to bomb the barracks of the Gestapo and the army that were looking after the Nazi leaders and their communication centre and administration quarters. That was one hour later. We took off just after 5 o’clock in the morning and flew down to the meeting point, joined the gaggle and were flying over The Channel and along over the French countryside. It was a lovely day. Beautiful blue sky. No clouds. Green fields, lakes and rivers down below and on the right was the majestic Alps and with the snow shining on the snow tops. Absolute picture book. We got near the target area and I left my table and moved behind. Ten inches behind the seat of the engineer because on the floor was a parcel of metal strips for [pause] we looked ahead, the flak looked light-medium so no worries. And the bomb aimer took over and he said, ‘Left. Left.’ And then, ‘Bombs gone. Bomb doors closed.’ And as he finished that word we were hit and something flew up past my face and out over the roof. And I looked down and in the centre of the parcel there was a jagged hole. In the meantime the pilot and the engineer were closing down the starboard engine which was a mess and the two inner motors which had also gone. So we were flying on one engine and an empty Lancaster will fly on one engine. The pilot checked the crew and found that everybody was ok. And he then said that the port outer engine, the remaining one was not giving full power and perhaps it would be best if we jumped while he had full control. Nobody wanted to jump. And the flight engineer said, ‘But we can’t do that Lofty. We’re over the Germany.’ At the time I thought that was a very sensible remark. Then we decided that we would try to reach the line of the allied army but very quickly the port, the remaining engine stopped and we were gliding and we had to go. And the drill was to all escape underneath the plane so you wouldn’t get hit by the tail plane. And the bomb aimer was the first to go and the four others all followed in due rate. And then the rear gunner appeared with the parachute in his arms. It had caught on the way up and opened. The pilot told him to get the spare parachute. He came back to say it wasn’t there. Later we found that they had taken it out to repack it and not — failed to replace it. The pilot then made a very very brave decision that rather than leave the rear gunner to his fate he would try and make a crash landing. At this time there was petrol floating around on the floor of the cockpit. His chances weren’t too good but he found that with the five men gone, the petrol also gone and such the plane would glide much better. And he saw a field down below of what looked like wheat and he glided the plane down. Dodged some wires close and put it down on a cornfield. They then both got out of the plane. Ran forty or fifty yards. Threw themselves down on the ground, looked back waiting for the explosion but nothing happened. The earth they’d driven into had apparently put out the flames. But appeared four Hitler youth boys aged about fourteen or so carrying a couple of machine guns which they pointed at the two Australians who were pretty worried. The boys were very excited. Talking to each other. And then along came the Volkssturm. The German Home Guard who took over and took the two Australians back to the regular army. Harry, the pilot, Harry was interrogated by a very high German officer there who said to him, ‘Why are you Australians here? We haven’t got any argument with Australia.’ Harry didn’t attempt to explain it but — meanwhile I had parachuted down to the ground and landed near a couple of houses in which the housewives were standing. Presumably looking at me coming down. And I hastily unbuckled my harness and parachute and left it there and went, walked quickly over to where there was a large clump of trees. The Volkssturm didn’t take long to turn up and no doubt the ladies pointed out where I was. And they were — I thought they said, ‘Pistol? Pistol?’ and patted me. I said, ‘No, and shook my head very vigorously. They said, ‘Parachute.’ and I just raised my eyebrows there and I assume that the couple of German ladies would be wearing silk underwear in the future. They took me to an army camp where there were my, the [unclear] were, was there and in the next couple of hours along came the mid-upper gunner and the flight engineer. And two or three hours after that again the pilot and the rear gunner appeared. The remaining member of the crew, the bomb aimer dropped first. He landed in the snow in the foothills and was captured by the mountain troops who took him deeper into the mountains and he actually didn’t get out of there till two days after the war ended. On May the 10th. The Americans turned up there. We were taken from the camp into the town where they had taken over the hotel as a headquarters and we were put in a room and finally given a piece of dry bread and it was covered in honey and ersatz cup of coffee. There was no hostility there. They were, but they were treating us as prisoners but not close guard. And came the evening light was there and we were put in the back of a covered wagon with the parachute of the, we think, the flight engineer. And we left there with a couple of guards. You might say nominal. Nobody was taking it too seriously. And we drove into the mountains and through the night. There was lots of traffic both ways on the roads. The Germans were using the darkness to avoid the allied fighters who were everywhere. And we then changed over half way across. We changed over to an open truck and we got under the parachute to open the parachute. Yeah. And at 6 o’clock we arrived at the Stalag 7a. Moosburg. Where they opened, a couple of the allied troops actually opened a couple of Red Cross parcels and fed us some breakfast which was very welcome. They then drove us further on to a communication centre at [Mainwaring?] about twenty kilometres away. And that afternoon the interrogating officer had Lofty, our pilot, in and asked him the questions and they got the usual answers there. And they said where, ‘Where do you come from?’ Lofty said, ‘West Australia.’ And the interrogating officer said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I know that quite well. I was an agent out there on several occasions for German firms buying wheat and wool.’ And Lofty said we then had a chat about the west Australian back countryside of which he knew more than I did. And then he said, ‘Well you’d better get back to your crew.’ So he said that was the interrogation. The Germans had given up. And the next morning, we stayed the night there and the next morning we were taken back to the Stalag on a tray, a horse tray with two horses to carry us back to the thing and we did a mixture of walking and sitting on the truck. And we talked to various Australians along the way who had been working on the farms. Where was the question? And we got back to the Stalag and the chief Australian officer said, ‘Do you know what’s going to happen to us prisoners when the allies arrive?’ And our pilot said, ‘Oh yes. We’re going to be taken back to England in the back of bombers.’ ‘Oh,’ said the group captain, ‘How would you know?’ Our pilot said, ‘Well the day before we got shot down they marked twenty five places on our plane where people could sit.’ ‘Oh.’ That was the end of that. The, on the 29th of April the American 14th Division came in and we were free. But it was some time before we got back to England.
AP: And you did go back to England in the back of a bomber. Did you go back to England in the back of a bomber?
CF: Yes. I think that’s about enough there but in actual fact what happened was that was the 29th of May. On May the 1st, yeah the 29th of April, May the 1st two days later General Patton arrived sitting on the front of a truck and at least a hundred correspondents and photographers if not a thousand were there and he announced that we would all be home in two or three days. Back in England in two or three days. And the, some of the Americans would be back in America in two to three weeks. At which the old timers such as me and such were a little bit cynical because of the amount of numbers. And we, yeah, so we sat in the Stalag with the — somehow or other the food was still coming in and the Red Cross parcels were being tapped and so forth. There wasn’t much difference under the Americans than there was under the Germans shall we say because I wasn’t going to go out into the town that I couldn’t speak the language and there were some wild people around. And, yes, I stayed in camp. But the long term prisoners who could speak German went into the town and in actual fact slept in some of the houses because the German, the German civilians liked to have you sleeping in their house if you were well behaved. There was no, any wild men turned up in the middle of the night sort of business, there. On the 7th of May. The night of the 6th of May we were told the following morning at 5 o’clock we would be taken by semi-trailer to air strips where we would be loaded on DC3s. A Dakota who would take us to the main ports, airports where we would then get into either American or British bombers. On the 7th of May we got up at 5 o’clock and duly got on the back of semi-trailers there and we were driven, I reckon forty odd kilometres if not more to an airstrip, a grass airstrip and quite a few. A big crowd. Only a few planes turned up. And therefore that night we were taken back to the German, at Ingolstadt the German. And we did some souveniring of some German wear and tear. And they took us back to the airstrip again the following day. And that was May 8th. Everybody was celebrating. One plane turned up, don’t ask me how they got to one plane there. So at lunchtime, by then the fella in charge of the shipment out said, ‘Go away and have a swim in the river or whatever you do. There’s nothing. Nobody is going to come in today and get it there.’ So an, sorry English long term prisoner who slept just near where I was in the hut said, ‘Oh come into town.’ I said, ‘ Oh ok.’ He said, ‘We’ll go and get, go in to the house and get some hot water for which we’ll give them American cigarettes,’ which were a very strong bartering tool and we’ll take some coffee in. He said, ‘I’ve got some of the stuff that the Americans who got taken out yesterday left on the ground. And let’s put it this way. A long term prisoner never threw anything away. You could, if you didn’t want it you could barter it for something else. And, ‘Yeah. Ok,’ and we went in and I don’t know whether he’d sized it up before we went in this house and we saw them and said you know could we get some water for a wash and a shave and we got some American cigarettes. And yes that’s ok. So we had a wash and a shave and then we said we’d got some coffee and they said yeah. So we were there and two daughters appeared aged, well they might have been nineteen, twenty, twenty one. Some like that age. And we found out that they had married some local boys who had then been grabbed by the army where ever it was. They were taken into Stalingrad. Do you know? Have you heard of Stalingrad?
AP: Yes.
CF: And as such they wondered whether they’d ever see their husbands again, sort of business, there. So that was their message. That we were celebrating the end of the war and they of course weren’t celebrating. And the two daughters were wondering you know just what the bloody hell was going to be the future of them. Anyway we had some nice cup of coffee with them. We having produced the coffee grains there to do it. Yeah. And we went back to the camp and we were taken to a jail that night and there was a bit of a fire about four in the morning or something or other. Some screaming. We got out of that and went and spent the rest of the night back at the airfield and using the overcoats that had all been abandoned by the, because they wouldn’t let you take overcoats on planes. It would make the load too heavy. And that was the 8th. The 9th and the 10th a few planes came in and the English bloke with the German language and so forth managed to wangle himself on one of the planes. So we didn’t go back to the house again and we just filled in the day just walking around. It was nice warm weather and such. So on the 11th there we were having breakfast. Oh we slept out those two nights using the overcoats and so what shelter there was and such so the following morning we’re there and the whole bloody plane, DC3s turned up. So we have to grab what breakfast we could and go and get ready, ready to go and you know make up plans. You had to go and list. Before you got on a plane you had to list everybody who was getting on the plane so if anything happened you knew what was happening . So we got taken to Rheims. To the small aerodrome and then we were taken by semi-trailer across to the major airport which of, was Juvencourt which was, you know, had about, probably had about five runways. Whatever it is. Anyway, we got there and I was allocated to a New Zealand Lancaster crewed by new Zealanders. And the pilot — I’d been in advanced flying unit with him six months before. He looked at me a bit surprised. ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘What the bloody hell do you think I’m doing?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Come and sit alongside me.’ So I, I didn’t sit in my designated spot but sat alongside him and got quite a nice view as we flew back. So anyway I was back on the 11th but the rear gunner, the bloke in there, he got back late on the 7th. He was the only one that came through on the one day where we were at the whole five thousand were supposed to do or something or other. Don’t ask me who was doing the statistics and everything around the place. Anyway, he got through on the night of the 7th and he was tired and they slept at some English ‘drome near London. Were there when fighter ones probably saw it and in the morning he and the other blokes hopped in a bus or something or other. He said, ‘What’s all the people wandering around shouting and jumping and everything else.’ ‘Oh the war’s finished. They’re celebrating.’ They said, ‘Oh is it?’ Oh. So he said he got down to Brighton on the 8th. The mid-upper gunner and the wireless operator had got as far as Holland no the 7th in other words but there was no plane to take them back to England that night. And so they got back on the 8th. That’s three. We don’t know what happened to the English engineer, he, after that he didn’t reply to any mail or anything etcetera. That was four. That’s right. So I got back on the 11th when, as I say, I got back to England on the 11th and the pilot actually stayed another four days after this. He didn’t leave the Stalag until about the 11th. Then he got flown to Nancy and then he took the train to the [pause] somewhere near the English Channel. And then flew across The Channel. He got back about the 15th. So if you get the idea that all your POWs are going to be flown back home in two days [laughs] — but I will say this much. We got very well treated when we got back to Brighton. In England. There, we got special treatment from there and when I went on leave I got, I think quadruple rations, I think, to take to the people I stayed with etcetera. Yeah. I got very well looked after. So that was the story of there. That as I say and that’s one thing on the DC3s you get quite a nice view of the Maginot and the what’s the name, the Siegfried Line. And all the debris of war was still spread out across the countryside shall we say. Nobody had had time to clear it up. It was, it’s out of the way, just leave it there and we’ll do it next week or something or other like that. The debris was and the bridges had been blown up and you could see what war had done to the countryside. You know. Yes. Oh yes. So that’s the story.
AP: Well I have three more questions.
CF: Yeah.
AP: Alright. So after that experience you came home to Australia. What did you do? How did you adjust back to normal life again?
CF: I had very little time adjusting back shall we say. And for instance my mate, Dan Lynch, who I, he was Tasmanian but he’d come over to Melbourne and he stayed in Melbourne and did the, went to the Melbourne University and got a degree in biology and then joined the fisheries and game department as their first biologist actually. And I formed a lifelong friendship and so I for the next few years while we were batchelors we saw a lot of each other. As we did with another couple of fellas who we trained with — Frank Kelly and John Hodson etcetera there. Yes. Four bachelors played around and one went up to The Northern Territory and then three bachelors played around. Yeah. So we all, as far, we all seemed, we all seemed to get pretty much, Frank actually I know started to do a course on something. I forget now. But he gave that away and then he got a job with a international there. The motors and so forth with them and from there he moved on to the South Melbourne City Council. I got a job back with a small building firm that I’d worked with and went back there. And went and did my accounting studies and then moved to a job with what was then Vacuum Oil which is now Mobil oil there. And Dan, as I say, got this thing and then he got a job. Those three of us, none of us had any, well as I say Frank had got shot down. And Dan and I had got shot down. And in actual fact the other fellow, John Hodson, he was sick one night. Didn’t fly. His crew didn’t return. So he had to get another crew etcetera. He, he, he sort of felt the war, shall we say, more than he did because he’d been pretty friendly with that crew and did a lot with them whereas we didn’t lose over there the same feeling as he got. And we also adjusted quite well to doing it there and I don’t quite know. By and large aircrew seemed to adjust pretty well back to there. Maybe the fact that we did it at remote distances as distinct to fellas that were there but on the other hand there were like the other day one fellow who didn’t do too well. And I know another fellow who didn’t, for thirty years did nothing because his best mate had got killed on 460 Squadron. I don’t know much about it. His third of fourth trip the plane crashed and killed the whole lot. Now why the plane crashed about twenty miles from base I don’t know. It could have been that something had been frayed and wear and tear over those next hundred miles might have caused something and all of a sudden some control might have snapped and the plane went in before the pilot could do anything about it. If he was flying at only a couple of thousand feet ready to land you don’t know. But that fella wouldn’t just come, for thirty years he wouldn’t come back to the air force. So there were people who were affected by the things but in my immediate knowledge of the people I trained with and saw a lot of in the next few years, none of them suffered from any kind of mental stress that showed in any way at all, sort of business there. So it did appear that being possibly a little bit away from it and so forth there but that’s how it goes on it there. In actual fact my biggest loss was a friend I grew up with who joined the air force before I did and went up to New Guinea. And on his first flight was shot down and he was injured and captured by the Japanese and the bloody Japanese sergeant then bloody murdered him. Which was a nasty one at the time but you know that one of your boys had not only not killed in action but bloody murdered sort of business there and we were told like, and the family afterwards said that they were told that they, that sergeant had been killed and they couldn’t do anything about it as a result sort of business. But that was the only, really he was the only one that was, really hurt me shall we say. My brother was in the army in the anti-aircraft in New Guinea but he was ok. And the other as I said this mate of mine. This is the odds of course. In Berkeley Street which is the next street to where I was in Kooyongkoot Road, Hawthorn. My mate did the thirty trips. The one that was there. Next door to him was a fella called Bob Benber who later became a big dealer in the insurance industry. He did a trip and got his DFC. And exactly opposite them was where Alec Wilde who did two trips — two tours. A tour and then another tour with 460. They all survived. And Kooyongkoot Road where I lived there was this lad I was telling you about got killed by the Japanese. I was a prisoner of war and a little further up the street was a fellow who was captured in the army at Crete. So two streets, three blokes all had tough luck. Next street three blokes who lived as close as you could possibly get all survived Bomber Command which was a dangerous place. Don’t ask me about the statistics. Yeah.
AP: Someone. One of my interview people said, ‘That’s the important thing in war. To have good fortune,’ he said.
CF: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: That, yeah. That’s exactly what you just explained.
CF: Yeah.
AP: I’m getting closer. I have two more questions. You mentioned when, I think it was your pilot, Harry, was being interrogated or when he was captured the German asked him, ‘You’re Australian. Why are you fighting us?’ I’m just curious. If he had attempted to explain why Australia was there what might he have said? What I’m interested in is why was Australia there?
CF: Well Lofty was not shall we say a well-educated man. He was a country boy. Grew up in the wheat fields and then moved into Perth. As such his, I don’t quite know what he might have said actually with his background of it there. It’s a little hard to say what you would say on it there. And whether he might have said, you know, we were fighting for the king or something. I can’t quite, can’t quite imagine him saying kind of thing that er. We were fighting. The best thing I could say he’d say we’re fighting because you Germans are threatening the rest of the whole of the world. Something of that nature is about all I think he might have said at that stage. But as I said he was not well educated in the sense of the word. He was a doer rather than a thinker type of business there. But as for a man in an emergency he comes out much higher than anybody else I know.
AP: I guess he was tested there.
CF: In other words, we said on his eightieth, so much so that both Dan and I worked it out that we would be in Perth around his eightieth birthday and we then took him up to Frasers restaurant, by name. Which is the big restaurant in Perth overlooking the township from what’s its name there? Have you been there at all? Anyway, we went there and we said, I said, ‘Except for picking our wives — Dan’s wife was there so she said, Thank you Colin.’ Picking Harry as a pilot was the best personnel decision we ever made. And he said, ‘Yes. I agree entirely. It was the best personnel decision that we made.’ And as you heard before we just about picked his crew for him. But as I said he was, we were right he was a solid citizen and that was it type of business of it there. He’s the type of bloke thank you want in your back line I suppose, at football. Sturdy. Dependable. And always be there. Yes. Yes a real bloke. A pity of it that they only had one daughter who was a smart lady. In actual fact she didn’t get married. Yeah. You could pass some of his genes down shall we say but there it is. Yes. Yes. He died some years ago and I flew over for his wedding [laughs] for his wedding — for his funeral and made a speech on there. Yes.
AP: The final question and probably the most important one. In your opinion what is Bomber Command’s legacy? What is the legacy of Bomber Command and how do you want it to be remembered?
CF: Well I’m not too sure where Bomber Command stands at the moment as you said. The thing is that hurt most of all that Churchill deserted Bomber Command. In fact he did it there and the — Harris, the one said he was sitting with on May 8th listening to, with the head of the American bombers and they listened and he mentioned Fighter Command and Transport Command and Coastal Command. Not one word one way or the other was Bomber Command in the Churchill’s speech of the victory over Germany mentioned. And in actual fact a couple of there before that after he was the man who agreed with Stalin that Bomber Command would bomb Dresden and he then sent the message back to the head of the air force — Portal. Who then passed the message down to Harris. And as Harris said all he said was the decision was made by somebody much more powerful than me and he was quite aware that no doubt he had a good relationship with Portal. He was probably mentioned of it there and he [pause] that, that hurt most of all. That later on there but that was it. When the war was close to finishing and all of a sudden shall we say the bishops and the [unclear] were saying oh we shouldn’t have bombed. Oh no. Look. Bombings nothing supposed to be like that. It’s just supposed to be drop a little bit in their garden or something. Look. Look at all the houses you’ve knocked down. Look at all the [pause] No. So in England there was great horror that those nice German people they used to see on holidays had been. Yeah. Anyway. The point is that it should always be remembered that the amount that Bomber Command did for the — well they sunk more capital ships then the navy and as Harris said didn’t even get a thank you [laughs] The army in the war in Europe would go back, instead of calling up the artillery they would call up Harris and say would you drop a few bombs on something or other on the business of it there. And while the, for instance the Americans got — grabbed a lot of praise for stopping the advance the Germans made in December, January sort of business there. Nobody ever mentioned that Bomber Command went and, in the, where there were the roads, two very important roads crossed. That Bomber Command just blasted that crossing out of action and nothing could move through there for another twenty four to forty eight hours. Reinforcements and so forth etcetera. That sort of thing never got talked about. Yeah. Well the thing is that in more recent times they have come around to realising that Bomber Command did a lot of things there. And one of the things that they did was that they bombed the artificial petrol factories there and the German fighters basically from the invasion on, or before the invasion were short of their hundred degree err hundred octane petrol because of the artificial petrol being made from coal — I think it was about eighty seven where they wanted a hundred. So they had to add things to it to make it a hundred and the, from before that the German fighters were not sent up anywhere near as often because they were trying to save petrol and of course the funny thing was that [pause] what is really never said and that is both against the Japanese and the Germans that the code breakers were able to get the messages that had been tracked on the wireless and they could then tell you what was going to, they could then tell you what was going to happen, sort of business of it there, and they never got the accolades. It did sort of business of it there. Because anyway they got the message and Churchill and the head of the army, the head of the navy and the head of the air force and I think about two other leading politicians etcetera there. I’m not too sure. They were the only ones that were allowed to be given the information that was coming through and they knew how it got there. So Portal, as the head of the air force knew that the Germans were short of petrol. Not only for their planes but for their tanks and so forth etcetera there. And he’s wanting Harris to really bomb the artificial factories more, more, more, and Harris who’s been told over the years it’s ball bearings, its gear boxes, there’s something else that was going to win the war was getting this message about it, about this. And in fact that it got to the point when Harris said to Portal, ‘Well if you don’t like my bombing programme I’ll hand my resignation in and you can get somebody who will do it.’ Portal couldn’t say, ‘I’ve got this information.’ You could understand why Harris was irate. So it was a bit tricky for some months there as to a bit of a chill between them because one knew all the information he was right but on the other hand he could understand why the other one was arguing against it there. But oh well it’s like there and I think in the last few years that the Bomber Command has been done there but it will never get the credit because it certainly did the damage and I must admit when you see the damage that Bomber Command did they did it, sort of business. And probably this is the old story of course people say oh they should have stopped it much earlier and you ask people in January ‘45 how long would the war last? You know. January February. Could go on for twelve months or so. And they say well why didn’t they stop doing it etcetera there. They probably could have stopped it a little earlier but it’s very difficult to say. Nobody knew that Hitler was going to commit suicide. If they knew that Hitler would commit suicide. Ok. Sort of business there. But as I say our raid that we got shot down on was completely unnecessary because Hitler was never going to come back to Berchtesgaden but a lot of people thought he was and he did sort of the business of it there. Ah yes I was quite glad as several leading people have said there, said the main character is that, I’m trying to this of his name. He said — he was a farmer in the Wagga area and he and another fella in Wagga further on he said, the war as he saw it was it’s like how you are at home. If there’s a fire or a flood on a neighbours territory you down tools and go over and help him. And he said, that’s what we were doing. Australia. England was in trouble and we were going over to help it sort of business of it there.’ And he [pause] Bill Brill and Arthur.
AP: Doubleday. Doubleday.
CF: Yeah. Yes. They had amazing bloody careers on there and I read somewhere that neither ever had to bring back an injured crew member. Absolutely amazing the fact that they had flown. Each of them had done sixty trips or something or other. Or more. Just one of those things. Yeah.
AP: Well that’s all the questions I have so unless you have anything, anything else to add to the discussion just before we wrap up.
CF: I don’t think so. The business of it there. The great trouble was of course after the war here as you probably knew that the fellas who came back from Europe were blackballed a bit. In fact some of them were accused of running away and actually anyway when the war was over the people who were out here were very annoyed when the people who’d been in Europe came back and told them what a real war was about. And as the fella who later became chief of the air force and the actual Governor General — sorry, the Governor of New South Wales he said he was in the mess and he said and somebody was saying, ‘There must have been forty planes, forty guns firing at me. It was terrible.’ And as this fella said, ‘I didn’t say something but I had had four hundred guns shooting at me sort of business of it there. And that was the thing. The reason there and they appointed the wrong bloke as chief of the air force during the war. They got the wrong diagram or something or other. I forget what it was. Anyway. Yeah. So that was a pity that it took ten years after the war I think to sort of get that nexus between those who had been in the war there. The fella I was telling you about Eric Wilde did two tours now he’s a bit of a character but he went to having got the DFC and the DFM and a flight lieutenant and all the rest of it. He was, went to an OUT, up I think to Mildura or somewhere like that and he was classified as not suitable for flying in The Pacific. And he promptly got a discharge and went and got a very nice job with A&A flying planes and he was made for life and that sort of business there. But some other fella came back, he’d been a wing commander over there and the best they could offer him was a flight lieutenant’s job or something or other. Those sorts of thing. Yeah. There was a bit of a nastiness as well as difficulty that fellas who had handled miles of stuff — when they came back here they would say the people who had the bit of power they’d fought in The Pacific and that was, ‘oh we had to do it. We didn’t have brick buildings to go back to at night time.’ And we had to do that and so forth there. One of the interesting periods of that incidentally was the fact that the fella came over as a wing commander at Binbrook and in that period in December, January when the big war was on. The Battle of the Bulge. And the air was there he said Binbrook when the snow came down he looked at the amount of equipment they had and he thought well in The Pacific we had one ‘drome and that was it. One big strip. That’s all we could make. So he told the bloke in charge of the ‘drome that he was to put his all equipment pick out the main one that was used and keep that one strip open. The other two strips don’t worry about them. Keep that main strip open and keep your, all the equipment on that and as he said at one time, or something or other we had seventy planes come and landed there and he said, ‘Where did you put them?’ And he said, ‘We put the one on strips we weren’t using.’ That was it. In other words where the one fella who had only ever been in England always had three strips tried to keep three strips open. Whereas he had been in The Pacific where, you know that was it. A few little things like that appeared here and there. On their, on the business side of it there. Yes. Yes. Of course there were a lot of politics on it. On the business of it there. But it’s there and the point is that’s true about Lofty Payne on there. That was in various magazines over the time and even in The Sun and it’s in the bomber what’s the name there, Bomber Boys. Lancaster man. Yeah. And I asked Lofty. He said, ‘I have never talked to anybody.’ I think he did talk to the fella who wrote the history of 460 Squadron during the war. He was Australian. I think he might have talked to him. But he said all the others — no. I’ve never talked anybody about that. Where they’ve got the information from I don’t know. But none of them ever come or ring me up or talk to me about it sort of business there. Yeah. It’s irritating slightly shall we say. Sort of business. Yeah.
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AFraserC151113, PFraserC1501
Title
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Interview with Colin Fraser
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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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02:10:16 audio recording
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Adam Purcell
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2015-11-13
Description
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Colin joined the British Army in December 1941, and eventually moved to his preferred Royal Air Force in March 1943. He went to Number 2 Initial Training School at RAAF Bradfield Park in Sydney as a navigator, graduating in February 1944. His first flight was in an Anson at Number 2 Air Observers’ School at Mount Gambier. Colin then sailed to Britain.
There were some delays as Bomber Command had surplus aircrew. He spent some leave through the Lady Ryder Scheme and went to RAF Padgate. He was sent to RAF Fairoaks and witnessed V2 flying bombs before returning to RAF Padgate. Colin was sent to RAF West Freugh and did dead reckoning navigation. His next destination was 27 Operational Training Unit in Lichfield. Colin describes how they crewed up. He was introduced to the Gee radio navigation system and Wellingtons. He went to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Lindholme and encountered Lancasters and H2S.
Colin discusses his impressions of England and his activities. He also outlines how he carried out his role as a navigator.
They transferred to 460 Squadron at RAF Binbrook and started operations in March 1945. Colin describes some of their seven operations, which involved damage to the aircraft on a trip to Saarbrücken; being caught in the searchlights at Potsdam; cancellation mid-route of their trip to Bremen. On 25 April 1945, they flew in the second wave to Berchtesgaden and were hit, losing all but one engine. Some of the crew baled out but the pilot crash-landed the aircraft with the rear gunner because of a missing parachute. Colin was taken to Stalag Luft 7 at Moosburg. They were freed on 29 April 1945 by the American 14th Division, although it took some time to return to England and ultimately Australia.
Colin gives his views on the treatment of Bomber Command and the politics involved.
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
England--Lincolnshire
England--Staffordshire
England--Surrey
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Germany
Germany--Saarbrücken
Germany--Potsdam
Germany--Berchtesgaden
Germany--Moosburg an der Isar
Germany--Ingolstadt
Poland
Poland--Opole (Voivodeship)
Temporal Coverage
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1943
1943-03
1944
1944-02
1945-04-25
1945-04-29
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
27 OTU
460 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bombing
C-47
crash
crewing up
Gee
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
military service conditions
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
Portal, Charles (1893-1971)
prisoner of war
RAF Binbrook
RAF Fairoaks
RAF Lichfield
RAF Lindholme
RAF West Freugh
searchlight
shot down
superstition
training
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/711/39540/AJonesD[Date].mp3
9f59b75729809eec19454ac926a49b02
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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Blair, John
John Jericho Blair
J J Blair
Description
An account of the resource
38 items. The collection concerns John Jericho Blair DFC (1919-2004). He was born in Jamaica and served in RAF from 1942-1963. He flew a tour of operations as a navigator with 102 Squadron from RAF Pocklington. The collection includes numerous photographs of him and colleagues, several photographs of Jamaica, a document detailing his life and an interview with his great nephew Mark Johnson.
The collection also contains three interviews with Caribbean veterans including John Blair recorded by Mark Johnson.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mark Johnson 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
2016-05-09
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Blair, JJ
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with D Jones
Description
An account of the resource
D Jones was born in the parish of Manchester, Jamaica. He volunteered for the RAF and went on the SS Cuba to the United States, crossing the Atlantic to Liverpool in June 1944. He went to a former Butlins holiday camp in Filey - there, as ground crew, they trained as soldiers to guard the camp. After a month, they totalled over two thousand West Indians.
D Jones trained as a wireless operator. He learnt Morse code, the construction of the wireless and how to operates it.
Jones went to RAF Church Lawford, Warwickshire, before going to Wiltshire. Although he enjoyed it, he recalls how cold the winter was. Quite a few aircraft came back damaged, and some did not return.
D Jones refers to the droves of aircraft passing overhead on D-Day. After the war had finished he looked after German and Italian prisoners of war. He mentions the spectacular victory parade in London.
Attitudes to the West Indians were mostly good. They were pleased not to have much contact with American forces.
After the war, D Jones studied and went to teacher training college. A lot of West Indians worked in England after the war. He returned to Jamaica where there was not much recognition for his service. He reflects on his war experiences and his attitude to war now.
This item was sent to the IBCC Digital Archive already in digital form. No better quality copies are available.
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Johnson, M
Language
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eng
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Sound
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01:10:33 audio recording
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Pending OH transcription
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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.
Identifier
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AJonesD[Date]
Temporal Coverage
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1944-06
1946-06-08
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Warwickshire
England--Filey
England--London
Jamaica
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
African heritage
ground personnel
military living conditions
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Church Lawford
RAF Hunmanby Moor
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/487/8371/PButlerDWJ1602.1.jpg
1c0c36ea5b3b4bc79bf3758d968344d7
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/487/8371/AButlerDWJ160623.2.mp3
11e879c4cada4b9163a2cb09c3a2959f
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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Butler, David
David William Jack Butler DFC
D W J Butler
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Butler, DWJ
Description
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An oral history interview with Squadron Leader David Butler DFC (b. 1920).
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Butler and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JH: My name is Judy Hodgson and I’m interviewing David Butler today for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive. We are at Mr Butler’s home and it is the 23rd June 2016. Thank you, David, for agreeing to talk to me today. Also present at the interview is Edna Butler, David’s wife. So, David, can you tell me when and where you were born and something of your early years?
DB: I was born in Cambridge, in a place called Cherry Hinton, on the 27th of April 1920 and I lived in Cambridge and went to school in Cambridge, and the local school, and I joined the RAF then [unclear] in later years, on January the 11th 1940, I can remember that quite clear and I did my training in various places and was later posted out, and served in France during the war. And on one night, we got warned the Germans were coming in the end of Reims, where I was stationed, in Reims and we were warned that the Germans were coming in the [unclear], and so we made a very hasty retreat out and went so we couldn’t go north because the bomber, er, the beaches were packed, so we had to go right across to Saint Lazare and we ran out of petrol and we had to walk forty miles to the coast We then got on to a Polish [unclear], wet knees up to our thighs and we got taken to Southampton in a Polish boat, and from then onwards, it was back to RAF stations and that sort of thing until I went on various courses, and I became an instructor at aircrew receiving centre in London and had to go down to Lords and collect sixty cadets [unclear], train them and have fun and games with them and whilst I did their selection boards to become pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, air gunners and that sort of thing and I later became a trainee with aircrew. I volunteered for aircrew because they were getting a little short of aircrew with the amount of losses that they were entertaining, and so I took a six-month, the quickest route [unclear] to an RAF station was as an air gunner, so I took a six-month course as an air gunner and was fortunate in, with another friend we passed top of the course, and we were interviewed by a very senior officer, and in my log book it registered that the very keen and smart cadet [unclear] will be well worth the commission, so I felt very chuffed about that Did my training and then was finally posted on to crew up to an RAF station at 12 Squadron at Wickenby, flying Lancasters, and we did all our training on Lancasters, and from then onwards we did our bombing trips out to various places and I [pause] completed about four or five bombing crews to various places, and if you want to know what places they were my log book will tell you, er, did you want to -
JH: If you’d like to say the ones that there were.
DB: I did a total of [pause] thirty trips but unfortunately, on one occasion they, I was taken to hospital ‘cause, with a very high temperature and er, it was very, I was very close to sort of not completing [pause] -
JH: Right.
DB: And my crew were posted with another chap in my place, who had just come back from leave, and they went off to Nuremburg and the chap came in the following morning to tell me that my crew were missing and they’d all been shot down outside Nuremburg .
JH: Gosh.
DB: So the CO said, now I can either go back and be re-crewed, but if the present crew where the chap was missing is prepared to take you, I said that will be fine, I would much rather continue my flying period, and so I finished off my tour with a new captain and a new crew which was super, and we did thirty trips including ten trips, bombing trips on Berlin.
JH: Really.
DB: Which was a rather lengthy tour, er, trip something seven or eight hours there and back and particularly in the winter, it was ruddy cold [laughs] so, but nevertheless we finally made, we had one or two little unfortunate enterprises of firing at Luftwaffe aircraft which, who dared to come up and see us, getting caught in flak, getting caught in searchlights but eventually we made it, by the grace of God and a good pilot flying the aircraft.
JH: What position were you in the aircraft?
DB: I selected which one and I was the rear gunner, which was well known to be a hot spot!
JH: [laughs].
DB: Having met a load of Luftwaffe pilots some years later, they did say, we always used to try to shoot up the rear gunner first, so I used to say ‘thank you very much’ [laughs] so, but we did finish. I then, I then took a gunnery leader’s course, did some specialised courses and run a lot of other gunners through the course and then I volunteered to do another tour of operations, and I was crewed up with six other crew members and, er, one of whom was a New Zealander, and a top line pilot, and we went to a place called RAF North Creake which was 12 Squadron. My previous squadron was 12 Squadron and this at North Creake was 171 Squadron, so we knew, we used to know that quite well and we managed to survive to the end of the war, another twenty five trips altogether including a number of little incidents involving Luftwaffe aircraft so there we go! So that really is a quick summary of my flying days [laughs].
JH: Okay, and what did you do then, immediately after the war, were you still in the RAF?
DB I stayed, I stayed in the RAF and I made a career of it, and I was fortunate enough to be offered a full time commission and I did so and got posted out to various places, er, to Egypt, I was in Iraq when Gaddafi had his rebellion, and we did have a tank roll up to our RAF El Adem in those days and, er, we got to know the Iraqi captain very well and he would literally sign anything for half a bottle of whisky [laughs].
JH: [laughs].
DB: A great chap, so we went all over and we were, I was allocated a bungalow in Tripoli with my wife and of course she was all stopped out, so she didn’t get out at all so that’s, and I was posted one or two other places, er Aleppo. Oh I was posted to Jordan, I got to know the Jordanese people and we got to, er, we made arrangements to have our, er, the runway lengthened and we had a very nice big, after when it was all over, we had a very, very nice time with a big marquee with the local Arabs, which was all very exciting, and then I got, I was then eventually posted back to England and became a SAR officer.
JH: Where was that at in England? Where were you posted to?
DB: A very good question. Do you know I can’t remember the name of it, it’s down south somewhere, I can’t, oh [pause] can’t remember the name, no sorry, name’s gone, old age has finally -
JH: Is it?
EB: Was it Headley Court?
DB: Head, no, no, I -
EB: Lionel?
DB: Oh, I did a tour at Headley Court which was an RAF medical station, and that was down south [pause] and, er, I was the adjutant there and I got posted all over the place from there, so it was quite a career one way or another.
JH: So when you were posted, you mostly went off on your own, it wasn’t something that your wife could go with you?
DB: No, no, then my wife joined me wherever I got.
JH: She did, right, yes, yes.
DB: And then, that was from 19-, oh, about 1940, 1950, I suddenly reached the age when it was retirement age, so I wondered what it was like to apply for a job and be told ‘you’re not what we’re suited for’ or ‘you’re too old for this’ or ‘you’re too old for that’, so I applied for a job at Girton, my home town, at Girton College [pause]. And, but I thought my family, my father still lived there and I thought it would be rather nice to be, and he was concerned that, concerned also with the local St John’s College as well so I thought it would be rather nice if I could join him in one of the colleges. Anyway I had five interviews by various women, because Girton College was a woman’s college in those days, and the job vacancy was for a steward and a junior bursar, and I applied and much to my surprise, after five interviews, I was offered the post and so I went to, er, and lived a month at the academics. And not being, and not having ever gone to college myself, I was given college status which meant that I had to become a Master, and I finally went to the Senate House in Cambridge and received a Master’s degree, an honorary one [laughs] and I said to the [unclear], do I have to take, my service means in the RAF you have to earn it and pass exam to get there, this I feel a little cheated getting my Master’s degree and I got all the paperwork to go with it and so I was with them for about three or four years and then I got another job with a local firm [pause] to manage the director’s office, which was rather pleasant. And I retired then and took up local work with the British Legion, and did a lot of work with the British Legion in Cambridge, in Histon and was finally elected as their president of British Legion and I’ve been their president since 2008, so I go to all their meetings, I don’t miss a meeting and I find it very honourable to go to all memorials, the meetings where they all have meetings so really, that’s a very brief summary of my career outside the RAF and inside the RAF.
JH: Yes, yes.
DB: There we go [pause], forgot to mention that I was, I transferred from the admin branch in the RAF because they did, the flying ceased and I then went on an admin course, and then I did an admin course for about two or three years and then they ran short of catering officers, and I thought a new career, and so I went on a six-month catering course and started from start to finish to be taught about all things in the RAF about catering, which was a wonderful course, very, very, very, and had the pleasure of meeting so many other caterers and posted to so many other RAF stations as the catering officer and became a staff officer in the catering branch which was very nice to have, so [pause] that’s another part of my RAF career besides flying and er, [pause] -
JH: It was very varied actually wasn’t it, you covered quite, you know, a lot of -
DB: Yes, after my service I had the pleasure of being invited to a German Luftwaffe gathering in Germany, and so I went with twelve other last Lancaster aircrew and went to the Luftwaffe gathering, and had the pleasure of meeting all the chaps that used to fire at us and, er, miss us thank goodness. But they were an incredible bunch of people and I’ve got some, I’ve got a couple of photographs of them here if you should want to have a look at them and show you -
JH: Yes, definitely.
DB: And later on, we invited them to come to Cambridge and we took them all round Cambridge and whilst they were here, I got them to sign my old flying log book and in it [pause] [background noise], there we go, that’s a photograph of all their signatures, all the Luftwaffe pilots that used to fire at us when we was flying over Germany.
JH: That’s fabulous, isn’t it.
DB: Yes, isn’t it.
JH: What a record .
DB: And I don’t know of another log book which has got those names in, unusual. I got very friendly with one of them, Martin Chivers, [then pronounces Chyvers] and he’d only, his log book indicated that he’d only shot down fifty-two of our English bombers, all written down, and he says ‘can I see your log book’, [adopts accent] so I showed him mine, and he said ‘you did fifty-five? how come I missed you!’ [adopts accent], [laughs], I said the simple reason, when we were, I were a target, very near a target, I used to get my pilot to jink which is -
JH: Sway?
DB: And we could see underneath if there was anybody there. ‘Ah’, he says, ‘you were one of those’, I said, ‘why is that’, he said, ‘because if we come across anybody was doing zinking, [adopts accent] we went to somebody who didn’t do that.’ [laughs]
JH: Wow.
DB: So that was very good and we’ve been sending one another Christmas cards, I didn’t get one from him last year so I assume he’s gone, but I got two photographs of him and his big [unclear] was very close to Goebbels, so that was a very interesting little incident, so there we go. All part of a peculiar little career of one’s life. Back on some of our bombing missions, the flying, the Lancaster was a very manoeuvrable aircraft, in an attack or getting out of searchlights, it was very manoeuvrable, and the skipper was able to manoeuvre the aircraft very quickly and get us out of trouble. And on numerous occasions he was able to do this, a very, very good pilot, Adams his name was, Flight Lieutenant Adams, very, very good and on my second tour, we were less with having to go and set up screens of, wireless screens to allow the bomber stream to go through these screens, in order to bomb where we’re going to bomb. And getting those into position was always a very tricky position, and getting caught in searchlights was a very tricky position, and being able to get out, Bill could, our skipper was a New Zealander and was five foot nothing, but he could throw that aircraft about anywhere. It was a very sluggish aircraft, the old Halifax and, er, I remember one being caught in some flak on one occasion, and we had the engine catch on fire and we had to get down very, very low level and fly back to England, and we got back home, with the engine blew up again so we had to find the nearest air place to get in, and by some stroke of luck, Bill said, ‘is Waterbeach down below?’ which is just outside Cambridge. I said ‘oh, home town!’ so we managed to get down and we got, we asked permission to land, we were given permission to land [unclear] and we down the whole length of the runway and tipped up at the end and I was still sitting in the back in the turret so, and I had to get out quickly, and getting out of a rear turret was extremely difficult, and I had to put my hands behind my back, open the doors and literally fall, grab my parachute which was hanging up but I didn’t get the parachute, we didn’t need it fortunately, and fell out backwards and damaged my ankle. And all of the crew thought it was highly amazing and most amusing because I was the only bloke that was injured [laughs], busted me ankle! So there we go, so that’s another little story about the second tour.
JH: And when you were in the Lancasters, were you always a rear gunner?
DB: I was always, I volunteered to do the rear gunner in our new crew and I volunteered to do the rear gunner’s spot on the Lancaster, and I’ve got some photographs I can show you of a rear turret which will give you an idea of what it was like, getting in was difficult. I was, very little room but you could, but knowing every part of a turret was essential, you knew where all the stops were. If you had a stoppage, you knew how to clear it and how to, but you, and that was in the dark, you would never have any lights in the, bit of moonlight if you were lucky, but generally speaking you, I used to get stoppages in, and I had to find the stoppage and knowing where the parts were and guiding me, the turret you would guide it round to the left or to the right by power and hydraulics and it was extremely difficult [unclear] and very cold. My thighs used to get frozen and I used to carry with me a tin of orange juice to drink coming back and it used to get frozen up, so I used to have to tuck it in my flying suit to soft it down a bit, and I never got out of the turret once, I never had to get out in a hurry once so we, so we did thirty trips .
JH: That’s extraordinary, isn’t it.
DB: in the Lancaster, a total of thirty bombing trips and that was bombing over the target, we never once let them go free. We had the bombing, the bomb aimer had a special area where he was told to drop the bombs and this he did, and it was a [pause], flak was always a problem over targets. It used to come up and flak and when we used to get back to the squadron, the mechanic used to come back ‘you’ve got seventeen holes in your body this week’ or ‘you’ve got one’, yeah, but I had one, I had a bit of flak through the side of my turret on one occasion but, er, that smashed the window but that was all right, no problem.
JH: I presume there was great elation when you actually came back, you were very elated when you got back?
DB: Er -
JH: Or quiet?
DB: Not really, we took it very much in our way, our main thing when we got back was going down to the briefing room and having a mug of coffee with a little drop of brandy in it, but nobody supplied the brandy, we had to take that ourselves, but we had a cup of coffee which was very good. On every trip, we had to be interviewed and record what happened on our trips, it was quite a lengthy operation before we were able to go and have breakfast in the, and occasional we used to get an extra egg from the people who didn’t get back and there, we always felt very sad when we knew the people that had been shot down.
JH: I’m sure.
DB: We felt they were missing, and we used to raise our glasses and drink their health and that was it. Some we knew that were made prisoner of war, others were killed, my own crew were all killed and [pause] if I may just add a little story to this [pause], some years after I retired from the RAF, I had a message from a gentleman named Tommy Cass, whose nephew was the air gunner that took my place when I was in hospital, and he says ‘can I come and talk to you’. So we got together and apparently he found out where that aircraft had been shot down in Germany and he went to Germany, and he tracked down the area and the local police force which found it, and they actually found the pilot, the Luftwaffe pilot that had shot the aircraft down, and made a big story of it in the local press. And I have, and he gave me a copy of [sneezes], oh excuse me, [everyone laughs], [sneezes again] and I have actually got in my little side entry here a copy of that report, amazing, so that was a very interesting interview from the chap that was the uncle of the chap that took my place. And [pause], they, and I actually got photographs of the graves of my old crew, in fact there’s, in the local German report there were three bodies picked up on the edge of the village and the three names were the three of my crew and I, you can’t imagine how I felt.
JH: No, no.
DB: There but by the grace of God, I should have been.
JH: Yes, mmm.
DB: I think they were saving me up so that when I go off to Hell [everyone laughs], the old big chap, big devil will be waiting for me downstairs, ‘Butler, I’ve been waiting for you, now we’ll have a good night out together!’ [everyone laughs], that’s my little story that is, yes.
JH: That’s fabulous.
DB: Oh I can spend hours telling you about the trips but it’s, it was a trip that had to be done and so many that didn’t come back, by the grace of God I still wonder why so many of us got through our thirty trips.
JH: Yes, that’s quite something isn’t it, quite something.
DB: Wonderful, wonderful, even now you meet them and they say ‘hello’ and it’s, you can’t remember their faces but you could remember particularly. I can’t go to any of the bomber command reunions now, I find it’s too much, er, hanging around and waiting, but I still meet them if, particularly I have two of them that I meet on a Monday at Tesco’s! [laughs] and we have a little chat.
JH: That’s lovely.
DB: Very rare about the war, we don’t talk about ops, just ‘how are you, ok?, how you’re getting on, how’s everybody’, just a general chit-chat so, I was very fortunate, er [pause]. After I did my first tour, I did receive the Distinguished Flying Cross which was a great honour for me, the only sad thing was I was hoping to go down to the Palace to get it presented, but there were so many of them being awarded, getting through it, that I was not invited but I did get a letter from the King to say congratulations and it’s hanging up on the wall! [laughs].
JH: Oh yes.
DB: Leave it up there love, leave it up, oh yes.
EB: That’s it, I like to see it.
DB: [reading] ‘I greatly regret I am unable to give this person the award you so [unclear], I will now send it with my congratulations, signed George RI [laughs].
JH: What an honour, that’s lovely, yes.
DB: Buckingham Palace, so I’ve had a little letter from Buckingham Palace, yes.
JH: As you say, it’s a shame you weren’t able to receive it personally.
DB: Yes, I didn’t write back and say thank you [everyone laughs], I still wear it, I wear it on occasions, oh we had a parade the other day which was to put, get a new banner and we took [background rustling], oh that’s the old Lancaster [pause], and that’s the photograph of the parade which was interesting [background noise].
JH: So when was this, just the other?
DB: Last Sunday.
JH: Really? Where was this at, where was the parade?
DB: Oh the parade was at St Andrew’s church in the village.
JH: In the village, right, yes you must be very proud when you’re wearing the medal.
DB: Yes.
JH: When you were actually flying the operations, did you have to keep going up day after day, was there a break, you know, if you went on an operation did you -
DB: No, no, no.
JH: Did you -
DB: You just carried on, whenever there was an op on, you may have a break of three or four days, perhaps a week, but then perhaps you had two or three in a short space of time.
JH: And what were you actually doing while you were on the break then, when you weren’t -
DB: Oh checking your guns, and catching your, checking your turret, making sure it was all working because it was essential for it to be working properly, er, that in an attack the, the chap that I made friends with flew 110, FN 110’s and his method of attack was to fly from the ground, up underneath the aircraft because they had upfiring guns in their Luftwaffe aircraft and he used to position himself under and fire at the bomb bay and the engines and that’s how he managed to shoot down fifty-two bombers. Quite a character, he knew what he was doing [pause]. After the war I was very fortunate in being taken in the current Lancaster for a trip out and we went round the runway, and when we got back from the runway I was able to sit in the rear turret like I used to, knowing where everything was as if it was yesterday, knowing about the gunneries, the handles for this and the stops for that, knowing exactly where everything was. I got out and the skipper said, ‘how was that?’, I said it was like a dream come true, I said sitting in my rear turret, I said ‘do you realise that you’ve got a piece of turret missing?’, he said ‘turret missing?, what do you mean?’, I said ‘there’s a piece of your turret that is absent’, he said ‘what is that?’, I said ‘it’s the dead man’s handle’. He said ‘what on earth’s a dead man’s handle?’, I said ‘if we got shot up during the war through flak or Luftwaffe and we lost our hydraulics to the turrets which meant we couldn’t turn the turret, the dead man’s handle was on the left hand side and we used to click it into space and turn it to which way we wanted to get out quick’, ‘ooh’, he said, ‘I will have to look for one of those!’ [laughs] and I don’t think they’ve yet found one! [laughs].
JH: And this was at East Kirkby was it, the East Kirkby runway?
DB: Yes, yes, somewhere like that, yes lovely, well there we go, well I’m glad I found you a Luftwaffe pilot!
JH: Yes, that’s lovely [laughs].
DB: All the comments we’ve had in the past about bombing of Dresden and scattering bombs around it, I feel quite hurt that we should be criticised for the action that we took. Prior to our trip to Dresden which is in my log book on the certain date, er [pause], we were briefed as we always used to have before a bombing trip, we were briefed to what was going to happen there, we were briefed that there were a lot of German troops stationed around there, and the Russians were coming into it and there were at least three other Luftwaffe factories in that area so we didn’t feel quite guilty when we bombed Dresden, and we went into Dresden. We arrived late and the big fire which was reported in the papers, we arrived when it was going at full strength and that was when we dropped our bombs in the middle of it, and we got caught in some searchlights and the flak but we made it through to the other side, but I have no guilt complex whatsoever of bombing Dresden, nor do I have any guilt complex about bombing Berlin ten times. I have no guilt complex about bombing any German cities whatsoever, they were our enemies, the number of people that they had killed off-hand throughout their marches to all these wonderful old countries we knew of, that’s it, I have no guilt, that’s how I feel about our bombing of Germany.
JH: Yes, yes.
DB: So that’s on one trip, Berlin was always a heavy place to bomb, it took us one, it took us something like an hour to get from one side of Berlin to the other and that was always full of flak and searchlights and [pause] -
JH: I mean, looking back, you must think how lucky you were to survive.
DB: I still wonder and I still think it was the old devil looking after me, I’m quite convinced of it, looking after me! A wonderful period in my lifetime, that there are occasions when I tend, at ninety-six, to forget little items these days, not as flowing with memory as I used to be which is annoying for me, not being able to walk as easy as I did but it’s all wonderful memories because I’m so pleased I lived through it, I have no guilt [unclear] at all.
JH: No, I mean you obviously had wonderful camaraderie with your fellow colleagues at the time, your crew.
DB: Oh the crew that I flew with were wonderful, wonderful people, all, the bomb aimer was accurate, the pilot was superb, the engineer knowing what to do, the mid-upper firing his guns and keeping us safe, wonderful team of people we were, all seven of us and [pause] I, as far as I know, I am the last remaining member of two crews, having lost my first one so sadly who were lovely people, but now the other thirteen members have now left me on my own. I’m not very pleased about that! [laughs], not very pleased about that! Wonderful period.
JH: And did you have, after you I know you’d lost your first crew, then was the pilot then with you all of the rest of those operations? The second one?
DB: Oh we had one pilot for one crew, for one tour, he did thirty and he went off and did some other things, I don’t know what they all did, er.
JH: But you always flew with that pilot.
DB: I always flew with that pilot for thirty trips.
JH: Wow, right.
DB: And the same on my second tour, I flew with him for twenty five trips, every pilot, because they knew who you were, what you did, what you were capable of as well [pause].
EB: Well, did you not have to be accepted by the crew of your second trip?
DB: Oh yes, yes they accepted me quite well but they knew, of course, that their rear gunner had been, he’d put, he was the first chap back from his leave when I was missing, they had, there was a full crew requirement on all the aircraft and so they took this chap who’d just come back from leave in my place in the rear turret with my old crew. I didn’t know that, I didn’t know who he was, I never met him, I didn’t know of him so I, er [pause], you can’t imagine how I felt when I knew, I felt like death warmed up, as if it was, he had taken my place and didn’t come home and he was missing, they were missing for some time before they were declared shot down, as his nephew found out that they’d been. And it was interesting to read the, an old pilot’s report on how he shot the aircraft down, it was on its way back from Nuremberg and Nuremberg was a very heavily defended city for flak and guns, and it was probably that that brought, I don’t know what it was brought down, whether it was a, I have a feeling that it was a Luftwaffe pilot that brought it down who gave me his report on how he shot it down [pause] and I got the report of him in my papers here somewhere. I never thought I could have got that out unless you read it but [unclear] so I’m glad I’ve found [background noise] my old friend there! [laughs], he put on a little bit of weight when I met him [laughs] but he got the iron cross, two iron crosses which is one of the top.
JH: Oh, awards for the Germans.
DB: [pause] handsome lad!
JH: And obviously through all this time your wife, then you had met him, did you say, in the 1940s?
EB: Oh yes we met, we met in 1940.
DB: She didn’t know what I did when I went down to London because I’d met her and we then parted.
EB: Yes, I didn’t hear anything from him for quite a while, did I?
DB: No, it must, ‘40, the end of about, the beginning of ’41, I got posted down to London, ‘41, ’42. It was down at London when I volunteered to become aircrew. I then went through all my training and it was 1943 when I got crewed up and ‘44 when I finished my first tour and about ’44, ’45, I’d received, I’d been promoted to flying officer, I’d got my gong up with my aircrew badge which I didn’t have when I first met Edna, and I was a young flying officer so when I first met Edna I was just an ordinary AC plonk [laughs].
EB: Yes! [laughs].
DB: And so I reverted from being an AC plonk to a young flying officer with a badge up and a medal up, so I thought ‘ooh’, and I was posted to a station four miles down the road from where Stafford operated and I was, I used to borrow a bicycle, go from the Officers’ Mess into Stafford and I said I wonder what it’s like to go and knock on the door to an old girlfriend and see what she’s like, so I duly arrived at Blackiston Street, remember the name of the road?
EB: Yes.
DB: Knocked on the door and says, ‘hello, oh surprise, surprise’ and we went together ever since.
EB: Well, I used to work at the Admiralty because when the Admiralty was down in Coventry, when Coventry was bombed, they moved it all up to one of the new schools that had just been built in Stafford on the outskirts, so I had, I and my sister both went to work there and we were there and when I came from there on the bus one Saturday from work down to, I used to get off outside the cinema and who should be standing there but this one! Absolutely flabbergasted, I said -
DB: Well, of course.
EB: ‘What are you doing here?’
DB: I felt [unclear] in my glory at being commissioned and badges up and medals up [laughs].
EB: Yes, and from then on -
DB: I, I really felt the bee’s knees as you can just imagine, how you would feel at that and I was only [pause] -
EB: You weren’t very old, were you?
DB: No, I was about twenty-four.
EB: Yes.
DB: Beautiful.
EB: Full of himself.
DB: And I’m still, and I’m still beautiful [laughs].
EB: [laughs].
JH: [laughs] of course!
EB: And everything went from there.
DB: Yes, I always tell my wife, never mind my lovely one, you’re still beautiful and she still is!
JH: Absolutely.
EB: He got on very well with my stepmother, didn’t you?
DB: We got on like a house on board, yes.
EB: He’d got a motorcycle and I wouldn’t go on it, because when you went round the corners I was frightened you see, but Mother used to go on the back, oh she never used to worry, did she?
DB: I was off, yes, I retired to Stafford.
EB: And then you went on the council.
DB: I got on the council, and then I was offered a commission because they ran short of officers in the RAF, they wanted specialised [unclear] officers so I was offered a permanent commission. So I said I was a job in Her Majesty’s Government, tax office for a short while, so I said ‘I’m off’ and so we, I went back into the RAF and -
JH: What year was that?
DB: That would be ’48, something like that, ’47, yes.
EB: Yes.
DB: ‘47 yes, about three years afterwards, came out then went back in again and then spent thirty-two years in it and I still miss the RAF, used to enjoy the RAF, enjoy, splendid place, splendid people. Ah well, there you go
EB: So, so that’s what he misses now, don’t you, you really do miss -
DB: Yes I do
EB: Lots of parts of the RAF life really
DB: Yes, that’s, you can’t have it always
EB: It’s just memories now, David
DB: Yes, yes, difficult remembering memories too sometimes. I was trundling along telling you something and then I couldn’t remember the end of it [pause], but then it flashed back again, a bit disjointed our little chit-chat I think somewhere.
JH: I think it’s been -
DB: A little bit fed in
JH: Yes, but that’s -
DB: Is there anything that I can broaden for you to give you a little bit more information, is there anything you’ve fancied I ought to tell you?
JH: [laughs] well
DB: Is there anything you, memorabilia-wise I could tell you?
EB: I think you’ve told it almost everything
DB: I’ve told you what it’s like sitting in a turret, I’ve told you about one or two other -
JH: Yes, absolutely
DB: Attacks that we had, and we completed, we mentioned what the Luftwaffe, telling the pilot to jink, we got that in about telling the pilot to jink
JH: Yes
EB: Yes
DB: Got that in
JH: Yes, no, I think we’ve fairly comprehensive
DB: There some little bit about something, exciting ones [laughs]
EB: I think you’ve covered almost all the -
DB: ‘course you’ve been sitting there as well, you’ve listened.
EB: Yes
DB: This lass has heard it all over again, she’s heard it so many times now she can even tell me the stories!
EB: I could write the book meself!
DB: You could write , I did start writing a book and after the first chapter I got fed up with it, ‘oh to hell with it’, I never bothered, never bothered.
EB: Well, I think you thought that so many people had already written -
DB: I’ve got books here about air gunners and what have you so, all with their funny stories and they’ve got lots of stories that I’ve never seen or heard of.
JH: Well, you all have something to say, don’t you, I mean, you know, in fairness so -
DB: I used to like to fly in the Lancaster, wonderful, I had the pleasure of flying my son in an aircraft, he’s got his own aircraft, and he took me up one day and said, ‘here you are, fly it!’ and I did and I said ‘star, we’re diving starboard, go!’ [laughs]. But I used to enjoy giving other pilots who used to, we used to get Spitfires and other single-engine flights doing practice attacks on us so that we knew what was coming and how to avoid them, what was the best evasive action and I worked out one or two good manoeuvres which I used to get the Spitfire doing, and they used to say, ‘sod you, I’m off!’ [laughs] and they used to dive like that away from us.
JH: When was this then, what -
DB: In between bombing trips.
JH: Right.
DB: So that we could practice and get the other people, and it was my job in the rear turret to give evasive action command to the skipper because I could, I was a better [unclear], because I could see him coming up, the mid-upper could see coming down, and I could see him coming down, and I could see him, being in the turret gave me a much better view.
JH: Right, so that was quite important then, position.
DB: Yes, if I saw anything I used to say to the skipper, ‘I’m going to give him a little burst, skip’, ‘okay’, because if I saw anything, because seeing [emphasis] a fighter in the dark you couldn’t, except moonlight. You could see a bit, depends on where he was, you could see movement, you might see a little bit of engine combustion but generally speaking you didn’t, the only thing you did, you saw was some red hot bullets coming over the top of your turret or pinging your turret. That was the only thing you saw and then you knew you’d got problems and I always used, if I saw anything coming up that was, I always give him a ‘dive to starboard, go, go, go’ [shouts] and he used to dive to starboard, dive to port whichever, if the fighter pilot was this side and he was coming up, I always used to give a ‘dive to starboard, go’, that meant the skipper would put the aircraft down like that and present a crossing speed, you passed aircraft much quicker than you would do if you started, ‘cause he could then follow you so you had to.
JH Yes, cuts across.
DB: You had to be on the ball to make sure that he couldn’t follow you and shoot at you, it was essential [emphasis] you gave him the right order, so you had to, you had to be on the ball when you first saw and you didn’t have a lot of time when you first saw the chap.
JH: So the pilot was relying on you an awful lot?
DB: Oh yes, very much so that you gave him the right [pause] -
JH: instructions.
DB: Yes, oh we never got shot down so that was [laughs].
EB: Mind you-
JH: You must’ve been good! [laughs]
DB: Must’ve helped!
EB: There was a lot of rear gunners lost their lives, wasn’t there David?
DB; Oh yes.
EB: Because they used to attack the rear gunner before anything else really.
DB: I suppose so.
EB: There was quite a lot, a lot of them that got killed wasn’t there.
DB: Yes [quietly], a long time ago.
EB: So you have to count your blessings my love, don’t you?
DB: Yes, and I still think you’re beautiful! [everyone laughs].
EB: This is the flannel I have to get from being in the Air Force! [laughs].
JH: Well, I would like to thank you, David, for allowing me to record this interview today and thank you both very much.
EB: It’s been a pleasure.
DB: But I’m rather sad that I (unclear).
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with David Butler
Creator
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Judy Hodgson
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-23
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Sound
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AButlerDWJ160623, PButlerDWJ1602
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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
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01:02:27 audio recording
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Davy St Pyer
Vivienne Tincombe
Description
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David Butler, DFC, was born in Cherry Hinton in April 1920 and joined the Royal Air Force on the 11th January 1940, serving in France at Reims as the Germans advanced. After walking some distance, he was evacuated back to England on a Polish boat and arrived in Southampton.
He tells of how he was hospitalised with a very high temperature, and how his replacement and his crew were lost over Nuremburg.
He was posted to 12 Squadron at Wickenby, flying in Lancasters as a Rear Gunner, and then he was posted to 171 Squadron at North Creake.
David tells of his scraps with the Luftwaffe and meeting some Luftwaffe Pilots at the end of the war and he tells of meeting those pilots who were firing at him.
Made a career in the Royal Airforce and served in Egypt, Iraq and Jordan as well as completing administration courses and serving at other Royal Air Force Stations including the Royal Air Force Medical Station at Headley Court as an Adjutant.
After the war, got a job at Girton College and became President of the Royal British Legion in Cambridge.
David completed a total of 55 Operations, 30 on his first tour of duty and then completing 25 operations on his second tour.
12 Squadron
171 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Distinguished Flying Cross
Lancaster
military ethos
military service conditions
perception of bombing war
RAF North Creake
RAF Wickenby
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/899/11139/AJacksonDM171130.2.mp3
1afde4d3c12a3c8d0bc1a7b452422441
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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Jackson, Norman
N Jackson
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with David Jackson about his father Norman Jackson VC (1919 - 1994), his service record and two photographs.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by David Jackson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-30
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Jackson, N
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: [unclear] [laughs] My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 30th of November 19, 2017 and we are in Kingswood in Surrey talking to David Jackson whose father was Norman Jackson VC and we are going to start off with earliest recollections of father’s life. So, what were the first [unclear] there?
DJ: Oh, good afternoon Chris. My father was born in Ealing in London on the 8th of April 1919. He was born to a single mother who put my father up for adoption. My father was adopted by a Mr and Mrs Gunter who lived in Twickenham. They were a professional family as far as I know. They certainly had a lovely house in Camac Road, Twickenham, they also adopted, just after dad another lad by the name of Geoffrey, Geoffrey Hartley. My father and Geoffrey grew up together, very close as half-brothers, my father was educated in Twickenham at Archdeacon Cambridge School, he stayed there until the age of sixteen where after gaining his school certificate joined an engineering company, he always had an interest in engineering. At the start of the Second World War in September 1939 my father decided that he wanted to volunteer, join the military services so he first he tried to join the Royal Navy but was told they weren’t actually recruiting at that time and so thought he would try the Royal Air Force where he was accepted. He was sent to RAF Halton where he took a further apprenticeship in engineering on airframes etcetera, from there once qualified, he joined 95 Squadron which was Sunderland flying boats, as a fitter he was sent to Africa, North East Africa which was Freetown where he served his time on Sunderland flying boats, he returned in 1942, in summer of ’42 where his intention was to join Bomber Command as a flight engineer, prior to that in 1939 he’d actually met my mother, Alma Lilian, they became engaged in 1940 when my father was then sent to North Africa and my, they didn’t see each other for two years, on my father’s return they organised their wedding which was on Boxing Day in 1942. ’43 my father started his training as an engineer on Bomber Command, joined his first squadron later that summer in ’43 which is 106 Squadron at that time based at Syerston in Lincolnshire soon to be sent to RAF Metheringham where the squadron was then based, flew several missions including ten to Berlin, several incidents during his tour of operations with Bomber Command, got shot up, engines out of action, very heavy landings with Fred Mifflin the pilot who they considered taking off flying actually and retraining because he couldn’t land the Lancaster without bouncing it, one day that led in a crosswind situation where they switched runways on a heavy crosswind and my father, the aircraft crashed with a heavy landing losing his undercarriage, my father suffered a broken leg at that time but even with a broken leg managed to get Fred Mifflin, he was in a bit of a, had a few problems inside the cockpit and managed to drag him out but was patched up and continued flying with a broken leg for further six weeks. Thirty missions were completed because my father actually had volunteered with another crew, his flight engineer wasn’t able to go one night, father stood in, so he reached his thirty missions’ quota before the rest of the crew. On the night of the 27th of April 1944, target designated was Schweinfurt in Germany, father volunteered to go along with the rest of the crew to see them through, this would be his thirty first mission, they took off on time, prior to the take-off my father had received a telegram to say that his first child, my oldest brother Brian had been born, he went along on the mission, they hit a head wind which slowed them up and when they arrived over the target they seemed to be alone but they went ahead, bombed, and by turning out and all of a sudden Sandy Sandelands the wireless operator spoke to Fred Mifflin the pilot over the intercom telling him he had a blip on his fishpond screen, his radar screen, he felt that blip could be a night fighter, they all braced themselves and waited, he then came back, Sandy Sanderson said it’s closer, it’s fast, it’s definitely a night fighter and then before they knew it the aircraft was being racked with cannon fire, my father was thrown to the ground, he was injured at that time with shell splinters, on recovering his position in the cockpit he noticed that the starboard wing had a fire just inside the engine area, he tried to feather the engine which he did, he feathered it, but the fire was still raging out there because it was basically in the wing where the fuel tank was. He decided at that time that he could deal with it, he got the, asked the permission of Fred the pilot, he felt he could deal, so he said, he could actually climb out on the wing with a fire extinguisher with the aid of the crew if he jettison his parachute, Fred Mifflin looked at him incredulously but said, ok, go ahead, so Dad took the cockpit axe which had an ice pick end on it, he took a fire extinguisher from inside the cockpit which he placed inside his tunic, his flying tunic, the bomb aimer and the navigator stood by as Dad climbed onto the navigator’s table and jettisoned the hatch above there which is just behind the pilot’s seat, he then deployed his parachute so that navigator and bomb aimer could hold onto the rigging lines, whilst had sorted the lines out Dad then climbed through the hatch and into the two hundred mile and hour slipstream, it was icy cold, he said he always remembered how cold it was, he inched his way out keeping close to the fuselage, trying not to have the slipstream affect him any more than it would, he used the ice pick on the axe to fire into the side of the fuselage to give him some purchase and then pulled himself down towards the wing root which was below him and toward the aerial intake at the front of the wing where he managed to get his left hand in to hold on, he then removed the fire extinguisher from his flying jacket and started dealing with, knocked the end of the fire extinguisher off on the front of the wing, the extinguisher started and he started to deal with the fire, he felt he was doing ok and the fire started to die down, at that point the wing lifted below him and the aircraft started to bank to the left. He was then, he then realised that the fighter must have found them again, the fighter came in, racked the aircraft again with machine gun and cannon fire, my father was hit several times with shell splinter and bullets, the wing blew up around him, engulfing him in flames, the slipstream from the aircraft as it slipped to the port side and down, lifted my father off the wing and he was thrown backwards, he came to an abrupt halt just behind the rear of the aircraft because he was still attached to the cockpit via his rigging lines and parachute, as he was being dragged down through the air, those inside the cockpit thought Dad had been killed but thought they’d get the parachute out anyway, they scrambled as best they could to get the shoot out as it been ripped, as it went through the hatch above the navigators table, it also suffered damage through the fire, my father then left the aircraft as the parachute went out through the hatch, he descended to ground quite rapidly, hit the ground very, very heavily, smashed both ankles, he laid there in a pitiful state, ankles smashed, his hands and face were severely burned, his right eye was completely closed, he also had several shell and shrapnel wounds in his body, he lay there until first light, he then crawled on elbows and knees through the forest and came across a small cottage, he approached the cottage and with his elbow knocked on the door, a window opened above him and a male voice shouted, was ist da? My father said, RAF. The voice from the window upstairs once again said, was ist da? My father cleared his voice as best he could and said in a louder voice, RAF. The voice from above shouted, Terror Flieger! Churchill gangster! And the window closed. Dad then heard the window opening and expected to be kicked and punched but there were a couple of girls inside, who took father in and laid him on a settee and started attending to him, their father, who was the person in the window upstairs, disappeared through the door, he returned a little while later with a policeman and a chap who Dad thought must have been Gestapo was in plain clothes, they then took Dad off of the settee and my father, supported by the policeman was made to march to the local police station. A the police station he was placed into a [unclear], he was in wheels through the streets to the local hospital, en route he suffered verbal abuse and even some stones but he always said he understood this, at the hospital he was treated very well, he stayed in the hospital for several months, he was then transferred to a prisoner of war camp where he served out his time, he escaped once, he tried to, was recaptured, at the end of the war he was repatriated along with the other, the rest, the surviving members of the crew. The surviving members of the crew told my father’s story, my father got a call from a WAAF officer he said who asked if that was warrant officer Norman Cyril Jackson, he said, yes, it was, and she said, I’m just calling you to let you know you’ve been awarded the Victoria Cross. My father’s words were, what the bloody hell for?
CB: We’ll pause there for a moment. That’s. Now in terms of picking up a bit more of detail on this, they got hit and hit badly twice by the fighter or fighters but in general in the dark you can’t see anything that’s going on but you can be seen so what did he feel about flying in these sorties?
DJ: My father, I can remember my father saying that on every single mission they flew which was obviously at night, very dark unless you had a full moon which sometimes light you up, you were, they used to have the four Merlin engines on the Lancaster, and what was a concern to them all the time was the exhaust of the Merlin engine which had basically bright flames coming out of it and that always made the Lancaster visible, they felt from inside the cockpit to anything that was out there but they also had pleasure in seeing that coming out because they knew the engines were still running, so it was basically almost a double edged sword, one you needed to see the exhaust as Dad said to make sure they are all running properly but the other you knew you were a possible target to anyone that was out there that you couldn’t see but they could see you.
CB: And in his training going back a bit he was originally trained as a ground engineer
DJ: Correct, yes.
CB: At what stage and how did he do it, did he get into flying? [unclear]
DJ: This would have happened in Africa, in Freetown when he was with 95 Squadron the Sunderland flying boats, he decided out there that he actually wanted to be part of the aircrew and as a qualified engineer he would be useful to Bomber Command and he knew the new four engine bombers were coming onto stream with the Lancaster and felt that was a position for him and so suitably applied and was accepted
CB: So what do you know about the training he had to do in preparation for getting into the, into Bomber Command?
DJ: Well, I’m reading now, this is the Air VCs Chaz Bowyer, book called For Valour, now, this actually says that my father enlisted in the 20th of October 1939 after various training courses at Halton and Hednesford he became classified as a fitter 11E engines, a group one tradesman posted overseas, his first unit was 95 Squadron to which he reported on the 2nd of January 1941, a Short Sunderland flying boat squadron based on the West African coast near Freetown following, for the following eighteen months Jackson continued to serve as a engine fitter on flying boats Marine Craft but the opportunity to remuster to flying duties as a flight engineer attracted him and he accordingly applied for training, as a result he returned to England in September 1942 and after six months at 27 OTU, Operational Training Unit moved to RAF St Athan at the end of March 1943 to complete instruction. Finally, with promotion to sergeant he was mustered, or remustered, I apologize, as a flight engineer on the 14th of June and posted to number 1645 Heavy Conversion Unit on the 28th of July he joined his first squadron 106 based at Syerston and flying Avro Lancasters.
CB: Right, that sets the scene very well. Did he talk about what the training was like?
DJ: No,
CB: And
DJ: Only, the only thing Dad ever used to mention about training was that the RAF lost more aircrew training than they did on missions themselves, on sorties, he said the loss rate on training was quite high, that’s what I can remember him saying about training
CB: Certainly, there was quite a loss. So, with his training he didn’t start flying until he got to the operational training unit is what you’re saying, yeah, because he’s been on the ground before.
DJ: Well, again I’m reading from Chaz Bowyer’s book here, which has quite a lot of detail, so from September 1942, I think that’s when he started, he applied and after six months at 27 Operational Training Unit moved to RAF St Athan and that was the end of March when he, he may have started his flying training then, whether there was any prior to that at the 27 Operational Training Unit I don’t know.
CB: Ok.
DJ: I don’t know, I think Dad did actually, I can remember Dad talking about RAF Elstos which was a small twine engined aeroplane he used to fly, so at that point being
CB: Ansons,
DJ: Ansons, sorry, the Anson, my apology,
CB: Yes, yeah
DJ: The Anson aircraft, so he did some time on that
CB: Right
DJ: Now I presume that was not at the operational, that may have been at the Operational Training Unit rather than the Heavy Conversion Unit, so I suspected he started before that
CB: The Heavy Conversion Unit would have been the four engine
DJ: The four engine, absolutely, yeah
CB: One way or another. Ok, good, and because he talked to you about a number of things, what did he say about when he got to flying, how he felt about flying?
DJ: He didn’t actually like it that much, I mean, bear in mind, Dad never used to speak, talk about it really at all, it used to be people asking him questions and we as children would be there and I asked, you know, in my father’s later life used to talk Dad about it but he was not very happy with talking about the war, he felt everybody should move on. What was the question, sorry?
CB: The question was how he felt about flying.
DJ: Flying itself he never really enjoyed it, it was just something that had to be done and even though my father wasn’t a particularly religious man, he always said that nobody prayed harder than him before a mission, cause he knew what to expect.
CB: That’s an interesting point because people did different actions before going on a mission, on operation, what did he do? Did he have a mascot, or did he do something before getting in the [unclear]?
DJ: Father never had a mascot as far as I know, he just looked at it as a job that needed to be done and
CB: Did he go through a ritual before getting in the aircraft, do you know?
DJ: No, not that I know of, no.
CB: No.
DJ: He certainly would have spoken of it.
CB: And we are talking about here when he got to the Heavy Conversion Unit it’s now a bomber crew of seven, how did that crew get gelled together?
DJ: As far as I know, once they’d actually formed up as a crew they gelled very well, they, my father always said that they were like a band of brothers, they were very close and that probably, well, I’m sure that would have been the reason why my father decided to fly on the final mission to see them through, their thirtieth, my father’s thirty first, they were very close, socialised together
CB: You talked about him being badly injured when he landed, cause he landed in a different position after he left the aircraft
DJ: Yes
CB: Yeah
DJ: To the rest of the crew
CB: They got out later presumably
DJ: Yes
CB: Were they all in the same prison camp or different ones?
DJ: No, I think that I’m not absolutely sure of, I don’t know, they may have been in the same prison camp [unclear] record and I did not at some stage which Stalag Luft my father was in but I can’t recall it at the moment
CB: Yeah. But did they get together after the war?
DJ: I don’t know much about that actually, I do know that I met two, as a young lad, schoolboy, I met the wireless operator Sandy Sandelands who came to our house in Hampton Hill, Middlesex. I also met the navigator, Frank Higgins, I met him as well, he used to tell about, I can remember them saying that my father citation was always wrong but, you know, they said they just didn’t listen to us because you know, because my father certaition states that on leaving the aircraft my father slipped and then ended up on the wing involved in the fire, well, if you climb out on top of the fuselage on an aircraft travelling at two hundred miles an hour and you’d slip, you don’t go down, you go backwards and this is what they used to say to me and they said, we were looking at your father on the wing and thinking we didn’t actually want him to go out there, we’d all rather just bailed out and that was it, but certainly when the fighter attacked the second time they thought that was it, he shouldn’t have gone out there cause he had now gone, that’s what they thought but those are the two that I’ve met and the only other person I can really remember, which I’d met later many times was Leonard Cheshire at various functions at Buckingham Palace or [unclear] for the Victoria Cross holders
CB: Yes
DJ: But they are the two members of the crew that I have met
CB: And on that topic Leonard Cheshire and your father received the Victoria Cross on the same day, so what happened there?
DJ: The, it was October 1945, as I say, following my father getting that phone call from a female officer in the Royal Air Force informing him he was to be awarded the Victoria Cross, the investiture took place on October 1945, on that day which my mother and father attended was Leonard Cheshire as well, officer commanding 617 Squadron at that time, he was to be awarded the Victoria Cross as well at the investiture in front of the king they were informed about the protocol of the event, the Victoria Cross would always be called first, amongst, cause there were other people there receiving other awards, the Victoria Cross, the people to be invested with the Victoria Cross would be called first, Leonard Cheshire as a group captain, as I believe his rank was at that time, would be called up first, Leonard Cheshire stopped speaking to me at that time, he said, absolutely not, I cannot go first, Norman Jackson in Leonard’s words stuck out his neck much more than I ever did, he should get the Victoria Cross first, I feel humble by being in the presence of this man which is what Lenny told me many times every time I saw him but he, Leonard Cheshire was told that because of the protocol of the day that couldn’t happen and the king would receive him first followed by my father so that’s what happened on that day, Leonard Cheshire went first followed by my father who received the Victoria Cross
CB: And how did they continue their association after the war, was it to do with the?
DJ: I think that after the war of course, the war in Europe had finished, it hadn’t finished in the Far East, my father was being crewed up to continue flying in the Far East but then obviously with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the war in the Far East ended and that was that but on the aircraft that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki the RAF observer was Leonard Cheshire and it had such an effect on him psychologically that he then went into an infirmary to for, I’m not sure how long it was for but he disappeared really from public life at that time, so my father never saw him until probably in the 1950s at various Royal Air Force functions where the Victoria Cross holders would be invited and I think that’s when Leonard started to see my father again but there was no real friendship between them, it was just really the only association was that they’d both been awarded the Victoria Cross, my father did know of Leonard Cheshire prior to the investiture of Buckingham Palace because of his work with 617 Squadron as most people in the Royal Air Force would had done. He was a great man but never really continued to associate afterwards other than at functions, Royal Air Force functions or Victoria Cross and George Cross holders functions, that was it. Which is where I met Leonard quite a number of times.
CB: You talked about your father crewing up for the Far East, that was called Tiger Force after what squadron was he supposed to be going to
DJ: Ok, I don’t know Chris, it was just that me Dad said he was, cause I asked that question did he see Leonard afterwards,
CB: Yes, indeed.
DJ: But that was October 1945 and it was really at the end
CB: Sure
DJ: So prior to that Dad was, you know, he came back, he was still in the Royal Air Force, he was still in the Royal Air Force until ‘46
CB: We’ll get that from his service record, but what did he or how long did he stay in the RAF your father?
DJ: From ’39, I mean, I’ve already showed you the photographs
CB: Of his demob.
DJ: Which is 1946 with Roy Chadwick at the presentation of the silver Lancaster bomber to my father and my father’s in uniform there so I’m presuming he was still in the Royal Air Force at that time, awaiting demobilisation I presume, yeah, so, the exact date I don’t know.
CB: They tended to, as I understand it, they tended to demobilise the people who’d been in longest earliest.
DJ: Well, my father joined in ’39 so he would have been long so but what date he got his demob I don’t know.
CB: Right.
DJ: Other than certainly in that photograph dated in, which, March wasn’t it? 1946 with Roy Chadwick my father still in uniform there, so.
CB: Can we just go fast backwards now, your father is on the aircraft, he is hit by cannon fire on the second attack by a fighter and he falls with his parachute in fire is what you were saying. He was badly burned
DJ: I don’t know if it was on fire or just smouldering, yeah, the rigging lines would have been dragging back
CB: But, he was dropping with that
DJ: At an alarming rate
CB: At an alarming rate and but he is burnt
DJ: Yes, very badly
CB: So, what do you know about how the German doctors dealt with his injuries?
DJ: Well, my father always said that they treated him very, very well, there is a report that I found out about twelve years ago, fourteen years ago by Spink’s in London doing some fact finding on my father, the hospital records are still there in Germany and when dealing with my father’s wounds, they actually ran out of saline and had to send out for more, that’s what they told me from the records they saw cause his wounds were so severe, so, that’s what I know, I mean, he said they treated him very well, very, very well
CB: So how long, remind me, how long was he in hospital?
DJ: The exact time I don’t know I believe, according to again if I may refer to Chaz Bowyer’s book For Valour The Air VCs, it states in here and I presume that some research was done for this, that my father was actually, if I can find the paragraph, at daybreak, my father is in a pitiful condition [unclear] he’s in German for the next ten months, Jackson [unclear] recuperated in a German hospital, though his burned hands never fully recovered so according to Chaz Bowyer ten months which would have put him from April through to early ‘45 where he was then sent to the prisoner of war camp
CB: And his wounds of course never fully recovered
DJ: The [unclear]
CB: [unclear] but what was the state of his hands later?
DJ: My father’s hands were noticeable that there was something different about them, my father had a really, if you looked at my father’s arms, they stopped obviously at the wrist, in he had a ring around each wrist and then the colour changed, my father’s hands were almost translucent where all the skin and flesh had been burnt through and then healed over the years. It never really bothered him as far as enabling him to do whatever he wanted to do, so there was no lasting effect from it other than the look of them really. He never suffered any lasting effects from those burns they healed and that was it but my father’s hands reached a stage where they wouldn’t heal any more so they looked like they looked on my father’s body which when we used to if we went to the beach or whatever my father had a pair of shorts on it was quite obvious with the number of scars on my father’s back and on the back of his legs that some sort of injuries had been sustained during his war years, certainly is quite a few scars there and as far as I believe there were seventeen different [unclear] hospital records from shell and shrapnel in my father’s body, some of those would have been incurred first attack and the rest on the second attack when he was on the way
CB: From your recollection what did they look like? Were some of them [unclear], were some them long and [unclear]?
DJ: Yeah, they were white and diamond shaped, I remember there were a couple that were sort of maybe half an inch long, straight, there were some that were diamond shaped and some that were round with almost an indentation to them so the skin had almost, was concave in my father’s back
CB: Was it a subject to conversation between
DJ: Never had, Dad never, all Dad used to say was, well, I’ve still got some shrapnel in my head, he used to feel round the back, [unclear] you could feel it there and used to feel the back of Dad’s head you could feel something sharp inside the skin so that’s the only thing he used to say when you tried to say, Dad, all those scars on your back but he wasn’t, he never used to speak about it much at all, it was, we learned about it from people coming to the house all the time, people would want interviews with Dad, the newspapers etcetera etcetera radio stations and so we learned about it from there it wasn’t something that Dad actually really spoke about but as we got older we spoke to Dad about it and
CB: And how did he feel about being questioned
DJ: Didn’t like it,
CB: By his family?
DJ: Oh, by his family? Well, he never really used to, Dad loved his family, he would never really be angry with us, he would talk but he never really opened up completely, he was just saying that that was then it was a very bad time, didn’t enjoy it very much, glad to move on and my father, we used to, I used to go to school with my father’s medals, they never meant much to Dad at all, he would let us take them to school in our pocket and of course teachers would want to see them and other people want to see them, he would go to Royal Air Force functions at various places, he would never ever put his medals on until he was inside the building and he would take them off before he left the building, he wouldn’t put them on because he felt that it wasn’t fair on all the other aircrew who were walking around who had their medals on, he felt it was almost ill deserved. I can remember one incident where my father had a function to go to and normally his medals would be in his desk drawer where he’d throw them he put them in there and just leave the drawer and that was it and he couldn’t find his medals anywhere and we were hunting, the whole family were hunting and we couldn’t find the medals anywhere and then obviously you start to backtrack the last time you had them, you know, he was at this function a few months before and what suit were you wearing and to that suit but the suit had been to the drycleaners in which was the [unclear] dry cleaners I can remember that in Twickenham and suddenly we thought maybe they were in Dad’s pocket when they went to the drycleaners so we phoned up the drycleaners and he said, yeah, we got a set of medals here, they were in some suit somewhere and we put them in the drawer and it was my father’s medals including the Victoria Cross that had just thrown in the drawer at the dry cleaners [laughs] so Dad managed to recover them ready for the next function. But he never really gave them any thought, he just put them in the pocket and that was it, that’s what Dad was like.
CB: Right, we’ll just stop for a minute. Going back to the medical issues and the hospital experience, in Britain McIndoe was the man who was best known for his plastic surgery but there other people doing it, what did Dad think about the work done by the doctor’s there? Were the plastic surgeons identified in any way or?
DJ: No, no one in particular, he said that he was very, very well looked after, he did speak about a Canadian doctor who would work in the hospital there which always seemed a bit odd to me that you would have a Canadian doctor working in a German hospital but whether that was, he was brought in for a particular reason or not, I don’t know, Dad never really spoke about it more than that other than say he was very, very well looked after, he was in a pretty pitiful state, he must have been but obviously a very strong will and managed to recover
CB: Any idea of the number of operations they had to perform on him?
DJ: No, no, none whatsoever, I don’t know [unclear]
CB: The hospital itself where do you think that was?
DJ: I would say, well the target that night was Schweinfurt which it I believe quite deep in Germany so I presume that as they were shot down over the target or just after the target, bombing the target it must have been within that vicinity, as much as, that would be a guess obviously.
CB: When you said that Spink’s did an awful lot of research on it
DJ: At the auction of my father’s medals which was done by Spink’s in London in 2004 following the loss of my mother and the subsequent dealing with the estate which included my father’s decorations, they did quite a lot of research and supplied me with quite a lot of information including all of my father’s mission records which I have and gave me the information about the hospital that they must have got, whether they got that from the hospital themselves or from somewhere else I don’t know, they gave me the information about the hospital running out of saline and so but the Canadian doctor bit my father, I can remember my father talking about that and [unclear]
CB: [unclear]
DJ: I presume so, yes, yeah, however they used to treat them in those days.
CB: A bit largely experimental I imagine.
DJ: I [unclear], I mean, I do sometimes think my father must have been in so much pain because if you have very deep burns and they are exposed to the air is very painful. And at the time my father hit the ground, his gloves must have been completely burnt off, completely burnt through so he must have been exposed to the air, but maybe with his smashed ankles, only being able to walk on elbows and knees, badly burnt face as well, one eye closed, there was so much pain elsewhere that it sort of numbed the effect of the hands, I don’t know. And it was pretty cold as well if I understand it was April or so I think it must have been pretty cold out there so that may have helped as well, the cold temperature.
CB: So, he was clearly damaged shall we say in various ways, what happened to his eye? Did that recover or what was wrong with it?
DJ: Yeah, I think he just got a bad bash on it or something, I don’t think there was any shrapnel damage to it at all, he, it was just happened in the incident probably when he left the aircraft he hit something and bashed his eye, I presume, I don’t know, Dad never spoke about it but his right eye was completely closed, I mean, Chaz Bowyer mentions that in the book here when he hit the ground so I think that would have just healed and opened up as normal
CB: These sorts of injuries can stay with people for the rest of their lives and you talked about the fact that his head had some shrapnel in it
DJ: Yes
CB: What about his health of in later years? Was his experience in the war in any way a disadvantage to him from a health point of view later?
DJ: No, I don’t believe, if it was I don’t think my father would have said so and he was a man that, he didn’t really speak about the war, he never actually said the war had any effect on him at all, physically or mentally, it was a time when they just did their duty, he spoke a lot about the other aircrew, how wonderful they were, and with the fact that there was no memorial to these guys, that bothered my father a lot over the years, a lot and but as far as the war affecting him, no, he never ever said that it damaged him in any way, in fact I think he felt himself quite lucky that he survived and went on to have seven children, extremely lucky, he often said that he should have died at the age of twenty five [unclear] man
CB: Where do you come in the ranking of children?
DJ: I am number five, born in 1953, so, four were born between ’44, which is my brother, my eldest brother Brian was born on the night my father was shot down and then we have Pauline, Brenda, Peter and then myself and I was followed by Ian and Shirley Anne a bit later.
CB: When were they born?
DJ: Ian was born 1955 and Shirley was, came along a little bit later in 1961 so there is a bit of a gap there.
CB: So, what sort of house did you have to accommodate all these members?
DJ: Yeah, a big one [laughs], My father had a, he built it himself actually with another chap, he bought some land in Hampton Hill, Burtons Road, Hampton Hill in Middlesex off of a chap had a big house in Uxbridge Road he came down to Burtons Road, so he bought this large, large piece of land and on there he built a bungalow, a four bedroom bungalow which had quite a large front, [unclear] it was a very large bungalow and that’s where we all were brought up
CB: Had bunk beds, did you?
DJ: Yes, yeah, I mean, when we were younger certainly and we were all seven at home, yeah
CB: Was there quite a well regimented system operating for use of the bathroom?
DJ: Probably, I don’t remember it being any problem, I know that we used to have a separate shower in the bathroom so we used to have showers all the time, bath night was generally on a Sunday or something where three or four of us boys used to get in together, I can remember that, certainly three of us, the younger ones used to get in together, the girls used to get in together, it was no issue at all, I mean, I was amazed that my mother who cooked three meals a day for us all, breakfast, lunch and dinner, would come up with so much variety for us all, I can always remember thinking where, my mother must be wonderful to come up with all these different choices all the time but it’s obviously I mean the house was full all the time, there was always things going on so we shared you had three of us in one bedroom when we were growing up, three of the boys, my oldest brother Brian had his own room, you had two girls with another bedroom and then when Shirley came along, a bit later, Pauline was getting married and so leaving the house and so Shirley could take her place [unclear] in the bedroom, Brian at that time had already gone, he’d been married and moved on so, it sort of, it worked out well at the end
CB: What was your father’s occupation after the war?
DJ: My father joined JBR Brandy as a salesman, that’s what he wanted to do, travel, he wanted to travel, he couldn’t settle down any more and his hands were such that he couldn’t go back really to engineering as such, he joined JBR Brandy, he was then with them for a while and then he was headhunted I suppose you could say by the distillers company [unclear] John Hague who wanted him to join them as their troubleshooting travelling salesman so to speak whereas they had accounts that needed building up they would send in, were sending in Norman Jackson VC and that carried some weight in those days. And suddenly people would sit up and listen and that’s what they used, you know, they, he was quite well thought of in the company for doing that, so, that’s what he did, he worked for John Hague was he, for many years. Up until retirement and he retired at the age of fifty-three.
CB: Oh, did he? What made him retire so soon?
DJ: My mother has suffered some mental health, she had suffered a stroke at that time but recovered from it but subsequently had a stroke later in life that put her into a wheelchair unfortunately but that was in, my mother was then sixty and lived to the age of eighty two with that
CB: [unclear]
DJ: Yeah, never complained about it, just got on with it
CB: This was the quality of scotch, was it?
DJ: Probably was, my mother never drunk [laughs], she would have a gin at Christmas with a tonic and that was it
CB: It was just the fumes from the open bottle
DJ: Yeah, maybe, my father used to, he’d drink, I think in those days it must have been different because every meeting my father used to have they’d drink whisky, they would go to a meeting and they’d have whisky, and then they’d drive home afterwards you know and my father used to come home, he’s been stopped by the police before in the old days driving home or he’d drive home with one eye closed looking at the centre line in the road because you know he’d been working and have a few whiskeys and the police would stop him and it would be local police and they’d realised who it was and they’d just take him home, knock on the door with Dad, one of them driving Dad’s car and the other one in the police car with Dad in the police car and say, oh, we have Norman Jackson here and delivering him to our house [laughs]. Happened on a few occasions.
CB: And what age was he when he died?
DJ: My father would have been, it was one month to the day before his seventy-fifth birthday, I’m sorry, one month to the day before they day he got shot down, my apologies, he died on March the 27th which was four weeks prior to the day when he took off, which was April 27 1944 so it was a couple of weeks before his 75th birthday.
CB: Now we touched earlier on the delicate question really of what happened to his medals, so
DJ: Yeah, not that delicate at all
CB: Ok, so, mother died,
DJ: Yeah
CB: Your mother died
DJ: Yeah.
CB: Was that someway the prompt on of dealing with the medical, medals,
DJ: Yes
CB: What happened exactly?
DJ: What happened was we contacted the RAF Museum in Hendon which we felt would’ve been where my father would’ve wanted them to go to, so we contacted the museum, not Douglas actually, we weren’t dealing with Douglas at that time, Douglas Radcliffe at Bomber Command, we were dealing with the curator of the museum and we said that we’d like my father’s medals to go there and he was very happy to receive them and letters were flying backwards and forwards between him and then suddenly my mother’s lawyer, I was an executive of my mother’s will as was my sister Shirley, the lawyer contacted us and said according to your mother’s will there is no stipulation about your father’s medals other than, as this is written in, to be kept within the family or if not part of the estate, he said, this is where we have an issue, you cannot keep a single item within a family, it has to be considered as part of the estate, this is what he said, so he said, well, if we all agree to donate it, he said, well, the problem with that in law there is no precedent for that, you, I can only tell you what the law is, he said, now, if you all agree we can possibly do something. My oldest brother Brian who at that time, at that time felt that they shouldn’t be donated to the museum, that was where the issue was, the lawyer acting for my mother then said, well, they have to be considered as part of the estate, so we said, well, what does that mean? He said, well, they have to be sold, he said, and if they have to be sold you can sell them on a private auction where nobody knows about it but the problem with that is legally if the maximum amount of money isn’t realised for any asset of the estate, the executives of that will can be held responsible, this is he’s just saying what the law is, he says, my advice to you would be to go to a public auction, I said, we don’t really want to do that but that was the road we went down so we contacted, well he did, Spink’s, the only reason we knew about Spink’s because that’s where my mother, my father’s medals used to go for maintenance and that sort of thing and they used to do the you know dressing of them and [unclear], so he contacted Spink’s who then contacted us and we had to go and see them and have this, you know, this meeting and everything else and then we had the auction, the media found out about it as we knew they would but a lot more, there was a lot more interest than we really anticipated and including us on the BBC news asked me to do a bit for them and they interviewed me at the RAF museum there talking about it, my wishes which just they would go to the museum for ten pounds or something you know and we donate that to charity or whatever, to which the lawyer said [unclear] you can’t do that, anyway there we are, day of the auction, all of the family really buried their head in the sand, they didn’t want to know, I was driving along the motorway somewhere listening to the radio and the news came on and it came on that the Victoria Cross awarded to airman Norman Cyril Jackson had sold, had made a world record of two hundred and thirty six thousand pounds at Spink’s in London, I felt, it was an awful feeling, it really was and then I got a call from various newspapers asking which I there felt, thought was quite personal actually, what are you gonna do with the money? And I just said, I don’t want the money, don’t want anything to do with it, don’t want to touch it, and then the guy from the Telegraph phoned and I spoke to him and he said, you sound quite angry, I said, well, only the fact that this didn’t need to happen in my view and he said, well, what do you feel about it? And then the next day he printed what I was saying that it bothered me that this, it had been sold amongst much acrimony and this sort of things and [coughs] it was not an easy time, the money itself was, sat at Spink’s for a while [coughs], they then forded it on to any lawyers dealing with the estate and it sat there until we were told that it had to be divided up amongst the people who were named within the will, which were the family, I personally refused to have any of it, with prior to that, Penny and I had lost our daughter unfortunately at a young age and we decided that what we’d like to do was have a bronze plaque made because the Victoria Cross is bronze from a cannon that was captured during the Crimean War, a Russian cannon, even though, you know, I think since they decided maybe it was a Chinese cannon that was captured by the Russians which was then captured by the British but we thought it’s bronze so we’d like to have a plaque made in bronze for Lilly our daughter so we got a quota back then of a thousand pounds and we took a thousand pounds of that money to make the plaque and the rest left with the rest of the family who wanted to take it and so that’s what happened to the proceeds of the sale of my father’s medals. At the time I was a bit angry because I felt they should be in a museum in the public domain, following the sale it became known that Lord Ashcroft had purchased my father’s Victoria Cross and he actually wrote it was one of his favourites which I thought was quite nice but I was still angry because I felt it should be in a public domain, I was told at that time by Didy Grahame who was at the or ran really the Victoria Cross and George Cross Association at the Home Office that don’t be too bothered because eventually they will end up in the public domain, Lord Ashcroft has stated that to me, that’s what Didy said and now of course Lord Ashcroft has been involved in the creation of the Victoria Cross room at the Imperial War Museum in London which is where my father’s medals were on show with the story so that is wonderful and I give my full thanks to Lord Ashcroft for that, it’s wonderful, it’s all ended up, you know, ok in the end and they are where they should be in the public domain and with my father’s story which is good
CB: And how did the rest of your siblings feel about
DJ: Awful, even to this day, really Brian was held responsible in some ways for what happened and that was tough for the family to take really because of dealing with the media and in some way trying to keep from the media without lying about what was happening and the reasons for it, what would’ve been nice if the lawyers just said, ok, a majority decision here, that’s what’s gonna happen but Brian felt that they shouldn’t be going to the museum, he’s entitled to his opinion but it did affect family, the family bond for many years to come, it did
CB: It sounds as though you found yourself in the front line of this but what about Shirley who was the other executive, why did she
DJ: Shirley to this day doesn’t forgive at all, not at all, Shirley, I do, I live and let live, I move on, Shirley is a different [unclear] [laughs], she hasn’t really forgiven so you’re welcome to go and interview her if you like [laughs], Shirley no, nor my sister Pauline neither my sister or Brenda really, they [unclear] forgiven, tough one
CB: Yeah
DJ: But that, you know, there we are. Brian had his reasons and he was entitled to them, you know, not everybody thinks the same and I think if you have seven children you are bound to have some disagreements, somewhere down the line
CB: You don’t need seven to get disagreements
DJ: No, two [laughs] or one.
CB: We’ll just stop there.
DJ: To be sold, part, consider part of the estate or sold, that was it,
CB: Those were the options
DJ: That was the options, they were part of the estate which meant they were to be sold as the rest of the estate would be
CB: Right
DJ: Or kept within the family and you cannot as my sister was saying at the time, you cannot keep one item between seven, you can’t cut it up and have a seventh each, you could all agree to give it to one person or to donate it or something, but you need full agreement and if there is one person that disagrees it’s part of the estate, that’s it, now you can have one person disagree for whatever reason, whether you want to see it sold, whether you just don’t want the museum to have it, if there is a disagreement and not, it’s not completely agreed by all seven children, it’s part of the estate, that’s how my mother’s will had been put together by her solicitor which was wrong really cause Mom would have been a lot better off, cause Mom always used to say I would rather Dad’s, my father’s medals, Dad’s medals went to David, that’s what she always wanted because she knew I would do the right thing and but that was never in my mother’s will, other members of the family knew that and kept quoting her but the solicitor said, [unclear] black on white
CB: Legally.
DJ: No.
CB: No.
DJ: This, my mother’s will was done many years ago, been forgotten about really so there it was in black on white and that was it, it just [unclear] one person to disagree for whatever reason and it was part of the estate
CB: Now Brian was the eldest?
DJ: Yes, he was, yeah
CB: And he is not with us any longer
DJ: No, oh you? that’s right, yeah, we lost him this year.
CB: Oh, this year
DJ: Yeah
CB: Right. So, how did the family, the survivors as it were, all six of you feel about it then being on display in the Imperial War Museum?
DJ: Happy.
CB: In that room?
DJ: Very happy. Very, very happy in doing it.
CB: So, does that in a way create a closure?
DJ: Yes
CB: In the family?
DJ: Absolutely, it does. They really should be in the public domain, doesn’t matter where but they’re in the public domain
CB: Yeah
DJ: That’s it. They’re still the property of Lord Ashcroft
CB: Yeah
DJ: As they should, I mean, but, you know, there we are, that’s it but they’re in the public domain which is a good thing
CB: It created, as you said earlier, a good deal of media attention and the sale price was two hundred and thirty-six thousand
DJ: Yeah
CB: What was the expected price at auction?
DJ: One forty, I think
CB: Right
DJ: From memory, I think they were saying it should reach about one hundred and forty thousand, which when you divide it by seven is nothing, twenty thousand or something like [unclear] saying at the time is just ridiculous, going through all this for twenty thousand pounds,
CB: Yes.
DJ: Which I, was a lot of money then I suppose but to me in my head it didn’t matter if it was two hundred thousand it still would’ve been a no
CB: Going back to that extraordinary experience in the Lancaster, what process do you understand went on between the crew members with your father deciding or convincing them that he should get out?
DJ: It wasn’t a, I don’t think, as I understand it he didn’t need to convince them, he was the most experienced member of the crew anyway, it was his job as far as he saw to see that Lancaster return and the crew as well, he asked the permission of the pilot Fred Mifflin who was obviously the skipper of the aircraft, he told him he could deal with it and I think the bond between them all, Fred never questioned it, it was an incredulous thing to try and do but he never questioned it and so he just let him get on with it, that was it, deal with it
CB: When he went into the prison camp, then there were lots of people there obviously, do you, what understanding do you have of how he got on when he was in the prison camp, prisoner of war camp?
DJ: The only thing I really about, Didy Grahame at the Victoria Cross and George’s Cross Association always says my father went through hell as she said in the prisoner of war camp, how she knows that I don’t know, I know very little about my father’s time in the prisoner of war camp other than he used to talk about they were very hungry all the time. He also spoke about in the prisoner of war camp was a chap who they called Little Bader who had lost both legs, he was an airman, lost both legs and they were forced to march, I don’t think this was what’s known as the long march or whatever, they were forced to leave that prisoner of war camp and march to somewhere else towards the end of the war and my father carried that chap, the legless Little Bader as they called him, the distance from that out the prisoner of war camp they [unclear] to the next one which I thought was a pretty incredible thing when, you know, you had hands that had been burnt through, broken ankles and God knows what else, [unclear] he’d healed but you couldn’t have been that good, because you hadn’t been, nutrition was probably non-existent almost and you’d carried him and the chap that Dad had carried actually wrote an article about this because he then found out about Dad’s award after the war and wrote an article saying this was the chap that carried me from the prisoner of war camp to the next prisoner of war camp, which I think was basically to get away from the advancing Allies to move further deeper into Germany and that’s what, that’s my only recollection of anything to do with my father’s time in the prisoner of war camp
CB: Do you know what his name was?
DJ: I did
CB: Ok [unclear]
DJ: I think, you can look it up, I did know it, it’s recorded, this chap, Little Bader, he’s quite well known I think
CB: Ok.
DJ: I think he was a rear gunner, I think he’d lost both legs
CB: We are talking still about the prison camp, he would have been in hospital as you said earlier all that time
DJ: Ten months according to Chaz Bowyer, yeah
CB: Ten months. And the effect of the surgery and the convalescence will still be in the system as it were when he gets to the prisoner of war camp, what do you know about the medical facilities, of the medical [unclear]?
DJ: I know nothing about, if it was [unclear] I don’t know
CB: No
DJ: I know very little if anything about the conditions within the prisoner of war camp, I know my father said they were always hungry, I know he said he never ever, he had to wait until he got back to England before he had a pillow, so he used to sleep with his arm underneath the back of his head, that’s how they had to sleep, they had no pillow or anything, very hungry all the time, as far as medical conditions, facilities were concerned I don’t know, I would have thought they were pretty basic if at all, whether they had a camp doctor I don’t know, I don’t know, I’d have to check on that
CB: Ok. We’ll stop on that.
DJ: Did prisoner of war camps have doctors?
CB: Probably. German.
DJ: They would of course
CB: If they captured people, they would [unclear].
DJ: Right.
CB: Spoke earlier about the Canadian doctor in the hospital, what do you know other than that?
DJ: I’m not sure if it was a hospital, my father spoke about a Canadian doctor, now, whether that was someone who worked in the hospital in Germany with the Germans or subsequently was a captured doctor in the prisoner of war camp I don’t know, probably the latter would have been the case, I can’t imagine the Germans sort of bringing in a Canadian doctor to help them in their hospitals, pretty bad on the payroll I wouldn’t have thought so, so it’s more than likely he was actually in the prisoner of war camp and helped at the, after being discharged from the hospital and that is probably nearer the truth
CB: In view of what your father said, did he ever make contact with that man or try to make contact with him?
DJ: Not that I know of, no, no. Not at all, not that I know of. But bear in mind, I was born in 1953, so whether he did turn up at the house prior to my being born or a few years after I’ve been born, I don’t know, I don’t remember. Dad certainly never spoke about it, other than this Canadian doctor and that was [unclear] helped him
CB: Apart from his experience with the aircraft, what else did he talk about his being dramatic because some of the earlier operations he went on as in raids were fairly dramatic, what
DJ: Yes, he used to talk about Berlin, they had, his crew at 106 Squadron they did ten tours to Berlin, which was quite a lot
CB: Ten ops
DJ: Ten ops, sorry, ten ops, not ten tours, ten ops, my apologies, three hundred missions to Berlins, ten ops to Berlin
CB: Yeah
DJ: One of them I know because it is on the records upstairs, they were hit by flak and also attacked by a fighter that night and lost one engine so they returned with three engines from Berlin all the way back to Metheringham, their base in Lincolnshire, I know that, that’s the only one Dad really used to speak other than the rest of them which were just missions, he just, it was a job to be done, one mission paled into insignificance with another mission, you know, it was just one mission after another really, had he had the choice he probably wouldn’t have wanted to go on any of them, but they just did their job
CB: Just picking up on what you said earlier about the cohesion of the crew, they tended to speak from experience of interviews as the family, what about when they were off operations? Any idea of what they did in their spare time?
DJ: [clears throat] No. I know they used to drink together around, they would go to a local pub around Metheringham or go into Lincoln together. Other than that I don’t know, bear in mind that Fred Mifflin was from Newfoundland so his family would’ve been in Newfoundland so I suspect he’d been quite close to the crew, keeping them together and then the rest of the crew would have known that so they looked after their skipper and the rest from various parts of the country, so they would have spent a lot of time together as a family, a family unit.
CB: I’ll stop there again. Thank you.
DJ: Maybe my father always spoke about the rear gunner who was killed that night
CB: The time when he got out of the plane
DJ: Yeah
CB: Well he
DJ: Well, he, the rear gunner, Dad said, was injured in the first attack
CB; Oh, right.
DJ: He was hit. Now Dad said, he probably would’ve never survived a parachute jump, now whether that was the reason why my father decided to do what he did or not, I don’t know, now that may be the reason, he was very good friends with Fred Mifflin the pilot who was also killed that night, my father said or Sandy Sandeland the wireless operator actually said they did both manage to get out of the aircraft, he saw them, Fred Mifflin was, Johnny Johnson was near the escape hatch at the back of the aircraft, Fred Mifflin was released, he was standing up, ready to move away from the controls, the Germans say they were both found within the aircraft, Sandy Sandeland always said that they got out of the aircraft and they were killed on the ground, so there was a little bit of disagreement there about what happened and my father says, knowing how aircrew were treated when they were off for a bombing mission on a village or town or city, he believed they were killed on the ground but we don’t know, there’s another story that Fred Mifflin and Johnny Johnson were very good friends, Johnny Johnson was injured, couldn’t survive the parachute jump so stayed with the aircraft and tried to bring it down, that’s another story, whether it’s true or not I don’t know, my father didn’t know, he was not in the aircraft but my father always believed they were killed on the ground and not in the aircraft.
CB: Ok.
DJ: Was one of those things you could never prove either way, really
CB: Yes, it’s difficult to deal with
DJ: Yeah.
CB: Now, we’ve covered dramatic things here but there was some good sides so how did your parents come to meet in the first place?
DJ: My father, actually my mother told this story that the way they met was my father used to cycle to the engineering works which was in Richmond from Twickenham, my mother lived in Twickenham at the time and Dad used to cycle past her daily and whistle and then wink. My mother used to obviously totally ignore him and then there was a dance one night at a club in Twickenham and that was where my father saw my Mum and approached her and asked her to dance, I think my mother refused, my father wouldn’t go away, kept on asking and eventually my mother gave in and that’s where it started. That was it.
CB: Persistent man.
DJ: A man who knew what he wanted, I think
CB: So how long did it take him to
DJ: Well, that would’ve been in 1938 to ’39, just prior to him joining up. Bear in mind my mother was born in 1922 so at that time she would’ve been sixteen years of age, coming on seventeen, so a young girl. They married in ’42 when she was twenty. And it was just prior to the war
CB: And then the decision on getting married, how did that work? Cause he’s been away for a bit.
DJ: Yeah, he was sent away, I think they actually were quite close and got engaged I believe in 1940 if I remember correctly and then my father was sent to North Africa, Freetown, North West Africa
CB: Sierra Leone
DJ: Indeed and was there until ’42 and my mother didn’t know where he was, received the odd letter but that was it, gone, and came back in ’42, September, they got back together and the, arranged their wedding for Boxing Day of that year and that was it. Happy ever since.
CB: But most of the war, [unclear] after that ‘42
DJ: Yeah.
CB: Then they were, father was still around
DJ: He, he was in the UK
CB: In the UK, so, how did they live together or did [unclear]?
DJ: No, they
CB: They lived apart all the time
DJ: They, Mum lived in Twickenham, in Church Street, Twickenham.
CB: Right.
DJ: She had a flat there, which my father used to visit when he was off duty, all the time my father was on duty, he would’ve been stationed at the airfield at Metheringham or Syerston first and then Metheringham
CB: Yeah, she didn’t move up to Lincolnshire
DJ: No, she didn’t, she stayed in Twickenham, that’s where she was
CB: And then after the war,
DJ: Yeah
CB: He was still in the RAF
DJ: He was
CB: So, the same arrangement continued
DJ: No, well, bear in mind that my father came back at the end of the war in Europe, he then was still stationed in the RAF, my mother was still living in Twickenham. Come ’46, he left the Royal Air Force, they then took a house in Whitton, which is near Twickenham, a rented accommodation while my father was looking for some land to build a house and that he found in Burtons Road Hampton Hill not far from there and then built the bungalow
CB: What do you know about how he came back from the prison camp? Because he wasn’t in the long march, you said
DJ: I don’t believe the march that was spoken about was the long march, it may well have been
CB: No, that’s right. Yeah.
DJ: But I don’t know, I don’t believe it was [coughs], I’m sure my father would have mentioned that, I think a lot of people died on that march, I don’t think it was that one, sorry [unclear]. [coughs] What did he say about that? I can’t remember much about it at all
CB: How did he actually get back to Britain? Was he flown back or [unclear]?
DJ: Again, I don’t know whether he was on a boat or actually flown back, I don’t know, a lot of the prisoners of war were flown back
CB: They were in Operation Exodus, yes
DJ: So, it may well be that he was flown back but he never spoke about it and I never asked him the question
CB: Ok. Right. Well, David Jackson thank you very much for a most interesting.
DJ: An absolute pleasure, Chris.
CB: Just. Parents give advice to families and children all the time. So, what was your father’s what shall I say recommendation that you should do in life?
DJ: Well, one thing I can remember my father saying to all of us was that, just remember, you don’t have to prove anything to anybody and personally I never quite knew what he meant by that until we were at school when everybody it seemed wanted to challenge you or expected you to step up to the mark where a challenge was involved, this was even with the school teachers who, if there was a rugby game, football game, whatever, they would expect you to excel in what you were doing because
CB: Because of your father was a VC
DJ: Because of my father, yeah. And it really was difficult to live up to thatt a lot of the time, very difficult
CB: Right
PJ: You’re down?
CB: Well, we keep going. No, let’s just. Penny is here now, so let’s just get a bit of reflection on other things. What do you remember about your father-in-law, although you didn’t meet him very often?
PJ: I met him over about a two- or three-year period but the first time I met him, I knocked at the front door and he opened the door and he went, hello, who are you? And I said, my name is Penny and I’m here to see David. Just a minute, [unclear] over his shoulder and shouted, David! One of your girlfriends is here! That’s my first meeting with Norman Jackson. We had a few more like that afterwards, didn’t we?
DJ: Wonderful man!
PJ: [laughs] Oh, you want me to add that bit. Wonderful man! [laughs]
CB: And you did meet him again. And what did he say the second time?
PJ: Oh, I don’t remember the second time, I can remember
CB: Other times
PJ: I can remember a few wedding receptions, family wedding receptions where we went to where he’d rather stayed in the pub than gone to the wedding reception
CB: Right
PJ: And we had to help him out, didn’t we?
DJ: Yeah
PJ: We assisted him out of various pubs
DJ: He’d rather stay at the bar with his whisky rather than go to the actual function itself, yeah
PJ: Yes
CB: Well, he was a man who distributed lemonade as a whisky
PJ: True
CB: As a job
PJ: Oh, that’s a good excuse
CB: You’ve gotta have confidence in your product
DJ: Absolutely
CB: You must try it out
PJ: Of course
DJ: I used to [unclear] He was a John Hague man through and through, absolutely
CB: A man of great belief
PJ: He was
DJ: And conviction
CB: Conviction
PJ: He was a lovely man, very lovely man, nice family man, good heart
CB: How did, the two of you, what was your perspective of the lack of a Bomber memorial or a lack of a memorial to the bomber crews?
DJ: Well, I know what my father’s opinion on that was. Really, upset him quite a lot and personally I couldn’t understand why, I know a lot more about why now and even though a lot of people who come up with reasons why it shouldn’t have been put up need to really go back and relearn their history because their facts are wrong, totally wrong and it was shame that Winston Churchill really dismissed [unclear] knowledge with Bomber Command at the end of the war, I think that was a start a bit really but I know my father was very upset by the lack of the memorial to these guys and would’ve been very, very happy to have been at the unveiling of the memorial in Green Park had us talking when that happened but to wait so long after the end of the Second World War for a memorial to the service that had the highest loss rate of any of the services is unthinkable really, I can’t answer [unclear] just unthinkable
CB: Thinking of the history of this, bearing in mind the Germans were practicing in the Spanish civil war, what were the main things that stick in your mind about what the Germans did originally?
DJ: Originally by starting the Second World War
CB: Then the bombing context
DJ: I think that the bombing context of the German Luftwaffe, maybe the bombing of cities you could almost say happened by accident, Coventry was meant to be a reprisal for what happened with the bombing of Munich by RAF following Hitler’s speech in Munich at that time. The bombing of London was meant to be a mistake by one bomber that basically had navigation had gone wrong and ended up in the East End of London and dropped his bombs during the Battle of Britain but if that’s true then what happened in the Spanish civil war, places like Guernica
CB: Guernica
DJ: Guernica which was basically used as a proving ground for the bombing tactics of the Luftwaffe, in my view they always had the intention of destroying whatever they could destroy. I think that the Germans, the Second World War was the First World War almost as it evolved into was not like a normal war that beknown before it was total war and it involved everybody within the country, absolutely everybody. I do think that the Allies fought the Second World War as indeed the First World War with a degree of humanity. I don’t believe that the Nazis, I think for them humanity didn’t exist.
CB: You talked earlier about when father landed and by parachute and the reaction of with the comment Terror Flieger. Could you just for the record here explain what Terror Flieger, what they meant by that?
DJ: A flier that delivers terror. Probably in today’s terminology a terrorist. And I believe, and my father always understood it, these German cities were suffering night after night and so that’s how he understood it, as a person delivering terror, to people who as far as I’m sure, that man who lived in that cottage was concerned, they didn’t deserve it. Maybe he wasn’t aware of Germany’s position within the Second World War or the reasons for the Second World War. He knew what he was being told, whether that was the truth, who knows. But if the, where the Nazis were concerned, I doubt it. But I’m sure he looked at my father as someone that was pretty awful [laughs] and should, you know, should have been treated pretty bad, abominably really and not with any humanity at all. That’s what I think.
CB: And he’s unlikely to have known what was happening in London, Coventry, Liverpool, Belfast, Portsmouth, Plymouth, all these places
DJ: No, I don’t believe that at all, and I think we’re talking about a different time where people weren’t, where news wasn’t as readily available as it is today, I’m sure he would’ve been aware of the rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the aims of Adolf Hitler, whether he considered the rest of Europe was to blame, the Allies [unclear] the rest of Europe, for what was happening in Germany towards the end of the war and it was ill deserved as far as Germany was concerned I don’t know, but I’m sure, when he said Terror Flieger, he meant that these people, these Royal Air Force during the night, at night and the American Air Force during the day were delivering terror that was ill deserved on the German cities. [unclear] sure was what he meant.
CB: 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 David Jackson
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-30
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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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AJacksonDM171130
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:25:11 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
David Jackson tells of his father, Norman Jackson VC, born in Ealing, London in 1919 and who worked in an engineering company when the war broke out. After initially trying to join the navy, he then joined the RAF and classified as a fitter on engines. He was then posted to 95 Squadron and trained on Sunderland flying boats before remustering as a flight engineer. David gives a detailed and vivid account of his father’s operation to Schweinfurt on the 27th of April 1944, which earned him the Victoria Cross: although he had reached his 30 operations with 106 Squadron, he volunteered to join the aircrew to see them through, making this his thirty first operation; the aircraft was attacked by an enemy fighter and racked by cannon fire; with the aircraft on fire, Norman decided to exit the plane in order to extinguish the flames. At the second attack, Norman was blown off the aircraft and landed in enemy territory, breaking both ankles and suffering serious injuries on his hands. He reached a German village, where he was indignantly called “Terror Flieger”, taken into custody, paraded through the streets and taken for treatment to hospital, where he spent ten months. Afterwards he was interned in a prisoner of war camp. David remembers when his father was invested with the Victoria Cross at Buckingham Palace and met Leonard Cheshire. David remembers his father flying ten operations to Berlin and tells of one on which they were attacked by enemy fire and lost one engine. David tells of the legal issues regarding his father’s medals and how they ended up in the Imperial War Museum after being sold at an auction. He discusses his father’s views on the lack of recognition to the aircrews after the war and debates the bombing context of the German Luftwaffe.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--London
England--Nottinghamshire
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Schweinfurt
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-04-27
106 Squadron
95 Squadron
aircrew
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
fitter engine
flight engineer
ground crew
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
memorial
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Halton
RAF St Athan
RAF Syerston
Sunderland
training
Victoria Cross
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1104/11563/PRoseD1601.2.jpg
271b045353133167b74a6cce195df34b
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1104/11563/ARoseD161128.1.mp3
6e5ed182dbb55a5d4e25889b20a4fcf8
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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Rose, David
D Rose
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with David Rose (Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a flight engineer with 51 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-11-28
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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Rose, D
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: Ok. We’re ready to start. This is Andrew Sadler interviewing David Rose for the Bomber Command Digital Archive at his home in London on the 28th of November 2016. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed David. Can I start by asking you where, and where, when and where you were born?
DR: I was born in Swanage in Dorset. 24 Station Road. And my, my father was from a family of twelve. And in 1912, 1914 my father said he did not wish to kill anyone and they said, ‘Well, you’d better go in the Royal, the Royal Medical Corps.’ Which he did. He came out as a sergeant and he, he came out with ill health and, and he died young. And I believe that he died, the cause of his early death was the war. And two of his brothers Merton and Osmond both died in the First World War, and their names are on the War Memorial in Swanage overlooking the Bay. And of course, his name is not there and I think he gave adequate equal service caring for and assisting the dying. Particularly in the, in the Somme. And his discharge mentioned that he had to march from France to Essen to Cologne, a hundred miles or so, and that was one of the causes of his weak health. Yes. Swanage to Oxford.
AS: And what, when you joined the RAF why did you join the RAF?
DR: I was at school at Kingswood in Bath. I’d been at the Swanage Grammar School. I was advised to go away to school. I don’t know how my parents could afford it but I went. I went to a Methodist School in Bath. Kingswood. And in the summer holidays of 1939 we received a letter saying don’t go back to Bath. Go to Uppingham in Rutlandshire because the Admiralty are taking over the school. So I went to Uppingham where I did my last two years of schooling and when I left school I had a year to wait before I would be called up for the war. And I didn’t want to go in the army. I preferred the air force by choice and volunteered for the air force. And while I was waiting for the year before I joined up I went to a wireless college in Colwyn Bay. A friend had been and it occupied his time. And I was there and I left with a Guildhall Certificate which showed that I could be a wireless operator at sea. And while I was there I was called to RAF Padgate for them to check me out. And they sat me down and they put some blocks of wood on the table and they said, ‘Fit those together.’ And I couldn’t do it. So they said, ‘Where does the fuel go in a car?’ I said, ‘I think there’s a hole at the back.’ And, ‘What’s a two stroke engine?’ I said, ‘I’ve no idea.’ ‘Flight engineer,’ they said. ‘No,’ I said, ‘You’re not listening to me. I’ve just told you what,’ Flight engineer. So they took me on board when I joined. I joined at Lords Cricket Ground in London and from there went to Torquay for eight weeks during which time I had appendicitis. And then I went to — where was it? St Athan in South Wales, for nine months training. And then from there, when I finished training I went on to Lincolnshire. I can’t remember the name of the station first of all where I did a couple of weeks on Stirlings. And then went to Skellingthorpe and dash, I can’t even remember the squadron number. 51 and 52. And I did a tour of thirty four flights and, and then I was doing various other RAF stations and ended up in RAF Locking. And then was discharged. Yes. Locking — I’m sorry, Skellingthorpe. And there I joined a team who had already been together. I was the last one to join. Flight engineer. And the pilot was Johnny Cooksey. He was wonderful. I think he, he somehow made a tremendous team of us. And when, when we finally left the air force someone suggested we have a sort of annual meeting and he was, he didn’t wish to do that. I think he wanted to say we’ll turn our back on that period. And so we never really got together ever again. It was Lincolnshire. Skellingthorpe. The first week we did a few circuits and bumps and I, I don’t know what they call it but practice bombing. Then we did our first operation which was too La Rochelle in the south of France to bomb the submarine pens. We had armour piercing bombs and we formed up in a loose gaggle over Bridport on a wonderful sunny afternoon and headed off for the south of La Rochelle. And as we approached the target the other eleven seemed to be up ahead of us but we were dropping behind them. The crew were saying, ‘Why aren’t we with them?’ I said, ‘No. We can’t go any faster,’ and so we were a bit behind all the others. And it wasn’t until then I realised that going out with the bomb, bombs on board was heavier and we were using more fuel. Now, why I had never learned that or understood that? So, I had some faults I must say as a flight engineer. I’m not sure I was quite up to it. Anyway, we all survived. We, we, there was one flight we went on which was [pause] we generally, we generally carried about, I think twelve one thousand pound bombs but there was of course the cookie which was, I think a ten or twelve thousand pound bomb on its own which completely filled the bomb — whatever you call it. Where the bombs were. And they were very sensitive bombs. Two had exploded simply taxiing around and killed all the crew at Skellingthorpe. And it was Johnny and the navigator were the two who, and the bomb aimer I think, were the ones who went to the main briefing when they were told where they were going, we were going. And then they’d come out and tell us where we were going. And on this trip we had, as I say this cookie and on take-off Johnny and I had our hands on the throttles as we did. We held our hands together on the throttle and put them up. When we’d got the right revs we started down the runway heading towards take-off and Lincoln Cathedral in the background and just as we, wheels came off the ground two engines broke down. Just stopped. So, we quickly pulled the throttles back but we were going at some speed then and we ran off the end of the runway. And what I remember was seeing a man up ahead of us by a house just to the left of the end of the runway throw down the spade and run. We ran off the runway. Our undercarriage wheels dropped into a little stream and crashed the plane. We all leapt out and ran like mad. The rest of the squadron continued on their, on their way. And in twenty minutes we were in another plane doing circuits and bumps which I understood was because if you had an accident the quicker you’re in the air again the better. Otherwise it gets you, it gets to you, you know. You have fear of it. Now, if we’d had that cookie, if we’d had that cookie on board I don’t think I’d be here today. In fact, I’m damned sure I wouldn’t be. So, that seemed to be a great fortune. And a little end to that tale is the next night we were flying a strange aeroplane one we hadn’t flown before. And as we got on board one of the crew said to me, ‘I’ve put your can beside you place. Your position.’ I said, ‘My can?’ ‘Yes. It’s an oil can. You pee don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Well I never have done.’ It’s a long way back to the elsan right at the back of the plane so I somehow never wanted to pee in the air. Anyway, he put it there. We were going to Hamburg and we got caught up in searchlights so we did what was called a corkscrew. Throwing a plane down and across and up and across. I was rolling around on the roof but Johnny sort of threw off the searchlight and we continued on target. It must have been Hamburg’s worst night. It was dreadful. The fires. Awful. The place was just on fire. We ran in, we dropped our bombs and we turned for home. And the navigator said after a while mucho. I think he said, ‘Check your, check the petrol. I think some has got on my maps.’ I said, ‘Ok. Will do.’ I went back and checked the petrol but I knew, I knew what it was. I had had a pee in that can and it was all over his maps. He was a very fastidious man the navigator and he wasn’t a happy man, you know [laughs] Can we pause?
AS: Yes. Of course.
[recording paused]
AS: Ok. We’re starting again after a pause. Yes. Please, please carry on then David.
DR: As I say, I think Johnny, our captain somehow made a great sort of team of us. We were in Nissen huts sharing with another crew. And it was quite obvious to me that they weren’t a happy crew at all. They argued a lot. Anyway, I think Johnny’s influence was terrific as the captain. We went, of course in to Lincoln a lot. Went dancing at the some hall up near the Cathedral. And nearby, near quite near on the way in to Lincoln, somehow, for some reason I encountered one day what turned out to be an Irish family. And they were very keen to invite us in for a cup of coffee and things. And I, we later thought, I wonder why they were so friendly with us. I wonder if they were trying to find out where we were going. We of course, in the letters home we weren’t allowed to mention our flights. Occasionally my mother would sort of question. I’ve got a lot of it, about a hundred letters that I wrote during the time I was there. And clearly I was not, we were not allowed to mention our destinations. After the event even. But I think we were terribly well protected from what we were really doing. Public, the publicity about the air force trips seemed to be, have been saying we’d been to bombing in the Ruhr and mentioning the factories there. What they were doing. They never said we’re going to Hamburg to bomb the civilians but that was one of our purposes. To, to increase morale. To damage morale among the Germans and you know it was a dirty job. And I, I really, I was, I was never a member of the British Legion or the Air Force — whatever it is. I don’t think, I don’t think the war and serving in the services is something to be celebrated. They keep, this year particularly there has been an awful lot of talk of heroes and all that. And the Albert Hall Memorial Service they do where The Queen goes has become, I think, dreadful. There were families there. To all this music the families slowly walk down and the people applaud and applaud. I think grieving is a private thing. Bereavement is a private affair and should remain so. It’s like on the news. The news today has become dreadful. You think, can they get to get a clip of someone bursting into tears? It will be in there again and again and again. And I, I have great anxiety and worry about the way, the way the war is remembered. There we are. I’m getting off the subject of [ pause] what the crew was about. I remember one. One day we were at briefing. We were told we were going to, I forget, I forget quite where. We were going and we were, we were, everyone had cookies. These big huge bombs. But the station had run out so they said you’re, ‘You’ve got incendiaries.’ Now, we actually complained and said, ‘Do we really have to go with just incendiaries? There is a huge investment here. You’re sending a Lancaster bomber. You’re sending a crew of seven who you could lose.’ Fifty percent were being lost at that moment in time. And, ‘Isn’t it rather wasteful just taking incendiaries?’ ‘No, you’re going,’ they said. So, we had to go but I know there was a moment when I think, I’m not sure that we didn’t know ahead of time because we purposefully, I think we purposefully all of us went for a walk in the countryside to Mr Cook. I had to fly so didn’t miss it eventually but that was our intention. Strange thing to happen but there we are. I’m not quite sure what else to say at the moment.
AS: What, can you tell me about the, your duties as a flight engineer on the flight?
DR: My main duty as flight engineer was to keep an eye on the fuel consumption, and then cover [unclear] we’d have to switch over from one tank in the wings to another. That was the main job as we were throughout, throughout the flight. A secondary one was just, just to know all about the air frame. Just to know as much as possible about the aeroplane, so if something went wrong in the air technically I might be able to do something about it. Two weeks of our training were at the factory in Manchester where the engines were made. And flying, one of my jobs was to put out [pause] oh damn it. What did they call it? [pause] I hope, I hope, it was these strips of metalised paper.
AS: Window.
DR: Window. Thank you. We put Window out through this hole beside my position next to the pilot. I had a flap down seat. I don’t ever remember sitting on it. I stood always. Throughout the whole flight. But that was my main job. The fuel and to [pause] and that particular, what did you say it was?
AS: Window.
DR: Window. To put out the Window. Which of course was a huge quantity. As we got in to the aeroplane we always thought it was Christmas every time. Used parcels everywhere. I had to get all these. Keep going and getting more and more of these damned parcels to push out. That was the main job.
AS: Did you ever have to do any repairs while you were —
DR: No.
AS: In the air.
DR: No. I can’t remember that I did. No. Seems a menial task really. But there you go. I’m told that they started with two pilots but they really were running short. They, so they replaced the second pilot by what they changed to a flight engineer. A curious, curious job.
AS: How long was your training altogether, as a flight engineer?
DR: Nine months. That’s, that’s based at St Athan. St Athan. I’ve got a picture of the Astra. The cinema.
AS: How many sorties did you do altogether?
DR: We did thirty four. We should have done thirty but because it looked I think as though the war was coming to a, possibly to a close. They pushed us on to thirty four. And then we were having a break during which time before coming back for the second tour we [pause] well we didn’t have to start a second tour because of the end of the war. At which time I was at Locking. I was in Locking. I was at Wing, Leighton Buzzard where every Thursday I would take a group of airmen to Oxford and take them on the river in an airborne lifeboat and show them how that worked. Other curious, curious jobs. But I went to one air force station in Norfolk where I was appointed entertainments officer. And the first thing I did was to go and buy records to play in the RAF cinema there. And I, there was a drama group and I was directing a play. And I was, we were in the operations room where all those girls would push things around and I was lying on it with my head on my hand and the commanding officer came in and said — well, I was, he sent me off somewhere else. He didn’t want me there on the station behaving like that. But your question. It was a curious job flight engineer. It really was.
AS: Were you always with the same crew throughout?
DR: Yes. Throughout. Never, never changed. A couple of the crew had to fly with other, other, and then we were kept together throughout. Yeah. I’ve got the logbook of all the, all the flights. The longest flight was ten hours twenty minutes to [pause] I’ll try and find out. It was in the east end of the, east of the Baltic. I wish I could remember the name. Anyway, it was twelve hours twenty five. And we went out twenty five thousand feet over Scandinavia and then across to the target, dropped the bombs, dropped very low, came across Denmark very very low and we were told, ‘Don’t come back to Skellingthorpe. It’s fogbound. Go to Lossiemouth in Scotland,’ — where we had a great breakfast and then flew back to Skellingthorpe where they said you’ve got to go out to the same trip tonight. ‘You all missed the target. You’ve got to go again.’ So, we did another ten hour trip the next night. It was a long two days.
AS: And when you, can you tell me a bit about how you spent your time off-duty?
DR: Yeah.
AS: How you socialised.
DR: Well, we went into Lincoln. And to the theatre. The variety theatre there. And the theatre, and to the cinema there. All the time. And we had tea in, oh I forget the name of it but a well-known brand of tea places. We certainly went up to this dance hall near the Cathedral.
AS: Would that have been the Assembly Rooms?
DR: Yes. That’s right. The Assembly Rooms. Exactly.
AS: Can you tell me about the dances at the Assembly Rooms?
DR: Well, it was what dances were around in those days. The foxtrot. The slow. I was best at the slow foxtrot. Waltzes. And the band, the band, the bands were quite good. All the local girls would be there and we’d meet, we’d meet up with them. And I’m trying to think. What else did we do?
AS: There was a pub there in the High Street I think that was very –
DR: I was going to say we went to the pubs. No. I can’t remember which ones. I went, of course to the opening of that Memorial. Was it last year?
AS: Yes.
DR: Yeah. I went to that. You know, our time off as quickly as possible in time so that we spent every moment of time we could going into town. Lincoln. The city. Particular memories I have.
AS: When you, when the war finished what happened to you then?
DR: I was asked, I was asked what I was going to do before the war. Planning to do. And I said I really hadn’t planned, ‘Well, I think theatre. I want to work in the theatre. I’d like to direct, I think. Or stage management.’ So they said, ‘Well,’ get a, get a, ‘If you can get into the Guildhall School of Music And Drama we’ll pay your, pay the fees.’ And I did get in. I had to, I had an audition with the principal, Mr Lundall. He sat at a grand piano and I stood at the end and I did a poem and a scene from a play. I had to go to Bournemouth to the elocution woman to help me. And I did three years, three years there and my girlfriend immediately got a job in Preston in Lancashire. Preston. At the Royal Hippodrome. The weekly rep. I went to see her the first week she was working and they asked me to stay and do the same job as well with her. And I very quickly became, very quickly became a stage director which oversees the management. And I directed five of the plays during the eighteen months we were there. We did forty four plays every year. After that I, after that I went to [pause] we came for, we came to London to see what work there was here. And in London I got a job with my wife Valerie. I met Valerie at Preston. In the theatre. She was on stage management and acting. She was on an acting course but got the job as stage management. And we did a, we did a, I was the stage director at a late night club show at the Watergate Theatre near Charing Cross Station. And that was backed by a man from the Sadler Wells Theatre and he then asked me to join the Sadler Wells Theatre Ballet. First of all I did a tour with Kurt. Kurt. Kurt [pause] damn. Kurt. Kurt. Kurt someone. He was the father of modern dance. Modern European dance. I did a twelve week tour because they needed, his company, based in Essen needed a English person on the board to help with the tour and this international ballet company was based in Essen. We had bombed Essen. And I had the most wonderful letter from Kurt Jooss, yes — Kurt Jooss. I had a wonderful letter from Kurt Jooss when we left saying, “I’m sorry I can’t be with you at the end of the tour. I have to be back in Essen raising more finance. But I want to thank you and particularly your wife who operated a very dangerous spotlight.” An old fashioned metal thing. Quite burnt her hands. He said she was so kind and there was never any — I had a lovely letter from him and he never knew I’d bombed this. I was on the thousand bomber trip to Essen. We were about nine hundred and fifty or so. It was amazing looking ahead. Hundreds of aeroplanes in front of you. Astonishing. And of course my father had to march to Essen or near Cologne. So, Essen became a sort of, Cologne became a focal point because I was in Berlin. Yes. Two days after the war they flew us aircrew to Berlin and just to see it. Spent the night there. I was kissed by a Russian soldier in the, in the, an embassy in Berlin on both cheeks with a very rough beard. And I found only last week a little baby’ s helmet, little baby’s bonnet. A very fancy lace affair that some German woman had given me in reply, in reply to a packet of cigarettes. But we never, we never bombed Berlin thank goodness. Dangerous place to be, I think. Well, everywhere was but that particularly. Yeah.
AS: Did you spend the rest of your career in in the theatre?
DR: Yes. In the theatre and in, and in the BBC. Twenty seven years at the BBC including four years producing a series called Z Cars. And –
AS: Oh yes. I remember Z Cars very well.
DR: Yeah. And then I was asked by David Attenborough to go to Birmingham to start a new department. English Region’s Drama which I did for ten years. Which was one year from my retirement and then Jeremy Isaacs asked me if I would join the new Channel 4 as Senior Commissioning Editor. So, I went, I went there where I met my wife Karin. My third wife. And I’m a, I’ve a, I’ve got three, three of those BAFTA things up there.
AS: Oh gosh.
DR: I’m a fellow of the British Film Institute. I’m a fellow of BAFTA. I got the Gold Medal of the Royal Television Society. So I’m, and of course Channel 4. Well, I had, I had ten million a year to support twenty feature films. That was the first real, you know, opportunity for us in television to support the cinema. But I’ve got the Roberto Rossellini Award. Not me but given to the Channel at the Cannes Film Festival. Given by Bergman’s daughter. Yes. It’s been for film, television — series, film and television.
AS: Oh, well done.
DR: I’ve got several. There are lots of biogs of mine, sort of on the, on the internet. You can look me up.
AS: Oh right.
DR: I’ve got two copies of my book I can give you.
AS: Did you — it sounds as if you find it fairly straightforward to move from service to civilian life then. Is that the case?
DR: I did. Yes. I feel, I didn’t go to university. Just to Guildhall School. I think I learned on the job. I was thinking about this actually. I think it goes right back to my captain, Johnny. His attitude to things. I’m quoting in a lot of these things. A lot of these things. [pause] Well, as I say I did the job while in Birmingham because of the freedom that we had. We had. And like in London I had somehow a [pause] there was a budget. I can’t really explain this. What I’m saying, I think is I never hardly ever looked for a job. I’ve always been offered jobs. Like when I came to London and met Steven Ireland who was general manager of the Sadler Wells. He asked me. He was behind the nightclub, the club theatre that he asked me to look after at Charing Cross. And he then asked me to join Sadler Wells Theatre Ballet which was based at Sadlers Wells with the touring company. It like the Birmingham, the Royal Ballet in London and the Royal Ballet in Birmingham. Similar. It’s a touring company. And having got to, yes I was asked to, as I say by Attenborough to go to Birmingham. And I was invited by Jeremy Isaacs, out of the blue, to join Channel 5 err 4. Channel 4. Channel 4. So —
AS: After the war you say you never had any further contact with your crew.
DR: I, I, I had correspondence with Tom the bomb aimer who then died. And I went to see — I think he was Scarrett. Was he the wireless operator? I don’t know. I went to see him in Leamington. Not Leamington Spa. At a very English town in Sussex. I tried to have contact with them. Didn’t work out. We never met up. Only Scarrett.
AS: How do you think the Bomber Command were treated after the war? Do you have any views on that?
DR: Well, I think, I think the chap who ran Bomber Command, whose statue is in The Strand, isn’t it? At the end of Fleet Street. I think he got a rather bad deal from the public. The chap who ran Bomber Command.
AS: Harris.
DR: Hmmn?
AS: Harris.
DR: Yes. He had some criticism didn’t he? Which I think was unfair. He was doing his job. And a dirty job it was. He was, you know presumably selecting targets and there were, there were civilians as well as everyone else. I think, I think the air force put, put a very good face forward as a force. Better than the army, I think. Yeah. But I don’t know , I don’t know why anyone wants to, their careers to be in the services. Why do you make a career of killing people? I don’t know.
AS: Thank you very much David.
DR: Ok.
AS: That’s excellent.
DR: Right.
AS: I’ll switch off now.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with David Rose
Creator
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Andrew Sadler
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-11-28
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
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ARoseD161128, PRoseD1601
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Pending review
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00:49:32 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
David Rose was born in Swanage, Dorset. His father had been in the Medical Corps during the First World War and suffered ill health afterwards. David believed his father had as much reason to be on the War Memorial as his two brothers who died during the conflict. David attended the local Grammar School in Swanage and then continued his education in Bath. He volunteered for the RAF and was very surprised that the RAF decided that he being a flight engineer would suit his skills. He joined a crew and was posted to 50 Squadron at RAF Skellingthorpe. After his tour of operations David became an entertainment officer. He wanted to continue this work and was accepted by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He went on to work for a touring company which was based in Essen and then for the BBC and eventually became Chief Commissioning Editor for Channel 4. He felt that his skipper in Bomber Command had a big influence on him right through into his peacetime life.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
50 Squadron
aircrew
bombing of Hamburg (24-31 July 1943)
crash
entertainment
flight engineer
incendiary device
military living conditions
military service conditions
operations room
perception of bombing war
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF St Athan
sanitation
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/745/10745/ACockbillDFA171008.1.mp3
db5752c8519a065771ad0856ae6002c8
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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Cockbill, Denis Francis Albert
D F A Cockbill
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Flying Officer Denis Cockbill (1924, Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 195 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-09-08
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Cockbill, DFA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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LD: Right. This is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Laura Dixon and the interviewee is Denis Cockbill. The interview is taking place in Penhale on the 8th of October 2017. Right. Hi Denis. Hello.
DC: Hello.
LD: Could you tell me just a bit about your early life before the Bomber Command?
DC: Before the Bomber Command.
LD: Yeah.
DC: Well, I was born in Newport.
LD: Ok.
DC: In 1924. I went to school in Newport. Went to the Grammar School. And my father worked as a, he was a clerk in the steelworks. And I had twelve months. Before, when I left this school I had twelve months. I only volunteered for the Air Force because I’d been bombed. Near misses a couple of time. I thought I’d get my own back so I joined the Air Force. So I was in the Air Training Corps. So when I was seventeen I volunteered as aircrew. I was attested because it’s quite tough, you know. You’ve got to be really fit and what have you. I passed that and they said, ‘Right. Pilot. Navigator, Air bomber.’ Which was the normal what people wanted to be. I didn’t. I wanted to be a wireless operator because my CO in the Air Training Corps was an ex-Merchant Navy radio officer. And he’d got me interested in radio. For instance when I went to the radio school they said, ‘In two or three months you’ll be doing eight words a minute.’ I could already do twelve so I walked it. So, I joined the Air Force when I was eighteen. Actually, I was three months late because the day I should have joined the Air Force I had an appendicectomy. So I was three months later. And three months on the squadron could have saved my life. Right.
LD: Ok. So a wireless operator. What do they actually do? Are you based on the plane or on the ground?
DC: Oh no. Aircrew wireless operator. Aircrew. Two years training.
LD: Oh ok.
DC: Ten months in radio school. Two hours of Morse a day.
LD: Right.
DC: You either learned it or you go around the bend and some did of course. See.
LD: Yeah.
DC: It’s like learning another language. You know, I mean I haven’t used it for donkeys years now but, you know what’s your Christian name?
LD: Dixon.
DC: No. Your Christian name.
LD: Laura.
DC: Laura.
LD: Yeah. Laura.
DC: De da de dit de da dit dit da dit da dit de da dit. That’s in Morse.
LD: Right. Ok. Wow.
DC: You don’t forget.
LD: Really. Oh, ok. So how long would a mission last for?
DC: Well, if you had a short mission two or three hours. The longest one I did was Berlin I think which was about eight and a half hours.
LD: Ok.
DC: Sat on oxygen all that time. The gunners were the worst off. I could move around. They couldn’t. They had to sit there for eight and a half hours.
LD: Wow. So, what other, apart from Berlin what other places did you go to?
DC: Actually, because I [pause] I mean I was fifteen when the war started so in three years I was eighteen. So when I joined the Air Force it was 1940, end of 1942. So the worst part was over. And I was two years training. So it wasn’t until the end of 1944 that I joined the squadron. War was over. So I was lucky. Fighter escort.
[pause]
DC: Right.
[pause – pages turning]
DC: Let me get my glasses.
LD: Ok.
[pause]
DC: That was the first trip I did which was Gelsenkirchen. It gives you the time. Take off at 0600 and we landed at [pause] no. It was five hours. That was in the, in the Ruhr and it was one of our worst trips. We were holed. We lost an engine and managed to limp back. My navigator had a bit of flak just miss him. So that was one. Then there was, then we did Kiel. And we sank, we sank the Admiral Scheer. And that was in red. It was a night trip. Then we went out again during the, on the same one on that day. That was 9th. On the 13th we went out again. Then I did Berlin. Heligoland. Bad Oldesloe.
LD: Never heard of that.
DC: That’s in the Ruhr.
LD: Oh.
DC: That’s in the Ruhr. That was what? Six hours. That was the longest trip you see was this one. No. Berlin. Where’s Berlin? [pause] Eight and a half hours at night time. And then we did, oh this was when we dropped, have you heard of the Manna raids?
LD: I was going to ask about that. Yeah.
DC: I was on that. In fact, if, of because logbooks aren’t filled in always by us. These were filled in by somebody else, “Spam Raid,” “Flour Raid.” And these were counted as operations because we were flying over enemy territory. Germans, if they’d opened up four hundred, five hundred feet high they couldn’t have missed us. And we dropped. I did, I did three I think [pause] I thought I did three. Yeah. One. Two. No. I did, I did two actually. That was Manna. Then we did Exodus which was bringing prisoners of war back from France. And we also did later on from Italy as well. So, yeah. Was that what you wanted?
LD: Yeah. Ok. So what was your relationship like with your fellow crew members?
DC: Oh excellent. It had to be because we were, we were, it was we were a team.
LD: Yeah.
DC: And if you had one bad apple in a team it doesn’t work. And the biggest problem of course was when you were crewed up. Do you know how you crewed up?
LD: No.
DC: Well, in a Lancaster there’s seven. The pilot, flight engineer, navigator, bomb aimer, wireless operator and two gunners. Right. So when I, when I did my, finished my training and I got my wings and everything I went to eventually I went to what they called Operational Training Unit where you crew up. You meet. You get your crew. You get the crews together. Right. And what would happen you’d get an intake of say twenty wireless operators, twenty pilots, twenty navigators, twenty flight engineers and forty gunners, because there were two gunners in a plane, eh. They put you in a hangar for the morning with coffee and say, ‘Right. Crew up.’ Now, you were with all these people you’d never met before. Right. And you’ve got to decide who was the best. Which is very difficult. And the best one to get of course is the pilot because he’s the one that flies it. Nobody else. If he goes we’ve had it then. And you just mingled around and get talking and actually on the way there in the train I was sat on a train with a bomb aimer and he was just joining up as well so we clicked altogether. We had two of us, see.
LD: Ok. So what would you do —
DC: And then there’s, there’s a story of the pilot. He was short of a bomb aimer. Got all the crew but a bomb aimer. And he saw the bomber walking around. He said, ‘Are you crewed up?’ And the gun aimer, he was a gunner actually, he said ‘Are you crewed up.?’ And the gunner said, ‘No.’ So the pilot said, ‘Would you like to join my crew?’ And the gunner said, ‘Yeah. Ok. But,’ he said, ‘I’m a bloody awful gunner.’ And the pilot said, ‘That’s alright. I’m a bloody awful pilot.’ [laughs] So they gelled.
LD: Yeah.
DC: You’ve got to gel.
LD: Ok. So what did you do in your spare time when you weren’t flying? As entertainment? What would you do together?
DC: The NAAFI. Cakes and buns. The cinema, which was very popular. And, yes, loafing around as normal. Playing football and probably snooker if you had a snooker table there. And if you had time to go out down to the local village. To the pub if they had any beer.
LD: Ok.
DC: That’s about it.
LD: So, can you tell me more about Operation Manna. Because —
DC: Yeah.
LD: It must have been a lot different from dropping bombs.
DC: Could you switch it off a minute?
LD: Yeah. Sure.
[recording paused]
DC: Sorry about that.
LD: No. Ok. I’ll just. You know, we’ll I keep some of that for the recorder. So —
DC: Yeah.
LD: Talk about Operation Manna. It must have felt —
DC: It should have been on the recorder, shouldn’t it? What I just told you.
LD: It was but I can repeat it anyway. Or, you know, repeat bits of it. So, you know you’re dropping food and not bombs.
DC: That’s right.
LD: That must have felt different from your usual.
DC: Oh yeah. It was brilliant. And I mean the Dutch were out. All the flags. We went out on D-Day, just before D-Day and there were orange bunting and flags and they were waving and cheering. It was fantastic. In fact there was a Manna, Manna Association. Every, once every five years we went over there and we were feted by the Dutch people. They thought we were fantastic. In fact, I got, I got a medal.
LD: Oh ok.
DC: Do you want to see it?
LD: Yeah. Sure. I’ll stop this now.
[recording paused]
LD: Course not. No. It’s interesting. So, with Operation Manna do you know how bad, how bad the people were?
DC: Oh, yes.
LD: How bad the starvation.
DC: Well, what happened, how it came is about is our troops were pushing through the low countries and they decided to leave the bulk of the Netherlands under the control of the Germans because they’d already blown some of the dykes. And the fear was if we attacked they would blow all the dykes and Holland would be completely under water. Which would be no good at all. So we left them alone. But it was one of the worst winter. A very, very bad winter. And because nothing was getting in or out including food people were starving. And eventually about over twenty thousand died of starvation. Mainly the young and the very old. Now, we knew about this and eventually we made an agreement with the Germans. Eventually. It took some time. That we would fly our aircraft at a very low height. We had to fly very low because it wasn’t on parachute. It was just double hessian sacks with the food inside. If you dropped from height it would damage. So we had to fly very low. And the agreement was reached. They agreed that we could do it. So, we did. The first trip was cancelled. Probably because some disagreement. And when we did, we flew, the gunners were already armed and when we flew over the coast you could see the Germans behind their guns. Five hundred feet. If they’d opened up they couldn’t have missed. We lost one aircraft in two weeks. We don’t know what. It just disappeared in the North Sea somewhere. But over the period we dropped almost seven thousand tons of food and saved lives.
LD: Ok.
DC: You meet a Dutchman and say Manna they love you.
LD: That’s lovely. So did you keep in touch with any comrades in the years after the bombing?
DC: I did. They’re all gone. I’m the only one left.
LD: Yeah.
DC: My last crew member was our flight engineer. He died eighteen months ago.
LD: Oh. Ok. Oh.
DC: My pilot was an Australian. We’re in, I’m in touch with his family but only recently because we were very reticent. We don’t talk. I never spoke about my war at all. My father never spoke about his war which was a great pity because I was born five, six years after the end of the First World War. My father was injured at Passchendaele. He got the military medal. We don’t know how because his records were bombed in the Blitz. And he never spoke about it, about his war, at all. I never asked him. I wished to God I did.
LD: Yeah. It’s a pity.
DC: And my son said [unclear] saying to me, ‘Write a book.’ So, what they do when I go out with them they take a tape recorder. Because the things I say now I’ve never said before.
LD: Yeah. Ok. So, with your, could you tell me about your primary school visits and the kind of reaction that you get?
DC: Oh, excellent. Excellent. What happens, they don’t do it any longer by the way but they used to bring school children in from South Wales and Gloucestershire to the Drill Hall in, they do it all over the country but here it was the Drill Hall in Chepstow. And they come for the day and the Drill Hall, the museum would be rigged out like war time kitchens and all this sort of thing. And in the Drill Hall they’d have war time posters and all the equipment and the ladies would talk to them about that. And then they’d bring them all in for us to talk to them.
LD: Ok.
DC: And some of the questions you get from these kids.
LD: Yeah.
DC: How many did you kill?
LD: I don’t know.
DC: No. They were fantastic. And it stopped now unfortunately which is a great pity. Because school people, it’s amazing how many youngsters [pause] May, if I may call you a youngster. How old are you?
LD: Twenty two.
DC: I was still flying —
LD: Oh yeah.
DC: When I was your age. You’re still to me a youngster.
LD: Yeah.
DC: And there’s a lot of things that you don’t know about my war. I didn’t know anything about the First World War. Henry the fifth in history we got up to, I think. Nothing about modern stuff at all.
LD: No.
DC: And the kids today don’t.
LD: No.
DC: I mean, I was in, we were in Hendon. The Air Museum at Hendon and, with my family. I mean we were in front of the Lancaster and I was saying about various experience. Eventually we had a whole crowd around us and one chaps said, ‘We learned more off of you than the staff.’ And one, one chap said, we said about the Americans, what they did. If it hadn’t been for the Americans we’d have lost Two World Wars. And bearing in mind they lost thirty five thousand in their Bomber Command. Even people like Clark Gable. Have you heard of Clark Gable?
LD: No.
DC: Film star.
LD: No.
DC: Well, he was, he was a gunner on them.
LD: Right. Ok.
DC: They didn’t have to. They didn’t have to.
LD: Yeah.
DC: And one of the visitors said, ‘Were the Americans in the war?’ Where’s he been?
LD: How old, so how old was he? Was just —
DC: Oh, I don’t know. I can’t remember now. Probably forty. Fifty. Something like that.
LD: Oh right. And he asked that. Oh. Ok. Can you just repeat what you said about the girl from Holland that you, that you met?
DC: Yes.
LD: Yeah. If you could just repeat what you said about that. Yes.
DC: Well, the, the talk to the schoolchildren that were in the Drill Hall in Chepstow. And the first one I did rather than talk about dropping bombs to school children I tell them about Operation Manna because I’ve got a very good print of the actual aircraft doing it. After the first one Anna phoned me up and said, ‘There’s a lady that lives in Itton, and she was at school in Holland. So can you talk together?’ So we, we met eventually. We met at the next talk. I knew who she was but she didn’t know who I was. And I had a, behind me the big print of a Lancaster dropping food covered up. So eventually this lady got up and started talking about when she was a school girl in Holland. And her father was taken away, or almost taken away. And they had no food. They had to chop up furniture and people were starving. And then one day she said big aircraft came over and instead of dropping bombs they dropped food. And out of her bag she picked out a picture she drew as a child. You know. Of an aircraft dropping food. And I was listening to all this. So when she finished I got up and I said about this lady who saw these aircraft dropping food. So I whipped the cover off the picture. I said, ‘It could have been that aircraft. And I could have been in it.’ And she burst into tears. The teachers burst into tears. And ever since then all my future talks were, we were a double act. Very good. And we still are friends.
LD: Really?
DC: I still take her to lunch now. Yeah.
LD: Oh. So she lives —
DC: She lives in Itton. Only ten miles away.
LD: Oh, lovely. Oh, ok.
DC: We never met until — never met until —
LD: Yeah.
DC: The talks. That was about twelve years ago. Thirteen years ago.
LD: But she moved here.
DC: No. She —
LD: Oh.
DC: Well, she moved here.
LD: Yeah.
DC: After the war. She was a teacher of art in [pause] in she came over as a au pair actually and finished up as a schoolteacher in Bristol. And then they liked, the Dutch like Wales.
LD: Yeah.
DC: There are a lot of visitors. They don’t like, because there’s no hills in Holland.
LD: Yeah.
DC: She bought a house in Itton, which is in the Wye Valley. Very nice.
LD: Oh, that’s lovely.
DC: That was in the 60s.
LD: Yeah. Ok. So, how do you think the Bomber Command is being perceived now. Like how —
DC: Dreadful.
LD: Right. Ok.
DC: When I get and if I meet somebody I’ve never met before and I say I was Bomber Command the usual reaction is Dresden. Which incidentally was a legitimate target. The fact that we dropped bombs and killed people. But it was all out war. No mentions are made of what the Germans did before. We started it and so when I give my talks to school children as I say I talk about when we saved lives and not when we took lives. Nobody knows about that. Which is a great pity.
LD: Yes.
DC: And you’ve got to bear in mind that Bomber Command lost more on a pro-rata basis more than any other branch of the armed forces. One in three were killed. Five thousand. Well, I think a hundred and fifty thousand flew in Bomber Command. Fifty five thousand were killed. Ten thousand prisoners of war they managed to get out which was very unusual. Five thousand killed whilst training. Can you imagine when you’re training you’ve got the aircraft and they’ve come off the front line so they’re probably clapped out to start out with. The crews on them are on a learning curve. How would you like to get on an plane in say Cardiff to fly to Spain or somewhere and they said to you, ‘By the way the pilot’s never flown this before and he’s on his own.’ Would you go?
LD: No.
DC: We had to.
LD: Yeah. Oh wow.
DC: So, a lot were killed in training you know. Of course air, air collisions as well. I mean, I mean can you imagine a night bomber raid with say eight hundred aircraft all flying with no lights.
LD: No. No. But there were no problems with your particular craft that you, do you remember any injuries or any problems?
DC: Oh yeah. Well, we got shot up on our first trip to Gelsenkirchen. Lost an engine and the shrapnel in the aircraft and a piece just missed the, the pilot was, the navigator was standing up, it went through his legs. Other than that I was lucky. I didn’t do many trips. We only did ten. Whereas to complete a tour was thirty trips and not many did that.
Other: Tell, tell Laura about the how Ted lost his position on the vic.
DC: Say that again.
Other: Tell the story of how, tell Laura the story of how Ted, your skipper lost his position on the vic and he was flying along the line in the [unclear]
DC: Oh well. That’ a long story, John.
LD: Oh, no. Yeah. Sure.
DC: Well, most of my trips which, towards the end of the war we had fighter escorts. In the olden days they had no fighter escort because they couldn’t fly that distance and it was over enemy territory. But as our troops were pushing forward we had fighter stations in France which would give us cover. So on a daylight we would have fighter escort. And on one trip we did it was a daylight trip. Probably eight hundred aircraft. And we were called a GH squadron. We flew on radar. Even in those days. One aircraft out of three had this equipment and it was, it was a cathode ray tube in front of me and you’d have two lines with two scrobes. One above. One above. And you would, we would pass back the windspeed to a base in England. They knew the height we were flying. They knew the speed we were flying. And they knew the bomb load. So they could commute, compute the exact spot where they dropped the bombs. And what they would do then they would send signals out on this cathode ray. Where these two scrobes were they were like that and they slowly get together. When they got there you dropped the bombs. There was only one aircraft had this. The other two were followers. They’d watch him. Right. So the bomb aimer, as they got nearer the bomb aimer would open the bomb doors so they’d open their bomb doors. When he dropped his bombs they dropped their bombs. So in twenty minutes you got eight hundred aircraft dropping their bombs on the target, you see. Now, we were on this one trip. We were a follower. In other words we were one of the ones behind. Right. Now, you take off. Eighteen aircraft take off on the squadron. You’ve got letters on the side of the aircraft. Right. So, you knew who your leader was so you look out for that letter aircraft to follow him. We took off and couldn’t find him in the melee. So my pilot flew down the bomber stream. There was the bomber stream. He flew down the bomber stream looking for our squadron and we couldn’t find him. So as we got near the target there was one vic of three that was slightly out of formation so he pfft underneath and he was in between. And these other aircraft were, ‘Get out. Get out.’ You know. So, we flew behind him, dropped on him, dropped bombs and then, when, when we dropped the bomb we just pushed off on our own.
LD: Wow. Yeah.
DC: So things were quite funny as well.
LD: Oh, that’s good. Yeah.
DC: That what you mean, Steve?
Other: Yeah. And the other one was the where you got the Spitfire escort coming back on that first trip. And the mid-upper —
DC: Oh, that was Gelsenkirchen. Yeah.
Other: Yeah. And you were so pleased to see them.
DC: Another, when we were shot up on this Gelsenkirchen it was a daylight and we lost an engine. We lost an engine and a half actually. Now, she’ll fly on two engines but slowly lose speed. Lose height. We were about twenty thousand. Now, it was a lovely clear blue sky and we had to leave the formation. And once you leave the formation on your own, you know you’re set up for any night fighters. Any fighters of course. So we had, I had a verey pistol above me and the instruction was that if you need assistance you fire off a green. If you are in dire problems you fire off a red. So we said to Ted, we were on our own and we had fighter, we couldn’t see them. They were way above us of course. The Typhoons and the Spitfires and the Mustangs were the best aircraft. Anyway, we said to Ted, ‘Don’t you think we ought to get some fighter escort?’ ‘No. No. We’ll be alright.’ Anyway, eventually we convinced him. I fired off a green and within twenty seconds we had two clipped wing Spits on our wingtip. And that was, the pilot hit the roof. The gunners never saw them. If they’d have been German we’d have had it. Anyway, a lovely feeling flying back with two Spits on your wing. When we got, when we got to the Channel they disappeared. That was nice that.
LD: Yes. Yeah. Ok. So, anything else before I leave? Anything you can think of. Any other stories or memories that we haven’t touched yet?
DC: No. I mean —
LD: No. Ok.
DC: It was, you know, you know I’ve told you how we crew up. And when we got back you know we had what we called the flying breakfast. But every time we took off we had bacon and egg and what have you which you couldn’t get in the wartime, see. Right. And when we got back the same thing. And the joke was you’d say to anybody opposite, ‘If you don’t come back can I have your breakfast?’
LD: Oh right.
DC: So you had a sense of humour.
LD: Yeah. Yeah. That’s true, yeah.
DC: We had a sense of humour.
LD: Yeah. Yeah.
DC: No. I know I shouldn’t say this but in some way I enjoyed it. I was young. No commitments. Flying. How many people flew in those days? I must admit when I flew first I was airsick by the way which wasn’t very clever. And when we did fighter affiliation [laughs] do you know what that is?
LD: No.
DC: Fighter affiliation is when you go up on a, on a training flight with gunners and you’re attacked by a Spitfire as if it’s a German and you take evasive action. And evasive action, if he’s seen coming from the port which is the left to you, ‘Enemy aircraft port. Corkscrew port.’ And the air, the pilot would throw the control column up, kick the control column and the aircraft would do that. And then he’d pull it up and he’d do that. So you’re doing that all the time. And if you suffer from airsick that doesn’t do any good.
LD: No.
DC: Now, the first time we did that was on a Wellington on training. And because the aircraft was very old he wasn’t allowed to do more than a thirty degree bank. In other words it would, I was sat there, I did nothing. I just sat there you see. But we couldn’t fly out without a full crew even then. But with, on the Wimpy it was gentle so I just sat there no problem. When we converted on the Lancasters and the first time I went up on the fighter affiliation I still sat there like this. I heard the aircraft, the pilot, the gunners say, ‘Corkscrew starboard,’ or port, ‘Go.’ The next thing I’m on the roof because I lost all gravity. I was on the roof. My pencils would be flying around in, there was dust in the air and when he pulled it up I couldn’t move see. And then I felt sick.’
LD: Oh no.
DC: And the elsan toilet down the back of the aircraft [laughs] So when we did, when we did future ones the pilot would call me up and say, ‘Taff, get down the elsan.’ [laughs] So, but the aircraft weren’t that wide at the bottom with two metal stanchions you see. So you go down. The elsan’s there. The rear gunner turret there. The elsan’s there. So you stand like this and you wait until you hear, you’re on the intercom. ‘Corkscrew. Port. Go.’ So immediately your legs come up so you daren’t be sick then. But you’ve got to make sure the lid of the elsan’s on [laughs] So then when he, when he pulls it up that’s the time to lift lid bluuugh. And once you’re sick you’re fine. It’s when you’re not sick.
LD: Yeah.
DC: I remember, I remember not long after the war we took what we called the Baedekers. We took the ground staff on a low level tour of the Ruhr to show them the damage we’d done. Now, on came these WAAFs with flasks of coffee and cakes and God knows what. And it was June. Just after the war.
LD: Yeah.
DC: Hot. And if you’re flying low when it’s hot you get updrafts. So we sat there. They don’t sit, they didn’t see much. They were sick all the time most of them. And I had a job to make sure I wasn’t as well.
LD: Yeah.
DC: Yeah. It was good fun.
LD: Yeah. It sounds good fun.
DC: So we enjoyed it as well.
LD: Yeah. I suppose if you’re young and you’re excited then, yeah. Ok.
DC: And of course I was commissioned eventually so I was walking around with the officer’s uniform with wings up you know. You felt good.
LD: Yeah. Ok. Well, if that’s, if there’s not anything else than I think we’re pretty much done. Ok. Well, thank you.
DC: Ok.
LD: Very good. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Denis Francis Cockbill
Creator
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Laura Dixon
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-10-08
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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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ACockbillDFA171008
Format
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00:29:06 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
Born in Newport, Denis volunteered for the Royal Air Force as he was tired of bombing, wishing to get his own back, he joined the Air Corps at 17. Wishing to train as a wireless operator because of his interest in radio technology, he officially joined the Royal Air Force three months after his 18th birthday. Having to train for two years, Denis joined an aircrew in 1944, flying Lancasters. He attests that learning radio communication was like learning a new language and that he has never forgotten it. He recounts several operations in which he flew over enemy territory, including flying over Berlin, an operation which took eight hours. He also recalls several experiences during his time, including near-misses, as well as Operation Manna and Operation Exodus. He gives detailed information about Operation Manna, stating that he also joined the Manna Association and travelled to the Netherlands once every five years for a celebration. Denis states that his relationship with his crew was excellent and believes that it had to be because they always worked as a team. He recalls that he completed ten operations in total, but believes he was lucky to survive these, recounting a specific experience in which he was escorted by Spitfires. He admits that he rarely spoke of his war, following his father’s example of the first world war, until recently. He now invites primary school children to learn of his experiences. He continues to give combined talks about Operation Manna with a Dutch lady who survived the Second World War. He believes that the representation of Bomber Command has been terrible, naming Dresden as a legitimate target, but he also prefers to talk of saving lives through Manna and Exodus. He states that the general public does not understand Bomber Command’s losses.
Contributor
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Sam Harper-Coulson
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Germany
Germany--Berlin
Netherlands
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1944
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
195 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
crewing up
Gee
Lancaster
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
perception of bombing war
recruitment
Spitfire
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/7/13/ADerringtonAP150715-01.2.mp3
2af1448baa606754816904ab2f0786c3
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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Derrington, Arnold Pearce
Arnold Pearce Derrington
Arnold P Derrington
Arnold Derrington
A P Derrington
A Derrington
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Dr Arnold Pearce Derrington DFC (- 2016, 187333 Royal Air Force), a navigator with 462 and 466 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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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Derrington, AP
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-15
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and I am conducting an interview with Doctor Arnold Pierce Derrington and we are in his house in Cornwall and we are going to talk about his experiences over the years in the RAF but starting off in his early days and then after the war with his civilian career. Today is the 14th July 2015 and I’m asking Derry to start in the early days. What was your background Derry and how did all of that progress?
DD: Well I was a child in Devon. I came to Cornwall at the age of eighteen months to live at St Erth. That’s still my model village and I was there until about 1930 and the family had grown by then and we moved to Marazion near St Michael’s Mount and I had my childhood days there. Very happy memories of Marazion and I still see friends from there and still hear from there.
I had a friend living nearby in a place called [?] and he was a navigator too. He’d been a clerk in an agricultural merchants and the, he went into the air force, and did a tour with Coastal Command and was posted to Rhodesia where he was an instructor. When he died eventually I spread his ashes from a lifeboat in Mounts Bay. But he and I were childhood friends. We were little rogues really because his father was a policeman and the father was very incensed sometimes. Some man came to him and said someone’s put water in the petrol of my motor tank in the tank the petrol tank of my motorbike and it turned out that we two boys had done it. Very embarrassing for the policemen. That boy’s sister is still alive. She visits me occasionally.
And at Marazion I was at the county school at Penzance and never dreamed I’d be flying. I saw Alan Cobham’s Air Circus. I’ve got his little notebook here. It’s in that blue container there. Do you have it? Alan Cobham’s book. That’s it. And I have a very dear friend I haven’t seen for seventy seven years. I went to that air display with his parents. And that was an air display that flew around with trailers behind the planes saying where the display was taking place and we were talking recently about that actual airfield which is between Marazion and Haile and my mother said, ‘Don’t you dare go up flying’ and I was offered a free flight and I did say no but within ten years I’d done a tour and got a DFC. It’s amazing how things go on isn’t it?
Now, where do we go from there now? I was at Marazion in the LDV or Home Guard and when I went to college at Exeter I decided to join the LDV there. And after a month or so the University Air Squadron was opening up in Exeter and I joined that and I was at St Luke’s, Exeter which was a teacher training place and until the last two or three years there were a few of us around but I’m the last one of them still going strong. One of the chaps Archie Smith from St Austell was on the county council with my wife. She was a councillor and had a very good career about it. She ended up with an MBE.
Well I went on then to University Air Squadron from this Home Guard lot there and I’ve even got a greeting telegram somewhere from a relation congratulating me on joining this University Air Squadron. I could dig that out if you want to see a picture of it I expect.
And well it was good training. We had a, a, a commanding officer called Searle who was the head of the physics department at Exeter and he had an adjutant called Crosscut and the main chap we met from an interesting flying point of view had the Croix de Guerre. He was a rear gunner. He was badly scarred.
And from the University Air Squadron I was attested in Weston Super Mare in June 1942 and that same month I joined the air force at Lords Cricket Ground. Our first payday, first money I’d earned in my life cause having been University Air Squadron I was a leading aircraftsmen and we were very superior indeed to the AC plonks. They only got a half a crown a day. And after a short time at Lords I was posted to Manchester to await overseas posting but they discovered that I needed corrective goggles so I was sent down to Brighton Aircrew Dispersal Wing, ACDW and had a very happy time there staying in a huge great hotel, sleeping on rough beds at the Hotel Metropole. And there was another one The Grand there was well and the [air?] parade still took place in those days and we saw some of the rather shaky soldiers who came back from there.
And from ACDW I was posted to grading school Ansty near Coventry. I was made into, well I did fly in a Tiger Moth but I was made into as a navigator and I’m very glad I was because it kept me going during the very horrible times that we were doing operations. I had my head down getting on with the job. I did look out a time or two but it was so horrific I got back to my base very soon and from the grading school I went to Blackpool waiting for overseas posting and from Liverpool I sailed to South Africa. It wasn’t straightforward because we were afraid of the submarines that might have damaged us so we went across the coast to America and then back again to freestone, Freetown and then from Freetown down around the Cape to Durban. We didn’t get off the boat at all. I was on gun duty on oerlikons.
When we got to Durban we went to a transit camp called Clairwood and there we were thrown an empty linen case and told to stuff it with grass because that would be our palliasse bed and the toilets, they were like huge great egg racks. I think there was accommodation for about eighty. And they fed us very well. It was very nice. The novelty of South Africa was interesting indeed. I met very interesting people there who worked in the Red Shield Club and they invited us into their homes and there was one family called Thornton who had a son same age as myself training as a doctor. I’ve heard from him right until recently when he died. And when I moved away from East London to Durban, Durban to East London we did some training in the air force work there. I went up there to do night flying at a place called Aliwal North and that was a place outside the town of Queenstown. It was a very strange volcanic rock there with a big flat top called [?] and there was [?] Association and I was a member of that for a long time and correspondence kept on.
And I met a dear man who was flying beside me called Harry Dunn. Because my name came in the alphabet first before his I was graded as first navigator he was graded as second navigator. And well I did turn out to be a better one than he did because I came top of the course. But Harry came to me when we went to our next stage up at Queenstown almost in tears. He said, “My maths is no good at all. Will you coach me?” Harry was out with the girls and drinking and didn’t bother at all really. He was good company but very happy go lucky.
And well we both got through and he came back with me on the same troopship back through Tufik (?)in the Red Sea. And the Germans were still in Italy and we had a lot of women and children on board who were being repatriated from India. They were service families. And they weren’t going to take any risks. When the Germans were clear, after a fortnight in Tufik we came back through the Mediterranean and home in time for Christmas 1943. And we were very popular because we brought back things which were normally rationed.
I bought a lovely Omega watch in East London for seven pounds ten shillings and well the same watch these days is nearly two thousand pounds. I lost that but that’s another story. I’ve bought another Omega since. I navigated on that one all the way through. They issued us with proper watches but I was delighted with my Omega. And I believe I had to hand wind it. I’d rather forgotten but recently I’ve seen the certificate when I bought the watch and apparently it had to be handed in to be oiled every year. Well mine never got any oil on it at all and I navigated on it pretty well. I was very happy with it. Delighted with my Omega.
Now where have we got? Oh yes. We were posted after Christmas leave, to West Freugh to acclimatise to British conditions and we flew up and down the Hebrides. Very fascinating indeed. I saw Iona which has a church which is the same pattern as our village church here in Pendeen - cruciform. And after going to this unit at West Freugh Harry got posted off to Transport Command and I was posted to Bomber Command. We were told, ‘write your wills. You won’t be here in six weeks time.’ I thought I’d find out how Harry’s going on. No reply. Wrote his parents – no reply. So I thought, well that’s it. I still have a lovely photo of him.
And I went on from West Freugh to, let’s see, OTU at Moreton in Marsh. Operational Training Unit. And that was on Wellingtons. In the meantime Harry had gone to Canada and became a fur merchant after the Transport Command experience as a fur merchant like his father was. And twenty or fifty years later on his conscience was pricking him because he had borrowed a book from an old aunt living near Bath and he came back to England from Canada to take this book to her. She was dead. Had an uncle ten miles away. Went to see him. He was dead too. So he thought I’m so far west I’ll go down Penzance and see old Derry. He didn’t tell me he was coming. I didn’t know where he was. I hadn’t forgotten him. And that day my wife and I were taking an old lady to hospital so we weren’t there in order to see him and Harry caught the train back to [?] to stay or he hoped to stay with a [sugar bidder[?]] there that he played rugby with before the war. When he got to the a [sugar bidder[?]] house he was out but the caretaker said, “Come on in and have a meal. He’ll be back in the morning.” and he was telling his tale of the book and going down to Penzance to see an old navigator friend. And that caretaker said was that navigator called Derry Derrington. He said, “How did you know that?” “I sat beside him on thirty one operations in bomber command. He was my navigator. I was his bomb aimer.” That dear boy has died since but his wife is still alive.
So after being at West Freugh Operational Training Unit there we crewed up, six of us, because we only had Wellingtons. We weren’t on a four engine outfit so we needed a flight engineer later and we gelled as a crew very quickly. Our pilot was an Australian called Les Evans, a dairy farmer’s son and he came from a place called Kingaroy in Queensland. And Les Evans was a very good pilot. He had been an instructor. We were all good chaps. We were never, there never was as good a crew as we are. Charlie will think so too. Charlie was friendly with another gunner called Dennis Cleaver and those two had crewed up together and they were looking for somebody to join and my pilot, Les Evans chose me for his navigator. I was delighted. Didn’t care whether he was Australian or Chinese or whatever he was. He was a dear old boy.
And after Les Evans, he and I were together, we chose the oldest wireless operator we could get and that was Tom Windsor. Tom was thirty one. We thought he was our grandfather [laughs] and Tom was a good old boy with the girls. One of the joking things which Charlie and I still talk about he used to say, “I’d like as many shillings,” and what that definitely meant we don’t quite know but we could guess all sorts of things. We were quite youngsters really in our early twenties. Tom was thirty one.
And well, we had Jonah who was in antiques with his brother. I was a trainee schoolmaster just qualified. Tom Windsor was a bookies clerk and Charlie and Dennis, the gunners, were both fitters and there were six of us. And we did OTU work at Moreton in the Marsh on Wellingtons and that was good. I saw my area where I live here from the air for the first time. I had been to see Alan Cobham’s Air Circus and did a flight - very limited indeed, but this was very wonderful to see our area from the, I suppose it was about ten thousand feet.
Well from the OTU we were posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit to get used to a four engine aircraft and we picked up an engineer who had been on the Queen Mary - Jock. Dear boy. Scotsman. A wee haggis we called him and he was good. In fact we had the most hair raising experience when we were doing a flight near the Isle Of Man because he had to change the petrol tanks over every so often in order to balance the aircraft, trim it up properly and he needed to go to the elsan and whether he was there longer then he should have done or what we don’t know but two engines cut out on us and I as navigator had to hold the escape hatch open, I did, ready for the crew to bailout and we got, Jonah, no Jock the engineer came back quickly, switched the right tanks over and she picked up and there we were again but we were very dicey indeed in those days.
Well we started our tour of operations. We were posted from our Heavy Conversion Unit to Driffield in Yorkshire just about twenty miles north of Hull. A lovely peacetime station. And the pilot did a second dickey, that is to give him experience. In the meantime we did all sorts of training to keep us well and fit. And on from there we started our own tour. And the first trip was an easy one cap griz nez. It was to do with army cooperation.
The second trip is one that was probably the most momentous in our lives. It was to a flying bomb site. Now on our back from leave we’d gone through London. We’d seen the headlines - Pilotless Aircraft over England and well those were the V1s and we didn’t know what that would mean and we were told this was a highly secret operation. We were not to talk to anybody about it at all and we were going to hit this target over, in daylight, at minute intervals. And as we were going down the country toward Beachy Head some silly bounder flying alongside us pressed the wrong button and what the crew were saying among themselves mentioned the name of the target. And that was [?] for the Germans. My pilot could see that every other aircraft was being shot down and he climbed an extra two thousand feet after Beachy Head [?] and did a shallow dive on the target. That gave us that bit more speed and we got there that split second before the minute was up but the flack came up and the Germans shot down one of their own fighters on our tail. Oh the gunners were quite screaming about it and we really felt we were getting acclimatised.
Well we got back from that we knew we’d got an aiming point. I’ve got a reconnaissance photograph of it here. It’s in my file which I’ll talk to you about later. That big fat file there is a list of all the things we did. All the, and I think it’s quite unique because the Australians were such a happy go lucky mob they didn’t collect them from us to shred them like most other people had done. I’ve got a complete unique set of operations and I know that we did well. We were good at wind finding and we did PFF support because we used to broadcast the wind that we found that was used by the master bomber.
Now where did we go from there? Well we did thirty one ops. Mainly over the Ruhr - Happy Valley, Flak Alley - all sorts of names for it and we got hit a time or two but we luckily came back and a lot of our dear chaps didn’t. I got back from a week’s leave and found seven complete crews wiped out. And they were dear boys. They were a jolly lot. They were mad as hatters. Motorbikes going around the mess, footprints on the ceiling. My speciality was doing forward rolls on the top of billiard tables or else in the fireplace. I’ve been told this later but I don’t remember it. And one chap flying with us he was the navigation leader he smoked his pipe through the side of the oxygen mask which was a little bit risky I think what do you think? Would you fancy doing that?
CB: No.
DD: No. No sensible person would I’m sure. In the middle of my tour I came home once and I thought I I’ll go up and see how my dad was getting on and I found him lying dead in the garden beside a bonfire. He’d had a stroke at the age of fifty four. That was, I was the oldest one of four children and my brother and I are the only two in our family now left but that was a great shock to me. It was the first dead person I’d seen and I was very saddened about it. I determined I wasn’t going to do any more flying when my tour was up although we were invited to be PFF people but I explained that I was the eldest of four and I couldn’t go back again and it wasn’t held against me. I was with a very fair lot.
The Aussies were a mad, happy lot. I got on wonderfully well with them. They were dears. And I never knew them do a bad, evil deed with anybody at all. They were wonderful. You’ll see pictures of some of them and some of the targets we had in my main logbook there.
Well we did get through our tour. I say the general thanksgiving every day for our creation, preservation. Preservation deeply underlined because we were preserved from all sorts of horrible things and we were able to save ourselves and our country by what we did. My Charlie, the rear gunner has a grandson I think it is who’s a Member of Parliament. There’s a photograph of him up there and I’ve got a letter of his in my general logbook here saying, ‘If I can do a much for the country as you chaps in Bomber Command then I shall feel I’ve done well.’ He’s a Doctor of Medicine as well as a Member of Parliament and I believe he had an increased majority at the last election. Charlie’s very proud of him. Charlie comes down this way on holiday occasionally. He was staying at a place called Mousehole not far from here with his, this man’s brother owns it and Charlie and his wife were down and we had some wonderful times together.
Earlier on I was talking about my friend in Canada who was, who met my bomb aimers crew over in Effingham near Goring and when this Harry came at one time he gave me my computer. Do you know it?
CB: I do.
AS: It’s a whizz wheel.
DD: A Dalton.
AS: A Dalton computer, yeah.
DD: A Dalton mark 3. While we were training as navigators this was our bible AP1234. There is an AP4567. I’ve seen it but I can’t get another copy. Anyhow, where I got this I don’t really remember but it was a precious book.
Well the tour was horrific. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world but I wouldn’t wish anyone else to have done it. And the crew were magnificent. We never had any quarrels or arguments. Les was a wonderful leader and well the mid gunner was a bit dicey sometimes but he was a jolly old boy and he loved singing too. We got on well. Talking about singing I’ve got a list of some of the ribald songs we sang.
We had lots of waiting around and because I live in the sticks down here in West Cornwall it took a long time to travel from Yorkshire to Cornwall. Twenty seven hours usually, stopping in London overnight very often, that I couldn’t come home on a forty eight hour pass. The time would be spent all with travelling and I passed my time away by doing this. This was my engagement present for my wife. This I did on an engineer’s bench in Air Force Station Driffield. The Song of Songs. In the back it says where it was done. Bound and written out by Arnold P Derrington between October and December 1944 at Driffield. I’m very proud of the title page of it. And I gave this to my wife and it will be my daughter’s eventually and this is the main title page. There.
CB: Wow.
DD: The Song of Songs. And I have bound a book before under ideal conditions but that was done on an engineer’s bench. The leatherwork as well and it’s very precious as you can imagine.
CB: What prompted you to do that?
DD: Pardon?
CB: What prompted you to do that?
DD: Well the language in it is very lovely and I felt it was a suitable engagement present for my wife.
[pause]
I’m wondering what is the next thing to talk about?
CB: Would you like to have a break?
DD: Hmmn?
CB: Would you like to have a break?
DD: No.
CB: Ok.
DD: No.
CB: So you said it was horrendous on operations so could you describe a typical operation that was hairy please?
DD: I got a diary which is totally illegal. There’s a black book over there somewhere. That’s it I think
[pause]
Yes diary of an RAF career after the 20th June ACRC etcetera. A tour of operations. An illegal document. Well its written, there’s quite a bit of detail there and I used it on one occasion for the people who are writing a history of our squadron. You see a book there, a big heavy book. That’s it. And my grandson Adam, who is going to have this stuff was so delighted he bought a copy for himself and, I was given a gratis copy and the two chaps who wrote it one is called Lax he was an ex air commodore and the other man there, a hyphenated name he was a chemistry professor very near where my daughter who lives in Australia. I’ve never met these two chaps but I’ve just had phone calls from them and with extracts from our diary and other things o sent them they got fifty references to us as a crew in that book. What’s it called again?
CB: To See the Dawn Again.
DD: To See the Dawn, yes. Well number, operation number eighteen. After much lighting, lightning the usual restless night I woke to a lovely morning. No signs of movement. Today is St Luke’s day. What happy memories it recalls. Possibly too many of us over the world - Canada, Africa, India, Gib West Indies and dear old England. Have I longed to, how I’ve longed to be on the cliffs today. Hanging around in the morning. FFI in the afternoon. Promise of pay then wait. Nothing doing. Draughts and roll call. Detailed for more, for move off tomorrow. I can’t read my own writing. Five weeks have elapsed since I heard from Helen and another five weeks will pass before I hear anything more. [?] I hadn’t done any operations that day.
CB: So this was a diary that you kept in addition to your logbook was it?
DD: Yes my logbooks are rather scruffy looking things.
CB: Yes I saw it on there.
DD: The South African one.
CB: Right.
DD: If I’d had it in England it would have had a rather nice blue cloth cover instead of a plain cover like that.
CB: Right ok. What prompted you to keep the diary?
DD: Oh just being [fussy?] and breaking regulations sort of thing.
[pause]
DD: I ought to be reading my own writing but I can’t.
CB: Well off the top of your head though what would you say was the most hair raising experience you had in a raid?
DD: Well even in the last raid we did. It was the 27th of December and we were going to the Ruhr and I’d had flu and I didn’t feel like flying at all. It wasn’t a case of LMF and it wasn’t a case of jitters it was a case of finishing near the end of the tour but I just did not feel well. My pilot Les said come on you’re alright you’ve always done well for us so far on previous occasions and off we went and I got taken sick and Jonah was sitting next to me the bomb aimer and I could tell him what to do when I couldn’t do it myself. And then I passed out and the heating failed at minus forty four. And we had to come down and I just vaguely knew what was happening. We had to come down to ten thousand feet because of the oxygen shortage. The heating had failed and the oxygen failed as well. And we had bombs being dropped by our own chaps up above and they were shooting at us down below and the fighters on our tail but I was able to work out the courses for the pilot. I’m sure you all know what the preparation is beforehand and there are estimated courses and things which one should take and as a navigator I’d worked that out in the briefing beforehand and I just read off from those and applied variation and deviation and gave the pilot those courses and we got through where we were going and whether we hit the target or not I don’t know because I handed over to Jonah, the bomb aimer. And on the way back I was feeling very unwell indeed and this was all due to the flu business I think. Anyhow, we did get back and thank God for that. That was a very hair raising situation to be in. I didn’t like feeling unable to do the job I had to do.
It was a very necessary job but a very horrible job and when I think we were trained to kill it’s a very revolting thought but if we didn’t do it we would have had much worse done to us as a nation and so I was very grateful to have got through my tour and because we were the only pommie crew amongst a lot of Australians they didn’t discriminate against us. Maybe we were favoured all the more I don’t know but they were dear fellows. We loved the lot of them and a very sad time it was when some got lost. There’s a recording of so many names of people who were lost after an operation.
That was a bit hair raising. Anything else you’d like to ask me?
CB: Yeah in practical terms was after the pilot was the navigator the most worked member of the crew?
DD: Oh yes and I was glad I was occupied like that. I didn’t see some of the horrible things that were going on but I had to record things. I had to give him new courses if need be and my main job was wind finding and I was able to do that well and our winds that we found were picked up, were broadcast so PFF could pick them up. And we were helpers of PFF we weren’t direct PFF people but PFF support was the denomination that we were given.
CB: So what is PFF?
DD: Pathfinders.
CB: Pathfinder right.
DD: Yes. They could wear a very special little golden wing.
[pause]
There’s a little map showing Elvington and such places we were talking about. You’ve got it alright?
CB: Yes thank you yeah.
CB Now on your plane.
DD: On?
CB On your Halifax did you have H2S?
DD: Oh yes.
CB: How did you use that?
DD: Yes.
CB: How did you use it?
DD: Well there was good screen to pick up the shape of towns and if a town had particular projection on one corner we could take a bearing on that and know where we were and I’ve got one chart in my, the big book which you can look at later on and I’ll show you a map which was specially adapted for H2S work. Gee was our main help and I’ve a Gee chart there. That gave us position line and we took a fix every six minutes and that was very handy because six minutes is a tenth of an hour and we could use the decimal point to move whatever our speed was. It was my job to find out what speed we were going. If we were getting to a place too early we’d have to do a dog leg beforehand. Do you know what that means?
CB: Just a weave.
DD: It was an equilateral triangle.
CB: Oh right.
DD: And you flew sides of it instead of a third and you just dodged with a piece across the bottom and you could lose two minutes or three if you would but that if you did that you were taking a colossal risk because you were crossing the main stream coming along. We were pretty close to each other sometimes.
CB: You couldn’t see them could you?
DD: No and there were times when you felt the slipstream of other aircraft almost as if the plane had hit a brick wall. She juddered because of it. Can you imagine that?
CB: How did you do your wind finding?
DD: Joining up the position on the ground to the position in the air and taking the vector that you got between the two you could work out the speed and the direction of the wind. The angle between the air position and the ground position gave you the direction of the wind. The length of the vector a quarter of the time you’d been working in the air you could work out the speed. It was done, this computer, are you aware what it was like? We had a red and green end on the pencil. It’s a laptop.
[pause]
DD: Had you seen one of these? No?
CB: No.
DD: No? Well speeds are set like that, went around that way and you put your wind on and you take a reading off against this point here and you know what angle we were working on.
CB: So this is the navigational computer mark 3, the Dalton Computer.
DD: And this was the circular slide rule converting centigrade to fahrenheit. Nautical to statute miles and so on. And my dear old friend on Transport Command brought that home from Canada for me.
CB: Oh did he? So it wasn’t standard issue in -
DD: Yes.
CB: The RAF? Was it?
DD: Oh yes.
CB: Oh it was. Right.
DD: Have a good look at it.
CB: Yes.
DD: And in that navigation manual there it tells you how to use it.
CB: Yeah.
DD: It talks about the duties of a navigator as such in that book too. The Navigator’s Bible.
CB: So back on operations a lot of it was the Ruhr. How did you actually find the target?
DD: Oh well the Pathfinders had been ahead normally and dropped flares. In daylight of course. It was a matter of the bomb aimer having taken near the target he’d then take over when we were say within ten miles of it, whateve,r and the target, when the PFF marked it, they had different methods of dropping flares. One name, I almost get nightmares about it - Wanganui. That was the name of an island near where Pathfinder Bennett lived. I’ve seen it from the air. Charlie Derby who you’ve met had been right around the south island of New Zealand and so had I. We went out at different times and stayed with Les Evans and his family. Les Evans has been here and stayed with us too. And Wanganui was the, when they dropped three different colours of flares and the master bomber would be overhead circling, looking down at the target and he’d give the bomb aimer instructions, drop your bombs to the right of the yellow flares or whatever. Yellow flares, red flares and green flares. Those were what we used.
And just to explain that Les Evans was an Australian but he emigrated to New Zealand.
DD: He married a New Zealand girl.
CB: Oh right.
DD: And he moved to Auckland.
CB: Right ok. So when you weren’t on operational flights what were you doing?
DD: Well keeping, getting as near to the right track as possible to the next turning point and we didn’t fly directly there. I can show you some little dots on little charts I’ve got there. Show you the operations we did and I’ve drawn them on straight lines but we never flew directly to the targets. This was in order to fox the Germans and we did all sorts of zigzags and shapes like that. And we also dropped window. Do you know what that is?
CB: Yeah.
DD: There’s some bits of window in my main big heavy blue book there. One of the wireless operator’s jobs used to throw out leaflets, propaganda leaflets. One thing which is rather saddening I had a lovely collection of leaflets and on one occasions when I was talking to a group somebody pinched them. I’ve got a few leaflets left but not the main lot that I did have.
CB: A collectable item.
DD: I suppose so yes.
So when you’re flying to the target you’re in a stream.
DD: Yes.
You’ve no idea where the other aircraft are. You said there were a number of issues, things that happened and you were glad you weren’t watching them because you were navigating so what sort of thing was that?
DD: Well it was up to the gunners and the bomb aimer went down into the nose. And they were keeping their eyes open for other aircraft too. We had no lights on of course as you can imagine and the pilot of course was alert to see that he was avoiding any other aircraft and you could feel the slipstream of other aircraft sometimes. It was quite a jolt at times to feel that but I still stayed at my post as navigator recording what was said by other people if it was necessary to record it and also making sure that I could easily feed the pilot with the course to steer once we’d been to the target.
I have rather an interesting business happening. Every October I go to a place called Porthleven and that’s where Guy Gibson was and I was flying at the same time as Guy Gibson but not actually on the same operations as he was and the people of Porthleven, he was there as a boy they’ve got a plaque up on a wall near the town clock which is away on a wing beside the harbour and because I’m a flying fellow I get invited over to it each year and they come and collect me for it and it’s a wonderful occasion. Very heartrending. And people reminiscent of their experiences of Guy Gibson as a child living in the town. Porthleven is about thirty miles from here I suppose. Out towards the Lizard Peninsula.
CB: As a crew, as a crew you did everything together.
DD: Oh yes.
CB: So when you weren’t flying what were doing?
DD: Writing that book you saw. Difficult to say. Ordinary sort of things. We visited local towns and did a bit of shopping. We weren’t a drinking party.
CB: Did you have many tasks to do on the airfield though?
DD: No.
CB: When you weren’t flying?
DD: Orderly Officer sometimes.
CB: Ahum.
DD: I was orderly officer on one occasion and a boy came up to the table and collected his pay, a corporal, and he’d been a boy at school with me. This was when I was at the Operational Training Unit and I got a message over the tannoy would Corporal Mitchell report to the Ordinary Officer. Got the fright of his life. Sounded terribly officious and when he saw me he just melted completely. And he was a boy with me at St Erth. His father was a carpenter and the president of the little band in the village and he was in that band.
CB: Now as you finished your operations.
DD: Oh yes.
CB: Then what happened?
DD: I got posted to Operational Training Unit as an instructor at Moreton in the Marsh and I decided then it would be a good time to get married and we lived in a village called Blockley which wasn’t far from the airfield there. It was an interesting little village. The plumber was called Mr Ledbetter.
[laughs]
The butcher was called Balhatchet. The chemist was called [Milton?] and I might think of a few more in a minute but, and the vicar was called Jasper. I was confirmed in Blockley.
CB: And what did you actually do as an instructor? Did you -
DD: Well, I didn’t fly then.
CB: Go up in the Wellingtons much
DD: I was a ground instruction.
CB: Right.
DD: And the young fellows who were going through were just needing, they were glad of my operational experience and one student who came through was a squadron leader who’d been with me in South Africa. He was a regular I think. I can’t think of his name now.
CB: And why would he be there?
DD: Oh to take a tour of operations. He hadn’t done any operations beforehand. He, he’d been a navigational pilot instructor. I can’t think of his name at all.
CB: No. So he was a pilot instructor as a pilot.
DD: Yes.
CB: But why was he getting navigation -
DD: He wanted -
CB: Training from you?
DD: To do a tour.
CB: Right.
DD: A tour was normally thirty one.
CB: Ahum.
DD: I believe Charlie who you met he had to do an extra one and he did it with a crew he had some illness or had flu or something and couldn’t go on operation with us and he said that they were a ropey lot. They were smoking. They were falling out among themselves and they were no, no sense of duty at all. But we were a very agreeable wonderful lot together and it was an experience that I can’t define. Closer than brothers. Our lives depended absolutely on each other and we relied on each other totally. Absolute trust. Absolute frankness.
CB: So what was your feelings at the end of the tour when you were all dispersed?
DD: When I was?
CB: When everybody was dispersed to other places.
DD: Well we wanted to keep in touch. We kept in touch with each other. I went to Dennis’ wedding at one time down at Llanelli and Dennis was a good old singer as I was saying. He had been a rather broad Oxford dialect beforehand. Now he’d become quite a little Welshman.
CB: So how long were you at the OTU as an instructor and what happened at the end of it?
DD: Well I was approached by someone who said, “You are an experienced navigator. Would you like to become a full time navigator?” I took the staff end course at Shawbury which was not far from Shrewsbury and right near there a place was called Church Stretton and the hill Caradoc which is the bungalow name here was overlooking where we were flying from. And the doctor who lived in this house before me came from that home district and he named this house after that hill called Caradoc which is a [?] in Shropshire.
Church Stretton has been rather precious to me because I had an aunt who lived there. She had a Breeches bible and she gave it to me which I’ve now handed to my son. My grandson Adam who will receive all my air force stuff he was married to a girl who came from there so we went back there to his wedding. And so church Stretton has been a little bit meaningful to us.
We had very good instruction there and I flew up to Reykjavik in Iceland. Went up on astro and came back on LRN Long Range Navigation.
CB: When you said you went up on astro that was because you were using the astrodome.
DD: Yes.
CB: And the sextant
DD: It wasn’t very, it wasn’t very accurate.
CB: But using a sextant.
DD: Oh yes.
CB: How often?
DD: A proper sextant.
CB: How often did you use sextants?
DD: Very rarely.
CB: On operation?
DD: I got I knew how to use one but it wasn’t used very often because it did need really precision and Gee and H2S gave us that. We could be much more precise than just map reading and well we were so high sometimes map reading wasn’t so easy and of course sometimes there was no character in what the land was below us.
CB: So how did you feel about using Gee because -
DD: Oh Gee was ideal. Yes the Gee screen gave us the position lines which we plotted and the more the angle between two position lines got nearer to a right angle the more precise it was. If it was shallow and less then say fifteen degrees it was little bit too inaccurate so we attempted to get position lines that would do that. In the book that I’ve got there the big heavy one you can look in that. Maybe you’d like to turn over a different pages in that and talk to me about that.
CB: Yes.
DD: But we, I stayed there after Shawbury, went back to Moreton in the Marsh again and I think I was offered the chance, “Would you like to come back in to the air force. Full air force.” No I didn’t wish to. I wanted to settle down to married life and family life and I did but I did ATC cadet work and that was very rewarding indeed.
CB: So -
DD: One of my cadets is still a local farmer here. He was a farmer’s boy and he was such a good cadet he was given something that in 1950 or so was a great privilege - a free flight to Singapore. I still see him and he still remembers the joy of being able to do that sort of thing. He went back to farming again.
CB: When were you demobbed and where?
DD: In September 1945. And my son David was born in that month as well. I was demobilised, where was it now? Harrogate I think. I’m not really sure. Harrogate I think.
CB: Right. I think in a moment we’ll pause for a break but just talk to me please a little more about H2S because that was sort of a mixed blessing.
DD: Well it was very good. H2S - just a code name for it, gave you on your screen a fluorescent picture of the ground below and towns stood out more so than anything else and if a town had a particular projection you could cotton on to that in order to get a bearing from it. And you’d rotate the screen [phone ringing] in order to – can you answer it please?
Tape mark 5308 the telephone begins to ring and the interview answers it for the interviewee – not transcribed.
Tape mark 5348 TAPE THEN REPEATS UNTIL MARK 1.47.20
CB: Derry we were just talking about the fact you were on 462 and then 466 squadrons
DD: Yes.
CB: At Driffield. Could you just explain how that evolved with the two squadrons?
DD: Well I started off with 466 all together but, and then 462 had been in the western desert and were posted back to England to take special duties. They were going to have a station of their own later on so we were transferred from 466 to 462 for that interim time. When 462 was built up to be a good squadron size then we were posted back to 466 and I can’t remember the name now but 462 went to not Swanton Morley
CB: Foulsham
DD: Faversham was it? That’s it so they were posted to that. They were a complete squadron on their own and you can read about it in the book by Mark Lax and the professor of chemistry. It’s possible that Mark Lax may be coming over to see me in late autumn this year. I’ve invited him. Whether he will or not I don’t know.
CB: So what’s his involvement with the squadron?
DD: He was just interested writing its history.
CB: Right.
DD: What his Australian Air Force career was I don’t know but he was an Air Commodore.
CB: And what age is he?
DD: Oh I should think middle fifties I should think.
CB: Right.
DD: They’re both younger than we are.
CB: So that covers that extremely well thank you very much and what were, oh final point. What were special operations?
DD: They might have been gardening which of course is laying mines in shipping tracks that was called gardening - code name for it. It could have been dropping food to needy people in certain areas that were damaged, overseas that is not in England. Those were their special duties.
CB: Right.
DD: They weren’t torpedo dropping but I did have a friend who was on Swordfishes dropping but that would have been a special duty but that was left to the RNAS which later was embodied in the RAF.
CB: Thank you. I’ll stop it there and pick up later.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Derry Derrington
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Great Britain. Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Dr Arnold Pearce Derrington grew up in Cornwall and joined the University Air Squadron at Exeter. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 and completed training at RAF Ansty, South Africa, RAF West Freugh and RAF Moreton in the Marsh, where he trained as a navigator on Wellingtons. He was posted to RAF Driffield where he served with 462 and 466 Squadrons. Most of his operations were over the Ruhr. He discusses H2S and Gee in detail. He was later an instructor at RAF Moreton in the Marsh and was demobbed in 1945. He kept a diary of his time in Bomber Command.
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-14
Format
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00:56:20 audio recording
Language
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eng
Identifier
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ADerringtonAP150715-01
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Heather Hughes
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.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
South Africa
Great Britain
England--Gloucestershire
England--Warwickshire
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Wigtownshire
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Type
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Sound
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1944
1945
462 Squadron
466 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
Gee
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
love and romance
memorial
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Ansty
RAF Driffield
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Shawbury
RAF West Freugh
sanitation
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/143/1366/AHawkinsDH151001.1.mp3
8b754798beb1912e8757ed38a3b0d408
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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Hawkins, Des
Des Hawkins
Desmond Hawkins
D H Hawkins
D Hawkins
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant Desmond Howard Hawkins DFC (158602 Royal Air Force), one photograph, a diagram and notes about his service. Des Hawkins volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1941. He trained as a navigator in Canada and flew 47 operations in Lancasters with 44, 625 and 630 Squadrons from RAF Waddington, RAF Dunholme Lodge, RAF East Kirkby and RAF Kirmington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Des Hawkins and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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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Hawkins, DH
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
IL: So we’re now talking. So this is — it’s Ian Locker conducting an interview with Des Hawkins at his home in Melksham. It’s the first of October 2015 and the time is about 3 o’clock. So Des, tell us a little bit about your early life and how you came to be in Bomber Command during the war.
DH: Well, it’s fairly simple. At my age at a rather special grammar school I was attending at Bradford-on-Avon, known as Fitzmaurice Grammar School, and we were very well-educated, supremely [emphasis] well-educated but, above all, we were naturally patriotic in those days, and when war came along I thought, ‘Right, the schoolboy’s aim is always to drive an engine locomotive.’ It had to be changed to, ‘ I want to fly?’. So I volunteered and eventually, in 1941, called to interview where we had very intensive medical examinations, and problems to solve, and be interviewed. I wasn’t particularly helpful when it came to the interviewing board. I didn’t think much of them and I don’t think they thought much of me actually but the fact is when they asked me why I wanted to join the Royal Air Force I said, ‘Well, that’s simple. I want to fly, obviously,’ and adding the word “obviously” put a bit of criticism into the questionaire and they suitably looked down a bit. [Background noise] Is it off?
IL: It’s switched on. It’s just you have quite a slightly quiet voice so I’m getting the recording level a bit higher.
DH: Oh, I see.
IL: But that’s fine.
DH: Well, the next question they asked me was, ‘ Have you any relations in the Royal Air Force?’ And I said, ‘Oh yes. Wing Commander A L Grice NC.’ Now that stunned them a bit because NC, as you know, is an army decoration basically and he had been a captain in the Great War, and had wing commander status in the last war, simply because he was a very positive research man. He had all the skills to conduct the sort of matters that needed to be put forward during wartime and at that point they all smiled, got up, came round the table and shook me by hand. They said it would normally be eighteen months you’ll be called up in — you were given a little badge, RAFER, and told to go back to civvy life but you’re sworn in, sworn in the Air Force, but you’re in civvies and they said, ‘Because you have someone in the RAF already, instead of waiting eighteen months you will wait only three months’, and that was the way it turned out. Thereupon, I was posted overseas, to Canada, down to the United States under the Arnold Scheme, the illegal [emphasis] scheme where we weren’t allowed to wear uniforms but they provided the RAF with flying training. But we had to wear lounge suits to settle the matters created by the Neutrality Acts but we were kicked out there. It wasn’t a very successful scheme. Even if you didn’t have your blankets, your sheets, at the corners of exactly forty-five degrees you were washed out. You got de-merits and when you had enough de-merits, like coming in under the fence at night like we did, you were washed out of the course. That happened to me and I went back to Canada where I decided that I’d no longer wait for a pilot’s course. I would be a navigator. I had all the satisfactory education necessary and that’s the way it transpired. Back to England and then they lost us at Bournemouth for about three months. They had to dump us somewhere, where we bathed and filled The Norfolk Hotel nightly, and had a whale of a time. And then they eventually caught up and I went to OTU at North Luffenham in Stamford, Stamford near Oakham, up that way, to be trained on operational training, rather different from just flying. Flying at night, in total blackness of course. Absolutely opposite to what it was like on the other side of the pond, and after that we then — we crewed up then. We selected each other for members of a particular crew. We then went to a conversion course from Wellingtons to Lancasters.
IL: So had you ever flown on that, Wellingtons, when —?
DH: Oh yes but not until we got to OTU. You had to learn to fly them there and do the night training there.
IL: So you learnt as a crew?
DH: Oh yes, absolutely. That was the idea, to weld together a fluid, effortless, satisfactory working group.
IL: Right.
DH: Then we had an intermediate stage before we flew the Lancs, we were flying Manchesters, because the layout of the Manchester, althought only two engines, was the same as in the Lancaster. It was easier for pilots. Then we were posted to number 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron which was the first squadron ever to have Lancasters off the production line. Althought that was some while before I joined them.
IL: Gosh.
DL: There afterwards, after a tour of operations, I went as anb instructor to OTU Chipping Warden in Oxfordshire. It was nearly as dangerous to be an instructor on the OTU as it was flying on operations [laugh]. At least that’s the view I formed. Ultimately, of course, time went by, the second front happened. I wasn’t involved with bombing operations then. I went back after [emphasis] the second front was opened to 625 Squadron and completed sixteen trips, not quite allowing me to complete a second tour, of twenty this time instead of thirty, simply because the war ended. And I can only say that’s a broad statement, chronology of events that happened.
IL: So your first, your first tour, you did thirty operations?
DH: Yes, that was the requirement.
IL: OK, tell me a little bit about — tell me a little bit about what happened on a tour of operations. Tell me about the places you visited. Tell me about the first tour.
DH: Well, that list I’ve given you has got it. Not that one. One of the others. Didn’t I give it to you? Didn’t I give you —
IL: It’s here.
DH: Oh yes, yes, the others. Now there are a number of people around who would say, ‘Forty-six? I’ve done ninety.’ But of course they couldn’t have done it unless they were in at the start of the war. Well, they didn’t contribute very much because very often, because they couldn’t find the targets on the continent so easily and, of course, many of the support second front trips were very small, maybe an hour and a half ,and some people have counted those as whole operations. You can knock up a fair number like that but if you look at my [emphasis] list you will see here that, whilst the first are all the Ruhr, measuring five or six hours each time, but when it got down to a bit later in that, when the winter came along, these hours were going up, 7.30, 7.55, ‘cause they were long trips, right, and then you can see here three Berlins. The shortest was 5.50. There was special reasons for that, the weather was thoroughly dud . None of the defences couldn’t get off the ground so we went the shortest way rather than the long way round. But here you see, on this second tour, these places: Misburg [?], Zeitz, Pölitz, Chemnitz.
IL: All much more East Germany.
DH: Yes. 8.25 hours. And there is one on here, we were at the very maximum, 10.55, a low level operational on a transformer station in Italy but because the night hours were insufficient to come back over enemy territory, too dangerous, we went on to land in North Africa, deliberately, it was planned that way, and then when we could get back (although the weather was bad for a week or so) we bombed Leghorn on the way back and taking off from where we were, in North Africa, Blida. And then again, so these all were fairly long trips.
IL: Absolutely.
DH: It’s not like a fighter pilot, going up for a maximum of half an hour and landing because he was either out of petrol, munitions or both. We couldn’t. The moment we entered over the continent the Germans were after us all the way out to the target and all the way back. It was a very, very, harassing situation altogether and very, very wearing, to such an extent that, when I first went to 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron they said, ‘You won’t be on operations for a couple of days. Get used to flying around the countryside, Lincoln countryside, see where we are.’ And we did that but at night, of course, there were empty beds, increasingly every night, and I suddenly realised there was absolutely no future in this at all. I wasn’t going to live more that two or three trips. That was my opinion and hence, postwar, when I came to write that book, that’s where the title “No Future” comes from.
IL: Absolutley. So, how did —? Just sort of describe that sort of —? How you came to terms with that sort of —? How does someone come to terms with ‒?
DH: Danger?
IL: With fatalism, you know —?
DH: You get used to it. It comes under a well-known phrase in the RAF, “getting flak-happy”. If you get a lot thrown up at you and you get through it to start with, and you always get through, so you acheive some kind of strange kind of optimism and the view that, ‘Whoever’s going to get shot down it won’t be me, it will be the other chap’.
IL: Right.
DH: Fatalism, yes, but rather a strange kind of optimism as well.
IL: And did you ever feel frightened? Did you ever — you know?
DH: Yes, yes. This North African trip we bombed Reggio there satisfactorily but we passed over an unknown defended area on the Italian coast, going across to Sardinia [?] across the Mediterranean, and they chewed us up a bit and on that occasion the pilot was throwing the airplane around like nobody’s business and all my navigational instruments slid off the table onto the floor, and the one moment that they slid onto the floor and I bent down to pick them up there was a horrid grafting bang right beside me or behind me, and shocked to find there was a great big hole in the fuselage. My own instrument board in front of me was smashed. If I had been in normal posture, sitting up at my table, it’d have taken my head off at the neck so that was the reason to be shocked. But having got over it I realised I’d got a guardian angel somewhere and forever after that I seized to worry about anything.
IL: Amazing. So how — how did you — you know? Obviously you mentioned earlier when you were chatting about that people couldn’t, you know, navigators, aimers, people couldn’t find targets and things in the early days of the war. What was different for when you were there? What were the improvements?
DH: 1943 when I went on the squadron they had already experienced Mark 1 GEE, a system of fixing your position on the ground by radar.
IL: Right.
DH: It was very unreliable and you often had to kick it to get it to work even but by the time I got on the squadron we got Mark 2 GEE which was much more reliable and useful. It helped us fix our position before we got to the enemy coast so we could recalculate as navigators the real [emphasis] wind velocity —
IL: Yeah.
DH: — and speed, and we were then able to adjust the forecast winds accordingly from there onwards, to give us more of a chance to get further into Germany accurately. And then, of course, later that year there was a new thing came along called H2S which gave you a plan of the ground. Rays were transmitted from the dome at the rear of the Lancaster under the — just under, near the mid-upper turret there’s a bulge. It transmitted from there, hit the ground, sent back pulses which would put a blip on your screen or a number of towns, must a blip. No names on them of course but in conjunction with dead reckoning navigation we were mostly able to decide which town that would be. In the Ruhr there were so many towns. That was where the problem was. You couldn’t tell which was which, right, because it was like one big industrial blob. But it did have its drawbacks. We went down to obstensibly to go to Pilsen, in Czechoslokavia, and we bombed and there was tremendous fires, a marvellous thing, suitable for the occasion, so to speak, but it turned out not to be Pilsen at all. It was this place here. Where the devil is it? Oh, I can’t find it. Pölitz.
IL: Oh, Pölitiz. Yeah.
DH: Pölitz. It seemed we’d done a wonderful job, nobody knew it was there, or at least all the armaments and that that were there. We did a good trick but we never found Pilsen. Why? Because it was the topography of woodland and hills and that masked the fact that Pilsen was there. So nothing’s perfect.
IL: No, absolutely.
DH: But it helped.
IL: Yeah.
DH: Considerably.
IL: So how, in terms of — when you were briefed on targets, what were you — what were the targets, you know? We’ll talk again about Dresden, you know, aftermath and things like that but were you always —? Did you think you were targeting always — it was, sort of, you were always targeting industrial complexes? Or was there ever a realisation that this was —
DH: They were mostly, as far as I know, industrial complexes and the fact that a lot of people got killed at the same time was unfortunate because they lived near their working space. So if their factory got blown up so does some of the people that lived around that area. It’s inevitable in war. You can’t do much else about that.
IL: OK, tell me a bit about some of the people who were part of your crew.
DH: Well, Burness is the star. A New Zealander who was a first [emphasis] class pilot. Considering the amount, small [emphasis] amount, of training you had before you had before you got onto operations, he was a first class pilot but he couldn’t accept anything that wasn’t acceptable. He was a shrewd, shrewd fellow but also quite a hard one. He once — we were doing some air-firing off Skegness on one occasion, practising, and he swept in over the coast and went right over a group of naval cadets on the forecourt and they all had to fall down, as they claimed they’d had been knocked down. We were pretty well at nought feet. Now he did that and when we got back there’d already been a complaint. Now they’d picked up the squadron letters but they hadn’t picked up the aircraft [emphasis] letter but the Squadron Leader Shorthouse, who was the flight commander then, said, ‘Bernie,’ he said, ‘That was you. The Navy is complaining,’ and he said, ‘Well, what’s the matter?’ He said, ‘They were forced to fall to save their lives, to fall to the ground to escape this aircraft coming in fast and furious over the top of them.’ He said, ‘Damn bad discipline, that!’ [Laugh] But he couldn’t be broke. He fell out with the group captain and he wouldn’t be told. He was strong, a first class pilot, but he knew that he had to defer to me. On one occasion we went down to one of these long trips, seven or eight hours, the weather was dirt, and it was the time when they broadcast from home, Meteology broadcast, revised winds, as they calculated them, but I said to him one day, I said, ‘They broadcast winds saying we’ve got to use seventy-five miles an hour.’ I said, ‘That’s rubbish. They’re a hundred and fifty miles. I know I got a proper fix.’ He said, ‘Well, what are you asking me for? You’re the bloody navigator!’ So I ignored the broadcast winds and went round. We found the target. There wasn’t much activity but it was the target. And we came back, hardly any aircraft anywhere. Usually you used to get a slip-stream, from an aircraft in front of you, absolutely nothing. We were an hour back before the next aircraft in Bomber Command simply because we hadn’t gone all over Germany, right, by false wind forecasts? And the group captain said to Bernie, he said, ‘You haven’t been to the target Burness.’ Because bear in mind they didn’t like each other. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘Come on chaps,’ he said, ‘ We’re going to get something to eat and go to bed.’ So we did. There was a hell-of-a shemozzle the next day because they hadn’t got any intelligence report from us. Right? So was the aircraft missing? Where’s the intelligence report? So it had to be explained and when asked by the commander at base, Scampton it was, ‘Why didn’t you go to briefing? Why didn’t you deliver an intelligence report?’ Bernie said, ‘Well, we hadn’t been to the target according to what the group captain, Sir, so no intelligence report was possible.’ That caused a storm. The offending officer was court-martialled as a result of it because we were able — . They back-tracked all my plots, couldn’t find anything wrong with it. They checked the engine consumption to see if we’d flogged the engines to get home quickly, nothing wrong with that. But above all things, the absolute wonder if the moment, we’d got an aiming point photograph of the target, which was taken automatically when the bombs went down and it wasn’t a good night but there wasn’t too much fire and flame, which very often obscured what could otherwise be a decent photograph, right, so we were totally exonerated, absolutley and completely, and the officer concerned was treated as he should have been treated. I believe he was court-martialled and sent to the middle east, taken down to wing commander but that’s a little bit private that bit , but I don’t care, I’m passed caring now anyway. But these were the sort of things that had to be contended with on some occasions. I never suffered like some did, any harsh reaction after I stopped operations, and when I went back to civvy life and worked for a good many years until I retired, only then did it come and smack me right in the face, all of a sudden I got all sorts of think-back feelings, I forget what the word is, looking back.
IL: Post traumatic stress.
DH: Post traumatic stress and that was terrible. And I thought, ‘Well the only thing I can do is put it down on paper,’ and that’s when I wrote that book after I retired from my civil job after the war.
IL: So what did you do as a job after the war?
DH: I was at Lloyds of London.
IL: Oh right.
DH: Yeah and er, but that didn’t solve the problem in itself because I started getting calls from the BBC to talk on radio, because we lived in Cornwall then. I’d retired and then they started asking me to do after dinner speeches. That didn’t relieve it, not a bit. Until the book was published, properly, it got around, all of a sudden it died away. I haven’t had anything since, just like that. Something spurred it, I don’t know quite what it was. Such are the frailties of human nature, one way or another.
IL: So what sort of things were happening to you just at the time when, you know —?
DH: Well, what sort of things why I might have been affected? Well, it’s quite something when you see an aircraft shot down in flames on your starboard beam or on —, you see one explode in the air right in front of you, all that kind of thing, you saw it so often and you began to think, ‘I’m going to get that one of these days.’ But we didn’t.
IL: So were there any other interesting people on your crew?
DH: Er, they all had their own facets, most notable I think is probably the popsies they chased in their off duty hours.
IL: This is the sort of thing we need to talk about.
DH: Yeah, but they were, of course, integrated thoroughly. They knew what to do and did it well and we didn’t — we weren’t completely ousted [?]. We did shoot down two or three night fighters which was quite something because you rarely saw a night fighter in total darkness, he saw you first . He could see your exhaust fumes from four engines. That told the Germans it was an English bomber so he could come up underneath and fire up. You couldn’t see underneath, right, so you just had to keep out of the way and that kind of thing.
IL: So would you have seen night fighters on most of the night missions?
DH: Yes, yeah.
IL: Gosh. Mm.
DH: Not in its full shape.
IL: No.
DH: But it was there, you knew it was there, and later in the war they did develop a radar thing operated by the radar operator, though I can’t think of it now, which showed if you were being trailed by an airplane, put it like that. But probably the most interesting thing about it all to me was how I got my commission.
IL: Yes, please tell me about it.
DH: Is that worth listening to?
IL: Yes, of course.
DH: Well, in those days, when you qualified in your particular trade, say navigator or pilot, you were made a sergeant, only a sergeant, and we took our sergeant’s rank to squadrons, and eventually to flight sergeant, but by then a number of the crews, straight from training, without experience, were coming in as commissioned ranks. They started commissioning by er, during, after training. We missed all that and it kind of rose up one night at a briefing, 44 Squadron, when Wing Commander Nettleton VC was briefing us for an operation and, like he always said, he drew attention by to the most senior crew by way of saying, ‘Look, if they’ve survived, why shouldn’t you?’ Right, now when they said “Flight Sergeant Burness” there was a lot of the new bods who looked up in a bit of astonishment, ‘Flight Sergeant Burness will lead the squadron tonight.’ It didn’t mean anything because you went indepentently. But sitting at the table, as it happened, were one or two of the big-wigs from Scampton, seeing how we were conducting our briefing, I suppose, or rather our management was. There were one or two covert chaps down the table when he said this. The next morning we were called to — yeah, the wing commander’s office. He said, ‘Do you want a commission?’ ‘Do you want a commission?’ We’d never thought about it really. He said, ‘Right.’ We did sort of hesitate for a moment because we thought well it won’t make much difference to the pay, though the mess bills would be bigger. He said, ‘Right, get into Lincoln. It’s been arranged with the tailors. You’re back in the mess, the officer’s mess, by tonight. You should be clothed properly in your new uniforms.’ And I think I —. The pilot didn’t achieve that because it had to go through the New Zealand Air Force pattern. So I had to attend at the mess that night and I wasn’t very happy about it, of course, but there it happened. And it made it easier for me when I went as an instructer, you know, it was a bit more listening went on, and it showed that whilst the operational features were first class, they were well planned, the administration wasn’t so good. Now why should they forget about those people, or were they hoping they’d all get wiped out before they needed to commission them, right?
IL: I suppose that’s true of a lot of them. Didn’t they? We talked about earlier about the lack of recognition that Bomber Command had. Tell me a little bit about your thoughts on — put your thoughts on tape.
DH: I’ve already said some, haven’t I? But that wasn’t on tape.
IL: But that wasn’t on tape.
DH: Well, it was my view we had Winston Churchill, as good a commander as he was during wartime, he was responsible for not giving Bomber Command the proper credit for its acheivements because he hoped to be the first peace-time Prime Minister, and he didn’t want to go looking for that position thought of as a warmonger or anything like that. Political, it was. So Arthur Harris, head of Bomber Command, got blamed for hitting the wrong targets, like Dresden, for example. Well, of course, it was never his decision. It had to come from the top. He, Arthur Harris, wasn’t allowed to bomb who he felt he should do. He had a pattern [?] from the Air Council and the Prime Minister. So we all thought in my area, although he’d been a good war commander, he let us down at the end because it should have been recognised that Bomber Command did, as it was expected to do, pretty well win the war because our troops and the American troops, being conscripts, were not up to the standard of the German army. They didn’t have much chance of getting on to the French [unclear] unless they were helped very very considerably indeed, and of course they were by Bomber Command, because we bombed all his supplies, so he couldn’t bring his troops up to — force us back into the sea as would in [unclear] have happened and he says, ‘my few.’ I’m firm about that. I’ve thought about it a lot and so, of course, he didn’t get his seat, as the Prime Minister. I would think all Bomber Command voted against him. Right, now then, what else was there to add to that do you think?
IL: Whatever. You were talking about Dresden as a target. That it wasn’t the innocent target that has been portrayed.
DH: No, it wasn’t.
IL: And you also mentioned, you know, your experiences of arguing with people on the radio. These are all useful things.
DH: Er, yes. Well, Dresden, of course, wasn’t the classic [emphasis] city that people like to think of it, as solely classic, and it’s a shame to break the buildings downs, but it housed the centre of the German Eastern command for fighting the Russians, and also had started making precision instruments that had been knocked out of the Ruhr by Bommber Command, and they built them down in Desden where it was thought it might be safe and also at Yalta, as I remember, this President Roosevelt, Josef Stalin and Churchill agreed to help the Russians and that was put in place by the Royal Air Force under the command of Winston Churchill, to bomb Dresden. So there isn’t much argument about this. That’s what happened but no one likes to think they couldn’t be stopped, like some of the people came on the radio after the war saying, ‘The war was nearly over. Why did we have to smash Dresden?’ Well, of course, it wasn’t known at that time that the war was nearly over. It collapsed rather sooner than expected and, in any case, her view, of this particular woman I’m thinking of, wouldn’t have been respected by those who lived in London with V2s falling all around them and smashing them to bits. So it was well justified and I think that’s about as much as I’d like to say about that, right?
IL: OK, but you’ve had some recognition recently.
DH: Oh, you mean the clasp. Well, yes, I was publicly presented with that by Air Vice Marshall Pat O’Reilly, retired, in the King’s Arms Hotel, Melksham. I didn’t really want to attend but the RAF Association thought I wasn’t doing the proper thing by opting out so I went along and, well, it was a social occasion which happened with a severe background to it, of course. It was a late [emphasis] recognition of Bomber Command without achieving much in the way of expense and that was, had a lot to do with it.
IL: Have you been to the new Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park?
DH: No. I’ve thought of it. I’ve been a very busy man actually. I haven’t really had time to do much. You’ve caught me at a time now when I’m tolerably free. I could go up tomorrow I suppose.
IL: You say you’ve been a busy man. What sort of things have you done after the war then Des, as well as obviously working?
DH: Well, a lot of book work. I did do some work for a City of London organisation after the war, by post. I done it for a fair few years. I’ve given it up now. It was taking up too much of my time and —. But in general mobility is not as good as it used to be though I get about alright. But I’m now more thinking where am I going to get a good meal next and which pub shall I go to?
IL: Sounds good to me.
DH: Yeah, well I find, and it’s not so silly as it sounds, but I go and I join a group of us oldies. We indulge in intelligent conversation over lunch and, in my humble view, that’s the only thing that’s really left for very elderly people. You can’t do much except use your brains, be friendly with people, discuss perhaps the situation in the world today, try and fight it’s battles without much success because the younger ones aren’t listening, right, or can’t listen, one or the other. And so we enjoy our food while putting the world to rights, in theory.
IL: What —? Tell us a little bit about how you socialised during the war. What sort of — what was the social life like between operations?
DH: At the bar. Briefly, that’s about it. Occasionally we would wallop off into Lincoln but you always did the same thing there. You went into The Snake Pit as they called The Saracen’s Head in Lincoln. It was known as The Snake Pit ‘cause it was thought there were more German spies in there than anywhere else in the country and so you could only have a drink. You didn’t drink too much generally but you did rather absorb a bit of it. It wasn’t bad. You didn’t do much except for one thing, one good thing, we used to get week’s leave every six weeks, phenominal, until it started getting down to three weeks because so many people in front of you had not come back from ops, you moved up the rosta. So we were getting a lot of leave by way of easing the situation.
IL: How did you cope with not — the people, how did you cope with people not returning? People that you — or were these people you didn’t know or you were just socialising with your crew or was this something that you just accepted?
DH: You accept it very quickly because you knew it’s inevitable, that this sort of thing will happen. The losses in — the worst part of the war in Bomber Command was ’43, ’44, as you know, were pretty fantastic. Of over 75,000 employed, 56,000 were fatal, er, casualties, and that doesn’t augur for a particularly friendly future. So you just have to accept it. ‘There’s a war on,’ was an old expression we used to use. It can be used in many circumstances, ‘There’s a war on.’
IL: Right, can you stop for a second?
DH: At the end of the war as the war ceased all our aeroplanes were grounded so there was nothing to do, utter boredom, ONUE [?] by the bucketful and one got fed up with getting up in the morning, breakfasting, walking down to the flights to see if there was anything, walking back because there was nothing, day after day. There was only one way to handle this, to get released. But of course, if you were relatively young, you were the later ones to be released. They asked, it was a combination of age and service, actually, carried out and so I, like most others, got released as soon as I could, went into Civvy Street, got going, but even in the City of London, the pay was pretty poor, and it was not as much as I needed. I’d been earning more in the services and so I rejoined the RAFVR, I resigned my emergency commsission and took on a reconstituted commission but I had to go in at a lower rank. So, instead of flight lieutenant, as I was, it was flying officer. But that was reinstituted, your original substantive rank, was reinstituted about a year later. And I did four years flying around at weekends, on Anson aircraft, of all things, and for a fortnight during the summer months, for which you duly got a day’s pay plus flying pay, which was substantial, which helped me with my reintroduction to civil life. And then at the end of that four years I felt I’d truly had enough and resigned again, finally, but before that I was granted, because I’d done all of that, I was granted my substantive rank of flight lieutenant for life. End of story.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Desmond Hawkins
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00:46:44 audio recording
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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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Ian Locker
Date
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2015-10-01
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AHawkinsDH151001
Description
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Desmond Hawkins volunteered for the Royal Air Force and became a navigator. After training on Wellingtons and Manchesters, he flew Lancasters for 44 Squadron and completed a tour of operations. He was commissioned as flight lieutenant and after the tour was posted to an Operational Training Unit at RAF Chipping Warden as an instructor. He then completed a further sixteen operations with 625 Squadron. He talks about the development of radar. He also mentions some of the operations to the Ruhr, Berlin, Italy and Czechoslovakia as well as a particularly long flight that led to landing in Blida, North Africa. Then carrying out a bombing operation from there on Leghorn, where his aircraft was attacked and damaged. After the war he went to work in the City of London but rejoined the Royal Air Force for four years. He wrote a book called 'No Future'.
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Christine Kavanagh
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eng
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Sound
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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Pending review
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Canada
Great Britain
Italy
England--Lincolnshire
England--Northamptonshire
Germany--Berlin
Italy--Livorno
North Africa
Slovakia
Czech Republic
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1943
44 Squadron
625 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
coping mechanism
Gee
grief
H2S
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
Manchester
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
radar
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/607/8876/AMaywoodRM151109.2.mp3
773cbbdec73ec1fb4e55919303593c37
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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Maywood, Dick
Richard M Maywood
R M Maywood
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Maywood, RM
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Richard 'Dick' Maywood (1923 -2016, 1623169 Royal Air Force), his log book and a certificate. He flew operations as a navigator with 608 and 692 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
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2015-11-09
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: This was the, this was the interview with Mr Richard ‘Dick’ Maywood at xxxx and he was a Mosquito Pathfinder navigator.
[Recording resumes]
RM: Above the main bomber stream. Twenty eight thousand. We carried one cookie.
CB: Four thousand pounder.
RM: Four thousand pounder.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And we had the Mosquitoes with the bulged belly. Now a lot of those — that was the B16. A lot of those appeared in the film, “633 Squadron.” Now, that film was the biggest load of bullshit you ever came across. It was so ridiculous that a lot of people would believe it. The bombs which they showed being loaded up on these, for the operation, were cookies. The four thousand pounder bombs that we carried with the peculiar tail fin added and they were supposed to drop these bombs so that they hit the base of the rock and bring it down. Now, with the four thousand pounder we were told safety height above one of those is five thousand feet or more. They wouldn’t have been more than five hundred feet away from that rock. So, the best part of that film as I was concerned was the theme song. The theme music.
CB: Yes. Exciting.
RM: Which I intend to have played at the end of my funeral service.
CB: Oh right.
RM: Because I’m gone.
CB: Yeah.
RM: The other Mosquito film they made. “Mosquito Squadron.” Again. That was largely, sort of, bull but there was one interesting point there which is true and that is the point where they had Mosquitoes practicing dropping bombs or lobbing bombs in to tunnels and that actually did occur. And one of the Polish squadrons. I think it was 305 was involved in that but other than that away we go. The Amiens raid which was a true one.
CB: Pickard. Yeah.
RM: That formed the basis of Mosquito squadrons attack. So, in actual fact “Mosquito Squadron” in spite of the American CO and all that sort of nonsense did contain certain aspects which were very true. Curiously enough, as I say, most of the light night striking force operations were either nuisance raids to divert fighter aircraft from the main bomber stream and were raids in their own right or they were on the same targets but about a mile higher than the main stream. So, some of them, the runs, were particularly with Berlin. They used to call that the Milk Run.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Yeah.
CB: So how did that work?
RM: In exactly the same way as an ordinary raid would be set out. You’d be given the route. You’d plot the route. And you’d be given the Met winds which the weather people had found and were vital because A — you needed it for navigation in the days of steam navigation. And you also needed it as the only setting to be put on the Mark 14 bomb sight. And that was the gyroscopically controlled one. I can tell you a story about that too. I shared a bombing range with a B17 on one occasion at Boxmoor near Oxford. We’re at twenty five thousand feet. We had six practice bombs. It was a NFT. And I was sharing a range with a B17 and he could not have been more than fifteen thousand feet. With the bomb and the pickle barrel from thirty thousand feet. Norden bomb sight. His bombing error was twice mine. I was knocking up around about sixty, seventy yards and he was around about the, probably a hundred and twenty, hundred and fifty yards and as I say he was probably ten thousand feet below me. Two miles below me. So much for the American bomb sight. And that Bomb sight the bombardier had to take it out of the aircraft every time he flew and put it back in to safe keeping and then draw it out because they didn’t want the Germans to get it. But what they’d overlooked was the fact that the Germans had hacked down quite a lot of B17s and knew everything about the bombsight. But there we go. I’m afraid that you are probably going to think that I am very biased against the Americans. I’m very biased against the American navy. And I’m not particularly, sort of enthusiastic about their air force either. Any air force which bombed in daylight, in formation. Well, at a steady height. Steady speed. Nearest approach to suicide you could get. The B17 crews, I must admit, were very very brave people. Very brave people. But in those days as I say we hadn’t got much reference for them because most of the big B17 stations were around here. in this area. Northamptonshire.
CB: Near Peterborough.
RM: Peterborough and that area.
CB: Yeah.
CB: And all that area. And George, my pilot, if we were coming off a night flying test he’d look around for one of these and he’d formate on a B17 and sort of drop his undercarriage and put the flaps down and sort of follow on its wingtips and then when he’d had enough of that he’d go clean. Both engines. And then he’d fly in a circle around them as they went along because I mean we could do a hundred and ninety knots quite comfortably on one engine. But to give you some idea. On one occasion, on an authorised low flying exercise an American B, a P47, the Mustang — formated on us. “Air Police” written along it’s side and he was going like this. More or less telling us to get up. I gave him the washout sign. I said to George my pilot, I said, ‘We’ve got a visitor.’ ‘What’s that?’ He looked, ‘Oh him,’ he said. He said, ‘Let’s teach him a lesson.’ And he just took both engines through the gate and we left.
CB: Left him standing.
RM: Within a minute he was a dot. He could have beaten us at low level because of course our B16s that we were flying at that time, although it’s low level, really didn’t get into their own until we were at twenty one thousand feet or over. But going through the gate gave us that little bit extra. And that was it. Because we used to — from Downham Market we exited down between the old and new Bedford Levels right down to Royston. That was our route out. Incidentally, after VE day they said, ‘You’re coming off high level bombing. You’re going low level daylight in the far east and map reading.’ Now, that is the equivalent of going off an HGV on to formula one practically. Now, a lot of people don’t believe this but I can assure you, hand on heart, that it’s true. We were told, ‘Now, when you go to low level that is fifteen to twenty five feet.’ And we did it. Fortunately, my pilot, when he was an instructor in Canada at Estevan on Oxfords had four instances of collecting rubbish from the undercarriage of his Oxfords. Low level. Unauthorised. But he was very very good at it [laughs] and we had quite an amusing incident to do with that but if we go back to the light night striking force. As I say that was part of 8 Group which was given the permission to put eight, in brackets, PFF force. Group rather. Pathfinder force. Because each station in 8 Group had one Mosquito which was mainly light night striking force and one squadron of Lancs which were again associated with the Pathfinder force and they were equipped with H2S which gave you the map. And of course H2S was the result of quite a lot of Lancs being shot down because the night fighters, German night fighters could tune in. Home in on them and bang. And then again, the Germans had a very nasty idea called Schrage Musik which you’ve probably heard of. The upward firing guns. So, they’d home in underneath an unsuspecting Lanc and bang. That was it. But once they got wind of this then they put the Mosquito night fighters in with the bombers and that did reduce the losses a little because it upset the Germans. Now, is there any aspect that I could fill you in on? Because I don’t exactly know what you’re after you see.
CB: That’s alright. So, what I’d like to suggest is that we start with your earliest recollections of your life. What you did at school? Where you were born? And then after school what did you do?
RM: Yeah.
CB: And how did you come to join the RAF?
RM: Yeah.
CB: I’m just going to stop for a mo.
RM: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: Hang on. Let me just get it started again. So now we’re restarting with the early days, Dick.
RM: Yeah.
CB: So, where you were you born and —
RM: I was born —
CB: Just up the road.
RM: Just around the corner.
CB: In Peterborough.
RM: In Peterborough yes. I went to the local school which is about a hundred and fifty yards around the corner from here as an infant. From five to seven. They had the junior section then from seven to eleven and when I was eleven I got a scholarship to the local grammar school which was called Deacon’s School. Peterborough had two grammar schools. Deacon’s and King’s, of which, of course, there was very considerable a rivalry between the two [laughs] as you can imagine. Now, with King’s School it didn’t matter so much about passing the school cert exam. Eleven plus equal. With King’s School you had to be able to sing because that was the Cathedral School. And curiously enough at the service yesterday at the Peterborough Cathedral I remarked on the fact that we must be getting old because the choirboys looked smaller and smaller. I was actually in school to hear war declared. I’d reached the sixth form. And we were actually called in during the holiday to the sixth form to deal with the evacuees from London. Now they, that started on a Friday. The evacuees came into the school and we were there to separate these various children and give them to the groups to which they’d been allocated so that they could be taken to their future homes. And about half past ten, quarter to eleven on the Sunday morning the headmaster came around and said, ‘Forget about the evacuees. All of you assemble in the music room because Neville Chamberlain is going to speak to the nation at 11 o’clock.’ So, we went in there and we heard the war declared and that was that. Now, I came to the conclusion then that instead of staying on to go, say to do my A levels and go to university if that would be interrupted by war service. Now, I’d always been, from the age of about nine when I’d got a book called the Boy’s Book of Aircraft for a Christmas present I’d always been interested in the flying aspect. Biggles and all that sort of thing. And I developed quite an interest in flying from the reading point of view and from the model aircraft point of view. And I thought well why not volunteer for the air force. So as soon as I was eighteen, that was in 1941, I nipped up to Cambridge because at eighteen if I volunteered for the air force I wouldn’t be called up for the army or the navy. And so, I volunteered. I was accepted for further investigation. That was in 1941 and then in December ‘41 was called to Cardington where I had my aircrew medicals and aptitude tests and was accepted as future aircrew. And much to my annoyance, that was December ’41, I was actually called up to Lord’s Cricket Ground August bank holiday Monday 1942. I hopped off one foot on to the other. I thought that was a dirty trick [laughs] Anyway, we were assailed with needles and vaccinations and boots to be cleaned and uniforms. Paraded up and down Earl’s Court and so on and went to the zoo for meals. From there I eventually went to Number 6 ITW at Aberystwyth. I’d only been there about six weeks on a ten weeks course when I had to report sick on the Tuesday. I’d got a swollen throat and what not. Sore throat. Went to the sick quarters and the MO there sort of looked, ‘Ah, Mist Expect three times a day for three days. Come again on Friday.’ Well, this Mist Expect was a brown lotion. Yuck. Which was very evil tasting. Anyway, by the Friday morning I more or less managed to crawl up to the sick quarters and they said, ‘Strange. We’ll have you upstairs under observation.’ And that was on the Friday. On the Sunday morning I developed the classic male symptoms of mumps. Now, as soon as they realised this they whipped me off to the local isolation hospital called Tanybwlch where I was the only patient and I distinctly remember it. There were five Nurse Williams’ and one Nurse Prodigan there. I lived like a lord but the interesting thing was that I was there for a week and at the end of the week they said, ‘Right. You’ll be going home Monday. Fourteen days sick leave.’ Now, before the Monday, on the Friday, about twelve of the people who were in my flight at ITW reported in to Tanybwlch with mumps. And what they were going to do to me was nobody’s business until I mentioned fourteen days sick leave. I was the flavour of the month after that. Anyway, from there, after a week, a few weeks due to bad weather I finished up as Desford Leicester, grading school where I did my twelve hours on Tigers. Selected for further pilot training. The interesting thing was there the instructor that I had was a Sergeant Collinson. He was an ex-bank manager and three weeks after I’d finished and gone to Heaton Park word filtered through that he’d had a pupil who’d frozen on the controls and killed them both. And a nicer bloke you couldn’t have wished for. He was the exact opposite to the American instructor which I had at Grosse Ile. Anyway, as I say, we did this grading school and then from there we went to Heaton Park which of course was the centre from which all aircrew to Canada, America — the USA, South Africa were sent simply because there was no room in the sky to have UT pilots barging about and getting in the way even though the Tigers were painted yellow. But, and as I say from there I volunteered for the Flying Boat course which was rather ill fated. I did get about thirty — thirty five hours solo on Stearman N2S4s which I thought was a beautiful aircraft. It really handled superbly. The sort of one that the wing walkers are using now. Much nicer aircraft to fly then the Tiger. Had twice as much power and on Tiger if you came on the approach five miles an hour too fast you nearly floated across the airfield. You didn’t get down. With the Stearman N2S4 you came in and as soon as you got the right attitude closed the throttle, stick back and it would go down on a three pointer and stick. Much nicer. Also, had brakes which helped you to stop and manoeuvre because with the tiger they had to come out and take your wing tip.
CB: Now where was this? In the states. Where?
RM: This. Grosse Ile, Detroit.
CB: Grosse Ile.
RM: Yes. And the French Grosse Ile. And that was American navy. The only British officers that we had there were one RAF and one Royal Navy officer acting as liaison because of course not only did the RAF send pilots there but of course Fleet Air Arm. And it was the Fleet Air Arm course really. With carrier work and then Flying Boats because they had to be versatile with both but I could never understand why we were subjected to the first part of the course but it was a good thing in actual fact. But I couldn’t see it at the time. Because I couldn’t understand anybody would try landing a Catalina on a Flying Boat. It’s a ridiculous state of affairs to be. Anyway, from there, as I say, I was sent back to Canada. To Windsor, Ontario and had a re-selection board. Was re-selected as a navigator air bomber. The navigators could either be pure navigators, NavBs, NavWs nav wireless or Nav radio and in each case, it depended on the type of aircraft that they would be going on to for their training and radio mostly on fighters for instance. The day and night fighters. The —
CB: Can I just go — can I interrupt? Go back a bit? Why was it that you gave up the flying? The pilot training with the US navy.
RM: Why? I was washed off. Yes. I was washed off the course. They had a field. The main fields. Grosse Ile had several satellite airfields. Much more. And one of these was a square field on the edge of Lake Michigan and in the middle of the field was a hundred foot diameter circle. Now, it gets rather technical here because to explain it I’ve got to be technical. Imagine that there’s a line through the circle with the wind. Wind line. And this wind line when on the afternoon that I was taking my tests was at right angles to the shore of the lake. Now, this field was probably no more than four hundred yards long and the circle would be probably about eight or ninety yards in because you had to, sort of, do a touch down and off again. The afternoon, it was in August, the ambient air temperature was eighty five Fahrenheit. Now, you came down wind parallel to the wind line like a normal left hand circuit. Eight hundred feet. When your wings were opposite the circle you cut the engine and the rest was a glide. Now, you had to glide down across the wind line at between ninety and forty five degrees. Continue the left hand turn and make a right hand turn onto the wind line and in and drop. Because, of course with a lot of aircraft you’ve got no forward, fighter aircraft particularly, no forward vision. So they had to adopt this and they still do I believe. I’m not sure. Now, as soon as on the right hand turn, as soon as I crossed the shoreline I gained about fifty feet. Thermals. I’ve never done any gliding or known anything about it and I didn’t know what a thermal was. So I overshot. The next time. The second run. I came a little bit lower. I still overshot. And we had to get three out of six in the circle. The third shot. I came around and I still touched down just beyond the circle. So I knew that I’d failed but I opened up and ignored the instructor who was sitting by the side of the circle watching. Ignored his signals [laughs] I thought I will bloody well put one in and the fourth one in I actually undershot. But in order to do that my right hand wingtip on the right turn was almost in the water. It was that low. And as I say as soon as I muffed that third one I knew that I’d failed so it didn’t bother me much. Now, one difference between the RAF training aircraft and the American training aircraft was that with the Tiger Moth you had a two way Gosport system so you could talk to the pilot. With the Stearman N2S4s, both army and navy, they had one way Gosport. The pilot could talk to you but you couldn’t talk back. The other fact is that all of the instructors, army and navy instructors on pilot training in the States were usually first generation nationalised Americans. Now, they were not allowed to go to the actual warzones just in case they were spies and nasty types. So, you can imagine that these instructors had quite a bone to pick. You know. They were very bitter about being singled out for this and they took it out on us. Now, on one occasion I’d already upset my instructor. You know, before these circles landing. And if you had a high level emergency which usually occurred at two thousand feet you were supposed to glide round, selecting a field and then make this sort of approach. And we were stooging along on one exercise just before these circles and he suddenly cut the motor and said, ‘Right. High level emergency.’ And one of the satellite fields was just down there so, I gave it full left stick, full right rudder, organised a side slip and brought it right down in one go in to this field. Settled and did a three pointer. And I sat there and I thought bloody marvellous Maywood. The remarks that came over the Gosport were not printable. Definitely not printable. I had disobeyed every rule in their book. Disobeyed them. I was worthless. I was useless. He didn’t speak to me for a couple of days afterwards. He just took me up. But on the way back after the side slip he cut the visit short because we flew for an hour and a half at a time. We’d been flying for about a half an hour. He said, ‘Right. We’re going back to base.’ And he did flick rolls left right left right and obviously to try and upset me. And they had a mirror up in the centre section where they could see us and as he did these, the more he did it, you know, sort of thumbs-up which made him even worse. As I say for two days he would just take me out to the aircraft. We’d do what we had to do until this circle business and not a word was said. Now, after washing off this course, as I say, we had a re-selection board in Windsor, Ontario. It’s just across the water from Detroit and I was selected as a NavB. I had to do six months general duties work. Three months in Toronto manning depot. That was quite an interesting, mostly sweeping the floor but on one occasion. Two occasions. Two successive days. We had to, you know, two of us, another washed off pilot and myself chummed up and we were picked for guard duty in the detention barracks there. When we reported to the flight sergeant MP first thing in the morning we were handed side arms. 45 revolvers. And the SP said, ‘Now, the only thing I’m going to tell you,’ he said, ‘Is never ever let one of the prisoners get within shovel distance of you.’ Shovel distance. What’s that? He said, ‘Remember that.’ He said. ‘If they look like getting there,’ he said, ‘Shoot them because it might be the last thing you do.’ He said, ‘We won’t ask questions.’ Anyway, we went into this detention barracks and we were ushered in to a building which was about thirty feet wide. Probably ninety feet long and normal height of a shed. Say perhaps ten, twelve feet. Across the centre of the room there was a black line. Two inch black line that ran down the walls, across the floor and up the other wall. Now, you can imagine. You walk in there and you see this. At one end there was probably about fifty, sixty tonnes of small coal. The other end absolutely pristine walls and floor. Whitewashed. The prisoners had wheelbarrows and shovels and it was their job to shift this coal from one end to the other and then when they’d done that they scrubbed the floor and the walls. Whitewashed them. And then did the job again. Now, they were doing this probably for two or three months and they were, it was described as being stir happy. And this was the reason. They’d had one or two of the guards had been attacked with these shovels and had been seriously injured or killed and that was the reason why we were told. Now, we only had that for two days fortunately because we more or less stood back to back [laughs] watching each other’s backs and then back to the old sweeping routine. And that was for three months. Then from there I was sent out to a place called Goderich which is right on the borders. Western border of Ontario. That was a training station for twin-engined aircraft for Royal Canadian Air Force cadets. Spent three months there and then onto a place called Mountain View in Ontario to do the bombing and gunnery school. The flying was done on Mark 2 Ansons. You’ve probably seen pictures of those. And the gunnery was done with the Bollingbroke which was the Canadian version of the Blenheim 4. The turret. Have you ever seen the Blenheim gun turret?
Other: No.
RM: Most peculiar arrangement. Vertical column. And a beam pivoted on this vertical column. At one end of the beam is a seat. At the other end are two Browning pop guns. 303s. And handlebars. So when you — to operate the turret to elevate the guns or depress them you turn the handlebars like twist grips. And to turn the turret you steer it like a pushbike. So, if you were firing at aircraft up there your bottom was right down here and you’re looking up there. You’re not sitting in the chair and looking all over like did with the Fraser Nash and the other turrets. The locking ones. Anyway, we were quite interested because the first exercise that we did it was really a chastener. We had two hundred rounds each to fire. Now, what they did with the two Brownings — they put three hundred pounds in each with a dummy round of two hundred in each gun. So, the first person in to the turret, you flew in threes, first used the left hand gun. Two hundred rounds. Left it. The next person going in two hundred rounds from the right hand gun. And then the third one cleared both guns and a hundred from each. Now, the actual bullets — the tips were dipped in paint. So that when they went through the drogue, which was the target, you could see from the colour as to who hit and how many. The drogue was roughly in size a bit bigger say than the fuselage of a Hurricane or a Spit so you can see it was quite large. The first exercise was what was known as a beam target where the towing aircraft had towed the drogue on your beam two hundred yards distance. Steady. In other words you were firing at a static object. No lead necessary either way. And of course we just blazed away with these in short bursts and when we got down after the first exercise. This exercise. They gave us the number of hits. Now, believe it or believe it not at two hundred yards, steady target, no more than probably being on the gun boats — an extraordinarily good result was five percent hits. The average? Three percent. Which is amazing isn’t it? The reason? Vibration. The rigidity of the gun mountings of course allowed the guns to spray and this is one of the things where modern films and pre-modern films of aircraft fights where you see a nice line of holes being stitched across the fuselage — absolute bullshit. You were lucky if you get it off, peppered them. That was the gunnery and then we did sort of quarter cross overs and all that sort of thing. Mostly then with cameras attached to the guns. They took Cinefilms. They wouldn’t let us use live ammunition against [laughs] their aircraft. The bombing was done with Mark 2 Ansons. A very slow aircraft. And using the old fashioned Mark 9 bomb sight which was quite a Heath Robinson contraption really but it worked after a fashion. But it was designed to operate when aircraft were sort of doing their bombing runs at probably a hundred and twenty, a hundred and fifty miles an hour with very little relationship to the forthcoming four-engined aircraft. And for that reason they devised the Mark 14 bomb sight which was gyroscope labourised and it was a beautiful piece of work. But going back to what I was saying about the weather, aircraft and wind finding. With the Mark 14 bomb sight you had to put the wind velocity in. Feed it in manually. And the only other manual thing you did was fit the bomb type. Select the bomb type and it worked out the trajectory and everything. Not only that but with the plate glass, sight glass, you had the red cross with the sword and that was stabilised horizontally. So that it would, in actual fact, give you accurate bombing up to about ten degrees of bank. Whereas with a Mark 9 you couldn’t. You had to be absolutely spot on and running the thing accurately.
CB: Straight and level.
RM: Straight and level. Yes. So that was an advantage with it. And that was bombing and gunnery school. Then nav school, as I say, was at Charlottetown, PEI. Prince Edward Island. And it was there I had my first really narrow squeak. In training of all things. Now, the nav school at that time lasted for twenty weeks. At the end of ten weeks you got a seventy two hour pass. From the Friday night to the Sunday which you couldn’t do much about because by the time you got from Charlottetown on to the mainland it was time to come back again. Right out in the sticks there. You were in the boon docks. Anyway, because we had bad night flying weather in the first eight weeks of our course they decided that instead of us flying on the tenth week we would fly on our twelfth week and the next course — 97. Behind us. Two weeks behind us would fly in our place. Now, you can appreciate this obviously. We were, a group of us, were going into the local cinema and it was just getting dark. Nice bright moon. No wind. Not worth talking about. Beautiful night. When we came out of the cinema three hours later there was a forty five knot gale blowing. Now, I can visualise what I understood and if I was in the same position I might have made the same mistake. In fact, almost certainly would but the Met forecast for the whole of their four hours was light and variable winds. Now, a sprog navigator. They’d only done ten weeks. They were only half way through the course. You still, over there, only had radio bearings. Visual sightings. More or less. And astro compass. The old bubble sextant which I could never get on with to navigate with. And the first leg out probably — of course you see navigation in those, steam navigation the vital part was wind finding, direction of the wind because that meant that you would get to where you wanted to go to. Probably find wind— sort of ten knots. Well, that falls within the flight plan. Get on the next leg and then you suddenly find wind fifteen, twenty knots. Must be something wrong so you backtrack. Check all your doings and in the meantime still maintaining the same course. And eventually you think well the only thing to do is to go back to ten knots. So, you re-plot for ten knots. Come to the next turning point as you thought, make your turn and say ,with four legs ultimately, you’ll probably be getting, or getting readings of thirty knots, thirty five knots. Can’t be right. Must go back to flight plan. And at the end of the flight when you should have been back at Charlottetown if you’d sort of ignored the truth you were probably fifty, sixty nautical miles northeast of Charlottetown. Right over the main Gulf of St Lawrence. Well as I say when we came out of the cinema there was this forty five knot wind blowing. When we got back to the camp they said, ‘Course 96 report to briefing room first light.’ And they made sure that we were there at first light because they sent people around to get us up. And we were given a very quick course on how to conduct line square searches. And every available aircraft and staff pilot who were available flew us so that we did these searches over the Gulf looking for missing aircraft. Never did see any. I believe that just after we’d finished the course. Twenty weeks. And being on our way back that they found one empty dinghy out there. And I believe that in actual fact they found the wreckage of one on the coast of Labrador which is just across the other side. How many went missing we were never told. But I did find out from the archives of the Empire Air Training Scheme in Brandon near Winnipeg — that I think three crews were absolutely lost. But anyway, we measured that and as I say we came back to this country. We did, before they would turn us lose on anything, they said, ‘Right you’ve got your navigation brevets in Canada. From Charlottetown. Over the Maritimes. Where one road or one railway is a land mark. Now, you may find flying over Britain and the continent a bit different. So, before you do anything we’re going to give you three weeks intensive training on map reading.’ And we were actually posted to a lovely little station just outside Carlisle. I think it was called Longton, where we were piled in the back seats of Tiger Moths. They only had about eight of these Tigers with staff pilots there. So, as I say it was quite a small grass field and we did quite a lot of map reading and target spotting over the Midlands and the Lake District. And that was good fun actually. On one occasion we, I actually flew with a pilot. One of the staff pilots who was a little more daring than others and it was a very windy day and he said, ‘I fancy doing a trip. Do you want to come?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ So, we took off and we were plotting our way around and the biggest rift that I calculated on that was fifty four degrees. And when we came over the airfield boundary at three hundred feet we actually landed ten feet inside the fence because the wind speed was virtually the approach speed of the Tiger. Yeah. That was quite interesting that was. Anyway, from there we went to AFU, Advanced Flying Unit and that was at Wigtown in Scotland. Halfway between Dumfries and Stranraer and that was on Ansons. Again, that was just generally getting used to flying over Britain. And then from AFU of course, straight on to OTU at Upper Heyford where we flew in Oxfords and we, more or less, we were [pause] our technique with Gee was a Gee fix every three minutes. DR after six. Six minutes. New course and again every three minutes. Every three minutes. And this was anything up to four hours. Which of course is the sort of navigation that we would be doing with the Mossies at night. And we also, we weren’t introduced to Loran until OTU and the snag there you see was the Gee would only be useful up to the Continent’s coast line. After that there was so much interference by the Germans. So much, what we called grass, that you couldn’t pick out the signal so we had to use LORAN which, curiously enough, they never did jam. It worked quite well and it worked out well over the Atlantic. Coastal command used it quite considerably. And as I say the last OTU trip we demolished a Mossie by going through the hedge and into trees on the way back with a single engine landing. Then, as I say, I’d only just started a tour before VE Day came. Just after VE Day the first thing we did were Cook’s Tours. We had two Mosquitos from each of the stations. 8 Group stations. Took off at one hour intervals during the day so that there was a route which went across northern Germany, the Ruhr valley then out more or less through the Danish border and back to home. And this was ostensibly to give us a picture of the damage which Bomber Command had done but if you bear in mind that these flights were every hour through daylight I reckon that the idea was a standing patrol just to tell the Germans we were still about. Now, at the risk of boring you here we were told that these Cook’s Tours would be a thousand feet. That’s a thousand feet above ground level obviously but George sort of took it upon himself to fly at a thousand feet. Now, the Ruhr valley is above sea level. About three hundred feet if I remember rightly. So, we were probably about seven hundred feet. Now, as I say the place was absolute rubble with steel structures. Just odd bits sticking up. Odd bits of concrete. Just like Hiroshima. And the Germans had bulldozed roads through this rubble so that they could get their troops. We were stooging along one of these roads. Sort of just ambling along at about a hundred and ninety knots. And we could see in the distance a chap ambling along with his stick and he heard us and he turned around. He recognised what we were and shook his stick at us. So, George said, ‘I’ll teach him a lesson.’ So, he sort of pulled up into a stalled turn and as he did he opened the bomb doors. Now on the B16 the bomb doors are big. Four thousand pound bomb size and from the front you can’t miss them. And this chappy, you could see, he sort of looked. Up went the stick and he was legging it down the road like mad, much to our amusement. Yeah. When it comes to low level flying though as I say our height was fifteen, twenty five feet. Clipping the grass almost. And on one occasion we were going across Wales, went down the valley and then up the other side. Big wide valley. Half way up this valley was a farmhouse and we were climbing up the slope and there was a woman pegging washing out. She obviously heard us and we could see her looking. Saw we were there and then she decided to look down and she could see us coming up and she legged it through this farmhouse. We could see her. And she ran out the other side as went over the top. Again, in those days our sense of humour was different to what it is now and as you probably [unclear] it was quite interesting. But fortunately for us — just after this 608 Squadron, the one we were on, was disbanded and we were posted to another 8 Group unit. 692 Squadron at Gransden Lodge which is just to the west of Cambridge and we, in actual fact, did one or two trips there and 692 was disbanded which meant that we were redundant aircrew. So we were sent first of all up to Blyton in Lincolnshire for re-selection board and I eventually finished up, although I’d opted for something different, on a flight mechanic engines course at Hereford. Credenhill. But there I learned all of the intricacies of the Merlin and the Pratt and Whitney Twin Wasp engine. And having finished that course I was posted to 254 torpedo Beaufighter Squadron at Langham in Norfolk. Langham, now, I believe is famous for its glass factory there which I think is on the old airfield where I became the flight tractor driver. And that’s what I stayed until I was demobbed. Now, they [pause] I could have opted to sign on with the air force. Not necessarily guaranteeing that I would fly as a navigator again but there was a pretty good chance. But in those days you had to do twenty one years for a pension which would have taken me from the age of nineteen when I joined up to forty. But you were too old to fly at thirty two. Now, as you probably appreciate after being grounded you don’t know what sort of job you’re going to get. General dogsbody usually. And the thought of eight years as dogsbody to get a pension didn’t appeal to me so I came out and I eventually finished up at teacher training college where I spent five years with a secondary mod trying to teach maths and science. And at the end of five years — because in the period between school and joining the air force I’d become an electrical trainee at the local power station so I’d got quite a good working knowledge of turbines, pumps and all that. Generators and so on. A good mechanical background. I managed to get a job as a lecturer in mechanical engineering at the local technical college on a one term temporary contract in 1954 and I was like old Bill in World War One. Unless you can find a better hole there’s no point in moving. And I eventually spent twenty eight years there and retired. Well, took voluntary redundancy in ‘82. And I’ve been a pensioner ever since. I think the Ministry of Education are busy making little plasticine models of me and sticking pins in because I’m quite expensive. Yeah. But that is that sad story of my life.
CB: Fascinating. Thank you very much. I suggest we have a break now.
RM: Yes.
CB: So, I’ll turn off.
[recording paused]
CB: So. Ken. We’ve just talked about Ken O’Dell being at Edith Weston near North Luffenham because he was also trained in America.
RM: Yeah. Now, if he was trained in America he wouldn’t necessarily be going to Grosse Ile because –
CB: He didn’t. No.
RM: He went under what was known as the Arnold Scheme and that would be usually around about Texas or somewhere like that. To one of the flying schools there with the American army and he would become an army pilot. Now, of course there would be some relevance there because the first part of their course would be for fighter aircraft. Fighter training. Single seat fighters. And this is probably where he went.
CB: Yes.
RM: Under the Arnold Scheme.
CB: His instructors were civilians.
RM: Yes. Yeah. And that did apply but not with the navy. The navy were all genuine navy types. For example, the chief petty officer who took charge of all the morning parades and what not — he had been in the American navy for eighteen years and he’d never seen the sea. Mind you, the Great Lakes, when it does get rough you do get thirty foot waves on it so it’s as good as the sea. And we can prove that because a group of us Fleet Air Arm and RAF types we hired one of these paddle steamers one Saturday night to go out on the lakes. You know, for an outing. This chief petty officer came with us. Now, admittedly it was a bit choppy but he spent all evening draped over the rail. Much to our delight. Much to our delight. Yes. Yes, he was not popular. The Americans for instance. The American navy have a very queer discipline which didn’t go with us. Very rigid. Whereas with the RAF you get a certain amount of latitude and humour. But not the Americans and for any minor misdemeanour the sort of punishment you got you went before the mast, you see and you were awarded this punishment. And that was known as square eating. Have you ever come across it?
Other: No.
RM: Ever heard of it?
Other: No.
CB: Never.
RM: Right. Now, at mealtimes because you were condemned to this you had to do a square eating. In other words [pause] that. That was square eating.
CB: So, lifting it up vertically and then pulling it, eating it horizontally.
RM: Yes. Horizontally. To eat.
CB: Into your mouth. With both knife and fork.
RM: Yes. Oh no. Usually with the fork because the Americans of course chop up their stuff.
CB: Of course. Yes.
RM: With a fork even. But if you did use the knife.
CB: Yeah.
RM: It had to be like. Now can you imagine anything more stupid? And that was the sort of typical sort of thing that you got. But the Americans, bless them, they weathered it so — good luck.
CB: Tell us about the accommodation. What did that they have?
RM: Oh, the accommodation was superb. These twin, these blocks that you see in the films. Two story blocks. Everything beautifully polished. Wood floors. The interesting thing is they had showers there and toilets. You had a single bed which was made up every morning. You know. Bullshit. And the interesting thing was the actual loos. Now, the loos were just like ordinary loos except there were no partitions [laughs] yeah. And we thought that strange. But they say you can get used to anything and it is so. Yeah.
CB: How many people? Were they, were you in dormitories?
RM: It was a dormitory. Yes. It would be about twenty — probably twenty four people. Twenty four cadets. Two sides. Twelves. Just like the dormitories you see on the films. The wartime films of the Americans. The American army of course were a bit more spartan than the navy. But everything was nice. The food though was good. Rather like the curate’s egg though. Good in parts. And you had very strange things like plum jelly with chopped celery in it and that would be a vegetable. Things like that. It was ingenious. Let’s put it that way. As I say, the discipline was very very good. If you heard the trumpet sound for the flag being lowered at the end of the day wherever you were and whatever you were doing you had to stand to attention, face the flag and salute whilst the trumpet blew. We did, in fact, there was one big navy battle that was conducted whilst I was there and I can’t for the life of me think what it was. I think it was Leyte Gulf but I’m not sure. On this particular occasion all flying stopped on this day. We were all assembled in one of the big hangars. All RAF. And five hundred of us all together. Fleet Air Arm types. All the officers there. The band. And the flags and banners and what not and we were given a very very stirring speech by the commanding officer on how good the American navy was and how brave they were and what a victory this had been. All this, that and the other. If you’d listened carefully at the back particularly with Royal Navy types, Fleet Air Arm types a series of raspberries. Yeah. Then having gone through all this marshall music we were all marched out again and continued. I remember that quite clearly.
CB: What time did you get up in the morning?
RM: Usually around about half six.
CB: And breakfast?
RM: Breakfast. Yes. You wandered over to the mess. That was one thing you didn’t parade for. You only paraded after breakfast. You know.
CB: Yeah. And what time did you go to breakfast?
RM: Usually around about half seven.
CB: And then you went for your parade. What time?
RM: About quarter past eight or so. From there disbursed to the actual flying field which — now this was quite interesting in actual fact. The main airfield at Grosse Ile didn’t have runways but it did have a huge circular patch of concrete about six hundred yards diameter so that you could land in any direction and you could land two or three aircraft side by side. Now, that was clear. All you had was hangars in the distance. And then beyond the hangars there was one vertical radio mast which was clearly visible. Now, that radio mast subtended a fraction of one degree from the field. So, you think nobody’s going to hit it. Wrong. Just before we got there some character flying solo. Chop. And the mast came down and hit the, fortunately the American seamen’s mess not the British mess and did grievous bodily damage to several of them. But nobody shed a tear from the British contingent for that. As you can gather I’m not terribly impressed with the Americans.
CB: Were the Americans training their people in similar numbers to yours or what was the situation?
RM: I don’t know what the navy situation was because this was the American navy base. And it was only RAF and Royal Navy.
CB: Oh was it? Training.
RM: Training.
CB: Right.
RM: Yeah. So, they must have had other bases. Probably in California and on the coast and so on. But we didn’t know anything about those and didn’t want to know anything about those.
CB: No. Tell us a bit more about these people who were first generation Americans. What sort of people were they and what was their attitude to the war?
RM: The one. My instructor and I only came across him really was a chappy who was a naturalised Dutchman with the rather curious name of Nieswander. Not spelt exactly as we’d pronounce it. N I E S W A N D E R. Now, he was, as a say, a naturalised Dutchman. First generation. And about six feet two, physique rather like a beanpole and of course like all of these other characters he had a chip on his shoulder. He wanted to be a fighter pilot. He was going to be a fighter pilot. Bugger this job sort of business. And he was, I suppose, fairly interested in teaching people to fly but you could sense and even it was expressed sort of rather obliquely to you by him that he wanted to go into the war zone but he was not allowed to.
CB: No.
RM: All of the pilots and this, of course, I think this also applied to the army pilots that they were not allowed to go into the warzone so they could either go on to training but curiously enough — transport. Cargo and all that sort of thing. And some of these cargo flights actually took them into the war zone. But they weren’t equipped with guns and what not so they couldn’t fight. Yeah.
CB: And what ranks were these people who were your instructors?
RM: Oh, practically all lieutenants. Junior grade.
CB: Right.
RM: Which would be equivalent to our POs. Pilot officers. Now, the interesting thing was there that in the RAF of course with commissioned and non-commissioned ranks you got upgrading in rank at given periods of time with aircrew and what not. Not so with the Americans. And I daresay that I was there, what, 1943. I daresay that in 1945 when the war finished he would still be a lieutenant. General. GJ. Lieutenant junior grade.
CB: And what rank were you at that time? An LAC were you?
RM: An LAC yes. Got, oh — Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, where I got y brevet. The Wings Parade there. Now that was in July. And we were all drawn up. We’d finished our training satisfactorily and I was assigned the rank of sergeant. We did get about three or four commissions straight away but mostly sergeant rank. And we were drawn up 2.30 in the afternoon on the parade ground there at Charlottetown and we were addressed by the Governor General of Prince Edward Island after we’d been given our brevets. And this gentleman to us, at that time, we estimated his age at eighty. He was old anyway. He was quite short and apparently, he was deaf. His aide de camp was an army type, lieutenant, who stood about six feet two and this Governor General was making a speech which lasted in total about fifteen minutes. And in the speech, he congratulated us on being — becoming pilots with the Royal Air Force. Went on in this vein and his aide de camp, his aid, was nudging him. Almost to tell him. You know, we could see it happening but he ploughed on and at the end of it the aide de camp had a real chat with him. Now we were standing to attention. Blazing sun.
CB: July. Yes.
RM: And by this time our tunics were turning black with perspiration. And what does the silly old bugger do? Once he’d been told that we were navigators he went through exactly the same speech and substituted the word navigators.
CB: Yes.
RM: Now, if any of us had had a gun we’d have shot him. Without any doubt. He was definitely not the flavour of the month. I had, I have never ever been so hot because of course the Canadians had the lightweight summer gear. Khaki. Like the Americans. What did we have? Blue serge. We never had any and those blue serge uniforms were quite warm. Yeah. We could have shot him quite cheerfully.
CB: Yeah.
RM: But –
CB: Now the Canadians. Excuse me. I’m going to stop a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: So, let’s just talk about the Canadians.
RM: The Canadians except for the French Canadians in Quebec were charming people. Now, as far as the Americans are concerned — individually very charming. We had individual hospitality through their USOs where you go and have a weekend with a family and so on. Superb hospitality. But when you get them in a group you’re on a different planet. Terry Thomas had the best description of a group of Americans. Remember his –?
Other: No. I remember him but not –
RM: Described an absolute shower. Yeah. And we found that afterwards actually when my first wife and I went across to the Continent in the early 60s. On the ferry we bumped into a bunch of Americans. Loud mouthed. Uncouth. But if you separated them they were quite charming to talk to. Now, the Canadians — much more reserved but just as genuine and I made quite a few friends there except at Charlottetown. Which — there’s a joke about Charlottetown actually which was very true at that time and the joke goes like — that in summer they raise potatoes and in winter children. Now, they still had prohibition there when we were there. That would be in late ’43, early ‘44. And apparently, prohibition stopped only perhaps twenty years ago so consequently the local inhabitants made their own alcoholic drinks by filtering off brasso and stuff like that or using rubbing alcohol. And the weekend before we got there. Two of the erks off the station because there were RAF aircrew there had purloined from the stores a quart of glycol, mixed it with orange juice and two of the local popsies and these two had a beano at the weekend. On the Monday morning the two popsies were dead, one of the erks was in sick quarters blind and the other one was rather non compos mentis. And both of them by the time we got there at the next weekend were on the boat home to Britain. That’s the sort of thing they got up to. As far as I can remember with Charlottetown you had large numbers of children who did the same sort of thing as a lot of the children you see where troops are concerned, and where the Americans are concerned. You know. Chocolates. They wanted chocolates and sweets or whatever and I was not impressed. Nothing would tempt me to go back there again even though it has changed apparently. The Maritimes, the western provinces, New Brunswick and so on — very sparsely populated and very uninterested. The only thing with them is trees, more trees and even more trees with roads, odd roads going through. Nah.
CB: Now when you were flying in Canada —
RM: Yeah.
CB: Were the instructors all Canadians? Were they British? What were they?
RM: A lot of them were RAF seconded over there. What happened, say take twin engine aircraft. You get the RAF sent over there — say to Estevan. He would do his course. The few people at the top of the course, the really high flyers would be retained.
CB: The creamies.
RM: As instructors and would do a full tour. Now, this has a bearing actually on George, my pilot and 8 Group. Now, all 8 Group Mossie pilots had to have at least a thousand hours on twin engines and the twin engines were mostly of course Oxfords which handled apparently rather like a Mossie. Either that or they were tour expired Lancasters. But you didn’t get anybody who just got his wings becoming a Mosquito pilot. Now that was just 8 Group. I don’t know what happened with 5 Group or 2 Group which were the other two groups that I remember being a part of Bomber Command. And it worked. It worked quite well. There were Canadian instructors obviously. RCAF. That is, if they hadn’t been posted to Britain which they were. I mean, they were coming over. When it comes to going over to Canada and the States I travelled on the Queen Elizabeth and it was like a mill pond and of course the Lizzie and the Mary were run by the Americans. They were handed over to the Americans and based at New York. And typically from New York they would come across to Glasgow — Greenock, with a division of American troops. Eighteen to twenty thousand troops on. They would unload them. They would then load returning Americans or returning Canadians and all RAF aircrew that were going for training. Royal Navy and so on. Roughly about five thousand at a time. And they would go to Halifax. At Halifax they would discharge and pick up a Canadian division. Bring those back and then you’d have aircrew that were going to the United States on the Arnold Scheme and people like that. Returning Americans going back to New York. And that’s how they did it. Now, going over there the actual mess deck had tables for twelve diners. Twelve people. And the cooks cooked in batches of twelve and you had, each day, one person went from the table to the mess. The cooks collected a tray say, of twelve steaks. Twelve chops. Now, when I say steaks — American steaks. Not British steaks which were postage stamp sized. But these were genuine. Genuine pork chops. Sausages. Those twelve helpings came to the table. Now, we got on to the QE in Greenock at midnight. The engines were running. There was a bit of vibration there. We sailed on the first tide which was about 6 o’clock in the morning. Just breaking day. We had to go to breakfast around about 7.30 again. And of course, we collected this tray. There were only four of us on the table. The other, sorry, six of us on the table. The other six were in their bunks seasick and we hadn’t even hit the Atlantic. Anyway, we got out onto the Atlantic and it was like a mill pond. There were six the first day, six missing the second day, four missing the third day. And we ate like lords. You know, God, we thought, you know, this is marvellous. We really ate. And these steaks and that were beautiful. Couldn’t grumble at that. And on the last morning they did manage to come down for breakfast before we disembarked. But one interesting thing. Each of us was given a job. The job that I was given was to go from the main stores with one of the American seamen to actually re-store or re-stock the canteens. Chocolate and so on. Which was quite a — not a very onerous job. Over and done with in an hour and that was it. But this American seaman I was with he said, ‘Have you got any currency you want changing?’ So I said, ‘Well, you’re not allowed to bring any currency out. Only ten pounds.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Supposing you got a bit more than that?’ He said, ‘Would you like it changed?’ He said. So I said, ‘Changed to what?’ He said, ‘Dollars. American.’ Now in 1939 the pound was worth four dollars American and four forty dollars.
CB: Canadian.
RM: To the Canadian. So you had this ten percent difference. So, I said, ‘Well, what’s your exchange rate?’ He said, ‘Well. For you it’ll be four dollars to the pound.’ So I said, ‘Well, it so happens,’ I said, ‘I’ve been a bit naughty. I’ve brought an extra tenner out. Twenty. I got twenty pounds changed into American dollars which, interestingly of course if you spent them in Canada which they were spendable — for ten dollars you’d pay the American ten dollars and get a dollar change. So, it worked out quite well. But the — I was talking to this seaman and I said, ‘We seem to be going at a fair old lick.’ I said, ‘What’s it doing?’ He said, ‘Well, I shouldn’t tell you.’ He said, ‘It’s more than my job’s worth.’ So, I said, ‘Go on. Nobody’s listening.’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘We’re cruising at twenty nine knots.’ But one night I woke up. It was only about 2 o’clock in the morning and the boat, you could tell from the vibration that they’d definitely sort of upped the steam but when we went to breakfast we were back to the twenty nine knots. So, I said to this chap, I said, ‘What happened last night?’ ‘Nothing very much,’ he said. So I said, ‘Go on,’ ‘You’re pulling my leg,’ I said, ‘You were going a lot faster.’ I said, ‘What speed were you doing?’ He said, ‘Thirty four knots,’ he said, ‘There was a sub scare.’ Now, of course the two Queens were unescorted but imagine this. A six inch gun fore and aft on the bow and the stern. On the main deck — Bofors and three inch guns. On the deck above you had Oerlikon cannons.
CB: Twenty millimetre.
RM: Yeah. Twenty millimetre. And on the roof you actually had two rocket launchers. So, as far as aircraft were concerned which of course would be the main thing they would have given them a very rough time. And on the second day they tried the guns out, you know, just to make sure they were working. And they did them one side and then the other. A big rocket flare went up, parachute flare, and they all opened up on this and it was quite deafening. Except the big six inch guns. They didn’t. But everything else —
CB: How many days did it take to get over?
RM: Four days and eight hours. As I say we lived like lords. Coming back. We came back on one of the old Empress boats. It was the Empress of Japan but it had been re-named the Empress of Scotland for obviously patriotic reasons. That took six days and a half. And on that they only had two meals a day. Not three. Now, you can believe this or believe it not. Going out the canteen had run dry so there was nothing on the way back. The first morning, I forget exactly which way around it was but this was the sort of thing. We had smoked haddock for breakfast. The evening meal — wiener sausages. Then for a change wiener sausages for breakfast. Smoked haddock. And we had that for six days. There was no sweets. No fruit available. And we were not in a happy mood. And then when we got into Liverpool Bay the boat had to anchor there for twelve hours before we could dock. And we could see the shoreline. People moving about. There would be restaurants there. And there we were. Stuck. We were not a happy crew. Funnily enough when we came back we had a full customs inspection. And you were allowed two hundred cigarettes, a bottle of Scotch say, or a spirit and a bottle of wine. The chappy in front of me, customs bloke ‘cause we were all queuing up, customs said to the chap. ‘Any cigarettes?’ Expecting two hundreds. The chappy in front said, ‘Six hundred.’ The customs officer looked at him and he said, ‘Surely you mean two hundred?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’ve got six hundred.’ ‘Oh. Well, that’ll bloody well cost you then.’ [laughs] I mean how thick can you get? Dear. Oh, it was. I must say that in spite of our, got one, two or three near squeaks I can look back on my war service and it’s quite interesting. Very varied. And I met some jolly nice people.
CB: How many of those did you keep in contact with after the war?
RM: I kept in contact with my pilot up to a time and then I lost contact with him. The chappy that I was at the Toronto manning depot with we split up but I traced him afterwards. After we’d become civilians. And found out that he’d actually joined the Toronto Metropolitan Police. Been with them for ten years and then he’d left there and joined the Pinkertons.
CB: Right. In America.
RM: Now, I always thought that the Pinkertons was a mythical organisation and I was put severely in my place when Gordon — eventually I went over there in ‘86 and stayed with him and his wife. When I said that I thought it was mythical he said, ‘We’re international,’ he said, ‘We’re interested, more or less in industrial espionage and things like that,’ he said. ‘We’re not interested in police work.’ So, I was really put in my place there. Yeah. And my pilot. He died. Had a heart attack around about 1982 if I remember rightly going on a fishing trip from Vancouver to Nanaimo. Vancouver Island. And he died on the ferry. Had a heart attack.
CB: Was he a Canadian?
RM: No. He was a Londoner. But he had gone across to the States — to Canada. Done his pilot training, become an instructor at Estevan and while he was there he met his wife who was the daughter of a newspaper owner in Langley which is just outside Vancouver. And of course as soon as he was demobbed he shot off to Canada because he got free passage there. Free ticket back home. Yeah.
CB: I’ll stop there for a bit. Thank you.
[recording paused]
CB: Right. We’re now re-starting after a short break and we’re with Dick Maywood and talking now about LMF.
RM: LMF. Lack of moral fibre which was a euphemistic way of referring to cowardice. It was not unknown with, particularly Bomber Command crews that some of them lost their nerve. In fact it’s a wonder that they didn’t all lost their nerves on heavies. Anyway, if they were accused and if they did succumb to lack of moral fibre they more or less had a courts martial and were almost certainly stripped of all rank.
CB: Physically.
RM: Yes. And –
CB: In front of — sorry go on –
RM: They were also treated to so many months in the Glasshouse which was at Sheffield. And everybody knew. All their crew knew of Sheffield and what it entailed. And fortunately, from my point of view I mean flying in the Mossie was safe. I mean not like the heavies. Because the chop rate even in 1944/45 on heavies was still quite considerable. But on Mossies I think it worked out, on 8 Group Mossies something like about half a percent. But one thing that did strike me with that ‘casue in the Mossie, being wood, low thermal conductivity. Radiators between the engines and the fuselage on both sides with air bleeds. Sealed cockpits. We flew in battle dress. No gloves. But we did have the escape boots just in case we had to escape. That was it. And we had our own sidearms. In my case a .38 revolver and it was only about three years ago it that it suddenly dawned on me. Twenty five thousand feet. If we had been hit and had had to bale out we would have been dead. Lack of oxygen and cold because, I mean, the outside air temperature was around about minus sixty. Minus seventy. And apparently about thirty six seconds of that and its good night nurse. It was a good job we didn’t think about that otherwise we might have gone LMF. But no, I have the utmost sympathy because one or two of my friends I know have had a very sticky patch. One I was with yesterday he is ex-Bomber Command Lanc and he was telling a friend that on one occasion they had a twenty millimetre shell, or, no, it couldn’t have been twenty millimetre. It must have been bigger than that. Go in to the Lanc and lodge in the ironmongery and not explode. And Dennis said that they sort of fished this thing out and dropped it out. And the chap who was talking to him and said, yeah, ‘Didn’t it explode then?’ And Dennis said words to the effect, ‘You’re rather stupid. If it had exploded I wouldn’t be here.’ How silly can people get? It’s, but it’s surprising really. When it comes to the old Mossie they talk about the wooden wonder. They’ve heard of the wooded wonder vaguely. No idea what it did really. Couldn’t be very interesting because it’s made of wood. And when you consider it was the first RAF multi role combat aircraft. You had your weather versions. You had the oboe versions. You had the PR Unit versions. Night fighter units. You had the Coastal Command Banff Wing which for a time had those Tsetse Mosquitoes with the 57 millimetre gun and I know one or two of the 247 Squadron even now who flew in those. And one in particular and he said that every time one of those guns went off you lost twenty knots airspeed with the recoil. But they didn’t last long because they found that a battery of eight rockets, sixty pound rockets was a better bet than the Tsetse gun. That was known as the Banff wing. There was 235 and 247 Squadrons in the Banff Wing. Anti-shipping. You had second TAF who flew fighter bombers. That’s guns, cannons and two bombs in each and that would probably be either on interdiction, road transport, railways and what not. You had the night intruders. Now, had the war had gone on longer it would have satisfied my sense of humour to get on night intruders. Because I loved the idea of sort of just dropping an odd bomb on the runway as they were about to land or shooting the buggers down. Pardon my broken English. Shooting them down. It would have appealed to my sense of humour but no. No. But there we are.
CB: So, you talked about flying at very low level.
RM: Yes.
CB: Tell to us a little more about that. I mean we’re talking about being low indeed.
RM: Yeah.
CB: However you look at it. And what about the excitement and the danger? Or the other way around.
RM: Well excitement. Yes. Particularly when we were doing low level bombing because I’d be prone in the bomb bay looking out the window. The Mark 14 bomb sight was useless because it was a high level job. And they hadn’t got a low level bombsight so it was all done with Mark 1 eyeballs. Now we had a bombing range out at Whittlesea. Well, just the other side of Whittlesea. And flying PPL I often had a scout around there to find out where the field was and I couldn’t find it but this was a big square field with the target in the centre. Now, literally to go we were flying over trees and down again. That was, we were sort of doing. The reason for it was quite simple. We were told the lower — you were going out to the Far East. A lot of jungle. Clearings. The lower you fly the less time you’ll be a target for ground gunners. So, the closer you can get to the treetops and the ground the safer you’ll be. And as I say, fortunately George was extremely good at low flying. Quite interesting actually. If we were bombing on east west run we’d come in low level and then at the end of the run we’d do a slow climb up to about fifteen hundred feet and then do a turn, reciprocal, back down to height again and bomb in the reverse direction and when we were on that run. On the east west run. Our turn to go reciprocal was always over Peterborough Town Bridge. It was super you know. Sort of down there. Yes. Home.
CB: Now, what about navigating when you’re — because your vista is very restricted when you’re flying low. So how did you deal with the navigation in that context?
RM: That was extremely difficult because as you say your range of vision is restricted so you have to absolutely do the correct thing. You look out and you see on the map where you are. The common mistake with map reading is to look at the map and say, ‘Oh that must be it,’ Because as you are probably well aware it is in actual fact, it’s very easy to do that. To convince yourself but I’ve been ferried over the last two or three years on what was known as Project Propeller. And I have, I’ve had a variety of pilots and I’ve flown as passenger with them and quite interestingly I am deadly against wind — so called wind turbines. And I cannot convince the BBC or the papers just what a waste of money they are. But these wind farms shown on air maps are extremely accurate.
CB: Are they?
RM: And they make bloody good landmarks because they actually show the arrangement of them.
CB: Oh right.
RM: So, you can see an arrangement and you can look at the map. Well we must be there. But of course in those days we didn’t. And again, you see, over the jungle as far as I can make out fortunately we were three weeks from going out to the east with the B35s.
CB: Oh.
RM: Which was the later version of the B16. We were within three weeks and VJ day came. Now I cannot stand hot humid weather. Whether it’s a throwback to the Wings Parade with the Governor General or not I do not know but I just cannot stand it and the thought of going out there. I would have been a grease spot.
CB: Yeah.
RM: A grease spot. Yeah.
CB: Just picking up on the navigation.
RM: But it would be with maps.
CB: Yes but —
RM: And dead reckoning.
CB: Yes. Well, I was going to say you use IPs. identification points. Would you put more of those in?
RM: Oh yes. You’d put them on the map because you’d probably, you’d be looking for them on the course. And as I say you take the ground on to the map not the map to the ground. Yeah.
CB: Now, going back to what you were talking about before we started taping you talked about the three mishaps that you had. So, what were they?
RM: Right. The first one was at Navigation School at Charlottetown and that was the fact that due to bad weather we missed the bad weather which was not forecast for the people who flew in our place. So, they got lost and I’m pretty sure that if we had flown on that night and we’d been given that Met forecast — winds light and variable which would take as zero for navigation purposes. It might have been a case of there but by the God go.
CB: Yes. You might also have vanished.
RM: Yes. Yes.
CB: Yeah. In the Great Lake.
RM: No. The Gulf of St Lawrence.
CB: Oh, in the Gulf of St Lawrence sorry. Ok. Next one.
RM: That was the first one.
CB: Ok.
RM: Then at OTU on the return trip from France where we had to land on one engine. They put us on the shortest runway with no wind and of course we vanished through the hedge with rather dire consequences to the Mossie. But — and then the third narrow squeak we had was of course the first time we took off with a four thousand pound live bomb and we got off ten knots slower than we should have done.
CB: Now, the Mossie could take four thousand pounds.
RM: Yes.
CB: But it was just in this particular case. What happened?
RM: Well, we, we — it took us longer to maintain, to achieve height than it should have done. Let’s put it that way. There was considerable chance that if the engines had even stuttered under those conditions on take-off we would have wiped out half of Downham Market.
CB: Was it because of the wind? You took off with the wind? Or what was it that caused it?
RM: Oh, we always took off in to wind.
CB: I know but in this particular case why was it?
RM: George didn’t say very much but I think the engines were not producing as much as he expected or the flaps were not right or something like that but I was too busy then actually during take-off. Getting all the charts ready and getting ready to —
CB: Where were you going that day?
RM: We were going to a place called Eggbeck which was one of the satellite airfields for Kiel. The Kiel Canal in Denmark. And it must have been the name of an airfield because I’ve looked and I’ve actually been in that area. Motored in that area for quite some distance and never found a place called Eggbeck. But it must have been one of the fields which was known as that. Yeah. And that was the one and only.
CB: Right.
RM: I’m afraid. Much to my annoyance. I was really savage when VE day came along, you know.
CB: Yeah. I imagine.
RM: I wanted to get my teeth into the Germans. But these things happen. But as I say afterwards we did the Cook’s Tour. We did quite a few what were known as Bullseyes. Have you come across those?
CB: Yes. Would you like to describe that?
RM: Yeah. Bullseyes were exactly the same conditions you would fly an actual operation. The only difference was at the target area e didn’t drop a bomb. We took a photograph to prove that we were there and we got there on time. Now, to give you an idea of the difference because as I say we had the Lancaster squadron. 635 Squadron at Downham Market and on bullseyes we both did the same route. Now, the Lancaster chaps would go in for their evening meal, would go to briefing and would be taking off as we were getting ready to go to the mess for our evening meal. Our evening meal, briefing, take off. Fly the same route. Be on target at the same time. On the way back we would land, be debriefed and would be having our breakfast when the Lancs were coming in. So two hour difference. Solely due to speed. But here I can give you something which is even more interesting. The American B17, the Flying Fortress. Nine crew. Fourteen guns. Four engines. Bomb load to Berlin four thousand pounds exactly. Out and return nine hours. Now, our Mossies on 608 Squadron, 692 and the other ones on the, what we called the Milk Run. The Berlin run. Out and return time four and a half hours. Now, admittedly with the American the B17s there was time taken up getting into formation and breaking formation on the way back but a lot of people don’t realise with the Americans in daylight, they couldn’t fly at night. They couldn’t navigate. They didn’t know how. They flew in daylight. Formation. Now, they carried a master navigator and a master bomber and I think usually two deputies just in case. They’re in formation. When the lead aircraft dropped his bombs they all dropped theirs. So, what they were doing in actual fact was carpet bombing. Admittedly they’d blanket the target. They would hit the target but that would be covering an area. Now, of course Bomber Command was specific on target markers. You bombed a target and all of the aircraft bombed that target. Not just one or two. So, as I say the American B17 crews were very brave. Much braver than I’d be, I think, under those circumstances to fly in daylight, level thirty thousand feet. Fighter fodder. No doubt. Yeah. Whereas the old Mossie. You couldn’t describe [pause] they did, the Germans did do us an honour. I think it was the Henschel 219 but I’m not sure where it was designed as a two engine night fighter specifically to counter Mosquitoes.
CB: Was it really?
RM: And that was the biggest compliment they could pay us. Then of course the jets came along and that was a different matter. They could sort of commit mayhem. But the interesting thing was that on the raid that we were doing on Eggbeck we were going out and near the target one of the aircraft called out, ‘Snappers,’ and that was the code name for the fact that 262s were about.
CB: Right.
RM: But nobody got lost that night. So –
CB: Messerschmitt 262 jets.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Yes.
RM: I mean they were serious opponents those. The 30 millimetre cannon for a start. I mean you don’t argue with those. Yeah.
CB: What was your operating speed?
RM: Our normal cruising airspeed out was around about two hundred and thirty knots. But that was indicated air speed. I mean at twenty five thousand feet the true airspeed would probably be somewhere in the region of three hundred knots which was covering the ground fairly well. If we went flat out the highest ground speed that I ever recorded was four hundred and ten miles an hours. And that was without trying.
CB: Now, what was the pattern of your operation? Because you were much faster than the Lancasters so you took off late but you had to be there first so how did you do that?
RM: Well the oboe aircraft had to be first. And then the Mosquitoes that carried additional marker bombs would be on target more or less at the same time and they would be listening to the oboe.
CB: Which was the master bomber.
RM: Or the ground. Master bomber. Advising them where to drop their new flares.
CB: Right.
RM: Whether they’d drop them short, long, east or west and so on to correct the error. And then of course by this time the main force Lancs and Mossies would be coming up on the scene but in a lot of cases with 8 Group the light night striking force actually operated on different targets. These targets were designed to be diversionary to lure night fighters away so that they didn’t know whether to go for the Lancs or us and in that case you’d probably get about anything from forty to fifty Mossies attacking quite a valuable target. Yeah.
CB: Now, you talked about twenty five thousand feet. Was that your normal operating height?
RM: Yes. That was normal.
CB: Or did it vary much?
RM: It didn’t vary much. Anything from twenty five — twenty eight thousand. The oboe Mossies, of course, they went up to thirty seven thousand feet.
CB: Oh did they. Right.
RM: Because of course the radio waves were line of sight and at that height they could just get the Ruhr. And of course, the Ruhr was the main complex of the German war industry and after, in ’43 onwards it was systematically demolished with oboe and and with precision bombing. Yeah. As I say the whole area was completely derelict. There was nothing there.
CB: What was your most abiding memory of your experience in the war?
RM: Well, it may sound silly to you but the thing which stuck in my throat more than anything was catching mumps. I mean it was so demeaning. Orchitis. Which, of course is the classic symptoms of that. It’s not pretty and it’s painful and to catch that at nineteen years of age. It was a chance complaint and that, that really stuck with me more than anything. Yes. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
CB: Yes.
RM: I suppose in a way what with that and the fact that I got washed off pilots case and the fact we hit bad weather at Nav School. With the time I lost. If it hadn’t been for that I might not be here.
CB: But you might have done all sorts of other things. Operationally.
RM: I might have finished up on heavies with a much heavier chop rate. Yeah.
CB: Just going back to the American training experience. In essence it was to train for flying boats so that –
RM: Yes.
CB: What aircraft did they have in that area working on the lake?
RM: They didn’t. The Grosse Ile was the aircraft carrier part of the navy.
CB: Ah right.
RM: And once they’d completed that you then went down to Pensacola.
CB: Right.
RM: And the Gulf of Florida and converted on to Catalinas.
CB: Right.
RM: Now the interesting thing is that for many years RAF — the RAF Museum at Cosford encapsulated my wartime flying experience very very neatly. They had Canso, which was a Canadian built Catalina because it had a retractable undercarriage whereas the Catalina didn’t. And alongside it was a Mossie B35 which, to all intents and purposes, apart from an astro dome was the same, exactly the same as our B16s. And these were side by side. Now, nobody knew about me there so it was purely chance but I gather now that last year that they actually split them up into two different hangars. Which is a shame.
CB: Changing the subject a bit —
RM: Yes.
CB: A Mosquito is very cramped inside. Or is it? For the navigator? And how did you operate?
RM: Well, I was a lot slimmer than I am now. The amount of room we had. My seat was about that wide. In front of me we had a dashboard with a dropdown table for the maps and what not on. We were actually sitting on the main spar and the pilot’s seat was just in front of the main spar. Now, just here —
CB: In front of you.
RM: In front of me and to the left hand side would be the console with the undercarriage and flaps.
CB: Throttles.
RM: And throttles. For the pilot. Right handed. In front of me, underneath the dashboard would be the opening which I would go through to get into the bomb bay.
CB: Go in legs first.
RM: No. Head first.
CB: Right.
RM: Yeah. Because you had to be facing the front. Yeah. You could only go in head first. There was no room to do a hundred and eighty.
CB: Yeah.
RM: It’s very cosy. The pilot –he had roughly the same amount of room and all the gubbins in front of him and to his left. We were both slimmer and we could both get in. Now, the B, the bomber versions — you went in underneath. It had a floor entry. Like the prototype in South Mimms Museum. The fighter bomber versions had a side exit or entry and that was just aft of the propellers. About nine to twelve inches behind the propellers and in the event of getting out you had to go in. Go out head first facing the rear to make sure you didn’t get mixed up and come out as mincemeat. Yeah. They had a ladder which stowed in the aircraft that you climbed up. You went in facing backwards and then turned around. The pilot went in first, of course to get into his seat. Now, he would have a seat type parachute. We had just the harness and we had the parachute stowed down by the right hand side so that if we had to get out we could just pick it up, clip it on and out.
CB: So, if you had to get out are you going to go out through the canopy or through the floor?
RM: Oh you didn’t go out through the canopy except as we did when we crash landed at [unclear] when it was stationary. If you went out through the canopy you had a jolly good chance of being chopped in half with the rudder. So, you always went out the escape hatch at the bottom. Yes. It would be a very foolhardy thing to go out the top. Yeah. That was quite interesting now you’ve come to mention it. When we were at Gransden Lodge we were doing, going up on an air test actually and we got up to about ten thousand feet and all of a sudden there was a hell of a bang and a lot of rubbish and what not flying about and George said, ‘Get ready to jump.’ So, I sort of put the parachute on and he said, ‘Oh.’ he said, ‘The aircraft seems to be flying all right,’ he said, ‘I thought the front had gone in.’ You know, the nose, with all the rubbish and what not. We were looking around. Couldn’t see anything wrong. And then we looked up and we found that the top hatch had blown off. And of course the vacuum, the sort of [unclear] effect too place all the rubbish in the bomb bay had come out and he said just said, just tried it and he said, ‘The chances are it’s probably altered the stalling speed a bit.’ So instead of carrying on with the climb he played about and found out exactly how the aircraft handled at a hundred and twenty knots which was the normal approach speed and he found it was probably about a hundred and thirty knots with the extra drag. And so, we aborted and came back and landed. There was quite a hullabaloo, you know. ‘How come you lost that hatch?’ Well, one of those things. Yeah. They didn’t charge us for it [laughs] 664B. I take it you know what 664B was.
CB: No. Tell us. Tell us for the tape.
RM: 664B action was to re-claim from your wages.
CB: Yeah.
RM: The money for whatever it was that you’d lost, stolen or strayed. Yeah. A lot of people for instance lost their wristwatches and went on 664B because you could get a Rolex for around about six pounds ten shillings. The Longines. I had actually had a Longines wristwatch. We were issued with watches. I don’t know whether you realise this or not but we had, were equipped with aircrew watches and we had to rate them and adjust them so that they lost no more or gained no more than two seconds a day. Now, that stems from the vital necessity of having exact time to the second when you’re doing astro shots. Because one second in time can mean about a quarter of a mile in position. And for instance Coastal Command types. The Catalinas and the old Flying Boats.
CB: The Sunderlands.
RM: The Sunderland. If they were returning and they had very poor radio signals. Very few Astra shots. And could not be absolutely certain of their landfall because of the astro shots and wrong time. A few seconds. I mean a quarter of a mile could mean the difference between getting into a fjord or a bay or hitting the land at the side of it. So it was vitally important that you got the time down to a second. It wouldn’t have mattered now because course cards. So accurate. But of course with the spring you actually had to adjust them. Now, the first watch I had we were equipped with these at navigation school at Charlottetown. The first one I had was a Waltham. An American which was quite well thought of. But I just could not get it closer than about five seconds no matter how I tried. And after two weeks they said, ‘Right. That’s no use.’ So, I took it back and got a Longines and within a week I’d got that sorted out and it worked quite well. And kept that right the way through and stupidly I handed that in when I was demobbed. Because as I said 664B I could have had it for six pounds fifty. Six pounds.
CB: Even in those days.
RM: Another thing. Another thing too which I bitterly resent or regret handing in was my sunglasses. Now, they were Ray-Ban. Green. They were superb for sun. want a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses now. Ninety quid. Ridiculous isn’t it? They would have cost about three pounds.
Other: Yeah.
RM: On 664B.
CB: You talked about astro shots. You talked about astro shots so where would you put the sextant. Could you hang it on the —?
RM: Yes, you hung it in the astro dome.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Now, you can turn this off because I’m going to be in trouble.
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 Dick Maywood
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-11-09
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMaywoodRM151109
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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02:21:54 audio recording
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Herefordshire
England--Norfolk
England--Oxfordshire
England--Lincolnshire
Scotland--Aberdeenshire
England--Leicestershire
Canada
Ontario
Ontario--Goderich
Alberta
Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island--Charlottetown
Germany
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Ontario--Belleville
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1945
1945-05-08
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Description
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Dick was born in Peterborough and volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1941. He was called up to Lord’s Cricket Ground in 1942. Dick went to No. 6 Initial Training Wing at Aberystwyth. He then went to RAF Desford, flying Tiger Moths and was selected for further pilot training. After Heaton Park, Dick volunteered for the flying boat course and flew on Stearman N254s at Grosse Isle in the United States. He returned to Canada, initially to Windsor where he was re-selected as a navigator air bomber. He was sent to Goderich and then Mountain View to the bombing and gunnery school on Mark 2 Ansons and the Bolingbroke. He gained his brevet at Navigation School in Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island.
Dick underwent intensive map training on his return and went to the Advanced Flying Unit in Wigtown on Ansons. He proceeded to the Operational Training Unit at RAF Upper Heyford on Oxfords, where he was introduced to Loran. He had just started a tour as a Mosquito Pathfinder navigator before VE Day. He describes the aircraft, Oboe, and the pattern of their operations. Dick participated in Cook’s Tours to the Ruhr Valley. He was in 608 Squadron but it was disbanded and so he was posted to 692 Squadron, another Group 8 unit, at RAF Gransden Lodge. This was also disbanded, and Dick was sent to RAF Blyton for a re-selection board where he was sent on a flight mechanic engines course at RAF Credenhill. He was posted to the 254 torpedo Beaufighter Squadron at Langham until he was demobilised.
608 Squadron
692 Squadron
8 Group
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
Anson
B-17
Beaufighter
Bolingbroke
Cook’s tour
flight engineer
Gee
Initial Training Wing
Master Bomber
Me 262
military living conditions
military service conditions
Mosquito
navigator
Oboe
Oxford
Pathfinders
perception of bombing war
RAF Banff
RAF Blyton
RAF Credenhill
RAF Desford
RAF Downham Market
RAF Gransden Lodge
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Upper Heyford
sanitation
Stearman
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/390/6910/AEssigD180320.1.mp3
a4ca92b5f79204af0604c5c307d9b335
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/.
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Dieter Essig (b. 1938) who witnessed the 1944-1945 Pforzheim bombings.
Title
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Essig, Dieter
D Essig
Identifier
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Essig, D
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-03-20
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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PS: Bevor wir anfangen, bitte ich Sie folgende Fragen zu beantworten, damit wir sicher sind, dass dieses Interview nach Ihren Wünschen sowie den Bedingungen unserer Sponsoren gemäß registriert wird. Sind Sie damit einverstanden, dass dieses Interview als eine öffentlich zugängliche Quelle aufbewahrt wird, die für Forschung, Erziehung, online und in Ausstellungen verwendet werden kann? Ja oder nein?
DE: Ja, beginnt ruhig. Ja.
PS: Gut. Danke.
DE: Bitte.
PS: Das dieses Interview unter einer nichtkommerziellen Creative Commons Attributionslizenz, die mit CC-BY-NC das bedeutet, dass sie nicht für kommerzielle zwecke benutzt werden darf, also dass dieses Interview öffentlich zugänglich gemacht wird? Ja oder nein?
DE: Ja, ja.
PS: Danke.
DE: Bitte.
PS: Dass Sie als Urheber und Author des Interviews identifiziert werden? Ja oder nein?
DE: Ja.
PS: Danke.
DE: Bitte.
PS: Sind Sie bereit, der Universität das Copyright Ihres Beitrags zur Verfügung zu stellen, damit es zu jedem Zweck verwendet kann und sind Sie sich dessen bewußt, dass das Ihr moralisches Recht beeintrachtigen wird, als Urheber des Interviews identifiziert zu werden, dem Copyright, Design und Patentsgesetz 1988 gemäss? Ja oder nein?
DE: Ja.
PS: Danke.
DE: Bitte.
PS: Also, jetzt bitte ich Sie um fünf Sekunden Schweigen, weil der Techniker das Moment braucht.
DE: Ja, gern.
PS: Gut. Also, dieses Interview wird für das International Bomber Command Digital Archive durchgeführt. Der Interviewer ist Peter Schulze, der befragte ist Herr Dieter Essig.
DE: Richtig.
PS: Heute ist der 20 März 2018. Wir bedanken uns bei Herr Essig, dass er bereit ist, sich interviewn zu lassen. Ihr Interview wird Teil des International Bomber Command Digital Archive, das an der Universität Lincoln angesiedelt und vom Heritage Lottery Fund finanziert wird. Also, Herr Essig, können Sie mir erstmals von Ihrem Elternhaus erzählen, wo Sie geboren und aufgewachsen sind, also die ältesten Erinnerungen die Sie haben?
DE: Ja, gut, ich bin am 30 April 1938 in Pforzheim geboren und wir lebten in, wir, meine Mutter, mein Vater und ich, und meine Schwester, wir lebten im Norden der Stadt Pforzheim, in einer Mietwohnung. Und ich ging zur, damals hat’s geheissen Volksschule und dann später in das Gymnasium, habe dort das Wirtschaftsabitur gemacht und ging dann zur Stadt 1957 und habe dort die Verwaltungslauftbahn beschritten. Ja. Wollen Sie noch was hören?
PS: Ja. Reden Sie ruhig frei.
DE: Ja, also auch, wie gesagt, mit dem Beginn der Bombenangriffe. Ja, gut, also wie schon gesagt, ich war beim Bombenangriff am 23 Februar 1945 sechs Jahre alt, zwei Monate später wär ich also sieben geworden, am 30 April. Wir haben den grössten Teil unserer Jugend, also wir, meine Schwester und ich, die fünf Jahre älter ist, überwiegend in Luftschutzkeller im Mietshaus zugebracht. Es gab ja viele Alarme um diese Zeit, wir hatten 1944 289 Fliegeralarme und insgesammt 261 Stunden. 1943 waren es noch nicht so viele, da waren es 48 Fliegeralarme und nur 79 Stunden. Aber man muss sich mal vorstellen, dass man also Fliegeralarm, wie gesagt, ich war damals sechs Jahre alt, meine Mutter hat mich in einen Teppich gewickelt wenn Fliegeralarm war, wir sind in den Luftschutzkeller und dort lagen wir auf den Boden, beziehungsweise in solchen Feldbetten und haben dann gewartet bis der Fliegeralarm vorbei war. Wir wussten ja nie was uns erwartet, wenn wir die Haustür aufgemacht haben, hatten, was war passiert. Am, ja, also ich wurde immer wieder gefragt, wie habt ihr eure Jugend zugebracht? Ich muss sagen, wir haben, ich habe einen Teil im Luftschutzkeller zugebracht und waren heilfroh, wenn wir wieder nach draussen konnten und festgestellt haben, es ist noch alles in Ordnung. Im Gegensatz zum 23 Februar, auf den ich nachher noch zu sprechen kommen werde. Die Zeit meiner Kindheit, wir wurden um unsere Kindheit, möchte ich mal sagen, betrogen, wir hatten in dem Sinn keine Kindheit, es war, wie schon erwähnt, aber es war überwiegend Bombenalarm und wir hatten nichts zu spielen. Ich weiss noch, mein Vater war bei der Sparkasse da bekam man zu Weihnacht so wie man bei uns sagt [unclear] so bemalte Bauklötzchen, des war für uns ein Festtag, des kam man sich heute gar nichts mehr vorstellen bei diesen Übermass was die Kinder heute haben und das überhaupt nicht so registrieren und in welchen Wohlstand wir heute leben. Ich möchte nun auf folgendes zurückkommen und zwar, es war nicht nur der 23 Februar sondern es fanden ja, der erste Angriff fand ja auf Pforzheim am ersten April 1944 statt, bei dem etwa 80 bis 100 Flieger die Stadt aus [unclear] Richtung anflogen und eine grosse Anzahl Bomben abwarfen. Diese fielen hauptsächlich auf den Südteil der Stadt, das Rod und den Südteil [unclear], dabei sollen nach Angaben 95 Menschen ums Leben gekommen und 127 Familien obdachlos geworden sein. Am 10 Oktober 1944 abends erfolgte ein schwerer Angriff mit Luftminen auf die Nord und Oststadt folge neben beträchtigen Gebäudeschäden über 60 Menschen kamen dabei ums Leben. Für mich auch noch in Erinnerung war der 24 Dezember 1944, Heiligabend, Zielviertel und Nordstadt waren Ziel eines Grösseren Luftangriffs, neben Gebäudeschäden waren etwa 90 Menschenleben zu begraben, zu beklagen. Ein grösserer Angriff richtete sich in den Mittagsstuden des 21 Januar 1945 hauptsächlich gegen die Oststadt, neben erheblichen Gebäudeschaden waren etwa 58 Todesopfer zu beklagen. Ich werde auch immer wieder gefragt, das will ich an dieser Stelle sagen, ob ich mich tatsächlich noch an diese Zeit erinnern kann. Und ich bin mit mir zur [unclear] gegangen, habe auch meine Schwester gefragt, mein Gedanken gegangen und ja meine Erinnerungen, die beginnen so ungefähr mit dem vierten Lebensjahr. Es kann natürlich unterschiedlich sein aber so ab dem vierten Lebensjahr und wenn man älter wird, je älter man wird desto mehr macht man in Reminiszenzen. Ich kann heute Sachen sagen die ich damals erlebt habe, Sachen die vorgestern waren, die habe ich vergessen. [coughs] Entschuldigung. Nun ich wurde darüber gefragt ob ich traumatisiert sei, ich muss des sagen: ‚Nein‘ und aus einen ganz einfachen Grund. Ich wache nicht nachts schweiß geballt auf, denn die Zeit meiner Jugend die wir im Luftschutzkeller oder draussen verbracht haben, des war für uns Alltag. Wir haben praktisch mit dem Krieg gelebt, wir sind im Krieg aufgewachsen und wir haben, so makaber es klingt, wir haben mit den Toten auf Du und Du gelebt, wir haben sogar mit den Leichen nicht gespielt aber [coughs], wir haben sie auf der Strasse liegen sehen. Nun möchte ich zum eigentlichen Thema kommen, zwar, Entschuldigung [coughs], der 23 Februar 1945. Wir, meine Mutter, meine Schwester, mein Vater war ja noch im Krieg, wir waren im Zentrum also am Markplatz Pforzheim und da hatte meine Oma einen, heute würde man sagen, einen Krämerladen, also, ja, so einen Edeka, und die haben wir ja noch besucht und dann war Voralarm. Meine Mutter, meine Schwester und ich, wir gingen dort wo heute das Rathaus steht, in einen Luftschutzkeller. In diesem Luftschutzkeller waren die Leute dicht gedrängt und es wusste ja keiner, dass so ein schwerer Angriff im Anflug war, im Anmarsch war. Meine Mutter hat diese Leute von der Partei, die streng darüber gewacht haben, dass alles seine Ordnung hat und dass keiner noch rausgeht, gebeten sie mögen doch noch mal aufmachen und und und, und es ist so ein Gefühl das Mütter haben, dass irgendwas in der Luft liegt. Die haben aufgemacht und wir durften noch nach Hause, wir haben vom Marktplatz bis in unsere Wohnung sagen wir mal 10 Minuten, viertel Stunde zu laufen, wir sind also den Schlossberg hochgegangen und da wurden schon die ersten, wir sagen Christbäumchen abgeworfen, es waren solche leuchtende etwas, die des abgestickt haben, wo die Bomben abgeworfen werden sollen. Wir sind also dann in die Wohnung und das heisst nicht in die Wohnung, sondern sind gleich in den Luftschutzkeller und haben abgewartet was sich da tat. Als sich dann der Angriff vorbei war wussten wir ja nicht was passiert war, wir haben die Tür aufgemacht und haben gesehen, die Stadt hat lichterloh gebrannt und meine Mutter hat uns an der Hand genommen und hat gesagt, wir müssten unbedingt in die Stadt in ihre Mutter also die Frau, meine Oma mit’m Spitzereiladen wussten wir nicht was mit ihr passiert war, deren Mann die Schwägerin von meiner Mutter, die waren ja alle noch in der Innenstadt. Wir haben uns also vorgekämpf, wir kamen nicht ganz bis ins Zentrum, am nächsten Morgen, als es dann hell war hat meine Mutter gesagt, wir müssen wieder runter gehen, und da sahen wir, was tatsächlich passiert war, am Schlossberg lagen die verkohlten Leichen, die nur noch die ausgesehen haben wie, entschuldige des Ausdruck, so wie zusammengreschrupfte Katzen. Meine Mutter hat gesagt, wir müssen noch unsere Angehörige finden, wir, die Kinder, meine Schwester und ich, wir haben die Leichen, die am Weg lagen, umgedreht und haben den Oma, Opa undsoweiter gesucht. Es war fürchterlich, über der Stadt lag ein, es brannte ja noch überall und über der Stadt lag ein, ich muss sagen, ein Verwesungsgeruch ganz eigenartig, es brannte noch überall, wir sind Tage später sind wir dann nocheinmal in die Stadt gegangen und in dem Haus, wo der Laden von meiner Oma war, war alles eingestürtzt und die hatten im Keller solche Koks also Briquettes und des brannte noch alles, es war also, es war fürchterlich. Meine Oma die konnte sich retten denn dort bei der, an der Geschäft vorbei, da ist der Fluss ein Stauwerk und da haben sich die Leute reingerettet und haben sich an Balken festgeklammert. Swimmen konnten die ja zum grössten Teils nicht, und da hat man sie dann aus dem eisigen Wasser rausgezogen und da haben wir dann die Oma gefunden, die wurden irgendwo, in einem Krankenhaus eingeliefert. Es gab so gut wie keine Versorgungen, es war also und für mich möchte ich an dieser Stelle sagen, für mich war ein erschreckender Anblick im, wir haben hier ein, heute ist es ein Altersheim, den Martinsbau, in diesen Martinsbau waren junge Mädchen untergebracht, die waren alle so um sechzehn Jahre rum, man hatt immer gesagt, es sind BDM Mädchen, also Bund Deutscher Mädchen, waren es aber nicht was sich herausgestellt hat sondern es waren sogenannte Kreuzmädchen, die hatten am Revers so ein Kreuz, die wurden eingesetzt um Telephon, Telephone zu bedienen. So, wir kamen dazu, also diese Mädchen die waren erstickt, als man diese Mädchen aus dem Keller rausgezogen hat und hatte sie in eine Reihe gelegt, ich weiss nicht wie viele das es waren, vielleicht waren es vielleicht zehn, fünfzehn, muss mal nachschauen, hat man in eine Reihe gelegt, sie lagen da wie lebend, sie waren also erstickt, hatten keine äussere Verletzungen und dann kamen die Eltern und mussten ihre Kinder identifizieren. Das war für mich als sechsjähriger, also das makabrischte was ich jemals erlebt habe. Des war also zum 23 Februar und die Zeit danach, das Aufräumen, das hat also eine ganze zeitlang gedauert. Noch in den 50 Jahren gab es ja auch noch Lebensmittelkarten, wir hatten wenig zu essen, mit dem wenigen, was wir hatten, mussten wir uns immer die Runden rennen. Es war ja dann die Franzosen kamen ja am 8 Februar 1945 und dann kamen die Amerikaner am 28, am 8 Juli 1945. Kapitulation war am 8/5. Ja, als die Franzosen kamen, die haben eine sogenannte Vorhut geschickt, das waren Marrokkaner und die Marrokkaner waren, muss ich sagen, nicht sehr zivilisiert, die haben also auch die jungen Mädchen, wenn sie erwischt haben, vergewaltigt und Meine Mutter hat meine Schwester, also ja, meine Schwester mit Russ im Gesicht eingefärbt damit sie nach alt aussah, damit ihr nix passierte. Wir hatten so gut wie gar nichts zu essen, und als ich mal ab und zu in den Schulen war, da hab ich denn die jungen Kindern oder Schülern mal des einmal geschildert weil es damals war. Wir waren, meine Mutter hat in der Wohnung, im Schrank ein Stückchen Brot ganz krumm gefunden und das war für uns ein Freudenfest. Meine Mutter, wie gesagt, hat mich in ein Kinderwagen gepackt, meine Schwester lief neben her und wir sind von der Nordstadt zu einem Vorort gelaufen, das ist Tiefenbronn, das sind also, na gute zehn Kilometer nach Tiefenbronn, zehn Kilometer zurück und da haben wir ein Paar Kartoffeln bekommen und etwas Milch, die Milch haben wir dann so unterwegs getrunken und die Kartoffeln das war für uns ein Freudenfest. Wir haben uns mit Dingen ernährt, die uns ja die Natur geschenkt hat und das war, was damals natürlich verboten war, wenn die Tannen, die kleinen, die Geschoss, also das kleine Geschoss, der Nachwuchs, das hellgrüne, das haben wir in Tüten eingesammelt und haben des zu Hause ausgekocht zum Honig. Wir haben uns draussen mit Brombeeren und Himbeeren, was der Wald so zu bieten hatte und ich kann mich gut entsinnen, wie wir also auf der Wiese Essbares zusammen gesucht haben, die Natur bietete relativ viel und in dem Zusammenhang eine kleine Episode. Ich ware bei Grundschülern und hab denen versucht zu erklären, dass es also wenn man gar nichts hat zu Essen, das Überleben, dann habe ich zu einem Jungen gesagt, überleg dir einmal wenn du jetzt, du hast Hunger, du hast Durst, hast nix, was machst du dann? Ja, weiss ich ja net. Habe ich gesagt, also, überleg da mal, du kannst hinaus gehn in den Wald, ja, was soll ich im Wald? Ja, ich sag, Entschuldige, jetzt überleg dir mal, was der Wald alles bietet. Du hast, kommst vielleicht an eine Pfütze, an ein Bächlein, ja, aber das ist ja dreckig, ja gut, ok. Also, du hast gar nix, der Junge kam nicht auf die Idee zu sagen, ja also Brombeeren, und dann war, [unclear] überleg da mal scharf und da hat der zur Antwort gegeben: „Dann gehe ich zu meinem Nachbarn“. ich sage das war die beste Antwort die ich jemals erlebt habe, denn dein Nachbar hat nämlich auch nichts zu essen. Das sieht man draus in der heutigen Zeit, also ich bilde mir ein, dass ich einige Tage ohne essen, ohne trinken im Wald durchhalten könnte aber nehmen so mal heut, ein Jungen der net seine Pommes Frites oder seine Burger undsoweiter, fürchterlich. Wir hatten ja auch keine Handys undsoweiter und ich sag immer wieder, auch meinen Kindern die noch relativ jung sind wenn wir einen, nur einen Tag keinen Strom, schalt euch alles ab, einen Tag keine Handy, unvorstellbar, unvorstellbar. Wir hatten zu Hause, da ja des [unclear] keinen Strom hatten, überall waren Kerzen, Kerzen gab’s da nicht überall zu kaufen, wenn wir Kerzen bekamen, dann sind wir also ganz froh gewesen, habe die gehortet. Wasser? heute unvorstellbar, Wasser gab’s ja keines, das Wasser war abgestellt und ja und dann kam immer wieder in der Woche oder ein oder zweimal so ein Fahrzeug wie man das heute hat, auf der Wiese haben, mit so’m grossen, ja, Kanister, und da sind wir mit so einem kleinen Putzeimer hingegangen und hat dort zehn Liter Wasser rausgelassen, ging nach Hause und hat des auf’m Kohleherd abgekocht und dann hatte man für einige Zeit Wasser, an eine Dusche undsoweiter, war gar nicht zu denken. Die erste Wannen[unclear], weiss ich noch wiel mein Vater des war also da sind wir nach [unclear] da gab’s die erste Wanne das man sich in lauwarmes respektives heisses Wasser hat legen können, des waren so die Anfänge und wie ich schon erwähnt hab, die Lebensmittelkarten die gab’s da noch bis in die 50er Jahre. Lebensmittelkarten heisst jas dass jede Familie eine bestimmte Anzahl, so kleine Abschnitte bekam und dann wurde soundsoviel Brot zugeteilt, Mehl, Zucker undosweiter und dann ist man in den Laden gegangen, die haben das abgerissen, da stand also meinetwegen drauf, ein Leib Brot und mit dem hat man also eine ganze Woche auskommen müssen. Meine Tante hat auch so einen Laden gehabt, ich weiss da wie heut, die hat diese Marken, diese abgerissen Marken aufgeklebt und mit denen musst sie dann immer abrechnen das jarnix [unclear]. Das war also die Zeit danach und wie gesagt, die Marokkaner das waren sicherlich nicht, also nix gegen die Marokkaner aber sie waren nicht sehr gebildet. Ich weiss da von einem Marokkaner das er zum ersten Mal ein Fahrrad sah, er hat sich bemüht auch das das Fahrrad keine, Luft [unclear] bestickt war sondern pure [unclear] probiert, da runter gefallen. Die haben, den Leuten die Hasen weggenommen, haben sie geschlachtet und dann kamen die einigen Franzosen, die war also wesentlich, ja, zivilisierter. Und dann kamen die Amerikaner und die Amerikaner das war für uns als Kinder ein A-ha Erlebnis. A-ha Erlebnis aus solchen Gründen, ich weiss noch von einem Amerikaner der zu uns ins Haus kam, mich auf den Arm genommen hat und mir ein Chewing-gum, ein Kaugummi gegeben hat, wir wussten überhaupt nicht was Kaugummis sind, es gab dann meistens auch Schokolade, Cadbury, das war das und vor allen Dingen durften wir bei denen in ihren Jeeps sitzen und das war für uns so des Paradies, das war der Beginn des Lebens. Meine Mutter ging mit ihrer Tochter mal spazieren auf die Höhe, fuhr ein Jeep vorbei und die haben was rausgeworfen und ja und wir sind dann hingegangen wie der weg war, wes war des, der Teil eines Tisches, meine Mutter war also quick strahlend das sie also, den Tisch den haben wir also zelebriert, mit dem sind wir nach Hause gegangen und haben den [unclear]. Des war diese Zeit und ich muss mal sagen, ganz offen und ehrlich, es war für mich, für uns, eine erlebnisreiche Zeit udn zwar wenn ich heute sehe wie ganz, [unclear] aus anderer Erfahrung sagen, [unclear], da geht so und so viel zurück weil’s kein Apetit mehr habe, ich habe zu meinen Kindern immer wieder gesagt, des was da zurück geht, des geht mal in Zukunft von de Menschen erlernt [unclear] und es sind so Dinge was ma heut überhaupt nicht mehr sich vorstellen kann. Also wir leben nun, dass muss ich [unclear] mal betonen, wir leben in einer Überflussgesellschaft und ich wünsche, wenn ich auch in eine Schule komme, das sich des nie mehr wiederholt. Es war also eine schlimme Zeit, es war für uns eine Erkenntnisreiche Zeit und die kann heute, wenn irgendnochwas ubrig ist, vom Mittagessen, dann kann ich das net wegwerfen sondern ich muss dann irgendwie des abends noch verwerten. Ja, des war also so des Konzentrat meiner Jugend.
PS: Ja, ich wollte wissen.
DE: Ja, haben Sie noch spezielle Fragen?
PS: Ja, ich wollte ein Moment zurückgehen zu Ihren ersten Jahren. Alos, haben Sie noch irgendwelche, die allerersten Erinnerungen, haben Sie vielleicht noch ältere Erinnerungen als vor Ihrem vierten Lebensjahr? Ein bisschen die Atmosphaere zuhause, was Ihre Eltern also so machten und auch wie man die Zeit so lebte mit der, also, die Nazi-Zeit?
DE: Ja, Sie erwarten von mir offene, ehrliche Antworten, ja?
PS: Ja, was Sie sagen möchten.
DE: Ja, ja, klar, also, die Zeit, ja, jetzt muss man vorsichtig sein, für mich als sechsjähriger in dem Sinne wenn die Hitlerjugend durch die Strassen marschiert sind mit [unclear] undosweiter, das war für mich immer so ein, wie muss ich sagen, ein erhebendes Gefühl, und habe zu meiner Mutter gesagt, da möchte ich auch mal, zu denen möchte ich auch mal. Wir wussten ja nicht was alles passierte mit der Judenverfolgung undsoweiter, sondern wir haben ja nur den schönen Teil gesehen. Und so war es auch mit meiner Schwester, die hat, die war noch nicht bei der BDM aber die hat da immer gesagt, vor allem Dingen gab’s dann diese Sonnenwendfeier, die Jugend war damals begeistert, denn die Jugend konnte ja gar nicht wissen, was hinter den Kulissen geschah. Weihnachten, Weihnachten kann ich mich noch entsinnen, es war warscheinlich ‚44, weiss net, ‚43, wir hatten ja praktisch nix, Kleinigkeiten, mein Vater war ja noch im Krieg, und ein für mich gravierendes Erlebnis war des. Meine Mutter hat die Geschenke was se da irgendwo bekommen hat, hat sie auf einen Tisch hingelegt und hat des zugedeckt mit Leinentücher und da war für mich, heute würde man darüber lachen, ein Linial, ein Holzlinial, ein viereckiges Holzlinial und da war eingeritzt zentimeter von eins bis zehn, das war ein tolles [unclear], anderes gab’s ja noch nicht zu kaufen und was ich vergessen habe war ja nun so dass, wir hatten ja hier ein Kaufhaus, heute ist Metro, wie sie alle heissen, ein Kaufhaus und dort hat man danach so wieder ein paar Sachen bekommen, allerdings musste jemand dafür Papier abliefern. Wir haben überall nach Papier gesucht und dann sind wir mit dem Papier dort hin und da haben wir also Kleinigkeiten erstanden. Es gab damals die ersten, ja wie kann man sagen, Drop’s hat es geheissen, des war also kleine, zum lutschen, ja, des waren so die Anfänge. Also ich muss nochmal sagen, meine Kindheit also vom viertem bis zum Angriff, da gab’s, also war hier nicht so gravierend, wie gesagt, ich hatte Glück eine altere Schwester zu haben die mich dann immer an der Hand genommen hat, wenn wir irgendwohin gegangen sind und mich, soll ich mal sagen im übertragenden Sinne, eine beschützende Hand uber mich gebreitet hat und hat gesagt: „so, wenn der Krieg vorbei ist alles anders und dann kriegst du auch dein Spielzeug“. Wir haben, aus Vorhangringen haben wir kleine Autos zusammengebastelt. Es gab dann auch hier ein sogennantes Seifenkistenrennen, es war also erheben, Seifenkistenrennen hat man also aus Holz undsoweiter so kleine Autos zusammengebaut und dann fuhr uns hier vom [unclear] Berg runter und da standen die Leut staunend an der Strasse und es gab da als Belohnung irgendwelche Schokolade oder Süssigkeiten, des war so die Anfänge und da kann ich mich dran erinnern und ich bin wirklich froh dass ich diese Erfahrungen, die positive Erfahrungen gemacht habe, was also das Essen betrifft, was die Hygiene betrifft und das ganze Ding. Wir haben als ich dann nachher in die Schule, Oberrealschule ging, auch ein Erlebnis des war, ja, am Marktplatz haben sie also dann so die Leichen ausgegraben in den Luftschutzkellern, ich kam hinzu, oder wir kamen da hinzu wie sie einen Luftschutzkeller freigelegt haben. Auf einem ausgegluhten Petro lag eine, ein Skelett und dieses Skelett hatte noch in der Hand, ein Schlusselbund und das war für mich so ein Erlebnis, diese also sagen muss aber. Auf den Trümmerbergen gab’s einen Trompeter, der hat also an Weihnachten stand der auf den Trümmern und hat also da irgendwelche Weihnachtslieder geblasen. Es gab hier ein, wie kann man sagen, ein Unternehmen, die haben dann später sogenannte Stegware verkauft, des heisst also so Mützen, und Anorack für den Amerikaner, des waren so die Erlebnisse. Als ich in die Schule, ins Gymansium ging, gab’s ja praktisch noch gar nicht, das waren so, in der Innenstadt waren so kleine, so Ständchen aufgebaut gab, wo se irgendwelche kuriose Dinge verkauft haben. Es ist ja net so wie heute, um mal zu sagen, jetzt gehen sie in die Disko oder in ich was weiss ich was, gab’s ja noch nicht. Es war ja in der Nordstadt eine Wirtschaft, da habense da immer Fasching, ja, habense eine Fete heisst ja heut, haben sie Fasching gefeiert und man ist da hingegangen und es war zum Teil bitterkalt und da hat man also seinen Mantel, ist man so in Hotelzimmer gegangen, und da haben sie die Mäntel auf einander gelegt und weil da die Veranstaltung vorbei war, dann hat jeder wieder seinen Mantel gesucht und es kam alles wieder so in Bewegung und ja es war also muss ich sagen eine schöne Zeit. Wie gesagt, meine Kindheit war nichts was also wie zum 13 Februar was weltbewegend war, wie gesagt eben dass man also Hungersnot gelitten hat. Und auch da fällt mir jetzt ein, zum Essen, wie ich schon erwähnt habe, relativ wenig und man hat, meine Mutter, weiss ich noch heut, hat Schnecken eingesammelt, is heute Delikatessen, Schnecken im Häuschen und hat sie in heisses Wasser geworfen und des haben wir gegessen, heut als Delikatesse, damals war’s so dass man also die gegessen hat zum überleben. Des sind so ein Paar markante. Jetzt fällt mir noch mal was ein in dem Zusammenhang. Ich hab am 23, am 30 April Geburtstag und Hitler’s Geburtstag wurde immer gross gefeiert. Des heisst also, [unclear], man musste Fahnen raushängen, also Hitlerfahnen raushängen und dann waren welche da von der Partei die des kontrolliert haben, ob tatsächlich überall die Fahnen raushängen. Und ich hab damals als, vielleicht sagen wir mal funfjähriger, zu meiner Mutter damals gesagt: „Du, ich versteh das net, guck a mal, i krieg kaum was zum Geburtstag und Hitler hatte am 20 April Geburtstag und bei dem hängen da die Fahnen raus“. Des habe ich nie so verstanden das also ein Diktator so gefeiert wird, für mich war des ein Diktator, wenn ich als kleiner hab nix zu essen und nix zu spielen. Es war damals eine totale Überwachung, wir hatten einen, heute heisst es Volksempfänger, also Radio wo man also nur zwei Sender reinbekam, und da hat man davorgesessen und dann kam die Anordnung dass man seine Telefonapparate abliefern musste. Wir haben dann, wor hatten zwei, ich weiss noch heut, wir hatten zwei Telefonapparate, ja, zwei Rundfunkapparate und die haben wir dann also, einen abgeliefert und schon kam da vom Haus der also ein strenger Parteigenosse war und hat gesagt: „Ja, aber zwei Apparate, ihr müsst noch einen zweiten Apparat abliefern“. Es war also eine, wir wurden bespitzelt bis wir das ja keiner negative Erfahrungen machte und und und, also es, in der Bezeihung war es verhältlich eine schlimme Zeit. Aber wir haben das halt miterlebt, wir kannten ja nichts anderes und auch in dem Zusammenhang, noch mal zurückzukommen auf das [unclear], ich sag immer, die Kinder in den armen Ländern, die dort aufwachsen, sind wirklich arme Kinder, aber sie kennen nichts anderes, sie leben mit der Not und essen auf der Strasse, und so war’s auch bei uns, wir haben ja nichts anderes gekannt und des wenn ich des die heutige Jugend erzähl, wenn ich sage, komme immer vor so wie wenn ich erzähle aus Tausend und einer Nacht, so war das damals, das war unsere Jugend. Ja, darf ich noch, wollen Sie noch was sagen?
PS: Ja, ich wollte Sie, zum Beispiel, nach Ihrem Vater fragen.
DE: Ja, gut, mein Vater war einfacher Soldat, er war, er hat mal gesagt, Kradfahrer, die haben also die, die Kradfahrer haben also Motorrad wie Nachrichten zum nächsten Posten gebracht, heut [unclear] Handy oder sonst wohin, und der war im Krieg als, muss man sagen, als einfacher Soldat, Gefreiter, weiss ich noch und der kam erst später aus Gefangenschaft zurück. Ich habe des miterlebt den in dem Wohnhaus wo wir wohnten war eben ein freies Gelände und eines Abends haben sie soundsoviel, kamen soundosviele Gefangene mit dem Transporter, also mit der Bahn haben sie hier Zwischenstation gemacht und haben sie die ganzen PG, also diese deutschen Gefangene in diese Fläche, net getrieben sondern die mussten da übernachten und meine Mutter wollte umbedingt gucken ob dort mein Vater dabei ist und die kam auf die glorreiche Idee, hat sich eine weisse Jacke angezogen und hat mit, ob das Regenschirm war oder sonst was weiss ich nicht, ein rotes Kreuz auf den Rücken gemalt und so hatte sie Zutritt. Mein Vater war nicht dabei aber sie hatte die Gewissheit, dass jetzt alles und er kam erst später aus Französischer Gefangenschaft zurück. Also meine Mutter musste und des betone ich auch immer wieder, sage ich immer wieder, alle Achtung vor Mütter die damals ihre Kinder durch diese schwere Zeit gebracht haben, wo die Väter im Urlaub waren und sie wussten nie, kommt er wieder zurück? Und wenn sie aus dem Luftschutzkeller kamen, wusste sie nie, was ist passiert? Was ist kaputt? Es war eine schlimme Zeit. Als wir, jetzt muss ich erstmal rikapitulieren, als wir am 23 Februar versucht haben in die Innenstadt zu kommen, schon am Bahnhof, am Bahnhof [unclear] war praktisch alles zerstört, zu 80% war alles kaputt, kam uns ein kleiner Junge entgegen und der hat nach seinen Eltern gesucht, der sagte, wo ist meine Mama? Seine Mama warscheinlich blieb sie irgendwo im Bombenhagel. Des sind so Erinnerungen. Also, wie gesagt, die Väter kamen dann erst später, viele kamen aus Russischen Gefangenschaft, ich weiss zum Beispiel einen Lehrer gehabt, der kam erst viel später von aus der Gefangenschaft, aus der Russischen Gefangenschaft zurück. Es hatt also wirklich längere Zeit gedauert, bis des alles wieder einigermassen ins Rolen kam, bis dann wieder, ja, erst nach ‚48, also nach dem die Reichsmark abgeschafft wurde, wurde es also besser, aber bis dahin war’s ein Kampf ums Uberleben. Und nochmal, alle Achtung, weiss net, wie die Mütter des geschafft haben, dass sie ihre hungerde Kinder so über die Zeit gebracht haben. Ja, wenn Sie spezielle Fragen haben dann richten sie. Für mich bleibt schwierig, sagen wir mal so, ohne Fragestellungen zu schildern, klar.
PS: Können Sie mir von Ihrer Schwester erzählen? Die Jahre?
DE: Also wie gesagt, es war für mich, meine Schwester lebt noch, Gott sei dank, die ist fünf Jahre älter, ich war damals also fünf, also zehn, und, ja und die war für mich immer der beschützende Engel, sie hatte genauso wenig zu essen und zu trinken wie ich, ich war viel, oder weniger, einige Male mit älteren Kollegen unterwegs des [unclear] für meine Schwester und einer ganz anderen geschildert, aus einer ganz anderen Sicht, denn der war ja damals zehn Jahre alt, bei war noch der Hitlerjugend, von dem gib’s also Bilder auch in dem Buch vom Herrn Redding, ist schon erwähnt, das ist der Herr Hans Paul Gerstung, der leider Gottes vor einiger Zeit verstorben ist, und wir waren immer zusammen in den Schulen [unclear] immer und der hatt es aus einer ganz anderen Sicht schildern können. Also, meine Schwester, wie gesagt, sie war nicht in BDM rum weil sie, warscheinlich war sie zu jung aber wir waren, wie gesagt, das ganze Ding miterlebt und durchgestanden. Ja, stellen Sie ruhig Fragen, ich bin ja da.
PS: Ja ja, erinnern Sie sich auch ein bisschen wie Ihre Schwester die Bombardierungen miterlebt hat oder wie es an der Schule war oder, ein Bisschen das alltägliche Leben.
DE: Ja, ich meine, das alltägliche Leben, sie ist auch auf [unclear] Schule gegangen, hat Abitur gemacht so wie ich es, des Wirtschaftsabitur und sie hat also eine Banklehre gemacht, sie war irgendwo als Assistentin tätig und hat dann irgendwann mal natürlich geheiratet und hat vier Kinder, wohlerzogene Kinder zur Welt gebracht, von einer schon in jungen Jahren schon Professor war, studiert hat und ja Mann, also mein Schwager der ist vor fünf Jahren gestorben. Und sie lebt jetzt für sich allein. Und hat zu mir immer gesagt, es war eine schlimme, es war eine schöne, enbehrungsreiche Zeit und wir müssen jetzt die jetzliche Zeit geniessen, ohne das irgendwelche Kinder irgendwo rumrennen und das finde ich ganz vernünftig, jetzt haben wir auch so viel durchgemacht und jetzt endlich die letzten Jahre die möchte ich mir in Ruhe gönnen, sie hat sich gesundheitlich wieder stabilisiert und ist also, wie man so schön sagt, wieder top fit. Des ist um von meiner Schwester zu sagen, ich weiss noch ja, die ersten Jahren als sie in die Tanzstunde gegangen ist, es gab hier in Deutschland nur eine, ja, eine Tanzstunde, hetu sind sie numeriert, was weiss ich wie viele und ich weiss noch wie sie vor dem Spiegel stand und wie man halt so, meine Mutter hat irgendwo Stoff her bekommen und da hat man ein Kleid gemacht, Tanzstundenkleid, [unclear] gar nicht mehr anziehen. Ich fällt mir also auch spontan wieder was ein, ich bin Katholisch erzogen und war auch am Anfang Ministrant, so, und als ich zur Kommunion ging, gab es natürlich heute, sind sie also alle [unclear] wenn sie zur Kommunion gehen und und und, und aber damals hat man [unclear] ich weiss noch, des Bild hab ich noch, ein Kommunion, eine Kommunionhose, kurz und eine Jacke dazu und diese Jacke hat meine Mutter gesagt, geh nie in den Regen, geh nie, weil des war ein Stoff den haben sie dunkleblau eingefärbt und wenn der in den Regen gekommen wär, wäre die ganze Farbe weggegangen. Ich habe, damals habe alle zusammengekriegt das war meine erste Uhr, die könnten vielleicht heute im Museum verkaufen, die war, ich weiss gar nicht wo sie ist, man hat Kommunion gefeiert, ja, ganz primitiven Verhältnissen, des sind so jetzt vielleicht, fällt mir vielleicht später mal was ein, aber des war so des Konzentrat, mehr weiss ich auch net, Fragestellung, im Moment nicht. Wie gesagt, wenn Sie noch spezielle Fragen.
PS: Ja, Sie haben mir erzählt dass Sie in einem Luftschutzkeller Schutz gefunden haben in der Nähe des Rathauses.
DE: Ja.
PS: Wie, wo waren, gab es auch andere Luftschutzkeller? Können Sie mir das ein bisschen besser erzählen?
DE: Ja, gute Frage, und zwar in der, bei uns, da wo wir gewohnt haben, keine zehn Minuten weg ist eine Schule, gib’s heute noch, es war die Nordstadtschule, und dann hat sie mal Adolf-Hitler-Schule geheissen und heute heisst sie Nordstadtschule, da war ein, unter anderem ein Luftschutzkeller. In diesem Luftschutzkeller waren heute würde man sagen also Feldbetten, ganz einfache Betten und wenn Voralarm war dann ist man dort rübergerannt. Der Luftschutzkeller war in der Regel aber schon voll, denn da gab es viele Leute die haben dort konstant immer nach dorthin gar nicht mehr nach Haus gegangen und da hat man also dann gebetet das also nix passiert. Das Leben im Luftschutzkeller hat sich folgendermassen abgespielt: Voralarm, schnell in den Luftschutzkeller und was ich positiv mitnehmen, mitnahm war also folgendes. Diese Hausgemeinschaft, was man huete nicht mehr findet, diese unterschiedlichen Art, im Keller haben sie alle zusammen gefunden. Ich weiss noch die wir auf dem Boden lagen, des war eine Frau eines Offiziers, die sich später leider in der Wohnung über uns erschossen hat weil sie vielleicht mit dem nicht mehr zurecht kam, wie sie bei uns kniete und uns mit Decken eingehüllt und gewartet hat bis der Alarm vorbei war. Die Häuser waren ja zusammen gebaut also darüber war [unclear] das nächste und dann das nächste. Da war ein, an dem Mauerwerk, das war mit normalen, mit normalen Steinen gemauert, das sass einer von der Partei, ein sogenannter Luftschutzwart, [unclear] Luftschutzwart, der sass vor diesem kleinen Durchgang, der vielleicht ein Meter hoch war, vielleicht ein Meter zwanzig, und des hat das folgende Bewandniss, wenn bei uns jetzt die Dinge [unclear] undosweiter, dann hat der so ein grosses Beil gehabt mit einen Hammer, dann hätte er des Ding durchgeschlagen diese dünne Wand und dann hätte man da durchkriechen können zum nächsten Haus. Des war ein sogennanter Luftschutzwart, natürlich, [unclear] gekleidet, also ein strenger Parteiangehöriger. Und, wie gesagt, wenn dann der, es war am Angriff Dezember, ja soweiso, wir sind dann wieder hochgegangen in die Wohnung, durch die Detonation undsoweiter waren ja die Schränke umgeworfen, und, so komisch es klingt, eine Schublade von einem Schränkchen war rausgerissen, auf’m Boden lag ein Gesangbuch und in den Büchern hatte man ja früher solche kleine Photos oder was weiss ich was alles mitge, und da neben lag also ein Photo raus[unclear] von einen Angehörigen. Meine Mutter hat gesagt, das ist ein Zeichen dafür dass die, der heute nacht zu Tode [unclear] und das war tatsächlich so. Das sind so Erlebnisse die mir also gesprächsweise immer wieder auftauchen, ja habe schon am Anfang gesagt, wenn man älter wird lebt man in Reminiscenzen und nochmal wenn mir irgendjemand jetzt irgendwo was sagen würde und dann fällt das wieder ein. Ein weiteres makabres Erlebnis, in Pforzheim gab es die Wiederstandsleute und dann kam die Gestapo, Gestapo war’s wohl, und die haben diese Leute auf die Höhe getrieben, so’n grosser Trichter mit Wasser gefüllt und haben die Leute dort durch Genickschuss getötet und haben sie da in den Trichter geworfen und Erde drüber. Ich war dabei als sie dann diese Leute da rausgezogen haben, zum Teil schon verwest, und, ja, es war für mich als Junger ein fürchterlicher und dann den Geruch von den, die wurden dann primitiv eingesargt und die Parteimitglieder, also, ja, die mussten die auf den Schultern auf den Friedhof tragen. Was ich in dem Zusammenhang, wenn ich im Frühjahr in den Wald gehe oder so etwas, dann und die Leute in den Schrebergärten zünden ihre Feuer an, wenn sie ihr Holz undsoweiter verbrennen, dieser Geruch, das habe ich noch in der Nase und zwar, in dem Luftschutzkeller wo wir waren, das habe ich vergessen zu sagen, diese Leute, wir waren die einzigen die rauskamen, alle anderen sind ertrunken oder erstickt. Die konnte man gar nicht mehr alle bergen weil es war die Gefahr das solche, es musste alles relativ schnell gehen. Und dann kamen die mit sogenannten Flammenwerfern und haben die von oben in den Keller gerichtet damit also die, ja, die Leichen verbrannt waren und da hat man Kalk hinterher geworfen und dieser Greuch den habe ich ewig in der Nase, wenn ich halt heute, wie ich schon gesagt hab, da vorbei komme, wo Feuerring gemacht werden, dieser Geruch habe ich ewig in der Nase. Und man konnte ja die Leichen gar net so schnell alle bergen, des war ja am 13 Februar 17 Stück, die hat man dann in Leiterwägelchen undsoweiter haben die Angehörigen die auf den Friedhof und da wurden sie also dann in Massengräbern beerdigt. Man hat, es musste alles relativ schnell gehen, ich weiss noch, bei uns in der Strasse da hat es eine Angehörige gefunden, in der Stadt hat also ein kleines Leiterwägelchen gehabt und da hat die also draufgebettet und die Hände drüber und hat also durch die Stadt gezogen und so zum Friedhof. Es gab ja keine, wie heute, Leichenbestatterer sondern, dass muss ich schon erwähnt hab, relativ schnell gehen, um eine Seuchengefahr zu verhindern. Und, wie gesagt, viele viele Wochen, Monate noch nach dem Angriff, ja, hatt es noch gebrannt. Ja, also wie gesagt, ruhig, haben Sie gern noch Fragen, ich spreche jetzt so ohne Konzept.
PS: Sie redeten eben von den Geruch, den Sie jetzt noch fühlen.
DE: Ja, den habe ich noch in der Nase.
PS: Gibt es noch andere, Gefühle die Sie jetzt noch haben, sagen wir, ich weiss nicht, erinnern Sie sich an den Ton der Sirenen, oder?
DE: Ja, ich weiss was Sie sagen wollen. Der Ton der Sirenen, wenn es immer Probealarm ist, an, wie soll ich das sagen, nicht überfällt mich des, sondern tauch des alles immer wieder auf und wie gesagt, auch der Geruch, das sind Dinge die, die kann man, die verfolgen einen immer wieder und auch nochmal zu dem [unclear], wir, meine Tochter, meine Schwester auch, wir waren abgestumpf, denn wenn sie als Kinder immer wieder mit dem Tod confrontiert werden, meine Mutter sagte: „Guck a mal, jetzt haben sie wir drinnen gefunden und der und der ist noch vermisst“ undsoweiter, dann sind sie irgendwo abgestumpft. Denn, ich muss immer das sagen, jeder Mediziner, jeder Polizist oder wer es auch immer ist, der ständig mit Unfällen zu tun hat, der hat im [unclear] nimmer auch so grosse Gefühle, kann er auch gar net haben und so war’s auch bei uns, wir haben die Toten angesehen und des war’s so. Ja, also wie gesagt, stellen Sie halt Fragen.
PS: Hatten Sie Angst als Sie im Luftschutzkeller waren?
DE: Wir hatten alle Angst, die ganz jungen hatten Angst, denn wir wussten ja nie, was passiert ausserhalb und es war ein erhebendes Gefühl, wenn wir also wie gesagt die Treppen hochgingen, die Tür auf und haben also die frische Luft. Es war eine, dass muss ich nochmal sagen, die Angst hat die Leute in den Kellern, ob des öffentliche Luftschutzkeller waren oder Keller im Haus, hat die Leute irgendwo vereinigt muss da man sagen, die lagen bei einander und heute noch Hausgenossinen, hat man da gesagt, die immer, wenn ich die treffe, ich weiss, das war damals so. Des kann man sich heut gar nicht vorstellen. Heut macht man die Tür zu, der Nachbar interessiert nicht im Grunde, Entschuldigung, gar nicht, mach die Tür auf, mach die Tür zu, aber damals war einer auf den anderen angewiesen, irgendwo sass man, einen Eimer Wasser übrig gehabt hat, denn hat man des geteilt. Heute, uninteressant. Und des war das schlimme, also, Angst hat uns in den Keller immer wieder begleitet denn, ich sag’s zum zichsten Mal, wir waren dann froh, als wir wieder aus dem Keller kamen. Eine Frage noch, die Sie gestellt haben, Luftschutzkeller, es gab ja noch im Stadtgebiet wie viele Luftschutzkeller? Öffentliche Luftschutzkeller, wenn Sie also in der Stadt waren, es war Voralarm, dann sind, die Leute haben schon gewusst wo die Luftschutzkeller sind, sind in die Luftschutzkeller geströmt und haben dort die nächste und ich weiss nicht was zugebracht. Es gab also, ich muss mal sagen, ich weiss nicht wie viel aber in Stadtgebiet eine ganze Menge Luftschutzkeller und ja, und da sind also die Leute, wenn Voralarm war, reingegangen und ja und haben, zum grössten Teil, weiss, natürlich war grad im Stadtzentrum, es sind viele erstickt und auch ertrunken durch des Wasser und ich weiss auch noch als wir, meine Mutter, meine Schwester unterwegs waren und es lagen irgendwo Leichen am Strassenrand, die man da also geborgen hatte, da hat unsere Mutter gesagt: „Guck a mal, die sind erstickt“. Die lagen da und hatten irgendwie geplatzte Lungen, dass heisst also die haben Bluttröpfchen unter der Nase gehabt. Des waren so unsere, aber dass man da grosse Gefühle gezeigt habt, wenn ich mich zurückerinnere, muss ich sagen, nein, man hat des registriert, es war so. Ja. Haben Sie noch Fragen?
PS: Haben Sie eine Ahnung, wie viele Leute in, wie viel Platz da war im Luftschutzkeller, wie viele Leute da bleiben konnten?
DE: Ja, also ich gehe erstmal von der Nordstadtschule aus, gehen Sie, muss mal überlegen, die Nordstadt ist relativ gross, und die Luftschutzkeller waren praktisch überfüllt, da lag Person an Person, habe vorhin grad vergessen zu sagen, da war auch in dieser Nordstadtschule, in dem Luftschutzkeller war also, na, ich würde heute sagen, ein Sanitätsraum, wo man leicht verletzte Leute gebracht hat. Es gab zum Teil kein Licht und da haben, die Decke, [unclear], hat man mit fluorosiriender Farbe gestrichen, dass heisst also, es war also ein Dämmerlicht, wenn Sie des heute jemand sagen das es mit fluorosirender Farbe gestrichen hat, würden die sagen absolut schädlich. So war das und nochmal die Leute in den Luftschutzkeller, da war alles irgendwo vereint, es gab kein, der ist besser gestellt, der ist, sondern man war vereint, man hat zusammen gerückt, es war kalt, man sich gegenseitig gewärmt, und wenn jemand irgendwo was ein bisschen zum Essen gehabt hat, dann wurde des geteilt. So war es in den Luftschutzkellern, oder wie es so schön heisst, im Bunker. Ich kann also nur von der Nordstadtschule sagen und von der, unten im Marktplatz und Marktplatz ist ja also noch ewig, ich sag ja damals, ich sah als sechsjähriger wie die Leute von der Partei, da waren ja immer solche Metall, Metallsprossen in die Wand ingewinkt, also als Leiter wo man also raufgekönnend, oben war also dann eine grosse eiserne Tür und da haben die also streng drauf geachtet, das ja keiner aus dem Dings rauskommt. Wir haben eben in der Nordstadtschule wo ich schon gesagt haben, haben wir heute noch diese schweren eisernen Schutztüren, die zweifach, zwei Riegel haben. Für mich [unclear] Erlebnis, ich spreche jetzt von der Nordstadt, vor den Kellern waren dann, hat man, mit Steinen hat man also so ein Vorbau gezimmert, damit also dort keine Brandbomben und soweiter reinfallen können. Wir haben, in den Bombentrichter haben wir gespielt, ich weiss noch wie heute, damals etwas älteren, die haben die Patronen gesammelt, wir haben die geöffnet, haben des Pulver, des Schwarzpulver auf’n Boden [unclear] angezündet. Gab’s ja wunderschöne Stichflamme. Heute unvorstellbar. Wie ich schon gesagt habe, ein Kamerad der etwas älter war, der hat also damals irgendwie, weiss der Kerl was, mit’m Hammer des aufgeklopft, das Ding is explodiert und hat im also zwei Finger weggerissen. Auch oben [unclear] Stadt, sehe ich noch heut vor mir, war auch ein Junge, wir haben da oben, waren so Brombeeren undsoweiter haben’se gespielt und einen schönen Tages kam er schreienderweise oben runter und er hatte so eine Bombe, hatte sich die Hände verbrannt, ich sehe ihn noch schreinenderweise die Strasse runterrennen, nach seiner Mama zu rufen. Es gab als nach [unclear] noch viele, wie gesagt, von Bomben die man also da gefunden hat und wo man also praktisch mit Handgranaten, die Handgranaten die hat man dann, haben dann [unclear] für die Handgranaten genommen und haben die in Reihen raus, also, des Pulver und haben [unclear] draus gemacht, ich weiss noch, wie man so in buntbemalten, ja, da haben wir also als Tanz [unclear] benützt. Es wurde viel von den Sachen umfunktioniert zu Spielzwecken. Denn nun mal es gab ja heute, damals gab’s ja kein Steckenpferd, damals gab überhaupt nix, man hat mit den notwendigen, wie gesagt, es fällt mir jetzt grad ein, diesen von man des umgebaut hat zu Kreisel mit einer Schnur, und hat also damit gespielt, oder man auf der Strasse, es gab nicht wie heute dieses Riesenaufkommen an Autos, es gab so gut wie keine Autos, zu dem Thema, es gab auch kein Benzin. Man hat also Autos gebaut, die haben hinten so einen grossen Trichter gehabt, Metalltrichter, und da hat man dann mit Holz geschürt und so, wurde Gas erzeugt, und so sind die also durch die Gegend gefahren. Bei uns in der Strasse, wo heute also Autos, Auto fährt, unvorstellbar, da war vielleicht, ich sag mal in der Woche vielleicht zwei oder drei-man Auto, da hat man auf die Strasse solche mit Kreide solceh Dinger gemalt, das hiess also König Kurfürst, König Graf und da hat man dann, es wurde hinter her gehüpft und, ja, es war also diese Zeit aber ich sag’s jetzt wir waren irgendwo glücklicher und ich sehe die heutige Jugend, die, will net sagen alle aber, alle unzufrieden sind und es muss zu Weihnachten und zu Ostern immer noch mehr, wenn ich jetzt seh, das schon vor Tagen jetzt die Osterhasen da angeboten werden, Die Kinder kriegen ihre Osterhasen und sagen Danke, wenn [unclear] sagen’se Danke und dann gibt es auf die Seite und irgendwann werden sie weggeworfen. Des, ja. Des war, ja, sonst fällt mir im Moment spontan gar nichts mehr ein. Des alles liegt an Ihnen.
PS: Sie erzählten mir dass sie also in den Bombentrichtern spielten und sie erzählten mir etwas von den Bauklötzen die sie einmal als Geschenk bekommen haben.
DE: Ja, also die Bombentrichter, die Bombentrichter,die haben sie ja dann gefüllt mit Wasser irgendwann und da, wie kann man sagen, simma [unclear], haben Baumrinde genommen, haben Schiffchen draus geschlitzt und haben die also auf diesen Bombentrichter schwimmen lassen. Und den Bauklötzchen, des hat, ja. es war folgendermassen, da mein Vater bei der Bank war, haben die Kinder, also wir, immer zu Weihnachten was bekommen und zwar so kleine bemalte Holzklötzchen, da hat man dann so Türme hin draus bauen können und und und, alles mögliche. Heute ist es alles mit einer, die Bauklötze mit einer Farbe gestrichen das de auch nichts abfärbt aber damals war’s also so, die waren halt einfach gestrichen mti einer Farbe und wenn man die lange irgendwo [unclear] da ist die Farbe weggegangen, aber es war halt, es war für uns ein Erlebnis. Es gab’s, wie gesagt, sonst nichts, denn wir waren froh über jedes Ding das wir also da bekommen haben. Telephon, natürlich hat’s kein Telephon gegeben, nix, konnte ja gar net sein, ne. Ja, ich warte auf Ihre Frage.
PS: Sie hatten auch die anderen Bombardierungen erwähnt, vor dem 23 Februar ‚45.
DE: Ja.
PS: ‚44, also der erste April ‚44.
DE: Also der erste war am ersten April ‚44. Und, ich habe es grad vor mir liegen, auswendig weiss ich ja net, und zwar, sie schreiben 80 bis 100 feindliche, also Flieger, die die Stadt aus [unclear] Richtung, sollen nach Angaben, 95 Menschen ums Leben gekommen sein. Und Statistisch, 120, 127 Familien obdachlos. Und, wie gesagt, am 10 Oktober’44, abends war also ein schwerer Angriff mit Luftminen. Wir haben, das fällt mir jetzt grad ein, die, es wurden sogenannte, wie soll man sagen, Alluminiumstreifen, haben die Flieger abgeworfen, um die andere, die Angreifer zu irritieren und des haben wir dann gesammelt, also Alluminiumstreifen, die haben wir auf der Strasse eingesammelt. Muss ja aber, muss aufpassen, das net grad wieder Fliegeralarm war, wir waren immer zwischen Luftschutzkeller und Freiheit immer praktisch unterwegs und ich ging also nie in die erste Klasse weil als ich in die erste Klasse gekommen soll, war ja Krieg und ich kam dam also gelich in die zweite Klasse. Des, ja, des hat sich dann irgendwie wieder einreguliert, denn die Lehrer von damals, ich weiss noch ja, Gott hab in Seg, der Rektor der also ein strenger Anhänger des Regimes war, der noch sein Parteiabzeichen da hat hängen gehabt, ja, des war also so, als ich zur Stadt kam, meine Kollegen dann, die kamen ja vom Kriegzeug (?) und waren also zum Teil Zahlmeister, was weiss i was, da herschte auch ein anderer Ton, heute nicht mehr hab vorstellen können, also bei den Fliegeralarm die hat sich hauptsächlich immer wieder unterhalb des Bahnhofs abgespielt haben, in der Nordstadt war’s, ja, die wahr relativ unbeschadet davon gekommen aber, ja, also ich kann nicht in dem Sinn, grad in unserer Umgebund ist eine Bombe in ein Haus gefallen aber am sonsten Nordstadt nix, Südtstadt unterhalb vom Bahnhof ja. Und als wir in der Nacht, muss also nochmal rikapitulieren, wir haben eine Brücke, eine eiserne Brücke die von der Nordstadt über’s Bahngelände führt und da wollten wir also dann in der Nacht drüber gehen, da kam uns einer entgegen und hat geschrien, nicht weiter gehen, hat uns also auch vor dem Tot gerettet, die war genau in der Mitte durchgebrochen. Und dann mussten wir also umkehren und sind dann wie gesagt in die, haben versucht in die Stadt vorzudringen was aber bei der Hitze undsoweiter an diesem Abend, an dieser Nacht nicht mehr möglich war, ja.
PS: Haben Sie noch Erinnerungen aus der Schulzeit?
DE: Aus der Schulzeit, ja, nun also aus der Grundschule, ich habe noch ein Paar Sachen aufgehoben und zwar ja, heut schreibt man mit Kuli oder was weiss ich was alles mögliches, gab’s damals nicht, es gab ein Tintenfässchen und es war auf, und dann hat man also Federn gehabt, Bindelstrich undsoweiter, des war die Schulzeit und ich war schon im Gymnasium, da hatten wir einen Lehrer und heute es war eine ganz tolle Erfindung, wir hatten einen Rechenschieber, Rechenschieber mit dem man also in der geschoben hat, Wurzel aus undsoweiter und dieser Lehrer war ein Promovierter, war ein Techniker und der hat mal gesagt, so jetzt wollen mal gucken, Wurzel aus neun und hat in der geschoben und gesagt, Wurzel ist ungefähr drei. Heute würden wir darüber lachen, des waren so, wir hatten praktisch, ich weiss noch, bin damals in die Grundschule gegangen noch mit einen Schulranzen wo man noch am Schulranzen war eine Schnur und da war ein Schwamm befästigt, da hat man als vorne an der Tafel und da hat man das asugewischt und ja, also, ja, des war so die Schulzeit und wie gesagt richtig los gegangen ist est als ich dann in die nach vier Jahre oder nach drei Jahre Grundschule ins Gymnasium also in die, ja, ging, da lief das alles besser, ganz langsam ja und dann kam ja dann keine Lebensmittelkarten mehr und ja, es ging dann langsam voran aber wie gesagt hat es einige Zeit gedauert und wir haben halt in Pforzheim noch Grundstücke die noch provvisorisch gebaut sind nach der langen Zeit, nach den ‚73 Jahren. Ja, was wollen Sie dann noch wissen? Kann ich Ihnen not mit irgendetwas dienen?
PS: Sie hatten, wann, also sie waren nie in der Schule als Fliegeralarm war?
DE: Nein, nein, ich war nie in der Schule als Fliegeralarm war, meine, sage meine Tochter, meine Schwester die war in der [unclear] Lage dass sie also, als sie auch in die Nordstadtschule ging, dass sie also bei Fliegeralarm zu uns in die Wohnung des geschafft hatte, wie gesat, des sind 8 Minuten zu gehen, ich habe des auch [unclear], wir hatten ja, auch heute, keine Zentralheizung was es alles gibt, meine Mutter hat einen ganz normalen Kohlenofen gehabt und im Keller hatt man dann Briquettes gehabt. Und dann ist sie in den Keller gegangen und hat zwei, drei Briquettes geholt und hat in dem Ofen Feuer gemacht. Dieser Ofen, diese Wärme musste aussreichen für drei Zimmer, Schlafzimmer war sowieso tabu, aber da mussten zwei Räume damit beheizt werden. Auf dem Ofen hat man so gekocht und was weiss ich was denn es gab auch net wie heut, dass man also rahen Feld hat, später hat man immer ein Gas, mit Gas betrieben und da gab’s, so ein kleiner Anzüder, dann hat man des aufgedreht und ist da Gas rausgekommen und da hat man schnell das Feuer hinnehmen müssen das des net explodiert ist und dann hat man auf dem Gasofen, hat man dann gekocht. Des sind so, wie gesagt, meine Erinnerungen, ich weiss noch, man hat natürlich, es wurde, heute geht man in den Laden und man kauft sich Burger oder was das alles gibt, damals war es ja, gab’s des noch nicht so, man hat also selber gekocht, meine Mutter hat gebacken, es war ganz toll was da also gemacht wurde. Meine Spezialität sind also, sind Maultaschen, das kann ich net verheimlichen, und meine Mutter hat dann in der Küche den Teig ausgewält, ich bin also dabei gewesen und da hat sie also und und und, des war die besten Maultaschen die hat man dann gefüllt mit wie, was weiss ich was, des waren so, ja, die Erlebnisse.
PS: Sie hatten vorher etwas angedeutet an Wiederstandsleuten.
DE: Ja, des war ja die, des hab ich jetzt leider, des steht in dem Buch vom Herrn Redding, die Wiederstandsleute wie diese [unclear] waren, die waren ja dann zum Teil hier, wir hatten hier ein Gefängnis heute, ist [unclear] Gefängnis und da waren die, hat man da die Leute inhaftiert und, wie gesagt, wurden dann oben durch Genickschuss getötet. Aber ich weiss net wie viel, aber wie gesagt im Buch vom Herrn Redding steht die Zahl drin, ich weiss bloss dass also die dort raussgezogen hat und das es fürchterlich war und zwar, Arzte ma Rande gestanden haben, mussten die Leute identifizieren oder was weiss ich was. Des waren so die grawierende Erlebnisse aber, sagen wir so, es war für uns Alltag, ein Paar Mal war wurde gesagt, es war für uns Alltag, wir haben praktisch mit Leichen gespielt, es war ja nix anderes. Es war unser Alltag.
PS. Haben Sie noch Erinnerungen an Ihre Wohnung?
DE: Ja, die Wohnung, ja sebstverständlich, jedes Mal wenn ich vorbeilauf kann ich genau sagen wo, die wurden dann. Meine Mutter hat noch bis zu Ihrem Tod dort drin gelebt, es waren Wohnungen da kam man heut kaum noch einziehen, mit natürlich keine Jalousinen sondern normale Rolläden, die waren immer irgendwann gestrichen hat, vom Zeit zu Zeit kam ein Mahler, Tapezzierer, das war also ein ganz tolle Sache, der kam mit einen Wägelchen, ja, hat er also die Wände tapezziert. Und des waren so, wie gesagt, täglich undsoweiter, nix, ewig noch der Ofen wo meine Mutter so schön hochgetragt in den Keller gegangen ist und hat morgens den Ofen in Betrieb gesetzt und kann ich mir nciht vorstellen. Heut geht man hin, dreht den Hahn auf und dan man hat also seine Temperaturen und wenn man dann Öl braucht dann ruft man den Lieferanten an und dann liefert der Ol aber darüber nachdenken, ne.
PS: Wie war es mit der Verdunkelung?
DE: Ja, danke, ja, folgendermassen, da hat man net wie heut Jalousine gehabt sondern man hat, auf eine Rolle war ein schwarzes aus, weiss net was es war, Pergament oder was es so war, oder Leinen schwarz und da runtergezogen, das musste man machen damit die Flieger undosweiter, das die net wussten wo was ist, also des war Vorschrift, dass man hat meine Mutter hat [unclear] hat überall diese Jalousinen, Jalousinen heisst runtergezogen. Schwarz. Und Ich sag nochmal, ich habe noch langezeit diese Fahnenstangen aufgehoben, das war eine normale Holzstange und da dran hing also diese Fahne des Dritten Reiches. Und überall wurde kontrolliert, wehe wenn diese Fahne nicht raushängt hat, da haben wir gesagt, das ist kein Partei Mitgied, also da muss man hinterher gehen. Ja, aber diese Sachen erfährt man erst später, oder tut man erst später aus dem Bewusstsein, denn damals haben wir wohl nix dabei gedacht, dass musste halt so sein und ich habe dann folgenschweres Erlebnis möchte man sagen, des war schon nach ‚45 ein Offizier, habe ich später erfahren, der wollte noch mit seinem Auto, ein alter Opel P4, wollte er noch türmen, abhauen, den hat man, ich weiss noch die Stelle genau, erwischt und hat ihm dann vermutlich erschossen und hat das Auto in Brand gesetzt. Hinzu wie das Auto noch gebrannt hat, ja, als der Mensch noch im Auto brannte. Ich, fällt mir ein das am Rand als wir nach Tiefenbronn liefen durch den Wald hindurch, Pforzheim Tiefbronn tiefer Wald, da waren noch versprengte deutsche Soldaten, die noch geglaubt haben dass es ja, sie wurden noch [unclear] als wir nach Tiefbronn liefen noch so am Graben entlang an der Strasse und da war noch ein deutscher Soldat, der hat noch mit seinem Gewehr, als ein Flieger oben drüber flog, den beschossen, war [unclear] weil er auch noch grad geglaubt hat, dass Deutschland, ja, noch an den Endsieg glaubte. Noch zu dem Zeitpunkt, nach ‚45.
PS: Erinnern Sie sich noch an etwas anderes an das Ende des Krieges? Als der Krieg zu Ende war, also?
DE: Das habe ich Ihnen ja gesagt, die Kapitulation war ja am 8 Mai 1945, ich habe schon mal gesagt, bei uns war des, ob des Franzosen waren oder Engländer, das spielt erstmal keine Rolle, des waren für uns, diese Frage ist aufgetaucht bei einen Gespräche bei dem Herrn Redding in der Buchhandlung, waren diese Franzosen, waren diese Engländer, waren des Befreier oder was waren des? Diese Frage kann sie mir keiner beantworten. Ich weiss es nicht. Die einen sagen, es waren Befreier, sie haben uns befreit vom Dritten Reich, für uns als Jungen, ich habe des net als Befreier umbedingt gesehen sondern es waren Leute, die uns aus einer anderen Welt in eine besseren Welt geführt haben, muss ich so sagen, es gab wieder zu essen, es gab, die Amerikaner waren freundlich und es war so ganz toll. Wir haben ja momentan dieses, net Problem aber, es wurden, auf der Höhe wurden ja Englische Flieger, ja, die mussten notlanden und die wurden dann auch da oben erschossen. Des geht ja nun hin und her und die kommen ja jedes Jahr zu uns, also die Überlebenden und die Nachfolger und es sind dann immer Versöhnungsgespräche und und und. Es waren damals, [unclear] es waren Hitlerjungen die damals, weiss ich nicht so genau, sechzehn Jahre alt waren, als die also dabei waren oder sogar selber diese Flieger erschossen haben. Man hat mir immer wieder die Frage gestellt, die haben sich auch nichts dabei gedacht, die wurden ja, sagen wir mal, manipuliert, haben halt gesagt, guck mal, die haben das gemacht und deshalb, es ist alles eine Gewissensfrage. Und ich sag nochmal, waren es Befreier? Für mich waren’s nicht unbedingt Befreier sondern es kamen Leute ins Land, die uns wohltaten, die uns zu essen gegeben haben, zu trinken, es ging uns besser wie vorher. Ja.
PS: Wo ist das passiert?
DE: Mit den Fliegern?
PS: Ja.
DE: Des ist von Pforzheim, da schreibt momentan ein jungern Mann seine Doktorarbeit drüber, da war es grad, diese Tage wieder so, gestern oder vorgestern in der Presse, so, da wir ein Gottesdienst abgehalten und und und, des war von Pforzheim nach Huchenfeld sind es sechs Kilometer. Da gib’s also grosse Berichte drüber wer wann wo und die jungen Leute, die da beteiligt waren, bei der Exekution, die kamen dann auch, haben im Gefängnis, Zuchthaus so und so viel Jahre abgesessen, also weiss ich nicht aber des war damals so. Wie gesagt, die mussten notlanden. Aber wie gesagt, wenn sie da die Details wissen die kann man also, no problems, die kann man also, in Behalt legen.
PS: Erinnern Sie sich welche, Verzeihung, habe ich Sie unterbrochen?
DE: Was, welche?
PS: Habe ich Sie unterbrochen?
DE: Mit was?
PS: Wollten Sie etwas sagen?
DE: Nein, nein, ich wollte dass Sie fragen, ob Sie noch, weil, wie gesagt, das ist immer schwierig wenn ich bestimmtes Thema vorbereite oder so muss ich etwas nebuläs aus meinem Leben gerichten, desshalb bitte ich Sie, dass Sie noch, wenn Sie noch Fragen haben, die Fragen gern an mich richten?
PS: Wenn Sie jetzt zurückdenken an die Zeit, als Sie ein kleiner Junge waren,
DE: Ja.
PS: Erinnern Sie sich was Sie gegenüber, welche Gefühle Sie damals Sie gegenüber denen, welche Gefühle Sie hatten, gegenüber von denen die Sie bombardierten?
DE: Ja, ich weiss, da kann ich eine gute Antwort draufgeben, also, ob sie gut ist weiss ich net, ich habe, ich hatte und habe keine Animositäten, ich will sagen obwohl der Grossangriff ja bei uns viel zerstört hatt, also wie gesagt des Anwesen von meiner Oma, das heute was weiss ich was, wert wäre, ich habe keine Animositäten, ich kann nicht sagen, die bösen Engländer, die bösen Amerikaner, weil ich jetzt ein Schritt weiterdenken muss, wir, die Deutschen, haben ja bei euch unsoweiter das gleiche gemacht, da müssen die auch uns gegenüber auch einen Hass haben, aber gottseidank hatt sich des alles gelegt, des sind, wir haben uns alle wieder irgendwo versöhnt. Und ich kann nicht sagen, wir, ich, oder, ich konnte nichts dafür und wenn jemand kommt und sagt, wie dieser da geschehen, er sei da selber dran Schuld und die bösen Engländer und Amerikaner wer es auch immer war, dieses, diese Aussagen kann ich nicht teilen. Denn es war auf beiden Seiten es war Krieg und es muss mal eben so respektieren, selbst nach all den Jahren muss ich sagen, ich hatte zu keinen Dings irgendwo, so Engländer, Amerikaner, was auch immer, eine Voreingenommenheit, sondern es sind für mich, wenn sie zu uns kommen, sind für uns Freunde und die jetzt kommen, die Generationen, die Nachfolge, die konnte ja sowieso nix dafür. Und dann will ich es nochmal sagen, diese, sag ich zum zichsten Mal, diese [unclear] zu mir gesagt wurde, ihr habt ja, dass ihr Schuld seit, was weiss ich , Guernica also, Entschuldigung, ich war nicht dabei, [unclear] es war die Generation nach unser, wie die empfinden, weiss ich nicht, ich auf jeden Fall heute, auch als Junge, hatte ich nie irgendwo, es wurde also nie irgendwo Hass gesehen. Meine Mutter hat nie gesagt: „Da guck mal, was die gemacht haben“, weil die eben wussten, dass wir dasselbe, der Deutsche auch gemacht haben. Also es bestand nie, es war nie eine Animosität gegenüber England, [unclear] verstehen, ich glaub dass ist eine Frage, ja, es ihre Frage beantwortet.
PS: Haben Sie noch irgend noch eine andere Erinnerung an den 23 Februar?
DE: Ja, ich habe Ihnen nun den 23 Februar praktisch geschildert, und was eben das entsetzliche war, dass diese Brandbomben, dass die Leute, ich weiss nicht, von Technik, genau von Technik aber das waren ja Phosphorbomben und die Leute sind praktisch auf der Strasse [unclear] geblieben, sind also als neben den [unclear] am Schlossberg, wie gesagt, lagen so und so viel Ding die wirklich vor Brand zusammen geschrumpft waren. Aber ich kann Ihnen noch folgendes sagen, man hat immer von 20000 Toten gesprochen, stimmt aber nicht, es wurde und zwar hat man die Toten von den anderen Angriffen zusammengezählt. Also Ihrer Information, ich hab’s grad da, am 23 Februar, es gab ja viele, hier Ausländer, Gastarbeiter, Fremdarbeiter, Entschuldigung, und in diesem Areal unten am Marktplatz sind also 23 Februar 253 Ausländer ums Leben gekommen. Der Nationalität nach überwiegend Fremdarbeiter. Also wir hatten 253, also die richtige Zahl sind also genau 17600 beim Grossangriff. Und die Zahl 20000 stimmt net denn da wurden die Toten mitgezählt von den vorigen Angriffe. Also, des ist jetzt also festgestellt. Kann man schon googeln was da, ja, bin grad mal schön googeln, ja, also des ist ja, des sind die entgültichen Zahlen. Also, wie gesagt, [unclear], nur wichtig dass jemand Fragen stellt, da kann ich die Fragen aber so aus’m hohlen Magen raus zu schildern mir [unclear] das ist immer schwierig.
PS: Ich wollte Sie noch fragen, wie war die Wahrnehmung der Bombardierung von Pforzheim, wie ist die verarbeitet worden von der Bevölkerung im Laufe der Jahre? In welchem Licht ist sie gesehen worden?
DE: Unterschiedlich, sehr unterschiedlich und zwar ich hab des [unclear] grad gemacht, man hat langezeit gesagt, Pforzheim wurde bombardiert weil Zünder hergestellt wurden. Andere sagten, es wurde systematisch zerstört, [unclear] war flächendeckend, also die Meinungs kann es sein dass flächendeckend das es umbedingt weil sie Zünder hergestellt haben sondern eben dass es flächendeckend war und die Meinung ging natürlich, ist ja ganz klar, die Mehrheit, die Altvorderen, die damals noch jung waren die, ich hab nie irgendwie [unclear] gesagt, die und das undsoweiter kaputtgemacht, man hat es hingenommen ohne irgendwelche Hassgefühle, denn wenn irgendejemand was gesagt hat, daan wurde immer wieder dagegengesagt: „Und was hat ihr gemacht in“, Hitler hat sagt: „Ich werde die Städte ausradieren“. Verstehen Sie, immer, es war ein, es waren gegenseitig aber sagen wir mal Hassgefühle habe ich nie irgendwo erlebt, dass die also mit [unclear] durch die Stadt gerannt sind, haben gesagt, die sind Schuld, nein, des nicht. Ja, Sie können ruhig noch weiterfragen, ich bin da.
PS: Nur noch vielleicht eine letzte Frage, wie war ihr Leben nach dem Krieg?
DE: Mein Leben nach dem Krieg, auch des habe ich auch irgendwo schon [unclear], mein Leben nach dem Krieg, es war eine Zeit wo man also, [unclear] aber es war eine paradiesische Zeit, wirt hatten, wichtig wir hatten zu essen, es gab kein Luftschutzallarm mehr, wir wurden net aus dem Schlaf gerissen, man hatte wieder, einerseits konnte ausgehen, ohne dass man in den nächsten Luftschutzkeller springen musste, wie gesagt, des Ende des war ganz wichtig, nach und nach wieder Sachen kaufen können, Sachen wo man sagen muss, dass kann man gar nicht mehr essen, von Konserven, [unclear] Hamburger irgendwo gekauft oder was weiss ich was, des gab‘s damals so net, sondern es war noch gute Hausmanskost. Was, ich hab so das selber gebacken, der Duft des frischgebackenen Brotes oder des frischen Kuchen und des war halt, es war toll. Des war die Zeit nach 1945 und wie gesagt, es gab da keine Lebensmittelkarten mehr aber ganz wichtig war es, dass man als Kind wieder durchschlafen konnte, weil die Mutter ihn nicht wachgerüttelt hat in den Teppich und dann in den Keller und dann die Angst, wie geht‘s weiter und was macht der Vater der im Krieg ist. Wir haben im Haus eine Frau, deren Mann war auch im Krieg, und des hat irgendwie mit Aberglauben nichts zu tun aber meine Mutter ist mit der zusammengesessen und dann hat man die Eheringe, hat man ein Schnürchen durchgemacht, hat ein Bild vom Ehemann hingelegt und hat des drüber gehalten und vielleicht war es auch Aberglaube. Wenn der Ring dann gependelt hat, dann hat man gewusst, der Vater ist gestorben. Wenn er ruhig war, dann hat man gesagt: „Der lebt noch“. Solche [unclear] ist man zurückgekommen. Des war so.
PS: Hat Ihr Vater ihr erzählt von seinen Kriegserfahrungen?
DE: Die Väter haben in der Regel nix erfahrt, nix erzählt, sie haben also bloss gesagt, dass sie also in Frankreich, dass die [unclear], mein Vater war also einfacher Kradfahrer, hat dass geheissen ja, dass die Altvorderern, die Älteren die besseren, Leutnant, Oberleutnant oder was es alles gibt, dass die ziemlich gehausst hätten. Ich habe eine gute Bekannte gehabt, eine Französin, und die hat mir also berichtet, wie damals die Leute die Deutschen in Frankreich gehasst haben, gewütet haben. Des muss man also auch sehen, also da muss es ziemlich schrecklich zugegangen sein. Also mir hat mein Vater [unclear], er war net irgendwo in der Oberetage, alles miterlebt hat, bloss hat er gesagt, was die, also Oberleutnant., was die da oben gehausst haben, das hat mir eine Bekannte auch erzählt, Französin, dass es also ganz schlimm [unclear], ja, ganz schlimm gehausst haben. So, jetzt muss ich an Handy, wenn Sie noch Fragen haben?
PS: Nein, ich würde sagen, ich würde sagen das reicht. Ich bedanke mich sehr recht herzlich bei Ihnen.
DE: Keine Ursache, wenn Sie dann irgendwie dann noch Fragen haben, wie gesagt, Sie müssen dass noch einsehen, es ist immer etwas schwierig wenn ich [unclear] die Fragen habe, dann kann ich die exakter beantworten, so muss ich aus’m hohlen Magen heraussagen.
PS: Warten Sie. Ich wollte Sie noch fragen, wo war ihr Vater in Frankreich?
DE: Oh, dass Weiss ich nicht genau. [unclear] Frankreich, aber Frankreich, des weiss ich net, hoch [uclear] dreisig Jahren gestorben. Also wenn Sie noch irgendwie diesen [unclear] und dann noch irgendwelche Fragen haben, spezielle Fragen, bin ich jederzeit bereit diese Fragen zu beantworten.
PS: Gut, dann werde ich, für jetzt würde ich sagen, Schluss machen.
DE: Anderthalb Stunden.
PS: Ich bedanke mich sehr recht herzlich bei Ihnen.
DE: Keine Ursache.
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Title
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Interview with Dieter Essig
Description
An account of the resource
Dieter Essig recollects the 23 February 1945 Pforzheim bombing, which he eyewitnessed at six. Mentions the long hours he spent inside a shelter, describing his wartime years as wasted childhood. Speaks of the 1 April 1944 bombing stressing how he didn’t feel traumatized as death was part of everyday life. Describes crowded air raid shelters and explains wardens’ duties, stressing a strong community spirit and how the sense of impending danger drew people close to each other. Mentions various wartime anecdotes: the gruesome sight of charred corpses looking like shrunken cats; the bodies of young girls who died of suffocation displayed on the streets; a trumpeter playing Christmas songs from atop a pile of rubble; blackout measures; execution of regime opponents and lynching of Allied aircrew. Stresses the wartime hardships he endured, such as food shortage and ration cards, and explains how he resorted to eat snails and wild berries to survive. Describes everyday life under the Nazi regime and mentions how he used to play: building wooden soapbox cars, making small boats out of tree bark and collecting live cartridges. Describes Moroccan vanguards raping girls, harassing people and robbing population, while speaks with affections of friendly American soldiers who handed out sweets. Describes the Allies as those who ushered in a better world for Germany by feeding and helping its citizens.
Creator
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Peter Schulze
Date
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2018-03-20
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Peter Schulze
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01:32:13 audio recording
Language
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deu
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Sound
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AEssingD180302
Coverage
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Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Germany--Pforzheim
Temporal Coverage
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1945-02-23
1944-04-01
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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.
bombing
childhood in wartime
civil defence
home front
lynching
perception of bombing war
shelter
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/728/9287/PBrowningDJ1601.2.jpg
a9c58bb31d10b774e30abf2e361e3ba5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/728/9287/ABrowningDJ160613.2.mp3
1ac6814e8f09ad26ce22db6bfcaf9534
Dublin Core
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Title
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Browning, Don
Donald James Browning
D J Browning
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Flying Officer Don Browning (1923 - 2020, Royal Australian Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 463 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Don Browning and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-13
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. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Browning, DJ
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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JH: This is John Horsburgh and today I’m interviewing Don Browning of 463 Squadron. He was a wireless operator in 463 RAAF. We’re at [ deleted] Warrawee in Sydney, New South Wales. And this is part of the IBCC Oral History Project. It’s Monday 13th of June 2016. So, good evening Don. Maybe we can start with when and where you were born.
DB: I was born in Strathfield, New South Wales on the 22nd of July 1923.
JH: So, Don was there any history in the First World War with your family in Sydney?
DB: Yes. My father was in the First World War. He was an officer in the 19th Infantry Battalion and he went away on the SS Ceramic. The 12th reinforcement or the, the 19th Battalion. He was in charge of the body of men that went over. I think there were a couple, it was rather unusual, I think there were a couple of twins I think on this trip on the Ceramic. And as far as I know they went to Egypt and then on to France.
JH: And I gather he, he was involved in some of the major campaigns in, in France.
DB: Yes. He was involved in the campaigns around Pozieres, Ypres, Billancourt, and I don’t know what the other one was now. I can’t think of it. But most of the ones that the 19th Battalion were involved in. In the — from Algeria.
JH: And I believe you went to school at King’s and that had a fairly strong army military background —
DB: Yes. First of all I went to a Burwood Public School. Up to fifth class at Burwood Public School. Then I went to King’s at, I think the age of about eleven. And because I had played the drum in Burwood Public School I became involved playing the drum at King’s. And consequently was in the cadets from the age of thirteen, eleven — sorry eleven or twelve and remained in cadets right through my schooling.
JH: And before you got involved in the RAAF presumably you left school before you joined up. What were you doing?
DB: I, when I left school in 1940 I, I went to Wentworth College which was a part of the Metropolitan Business College to do a business course. And then from there I went out in to the business world. I was employed as an auditor with quite a large firm of chartered accountants called Smiths Johnson. I was mainly out at the glassworks. Australian Glassworks which was part of Australian consolidated industries.
JH: What year was that Don?
DB: That would be in 194 —the early part of ’41. Possibly [pause] yes. Early part of 1941.
JH: So then you, you enlisted in the army I believe eventually.
DB: First of all I enlisted in the air force and was waiting for a call up to have my medical and so forth but then I got a call up for the army. And I went to the boss and told him that I was I had a call up for the army and he told me that I was employed in essential duties sort of thing because I was auditing companies that were involved in munition work and so forth and I needn’t go into the army. But I told him I had already enlisted for the air force and he said, ‘Well in that case you might as well go.’
JH: Don, what with your father, his history in the First World War and you obviously had some military training in the cadets what made you want to join the air force?
DB: Oh, I’d experienced the renown of Kingsford Smith and various aviators. Amy Johnson etcetera and those that were, were involved in the early aviation. And I had a desire to join the air force.
JH: Of course you got to know Rollo Kingsford Smith quite well and were —
DB: Not, not at that point.
JH: But we’ll come to that as we —
DB: Yeah.
JH: Go through your history in the RAAF. So, Don perhaps you could talk about when you went across to the RAAF. I think it was by now 1942 and I gather you went through some training courses in Australia and then set sail for the UK. Perhaps you could talk about your training in Australia.
DB: Well, yes I was. When I joined the air force it was the 17th of August 1942. I joined in army uniform because I’d been employed in the army right from ‘41 until then. And I went to what they called Initial Training School at Bradfield Park, Sydney which is, was down in the Lindfield area on the Lane Cove River. I was there actually for a period of [pause] I should have brought my torch light in here. I can’t see. From the 17th of August until the 1st of October. I think.
JH: What sort of training was that at Bradfield, Don?
DB: Well, that, that was initial training was a lot of square bashing drill. Morse code. [unclear] or electricity and magnetism particularly. A bit of mathematics and aircraft law — air force law, aircraft recognition and general matters to do with the air force.
JH: Yes. So, so from there you were posted to Parkes.
DB: Yes. Well, of course naturally everyone wanted to be a pilot as I wanted to be but a lot of us were made wireless operator air gunners. Particularly those who had done physics at school and I’d been there until leaving. Doing physics and that sort of thing. So quite a number of them were made wireless operators air gunners. I think at that stage the Empire Air Training Scheme were working on the fact that the four engine bombers and that sort of thing would be employed later in the war and they were preparing crews to go on these four engined aircraft. We were selected according to the exams and so forth that we did at Bradfield for training as either observers, wireless operator air gunners, pilots [pause] and I think that that was the general selection of categories. It was only later that the observers became a choice of navigators and bomb aimers and the wireless operators dropped the air gunnery to wear a signals wing. I think that happened in March ’43 if I remember rightly. But it was —
JH: But you still, you still had to do some gunnery training.
DB: Oh yes.
JH: And I think you went to Port Pirie.
DB: We had to do all the training for air gunnery because you could be used in the different categories depending on where you were sent. Whether you were sent to, up to the islands or over to the UK. And of course we hadn’t at that stage. I think that Britain had only been using Wellingtons and Whitleys.
JH: Yes.
DB: And the four engine planes hadn’t even been contemplated.
JH: Yes. Yes. So, so by then you’d passed probably with probably flying colours and you were selected to, to go to the UK.
DB: No. From there we went, we were sent on our various courses. I went to Parkes to do my wireless operation course.
JH: No. I meant, meant from Port Pirie. After Port Pirie.
DB: After Port Pirie where we did the gunnery. Yes. We were sent overseas.
JH: Yes. Yeah.
DB: We came back to Bradfield. That was number 2 Embarkation Depot.
JH: Yeah.
DB: We were there for about ten days.
JH: Yes.
DB: Or a fortnight. And then I remember being, marching down George Street waving to my mother on Farmers Corner. And caught a train up to Brisbane and I went on the Matsonia across to America.
JH: Yeah. So how many were in the contingent marching down George Street?
DB: I couldn’t tell you what the numbers were but there were pilots, there were navigators and or observers at this time.
JH: Yeah.
DB: As they were called then. And some of those did further training in Canada.
JH: Yes.
DB: But I was qualified as a sergeant wireless operator air gunner and I went after a short period in America. I went on the Queen Mary to Scotland and down to Brighton.
JH: What did it feel like marching down to the ship?
DB: Well, it was a bit [laughs] a bit of a surprise because I used to go home every night from Bradfield. And each night I’d go back or each day I’d go back to Bradfield. I didn’t know when I was going to go or anything or what was going to happen and the last night I can remember going home and I said, ‘Well, I think we might be going tomorrow. We’re doing a march down George Street.’ And my mother came in to watch us.
JH: Did she realise you were heading to the ship though?
DB: She didn’t realise what was happening but she might have had an idea.
JH: Yes. So what an adventure. How old were you then Don?
DB: Let me just have a look and see. I think I left on the [pause]
JH: This is in 1942.
DB: No. It was ’43 that I left. Sorry. I said ’43 for that signals wing. I think that was early ’44.
JH: Right.
DB: I think I was a month ahead of it. Twelve months ahead of myself. I left 2 I, Number 2 Embarkation on the 26th of May 1943.
JH: Ok. So, tell us how you got, I think your destination in the end was Brighton of all places.
DB: Yes. Well we first of all went on the Matsonia to America. We went into Auckland I think it was for about six hours leave we had there. And then we went.
JH: Did you pick up some New Zealanders there?
DB: We picked up some New Zealanders.
JH: Yeah.
DB: Certainly. And it was a, there was a lot of American wounded on board the ship as well. And we as aircrew we had to do gun duty on the various guns all around the ship. And the ship travelled on its own. It didn’t have any escort or anything because it was travelling at about twenty knots. We changed course every seven minutes all the way across the Pacific. We arrived at San Francisco and went by train across America. We were at Camp Myles Standish in America. And it was a very, very large camp. Much much bigger than the showground in Sydney when I was in the army. And it had four PXs. Which would be, well I would describe them as the equivalent to a small shopping centre that we know of today. They could come in a stock which covered everything from gold watches [laughs] the troops were able to buy. But one of the main things I used to think of was the enormous quantity of ice cream that we could get. We did a pass out parade in — on this proper station. And we asked the American band to play at a hundred and twenty paces to the minute because that was the pace that we were used to marching at. The Australians were very proud of the way they used to be able to do a stamp, eyes right. We really impressed these raw recruits in the American camp. We did a marchpast in front of the general and, who they greeted with the hottest version of “Tiger Rag” with this band with about six or eight trombones in the front row playing, “Hold That Tiger.” [laughs]
JH: So, before you headed off to the UK were you getting reports of the, and this would be in ’43, some of the heavy losses that Bomber Command were suffering?
DB: No. Not really. We didn’t get much, much reports about them but we knew that there were losses.
JH: Yes.
DB: It was a bit, it was a bit dicey over there.
JH: Yes.
DB: But my first night at Brighton gave me a surprise because we had an air raid. We were staying at the Grand Hotel in Brighton on the beachfront and all of a sudden the Bofors guns started up and there was aircraft coming in to drop bombs. But —
JH: So you had to —
DB: We had to go down to the basement.
JH: Into an air raid shelter or the basement of the hotel.
DB: No. We went down to the basement of the hotel actually but there were air raid shelters there. Although there were other air raid shelters elsewhere.
JH: Yes. What was the target do you think?
DB: Well, I don’t know but Lord Haw Haw used to say, ‘We know the Australians are in the, at the Grand and the Metropole at Brighton.’
JH: Did he?
DB: So they knew all about us coming.
JH: You may have been the target. So, Don after Brighton you started some more training. Was it at Lichfield?
DB: No.
JH: That you went.
DB: The first training was at the Advanced Flying School training. And I was, I was quite a while converting from the AWA material that we had been trained on to the Marconi equipment which was used in the UK. There was quite a bit of work on that. And then they put us out of practical work on the direction finding station. And finally we did training on Ansons. Avro Ansons. And we did cross-countries and various things on that as wireless ops. We went as number 2 wireless op and then becoming number 1 wireless op in the plane. We had navigators doing training there as well.
JH: Was that at Lichfield?
DB: No. That was at Millom.
JH: Millom. Ok.
DB: In Cumberlandshire.
JH: So after that you went to Lichfield.
DB: After that.
JH: OTU.
DB: That was about, oh three months I think that I was there. I then went to Lichfield which was an Operational Training Unit and it was here that we met the other categories of aircrew and we had to crew up. And this we did in a, in the sergeant’s mess. I remember it quite well because Alan Stutter was to be my pilot. He came and asked me if I’d be a wireless op in his crew. And I think at that stage he might have also had the navigator Paul Wilkinson who had been a schoolpal of his at Canterbury High School. Both of them were quite smart cookies I think. They both had eight A intermediate passes. And we also got the two gunners. A mid-upper gunner who was Malcolm Woodgate. He came from Queensland. I think he’d done his course at Evans Head on the north coast of New South Wales. The other gunner was Dick Holmes and he’d been at Parkes with me and was scrubbed as a wireless operator because the scrubbing for wireless operators was very high because we had to be very very competent in Morse. It was one of my worse subjects. However, I soon was able to conquer it eventually and I finished up passing out about oh I think it was 18 22 25 words a minute. But the minimum was 18 20 22. And following that we then went and did the gunnery at Port Pirie in South Australia.
JH: So, maybe we, we can just mention the crew a little bit more before we talk about operations.
DB: Well, the other members —
JH: This was an all Australian crew, Don?
DB: I was an all Australian crew.
JH: Yeah.
DB: The final member that we picked up at OTU was our bomb aimer. He was much older than the rest of us. I can’t actually recall what age Paul would have been but I think he would have been about twenty eight or so at that time. I think he was thirty one when we came home. But he was, he’d been involved in the radio on the ABC and he had done the early part of a legal course but I think that the Depression came in and stopped that. And he then worked for the ABC from then on.
JH: You — I believe you continued on with the crew and you completed a tour.
DB: Well —
JH: Of thirty six operations.
DB: Yes.
JH: Is that correct?
DB: We picked up — following Lichfield we went to a Conversion Unit where we flew Stirling bombers. That was our first introduction to four engine planes. And it was here that we picked up our flight engineer who was an English fellow in the RAF and he was [pause] his name was Harry Walsh and he came from Leeds. And then we were then a crew of seven. Now, all these fellas worked most assiduously and with their courses that they were, had to, had to accomplish. And I think most of them were given an above average assessment at Con Unit. The whole of our crew finished up with commissions. With the exception of the rear gunner. Dick Holmes was a warrant officer [unclear]. I don’t know just what went wrong there that he wasn’t commissioned. But everyone else was a flying officer in my crew.
JH: Perhaps we can talk a little bit about some of the operations. But before you went on operations by this time you were posted to 463 at Waddington.
DB: No. Before being posted to Waddington I did what we called Lanc Finishing School at a place called Syerston. Somewhere near Nottingham that was. And that was a short course of about I think of about a fortnight or three weeks perhaps. But prior to going there we had to wait until we got, had accommodation there to do that course. We went to Scampton and we did a sort of a commando course for about three weeks there. That was in, in command of a British major who was a pretty tough task to follow. He used to come around looking for the dust on all our [pause] Scampton was a peacetime ‘drome and it had very good accommodation. But he used to come around and he’d put, climb up on the stool to have a look and see if you had any dust on top of your lockers and this sort of thing. And if there was anything there he’d have your running around the with full gear on around the parade ground and so forth. Quite an education.
JH: I don’t suppose you got your own back and took him on one of the operations in a Lanc.
DB: No. We didn’t get our own back there. But I had some other altercation with some of the people when I’ve been in charge of courses at the Advanced Flying School.
JH: So, did you do some nickel raids? These dropping leaflets.
DB: The nickel raid we did —
JH: Propaganda. Yeah.
DB: Was in a Wellington and that was done from Lichfield.
JH: Yes.
DB: On that particular event we ran short of fuel and the navigator had to change over the cocks to the wing tanks.
JH: Yes.
DB: On our way home. Our nickel was to a place called Chartres in France.
JH: Yes.
DB: And we didn’t see any action or anything much but there might have been some searchlights and things like that.
JH: Why did they call them nickel raids?
DB: I don’t know why it was a nickel raid. I don’t know.
JH: This was dropping leaflets.
DB: They were dropping —
JH: Yeah.
DB: Pamphlets there to advise the French people what was going on.
JH: Yeah.
DB: Anyway, on our way back we couldn’t change these cocks on the petrol thing over to the wing tanks and we had to call up Darkie because we were running short of fuel. And we, we were in the vicinity of Boscombe Down. We knew that. And Alan tried calling up on his normal RT set but the range was rather limited with that to about five to ten miles and we didn’t get any response. So I said, ‘I’ll fix it. I’ll zero beam to the tower at 11.54,’ which was the transmitter that we had on to the Darkie frequency which I think was 6140. And anyway I did this and Alan called up on that. Of course we nearly blasted them off the air so they put the lights on and let us land. It was a grass runway or grass strip and they wanted to get rid of us pretty quick. But they came out. They said, ‘What’s wrong?’ We told them we couldn’t shift the cocks and so forth. So they sent the mechanics out. They fixed those and they said, ‘Right. You can go now.’ When Alan ran the motors up he wouldn’t take it off because we’d had a magneto drop so we stuck. We were stuck there overnight which somewhat aggravated the people at Boscombe Down because they had all these experimental aircraft and so forth there and —
JH: So what was Darkie? Explain what Darkie was?
DB: Well, Darkie was a, was a short range radio that [pause] that you could use anywhere in England. Call up, and people used to answer and say, they would be Darkie Derby or Darkie, well wherever they happened to be. So you’d know then where you were.
JH: So, I hope the skipper bought you a beer that night when you got back.
DB: Well, we didn’t. I can’t remember what we had there at the time. I think we went into the mess. They gave us something. Probably a flying meal of some description which was always an egg and a bit of bacon and [unclear] or tomato.
JH: Ok. So, Don let’s look at your first operation. Tell us a bit about that.
DB: Well the first operation I did was on the 1st of August. That was to a place called [pause]
JH: This is ’43. 1943 or ’44.
DB: That was, no that was 1944.
JH: Yeah.
DB: My first operation. The 1st of August 1944. It was after D-Day. And I actually went to the squadron on the 31st of July and the first thing they, we had to do was a cross country to make sure that we were capable of carrying out instructions etcetera. And my first op was to Mont Candon. It was a flying bomb site. And I got the feeling that we didn’t, we didn’t drop bombs on that occasion. We were recalled. But, but there were, I think that was the time that two of our friends went down in a collision over the target and fourteen members were lost.
JH: From 463.
DB: Well, no they were on 467 actually which was the other squadron that was on our, the same ‘drome as ours on Waddington.
JH: At Waddington. Yeah.
DB: But these fellas had been training with us at, on Stirlings at Swinderby only a matter of weeks before.
JH: And I believe after that you were on a raid to Calais.
DB: Well, I did four operations there that were daylights.
JH: Yes.
DB: They were all on French targets. Mostly on flying bomb sites. Then I, my next operation was to Chatellerault in France. That was a night operation. That was 6.45. The next operation we went to Brest. That was a daylight. And that we were down attacking shipping. We did the Clemenceau I think was the name of the ship that we hit. And that was in the Brest Harbour because the Americans were waiting outside. They wanted to use the harbour at Brest and they were waiting to try and get in. These two ships were shelling them and they were having a bit of a problem with them. So we went in and cleaned the two of them up.
JH: So you sank the ships. Or damaged them.
DB: We certainly hit it because we had photographs of all of our targets. At the time that I was operating we always had an automatic camera operating as soon as you opened the bomb door.
JH: Yeah.
DB: So, take pictures and this was I suppose designed so that people would not be dropping bombs willy nilly. But they should be showing their marking point.
JH: Yes.
DB: And so forth.
JH: What was the main worry there? Anti-aircraft fire or were there fighters operating.
DB: It was anti-aircraft was the problem over Brest. And in fact Alan made the remark that he thought that the Yanks might have been firing at us too.
JH: For good measure.
DB: The sky was black with anti-aircraft fire. We got hit in one of the motors on the way in into the target and we got hit coming out in the other motor and we actually came back on two motors. Although I got a [pause] when I spoke to base on the radio they said we should go to a crash landing ‘drome. Alan said, ‘No. We’re not going to,’ He didn’t like sleeping in a strange bed so we’d go back to base and, which we did. And he got a, made a quite a good landing on two motors but we just finished short of the bomb dump. But that would have given them hell of a surprise with a big bang if we’d gone a bit further. But anyway all of the hierarchy in the squadron — that is the group captain and the squadron commander and so forth, they all came out to the plane to congratulate him on coming home on two. I think we might have been one of the early ones to come home on two.
JH: Yes.
DB: And during the debrief, debriefing, the intelligence officer said to me that Alan had done a great job and he would be recommending him. Recommending him for an immediate decoration. Well Alan at that stage was a flight sergeant.
JH: Yes.
DB: And he would have got a DFM but he never got the DFM from the thing and it didn’t come through. He got a DFC at the end of the tour.
JH: Yes.
DB: The same as most pilots who had completed a tour of operations. That’s at Brest.
JH: Yes. What about the Calais raid?
DB: Now, well following Brest I went to Stettin. That was a night job. 7.49. Darmstadt, I flew with a spare bod as a spare bod with another crew. That was an eight, eight and a half hour trip.
JH: What was that like? Fitting in as a spare bod.
DB: Well, you didn’t like doing spare bod trips because you got used to operating with your own crew. But crews [pause] Roe’s crew was quite an experienced crew. And I don’t know what was the matter with their wireless operator but anyway I went with them on that raid to Darmstadt. And the next raid I was to do with them was to Königsberg which was probably one of the deepest raids of Bomber Command. That was, we were airborne for ten hours thirty two. And we, I actually went on the trip with my own crew but I’d been briefed to go with this Flying Officer Roe again and when I found my crew was available to fly I said, ‘No. I’d sooner fly with my own crew Roe. Thanks very much.’ And the signals leader went in my place on the trip to Konigsberg with Roe. They were shot down. So there was a case of being in the wrong place at the right time sort of thing.
JH: Did they survive?
DB: And that was the luck of the game.
JH: Did they survive, Don?
DB: No. They were all killed. Following that I went to [pause] there was — we were coming through fairly thick and fast at that time because this was in the summer period in England. And I did another daylight trip to Boulogne in France. I did Bremen. Dortmund. And then the first trip to Dortmund Ems was early in the piece. That was the 23rd of September.
JH: Was this bombing the canals?
DB: That was bombing the canal to let the water out because a lot because a lot of the transportation of goods and ammunition and so forth was done along the canals in France and Germany.
JH: And successful in creating havoc.
DB: Oh yes. Well, that was. They were always very good raids. It was one that we did on a regular basis. About once a month we went down over there and it took them approximately a month to fix it up again to get the water flowing in it. And we go and let the water out for them. I did some daylights in Wilhelmshaven and Walcheren Island. And I’m just trying to find this trip that I did on Calais which [pause] where was that? I think it was in September. Calais. Calais. Calais. Yes. There we are. This was an interesting trip. This one to Calais. It was the 24th of September and we were briefed to do this raid very early in the morning and we would expect to go in at dawn. But the weather was so bad it was to be an army co-op job because the army were outside of Calais waiting to go in but they were being held up by gunfire from a battery of guns that were down near the harbour in Calais. And anyway it was described as being a death or glory raid and we were [pause] and it was one of army co-op. Well we had, we went out to take off probably shortly after dawn but the weather was so bad they called us in. We had breakfast. We went out again to the aircraft and sat there in the dispersal area until lunchtime. Came in again and had lunch. And about, let me see what time it was that we took off. We took off at [pause] I can’t read this thing. 17.30. 5.30 in the afternoon.
JH: After waiting all day.
DB: After waiting all day to do this raid. And we were told that we had to clean these guns up. We were to bomb from eight thousand feet. Or ten thousand I think it was but, but we were to go no lower than twelve hundred feet or we’d go up with the bombs. And when, as we approached Calais we were, we were down at nineteen hundred feet. And my, our bomber aimer Paul O’Loughlin was a most meticulous bomb aimer and he wasn’t going to go in and drop his bombs willy nilly. He made us go and do an extra circuit to get himself on the right line to bomb.
JH: Were you first in?
DB: No. There were others there but I just can’t recall. I, I was busy trying to get radio communication because they had picked a frequency that was right on the BBC and all I could get was the BBC coming through strong and clear. And I can remember it quite well because the mid-upper gunner was a fella who liked to sing songs and he’d seen these dollops of light flak coming up six at a time and the BBC radio was playing, “God Save the King.” You can imagine what he said about the king wasn’t very good at all. But he was, he was singing his song about he’d, “Like to Buy a Paper Doll to Call His Own.” [laughs] Alan made some comment about that in the [pause] in an article he wrote about this raid later on. But it was rather frightening to see these red dollops coming up from the ground. And I had a particular friend there who’d been at, used in Kodak House with me when we were sorting mail. He was going to be a navigator on coastal patrol but we went out one night in London with some highly decorated Bomber Command people and he decided he’d come to Bomber Command instead. He changed his mind and came up there as a bomb aimer. Well, I think he was I’m not sure how many actually got out of his plane but it wasn’t many. It might have been two or three. And he was captured and held in German headquarters underground. And the British kept shelling and, and the junior officers had the white flag up but the senior officer there when the British kept shelling sent them up to pull the flag down. And this was going on for quite a while. It was about three hours difference evidently and Doug, he said they were all drinking Cognac and he thought he might as well be drunk as a way. He said, ‘They were going to kill me one way or the other. Either the shells were going to get me or your bombs from up above were going to kill me.’ Anyway, as it turned out the losses were very substantial but with the muck up of the radio there had been a recall sent out. The aircraft didn’t get it but they were —
JH: They didn’t get the signal. Yeah.
DB: There were fifteen aircraft that actually bombed it and eight were shot down. Seven were the Lancs and one Halifax.
JH: Well, you, I think your crew did thirty five or thirty six operations.
DB: Thirty seven. They did thirty six and I did thirty seven.
JH: Yes. And, and quite a few of those were with a very famous Lancaster.
DB: Oh yes.
JH: Do you want to talk about that?
DB: We were given Nick The Nazi Neutraliser as our permanent plane. And actually we had hoped to fly it on its hundredth operation but it, but it was involved in an accident with a Hurricane. It was doing fighter affiliation with the Hurricane and the two collided and the eight air force personnel were killed. The whole lot. So we got another to fly but I don’t know whether we, I can’t remember if we actually called it that but —
JH: So this was the nose art. There was a picture.
DB: Yes. It was ninety six operations and I’ve got —
JH: Yes.
DB: I’ve got every operation that it flew in this history that I’ve, you will scan. And all the crews that flew it. Those were all the skippers names.
JH: Yes. I think you told me you did nineteen operations. Nineteen on it.
DB: We did nineteen. We were the second highest. The first crew that got it brand new was Flight Lieutenant Ray Howden. He was the pilot. I’ve got his crew listed there and they did twenty nine trips in it.
JH: Don, so you completed the tour and I believe you actually did some extra operations.
DB: No. I only did the one operation extra.
JH: One more. Ok.
DB: One extra one which took me up to thirty seven.
JH: Yes. Yeah. So —
DB: Following that, following the operation I was on the squadron right ‘til the time the war ended, in Europe ended because I was employed as a analysis officer. Examining the crew members to make sure that they hadn’t lost any efficiency. My bomb aimer had the same job as a bomb aimer and the pair of us remained on the squadron until Victory in Europe Day. The 8th of May ’45. And I don’t know that either of us had a drink on that day because we were serving. Being all the airmen and all the crews around in one of the hangars it was a big party.
JH: I believe there were some parties in the mess on occasions, Don.
DB: Well, that’s it.
JH: Perhaps you — I heard about one or two things there from people. What about the pyramid and the, a few gunshots now and then?
DB: Oh yes. Well, they used to. Australians were a bit scallywags. They used to play up occasionally but they sort of took a blind eye to this because you know these fellows didn’t know whether this was going to be their last trip or whether they might finish a tour. They had no idea.
JH: Indeed.
DB: That was the way things were in those days and, but on one occasions they built or I think on several occasions actually they built a pyramid in the mess. They usually put it on four mini glasses with a table sitting on those and then they’d put the lounge chairs and various things and on one occasion they even had a motorbike on the top of the thing. Up near the ceiling. And this was in a peacetime ‘drome so the ceilings were pretty high and but the, the fellas climbed up and wrote their names across the ceiling with their cigarette lighters. It wasn’t very well received by the RAF people and the CO [laughs] he made them all go up, get up and scrub it down and clean up the mess. But on another occasion they mucked up a bit. We had one fella come in one night singing, “Pistol Packin Mama,” or something or other and he took his revolver out and put six shots across the ceiling. He was damned lucky he didn’t hit anyone up in the upstairs rooms.
JH: So, so let’s talk about, well obviously winding up there. And did you go down to Brighton. Waiting for a —
DB: Yeah.
JH: Embarkation to come back home.
DB: I went down to Brighton. We were there up ‘til, I think the 30th of August. We left to go to Liverpool to catch, and we got on to the Dominion Monarch which was quite a big ship. And we had a very long trip to Australia because we went down to Suez. We took on water and oil and so forth. And we weren’t allowed off the ship. So much so that they took us then down to the Bitter Lake and we spent the night in the Bitter Lake. Right out in mid-stream so there was no chance you could get off and go anywhere from there. And then we went straight non-stop to New Zealand. To Wellington. We got our first leave in Wellington. We had six hours leave I think it was. And they said well seeing you had New Zealand prisoners of war on and there was no ferry going down to the South Island for several days we had to go down to Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch with these New Zealand prisoners of war. And then we left Lyttelton and it was quite a long trip up into Lyttelton as I can remember. And I could actually see the relief on the skipper’s face when the pilot came on board of the ship and took charge of it up the [pause] Sound I suppose you’d call it, of Lyttelton. To the port where we let these fellas off. And following that we took off and we didn’t stop again. We came straight through Cook Straight into a tremendous sea. It was very very rough.
JH: Yes.
DB: In fact we had Royal Navy boys on board and they said a destroyer could not go through that sea. She’d just have to ride it out and shut down. Anyway, some of the fellas were in pretty high spirits and they were, they were shooting the waves across on A deck. Water had come in through port holes and so forth. And they were shooting the waves as they went across the loungeroom or whatever it was there on their lifejackets [laughs] Anyway —
JH: A long voyage. A long voyage. Yeah.
DB: We arrived home on the 14th of, the 14th of November.
JH: So, how long was the voyage, Don?
DB: Well, I thought I might have been wrong in my dates there but no. That is the date that I got off the thing. The 31st of August ’45 to the 14th of November ’45. I’ve got that down.
JH: Yeah. About six weeks.
DB: Yeah. Six week trip. Now, I would like to say about my crew that both Alan Stutter and Paul were schoolmates. They both had very good passes as I had already said. Paul O’Loughlin was a first class bomb aimer. He had an above average assessment of fifty one yards from twenty thousand feet. I was considered as an above average wireless operator. In fact all of the crew were commissioned with the exception of the rear gunner, Dick Holmes and he was a very [pause] well a very good gunner. Most particular in his work. He was always cleaning his turret, cleaning his guns and very, a very important member of the crew. I can’t see why he wasn’t commissioned as well but he was the only one of the crew who did not receive his commission and, but he, when he came back from the war he went to Sydney University and did Arts or an Arts course that he did and went teaching. Paul Wilkinson went and did dentistry. And Paul O’Loughlin became Director of Drama of the ABC. Alan Stutter became a Master of Science and he was, worked in fabrics and so forth. He was with Bradmill when they designed the material for the first Americas Cup Challenge with Gretel. So each one of them achieved quite a lot and I think as a crew we were considered to be an above average crew. And I think that it’s right that I should mention that they all worked very, were at the top of their ability when they were operating in our aircraft.
JH: That’s some very good comments and I think the fact that you did a full tour, the crew, certainly endorses how good you were as a crew. Now, what about you, Don? What did you do after the war?
DB: Well, I did accountancy. And then I did, I knew I was going to be involved with the family business so I went into a hardware business with an air force mate of mine. Had that for a while. Got a bit of experience in operating a retail hardware business and experiencing, well quite a lot of things apart from accountancy. But I did the books and everything for that. And then I became involved in the retail game and following that I ran a, I bought a run-down orchard and turned it back into a commercial proposition. Retiring at seventy two.
JH: Yes. I should point out that Don is the president of the 463 467 Squadron Association and he’s been very much involved in Bomber Command veterans for some time now. And also Don was one of the instigators of the Bomber Command Commemoration Day which now is, is, has grown quite a bit and we’ve just had the ceremony in Sydney. It’s in Canberra, Melbourne, Brisbane and of course London.
DB: And South Australia.
JH: Yes. Do you want to say a bit about that, Don?
DB: Well, initially I was on the committee of 463 467 and I have been involved there for many many years and as the presidents retired or died off and so forth. The first one we had was Roy Crossman. He was the president for a long time. Then we had, following him Reg Boyes and Don Huxtable then nominated me as a vice president of 463 467 and eventually when Reg departed I was made president. But Rollo Kingsford Smith whilst he was involved initially with the establishment of the Association he then went to De Havillands and became managing director of De Havillands. So he was away from the Association for a while. But then towards the end he came to me and he said, ‘Look, I would like to see some commemorations for Bomber Command because we’ve now got this Memorial going up in Canberra and it should be utilised. Now, I realise that our squadrons represented only about twenty percent of those involved in Bomber Command. It should be [pause] it should be really taken over by Bomber Command because all these Squadron Associations will eventually fold up for the lack of numbers and so forth. And I would like something done to commemorate these people who I wrote I wrote so many letters of condolence to their relatives and so forth, and next of kin.’
JH: This was Rollo speaking.
DB: Yes.
JH: Yes.
DB: ‘And I would like to see something done. Can’t you do something about this?’ And I agreed with him that it was probably long overdue and something should be done. So he said, ‘Well, let’s call, get a meeting. You can bring them up to my place at Exeter and then we’ll have a discussion about it and see which way we go.’ So, I actually got Ross Pearson who I knew as a wireless operator who subsequently became involved in the law. He, and he actually worked for the ABC as well. I don’t know in what capacity but I know he had legal degrees. I suggested he might join this group that were going to meet at Rollo’s place. And as a result of this meeting and subsequent meetings that we had we formed a Bomber Command Commemorative Day Committee. And I think we were really instigators of, of the Bomber Command Memorial being commenced in Britain because it was only following our Bomber Command Memorial that we established in 2005 that people started to think again about Bomber Command. And now we have this wonderful Memorial in Green Park, London which really started from these meetings that Rollo had organised and I was actually the first secretary and Ross Pearson was the president of that group.
JH: That must give you a lot of satisfaction, Don. That something you instigated here has grown so much.
DB: Yes. Well, I’m very pleased to see that the recognition that has been given to Bomber Command. We’ve now been given a commemorative clasp that goes on the ’45 Star. And also those of us who were lucky enough to survive to be given the Legion of Honour from the French government.
JH: Don, that — I have to ask what from that what are your thoughts on the fact that there was no Bomber Command campaign medal?
DB: Well, there was an attempt earlier in the peace by Bomber Harris or Air Chief Marshal Harris. He was the commander of Bomber Command. An attempt to get a Bomber Command medal. I think it was actually struck by his — I think his wife might have had something to do with this. Lady [pause] she was, what was she? I’ve lost myself. Just a minute [pause] I can’t think what her first name was but she was Bomber Harris’ wife and there is a medal. A Bomber Command medal. But I don’t think it was officially recognised by the British government. But I have one but I’ve got a feeling that we had to pay something for that. I’m not sure.
JH: Yes. So, what, what were your thoughts on the treatment of Bomber Command after the war?
DB: Well, I suppose it must have been the change of government and Bomber Command was not terribly favourably received by those who received our bombs. Those people in Germany. And you know, there was quite a lot of antipathy as to the fact that we were, had bombed towns and so forth. But during the period that I was involved with Bomber Command it would seem to me that our objectives were more to do with war effort and so forth than actual bombing of cities. Our navigation had improved so much that we were able to put the bombs where we wanted them. And they had also put these cameras in the bomb bays so that the people didn’t put them in the wrong place. I believe you know that in certain instances of course if you, if you were in trouble you had to get rid of your bombs and there could have been accidents and so forth that might have happened over a period of time. But generally speaking the efficiency of the air force improved very much in the latter part of the war and of course it’s got to the stage now they can put it through a window and kill an individual sort of thing. So, and let’s face it war is war. Germany had already started bombing. Indiscriminately bombing cities in Britain.
JH: Yes. They started that type of bombing.
DB: They started the actual bombing of cities.
JH: Yes. That’s true.
DB: So, that’s what, that’s what happens.
JH: Well, Don I think we can wind, wind up the interview. It’s been a fantastic story and to come through thirty six.
DB: Thirty seven.
JH: Operations. Is something outstanding and, for you and your crew. So, thank you very much, Don, we’ll, we’ll sign off here.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Don Browning
Creator
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John Horsburgh
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-06-13
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABrowningDJ160613, PBrowningDJ1601
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Pending review
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Format
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01:07:58 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Don Browning volunteered for aircrew and began his training as a wireless operator in his native Australia. His arrival in Brighton in the UK coincided with his first experience of an air raid. Don was posted to 463 Squadron at RAF Waddington. He did an extra operation from his regular crew when he travelled as a 'spare bod' with another crew. He was briefed to travel with that crew again but when he discovered his own crew was operational he opted to stay with them. The other crew were all killed on that operation. After the war Don became very involved in the 463 / 467 Squadron Association eventually becoming the president. He was very involved in the establishment of the Bomber Command Commemoration Day in Australia.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
France
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Bay of Biscay
Atlantic Ocean--English Channel
England--Lincolnshire
France--Brest
France--Calais
New South Wales
New South Wales--Sydney
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
463 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
crewing up
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
memorial
mid-air collision
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
perception of bombing war
RAF Lichfield
RAF Millom
RAF Syerston
RAF Waddington
Stirling
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/728/24862/PBrowningDJ1601.2.jpg
a9c58bb31d10b774e30abf2e361e3ba5
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/728/24862/ABrowningDJ[Date]-01.mp3
7a921373e3dcea8dc6375af2f29d04a1
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
Browning, Don
Donald James Browning
D J Browning
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Flying Officer Don Browning (1923 - 2020, Royal Australian Air Force). He flew operations as a wireless operator with 463 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Don Browning and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-13
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. 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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Browning, DJ
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DB: No. I think it must have been the raid to Mont Candon. There was two planes collided and all the crew were lost in those two planes. They collided. Went down together. Both of those people in those planes were on course with us at Conversion Unit. So, it was quite a nasty initiation to go on to the squadron and have those mates from our conversion course all go down in that crash.
JH: Before you did that operation did you do any pamphlet flights? Dropping, what do you call them? Nickel raids.
DB: Yes. We did a nickel raid whilst we were at the OTU and that was done [pause] we went to Chartres in France. And we flew, we did that in a Wellington bomber and on our way back we were supposed to change our tanks over. This was the navigator’s job to do this but he wasn’t able to turn the cock. And he asked me to have a go at it and I couldn’t do it even though I had a spanner. I couldn’t shift the thing. And as a result of that we were running short of fuel. And I can remember Alan was calling up on Darkie requesting a landing ‘drome in the south of England as we were coming back but no response. We were near Boscombe Down. Anyway, I said, ‘Oh well look, they’re not answering you. I’ll zero feed my transmitter into their frequency and they’ll damn well answer you then,’ which I did. And of course immediately he came up requesting landing lights for Boscombe Down. Eventually we got them put on and we landed. That was an experimental ‘drome and they didn’t want us to stay that night. Stay overnight. And it was already dark of course as you can imagine and they rushed out to us to see what was wrong. And they, they fixed the petrol so we were able to, or gave us more petrol and fixed up the cocks so we could move it. And then when Alan ran the motors up, we got a magneto drop and he wouldn’t take the plane off so we stayed the night there. They were very very anxious to get rid of us the next morning. They didn’t want us to see what was going on at this experimental ‘drome. But they had, at that time they had Lancasters with twenty millimetre cannons in the rear turret which was something which was quite new to us because we only had Browning machine guns. And the name just expresses how good they were. Being Brownings. They were good.
JH: Of course.
DB: However —
JH: Did they, that’s an interesting point — did they, did they adopt the cannon?
DB: No. I think there was some aircraft that had the cannons later in the war. And they flew, I’m not sure whether they were for the ones that had the Black Widow turret which was a sort of a blacked out turret and operated on a radar system and the gunner used to just have to put the blip on the, on the line sort of thing and pull the trigger. And they got, I don’t know about ninety eight percent accuracy. But they couldn’t establish what the planes were. So they were, that was 100 Group. And they used to fly at a different height to us when on operations.
JH: Before you, you mentioned an operation to Calais as perhaps one of the most dangerous raids you were involved in. Perhaps you could talk about that a little bit.
DB: Well, Calais was the shortest book, the shortest trip in my logbook and everyone joked about it saying that you can hardly call that an operation because it wasn’t, you know considered to be very deep penetration into enemy territory. I’m just looking in my logbook trying to find out the date I actually did that. [pause]
JH: So there was a kind of a ranking system in the operations. Calais versus Berlin.
DB: Well, when we were briefed for this I must mention that. We were briefed to take off at [pause] around at around about dawn. We were actually to go down and bomb a gun site which was near the walls. This gun site was apparently holding up Omar Bradley from going into Calais and he had requested this as an army cooperation job. And the weather was absolutely appalling. We were briefed for that early take off. That didn’t happen. They took us back to the mess for breakfast. Then they took us back to the aircraft. We sat there until lunchtime waiting for the green to take off but nothing doing and eventually I think we went back and had lunch. Then we went out to the aircraft and we sat there until we took off eventually. Which was — let me see if I can see this. [pause] I have it here. I can tell you exactly when it was. Calais. Calais. Calais. Calais. Where are you? [pause] [unclear] see that. Here we are. I’ve got it. Strangely enough it was operation number thirteen in my logbook. Calais. We dropped our bombs from nineteen hundred feet. It was on the 24th of August 1944 and it was described as a, ‘Death or glory,’ raid by the intelligence officer who said, ‘You must drop your bombs from,’ I think it was originally ten thousand feet, ‘But you’ll go no lower than two thousand.’ I think it, I think it was no lower than twelve hundred he said but we actually dropped down to nineteen hundred feet. And on this raid there was a complete muck up of the radio. The thing was confused and there was a recall because the weather was so appalling and — but a lot of the aircraft did not receive this recall. And the time that we’d taken off was 17.30 in the afternoon. That was five thirty. So, it was when we got down to Calais it was very appalling weather still but we were able to make visual contact with where those guns were. But our bomb aimer being a meticulous character as he was made us do a second run around going into the target. And, ‘Go around again,’ said Paul. He wasn’t terribly popular as a matter of fact because as soon as we made, moved to go around we had this light flak coming up at us six at a time. Red dots. And they seemed to follow us around the circuit that we were flying. Anyway, we had to drop the bombs and our bombs dropped right on the gun sights. But on that raid we lost eight aircraft. There was fifteen aircraft went in to bomb. Seven Lancs and one Halifax were shot down. And one of my friends that I have mentioned before who’d been at Kodak House was one of the few that got out of his aircraft. His name was Doug. Doug. Doug Michelmore. I couldn’t think of his name. He was involved in the accountancy field that I also had been involved in. Anyway, he spent his time in the headquarters there. Down under the ground in German headquarters. He’d gone down in his parachute, saw all the stakes in the water and so forth and left his harness on. Thought, ‘That will give me some protection.’ But the Germans were standing on the shore with guns trained on him. They didn’t attempt to help him or anything. But anyway he got out eventually, out of the water and they put him in German headquarters. And the British kept shelling and we were dropping bombs and so Doug wasn’t terribly happy there he said. But the Germans, the younger officers were drinking a large quantity of Cognac which they had stored there and they offered him drinks so he thought, ‘ Well, I’d better drink this because the way this is going I’m going to be killed anyway so,’ he said, ‘ I got a bit high on the Cognac too.’ But he told me all this when he came back about three weeks or a month after this particular raid. I saw him in the mess. And I said, ‘How are you, Doug?’ And he said, ‘Well, not too good at all’ he said, ‘My nerves are shot.’ He said, ‘I’m waiting to go home. They’re going to take me home.’ And I said, ‘Well, how are you generally?’ He said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘The trouble is if anyone passes wind rather loudly I’m running for an air raid shelter.’ That was a story that I thought was rather amusing.
JH: So that raid, was that just 463 or 463 467 combined?
DB: I think there would have been some group, other aircraft from 5 Group. I don’t know but I know and I mentioned previously about the radio connection. We, they picked the frequency right near the BBC frequency and the only thing we heard as we were lining up to run in on to that target was the, the anthem being played. “God Save the King.” And you can imagine what the crew, what the mid-upper had to say about that when they had the red dollops of flak come up around him. But anyway he was a funny guy this fellow but he used to sing this song, he’s “Going to Buy a Paper Doll to Call His Own.” [unclear] and Alan Stutter made the comment, he said, ‘I had the idea that the mid-upper gunner was singing his favourite song.’ Anyway —
JH: Well, that, that was heavy losses in that raid.
DB: I think that was possibly one of those raids which was described as a death or glory raid so they accepted it as a full operation.
JH: They got it right didn’t they? You were telling me before you were involved in a few operations targeting the canals in Germany.
DB: Yes.
JH: And I think you played some havoc in that department. The Dortmund Ems Canal for example.
DB: We, we regularly visited the Dortmund Ems Canal. I think about once a month we would go there. I’m just looking to see whether I [pause] The first raid I did on Dortmund Ems I think was [pause] the 23rd of September and we strafed that canal down and let all the water out. And it was the raid before the Calais one that we did that. And we used to go after that about once a month but not necessarily to the same spot and we would smash the canal up again. The last raid that I did on Dortmund Ems Canal I think was on the 21st of the 11th ’44 when I’d done the 4th of the 11th ’44. Each of these raids were taken on different parts of the canal and they were usually about, oh about a six hour duration. It was a target that was a special target from the 5 Group aircraft particularly. And I think that was the 1st of January ’45 which was a daylight on Dortmund Ems Canal and yes that’s six hours fourteen. I think a guy got the VC on that particular raid. Then we did it again on the 20th of February ’45. So it was a regular target for 463 and 467.
JH: Were those canal systems heavily defended?
DB: Very heavily defended. Yes. But we had quite heavy losses on them.
JH: Don, perhaps you can talk a little bit about not so much the operations but tell me something about your leave from Waddington. I understand you’d go down to London and probably the Boomerang Club. And you were telling me before about some fairly wild mess parties.
DB: Yes. I remember. I think it was the night that Bill Brill, who was the CO of 467 squadron received his DSO. I’m not certain on that but it was a pretty wild mess party on that occasion. But of course some of the guys insisted on carrying .45 revolvers. I think. I never was involved in it but we had one fella who was playing around with his gun in his flying boots. A pilot as a matter of fact. And he was, they were sitting out the aircraft waiting to take off. Waiting for the green from the control tower. And the bomb aimer was asleep in his compartment [laughs] Anyway, the next thing he knew the ground crew were coming through putting the [unclear] on the plane. And he woke up and he said, ‘What’s happened?’ The ground staff crew said to him, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Has it been scrubbed?’ He said, ‘No,’ he said, ‘Your pilot’s gone and shot himself.’ He’d put, he put a shot straight through his foot. And that was one. One occasion but we had another one in the mess where a bloke came in singing out the pistol packing mamma and put six shots across the ceiling. That wasn’t very well received by the RAF people up there. They thought it was a bit rough. But the Australians were a pretty wild mob anyway.
JH: And what about the famous pyramid of chairs?
DB: Well, they yes they used to make these pyramids of chairs. On another occasion they made a pyramid in the anteroom of the mess and they set it up on four mini type glasses, a table and then the lounge suite. And then eventually, it was a fairly high ceiling because this was a peacetime ‘drome they’d, I think on one occasion they even had a motorbike up there. But they then all climbed up with their cigarette lighters. Wrote their names across the ceiling in the mess and of course the CO didn’t like that either. Made them all get up and scrub the things off. Yes. We had some wild parties. But I think that you know they had to let their hair down some way because you know, we were never sure whether they were going to be there to make the next one anyway.
JH: Well, Don you actually did thirty seven operations which is well above the odds.
DB: Yes.
JH: Well above the average.
DB: I did one. My spare bod that I did was on a raid I flew with another crew. A Flying Officer Roe. And I was, my crew were off. I don’t know what was wrong. Some of them were sick or something and they were off duty because we were down on personnel. And anyway I did a trip to Karlsruhe I think with Roe and the following night we were briefed to go to Königsberg which was probably the longest raid of the war. Right over in East Prussia. And I said, well I was briefed to go again with Roe but I said well look, ‘My crew are now on stream. I’d sooner fly with my own crew.’ So, I went with Alan and our crew. Our crew happened to be one from Nick the Nazi Neutraliser but I don’t think Nick was on that Konigsberg raid but that was the plane we used to fly. But anyway the —
JH: That was, that was the nose art you’re talking about.
DB: That was the nose art.
JH: On your Lancaster.
DB: A great big picture of the devil on the front of it. Anyway, and then we had all bombs there for the number of trips that we’d done. Nick was actually did ninety six trips and we had hoped to fly that on a hundred but because it was lost in an exercise of fighter affiliation with a Hurricane. And the whole of the crew of the Lanc and the fighter plane, the Hurricane were all killed. That was a great disappointment. We had hoped to fly it, as I say on the hundred.
JH: What a warhorse. A hundred.
DB: Yeah.
JH: That would have been.
DB: Just going back to this Konigsberg raid. That was on the 29th of August and it was a trip of ten hours thirty two. Well now, I flew that with my crew but the signals officer took my place in Roe’s crew and they went west so there it was a case of not being in the right place at the right time unfortunately. Just bad luck.
JH: Don, talk us through, well VE day and and the trip home because I’d like to talk about the Bomber Command Commemoration Day Foundation. How that was set up. But yeah talk us through your, your return after the end of the war.
DB: Well, I came home on the Dominion Monarch which was quite a comfortable ship. And the captain, but I can’t remember what his name was but I always remember he used to, he was never whenever I looked at the bridge he was there. He was a man with a great big beard and you could practically see the relief on his face when we went in to the harbour at Christchurch. Going into the harbour of Christchurch in New Zealand. I’m trying to think of the name of the [pause] — Lyttelton. The port of Lyttelton. That was the port of Christchurch in New Zealand. And when the pilot came on board you could practically look and see the look of well, relief I suppose for want of another word on his face. He hadn’t overcharged for the pilot having made the trip out from the UK. We were, it was a very very long trip. We got on the boat at Liverpool. We pulled up and took on fuel and water at Suez. In the Canal. We went, they wouldn’t let us off the ship at all. And we were, we were in, we were moored the night in the Bitter Lake. Right out in mid-stream so no way you could swim [laughs] ashore and have a look at anything. And then we took off. We went the rest of the way through the canal and we left England on the 31st of August ’45 and I didn’t arrive back ‘til the 14th of November ’45. No. Wait a minute. That can’t be right because I, that was the day I was discharged. Well, it was certainly the end of October. That’s right. I went from Brighton up to Liverpool and I left on the 31st of August ’45. I’ve got in my book here that I was discharged on the 14th of the 11th ’45. I don’t know what date we got back but I know it was a heck of a long trip. And I had a, well I don’t know I think I had [unclear] down to Brighton.
JH: So, so back to Sydney. Back to family. And what about a job? What prospects did you have?
DB: Well, I eventually didn’t have a — I’d worked for the auditors and so forth but there were a lot of people that had been involved there and they said well they didn’t know whether they could employ me or not but I was a sort of a stand-by. So, I applied to take on accountancy and I did that under the Repatriation Scheme. Following that I was I was employed at Australian General Electric for quite a while. I was in charge of power machinery up there. Doing their costing. That was out at the Warburton Works. After that I’d taken over a business with another air force friend of mine. We had a hardware business which we ran for a while. And when that was more or less experience for me because I became involved with the retail trade which was my family business and I was there until that was eventually sold put it that way. Actually, I sold that to my cousin and the thing was eventually sold.
JH: And by then you’d met Pat.
DB: After that.
JH: Marriage.
DB: I wasn’t married then. I was married at twenty seven. I was twenty seven when I was married and we had three. Three children and —
JH: And now some grandchildren.
DB: I , I, following, well during the time that I was involved in the retail game I bought a farm and I was running a farm more or less as a, well a tax. A tax dodge I suppose in one respect. But farm properties enjoyed plenty of depreciation and so forth. And I did that until I retired.
JH: All quite legal we should add.
DB: Eh?
JH: All quite legal.
DB: Yeah. All quite legal. Yeah. Certainly it was legal.
JH: Yeah.
DB: As indicated.
JH: So, why don’t I see if I can get you to reflect on what you thought of the treatment of Bomber Command post-war and you know, your feelings on the area bombing strategy that was adopted.
DB: Well, now let me think about this because I became very much involved with the reunions of the 463 467 Association which was formed following our return. I think it started probably ’46. It might have been ’47. I can’t actually recall. I do recall marching in the Anzac Day of 1946 but I went in to find our mob but couldn’t find them and I marched with a group called, “The Desert Harassers.” Another friend of mine who happened to be, he was in Coastal Command but we couldn’t find either of our group and so that’s who we marched with on that first Anzac march. Eventually we had, 463 and 467 had numerous interstate reunions. In fact they also had one reunion in 1975 which went over to the UK and subsequently went off to Germany and so forth. Met some of the fighter pilots who’d shot them down and that shot planes down and whatnot. But it became quite a strong Association. We, we included our wives in this. That became the mainspring of the success of the Association. And during the course of this Rollo Kingsford Smith who was our first CO of 463 Squadron he had been instrumental in sort of trying to arrange commemorations for, for the people that had been lost on Bomber Command. Because following the cessation of the war they had been no particular recognition of Bomber Command as such. In fact we were more or less ostracised and considered by lots of people to be murderers because we actually bombed women and children in some of our targets. Now, this must be considered as a two way event because the Jerries came over to Britain and did exactly the same thing. They killed women and children. And so let’s face it it’s war and that’s what war is all about. We only did what we were instructed to do and so for a long while there was great antipathy towards Bomber Command. Well, Rollo had to write, during the course of his command of 463 lots and lots and lots of condolence notes. Now, he said to me, ‘Look. I would like to see some commemoration for all those people that were lost and, and the work that was done by those in Bomber Command. And I think there should be a Commemoration Day. And there should be some recognition.’ Well now Rollo was involved in the Bomber Command Memorial in Canberra.
JH: This was about 2005.
DB: That’s what —
JH: Don.
DB: Yes. With [unclear]
JH: Yes.
DB: And they were part of a committee that had, that really finished up with the Bomber Command Memorial being installed and opened in 2005. In fact Geoff actually did the opening, I think at that event. Now, from that point on Rollo had asked me for a donation and several others. And 463 and 467 came to the party to a certain extent and I remember Hugh MacLeod who wasn’t actually on our squadron but used to enjoy Anzac Day with us he put in a substantial donation towards this Bomber Command Memorial as did Rollo and myself and others. Anyway, Rollo said he wanted more of a Commemoration Day. And we saw an article that was written by Roxy MacLennan in the Air Force Association paper about there should be recognition of the Bomber Command and so forth. We decided, or Rollo decided to call a meeting. And he asked me to arrange to have a meeting with people at his home in Exeter. This we arranged and we made an approach to the War Memorial as to what, what the best way to go about getting some recognition of Bomber Command. Now, Steve Gower who was then the Director of the War Memorial suggested that if we were to do this it should be made through the Air Force Association or our Squadron Associations. So, this was the approach that was made. We went to Canberra. Ross Pearson and myself. I got hold of Ross Pearson because Ross was, was a wireless operator who I knew and he was a friend of both my navigator and my pilot and, but he did a legal course after the war. And I thought well he was the bloke to do something about this. So, so he joined this committee or suggested this committee and he said, ‘We’ll go to Canberra and front up in front of the Association,’ which was the national body down in Canberra and demand that we get this day. And if they’re not going to do something about it then we will. But we went to Canberra and Canberra accepted that. The national body did accept the fact that the Bomber Command Day would be possible and it should be done at the Bomber Command Memorial which had already been established in 2005. So, our first event was in 2008 and it’s now 2016 so it’s the ninth event that has just been concluded.
JH: And it’s gathered momentum, Don.
DB: And it gave momentum really for the establishment of the Memorial in London.
JH: Yes.
DB: Which is a wonderful Memorial which I had the pleasure, unfortunately Rollo had passed on and didn’t have the pleasure of going to see it. It is a marvellous Memorial and anyone who had the opportunity to go to England, to London should make it a number one visit.
JH: Maybe to finish off we could, we could mention that this Bomber Command Commemoration Day is not just Canberra any more.
DB: Oh no. That’s right. It’s now, well initially that’s the way we approached it. We wanted it commemorated in all States on the same day. Not only in all States. We made contact with New Zealand and Canada and both of those countries had accepted. We didn’t get acceptance in South Africa but we got acceptance in those other countries including England. And the first one in England was conducted at the Bomber Command —
JH: Memorial.
DB: Memorial. No. I’m sorry. It was at the Bomber Harris Memorial.
JH: Bomber Harris.
DB: Which stands outside St Clement Danes. And that was conducted by a navigator, Paul Wilkinson. And following Paul Wilkinson’s passing his son who was a lieutenant commander in the Royal Navy and a neurosurgeon has carried on the laying of wreaths on that Memorial and will do for, I think probably until next year. That will be, I think the end of it. And we’ve supported it every year since its inception in 2012. And we laid a wreath every year since then.
JH: Don, you must be very proud of what’s happened with that as one of the instigators so I think we’ll, we’ll finish off. I’d like to thank Don for this interview. It’s an amazing story. Amazing history of Bomber Command service. Thank you very much, Don.
DB: Right. Well now, I’d like to hear that back because I probably have made some mistakes in that. I don’t know.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Don Browning. Two
Description
An account of the resource
Don Browning was posted to 463 Squadron at RAF Waddington. On one operation two aircraft collided and Don lost friends he had undertaken training with. On an operation to Calais the weather was very poor and the attack aborted but not all aircraft received the recall including Don’s. On that operation eight of the fifteen aircraft was lost. The Australian crews were noted for their exuberant behaviour in the mess including building pyramids of chairs and shooting at the ceiling. On one occasion a crew was waiting at dispersal when the ground crew started working on the plane. When the bomb aimer asked was it scrubbed the ground crew said no, their pilot had just accidentally shot himself.
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John Horsburgh
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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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00:41:43 Audio Recording
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ABrowningDJ[Date]-01, PBrowningDJ1601
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Pending review
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Julie Williams
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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France
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Egypt--Suez Canal
Egypt--Suez Canal
North Africa
Egypt
Date
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2016-06-13
463 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
coping mechanism
Lancaster
memorial
military living conditions
military service conditions
perception of bombing war
RAF Waddington
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/331/3491/PSouthwellDE1603.1.jpg
14aae2a01070e096fa9c00a5c57a4ace
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/331/3491/ASouthwellDE160424.2.mp3
bd5f88b470f50c82d0fece440095f478
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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Southwell, Don
Donald Edward Southwell
Donald E Southwell
Donald Southwell
D E Southwell
D Southwell
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Donald Edward "Don" Southwell (b. 1924 - 2019, 423987 Royal Australian Air Force), documents including a navigation chart, and six photographs. He flew operations as a navigator with 463 and 467 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Don Southwell and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-04-24
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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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Southwell, DE
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DES: [unclear] have you?
AP: My little question sheet.
DES: Oh, good, [unclear] you should have given it to me before.
AP: No, no, no.
DES: [laughs]
AP: So what I do, uhm, because of this little adapter, if I unplug it, the careful tuned thing dies and it gets embarrassing cause it never works. So, instead I have to plug in earphones, so that I can check cause this is a little splitter. I can plug in earphones so that I can listen to it, because if I just try on the speaker, it goes out the earphones so, anyway. It works now, that’ the most important thing, I’ve had a couple of interviews where I had to use the little microphone built in here cause I never know if this thing’s working. Very very [unclear].
DES: I didn’t know there was a mike in those. See, I use one of those all the time. [unclear]
AP: Well, some of them, some of them do, so there is actually a little camera up here, there is a little microphone there, so it is like for web cam, is not for very good quality and it picks up all the noise that’s around, this seems to be more, uhm, localised to adjust your voice, which [unclear] in the recording. I did one of those with a bloke, uhm, Jack Bell, who, he was shot down in Libya, uhm, he’s 98, he was shot down in Libya in 1942 and spent the rest of the war as prisoner, ’43, very early [unclear].
DES: Ah, prisoner.
AP: 42 [unclear]
DES: In Germany?
AP: Uhm, in Italy and then in Germany.
DES: Ah.
AP: Uhm, and the house next door was actually being demolished at the time we did the interview. In the background you can hear a little bit of it, but not very much. So, for a twenty dollar E-bay special, they are pretty good. Anyway, if you are comfortable and ready to [unclear]
DES: Yeah.
AP: All this is, as you know, IBCC interview, uhm, basically we just have a chat. Uhm, I’ve got a sort of list of questions to get us started, but basically I’ll let you run and we go wherever we go and then we might come back and fill in gaps, all that sort of stuff.
DES: You edit it. Yeah.
AP: Yeah, uhm, we just go until one of us begs for mercy basically. I know what you are like, so it could be for a while [laughs].
DES: No, no, no, it’s not right. No, I, whenever this comes up and I’m in a group, I know the people who’ve got all the interesting stories. I’ve been doing this since Australia all over.
AP: No, I.
DES: Down in, [unclear] I’m gonna write him a letter too, but, uh, Ian McNamara and uh he was, uhm, I was all, I did directing, at, down there, I got the, we got this bloke and got this bloke, got that bloke, got that bloke, he’s gonna get all interesting blokes, you know, I knew [unclear] too long [laughs] and they didn’t want me [laughs] Yeah.
AP: Very good. Anyway, uhm, so, look, the shortest interview I’ve done went from forty five minutes long to three and a half hours or so, you know, whenever we get, we get, it’s quite ok. As I said, there’s a list of questions to sort to start of, so
DES: Forty five minutes, [unclear]
AP: That’s very short one, that was very hard because I had to keep asking questions to. Uhm, my favourite one.
DES: You’d might have to do that.
AP: We’ll see what happens when I ask the first question, that’s always the same question I start with and once the opening response went for about ten words, the longest one has been an hour and fifty before I had to say anything else. Which
DES: [unclear]
AP: It’s astonishing, it’s really really good. Anyway, so, uhm, I start off with a little spiel, so, kick off with that now, just to sort of set the time and the place, uh, so, we are recording and it looks good. So, this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Don Southwell, who was a 463 Squadron navigator at the tail end of World War Two. Interview is taking place at Don’s home in St Ives in Sydney, it’s the 24th of April, I should know that, it’s their [unclear] day, my name is Adam Purcell. Uhm, so, as usual, Don, we will start with the normal question, can you tell me something of your early life, growing up, what you did before the war.
DES: Yes, I can certainly do that. Ehm, I was born in Croydon, in New South Wales, in number 10, Hardidge [?] Street as a matter of fact and I was the third child of my mother Cathy. Ehm, I had my brother Brian, my sister and myself, we were four years between each of us and we lived in Croydon, in Sydney. My father died when I was thirty, when he was thirty five and my mother brought us all up to the [unclear], my, I went to school in [unclear] High school and I had, oh I had a job when I left high school. I was, uhm, my first job was at, uhm, RKO Radio Pictures and I was there for about eighteen months and uhm, my mother thought that this picture business wasn’t the sort of place that [laughs] her son should be spending his career in. So, she started to work on various people and I finished up with a job at the MLC. At the MLC, at this particular stage, they only took you with the leaving certificate. My mum couldn’t afford to keep me on the leaving, so, while my brother and sister went to Fort Street High School and did the leaving, uhm, my mum couldn’t afford it. Anyway, we, I went to RKO Radio Pictures and we, uhm, I lasted there and, uhm, I got the job at the MLC and my sister actually worked and that’s how I probably had a little bit of influence and they didn’t want to appoint me first of all but I reached the stage where there weren’t getting many men in because of the war and the war had started and this was in 1941. And so, uhm, I was very fortunate to get that job because I remind there laws about 90 and that’s not a jag either, this is quite true and I [unclear], I have to write, yeah, uh, I was there for eighteen months and the war came and I’d already enlisted, I’d already joined the air training corps, it was 24 Squadron at Ashfield and under control of squadron leader Whitehurst and he had the grads there and we did all the courses for the air training corps and I was also an ARP warden on my bike and I had an ARP band on my arm, patrolling the streets at night to make sure the people were keeping to the blackout rules. I used to sit in those, sit at the top of the town hall at Ashfield and looking for [laughs] Japanese planes coming over. We didn’t get any Japanese planes but we had to report all things that were going in there and then I got the call up for the army. Because I was eighteen the army called me up and because I was in the air force, I had already been in the air training corps it didn’t make any difference so I went up to the infantry training battalion at Dubbo in central New South Wales and, uhm, I was there for about three weeks, while the rifle regiment came in on a motorbike and looking for [unclear] and took me back to the, you know, the orderly room, I was put on a train to Sydney, I was discharged from the army and sent down to Woolloomooloo. In Woolloomooloo was the air force, uhm, recruiting depot and there we did the medical tests and so forth and I was then posted off and I to number nine Glebe Island [?], which is a wharf in Sydney, I went in as an aircrew, I was called, the air force had so many people for aircrew that they couldn’t cope with them at a particular time and they made us air crew guards and I served for three months in Sydney, there’s an aircrew guard, some of them got posted all the way from New South Wales but I was fortunate enough, I caught number nine Glebe Island, where we guarded little beds, belonged to the air force and so forth and we also did jobs working on the wharves and I was part of the secret war people talk about, that the wharfies continually being out on strike and so forth and they asked the, they sent one of us down to do various jobs on the wharves because later all the supplies were going up to New Guinea, was on a ship called the Marino and it belonged under contract to the air force and now, the wharfies were pilfering stuff from this convoys that were going up to the, the trips up in New Guinea, they were pilfering stuff there and so we had a, we were put, what do you call it? A revolver, a Smith and Wesson revolver around their waists and I did stay for one night, I’d be inside the wharf for one day, inside the wharf in the stores where they had all the stuff there laying. We had a guard on the door, a guard on the, uhm, where the crane came down and picked the, uhm, supplies up, one on top on board the ship and one down in the hold. And we virtually stopped the pilfering in the, but there was a great war against the wharfies in those particular days but a very interesting book has been written about the secret war and it’s not only happened there, but it happened in the army and all around the place. So, that was just a little side set up, while I was waiting to go to aircrew. I was then called up to number 2 ITS in Bradfield Park, to go and do my initial training school and, uhm, so began my career in the air force. Then, do you want me to go further?
AP: Yeah, can you keep going as [unclear].
DES: I’m in the air force then, ok.
AP: Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Absolutely.
DES: We’re in Bradfield Park and Bradfield Park was the centre of two ITS and we did the normal parades on the [unclear] rid marches, uhm, we did cross country runs, we did all sorts of subjects that were pertinent to air crew and so forth, meteorology, all that sort of business and we, uhm, that took us about three weeks to do that and then I was categorised as a pilot. Cause I wanted to be a pilot because my brother was a pilot and so they made me a pilot. They sent me off to number 8, I think it is number 8, EFTS at Narrandera and so began my career, started my career as a pilot. The time limit for getting through, through the school was you had to go solo in twelve hours, now came twelve hours and I hadn’t gone solo and the, uhm, my instructor said; ‘Come on, Don, we gotta get you through this’ and we were operating from a little satellite area, outside of Narrandera, he said you gotta go up and go solo today [laughs]. So, I worked out all what I had to do in the circuit and so forth and I went up on the, took off, made a nice take off but I got the wind changed and then [laughs], I didn’t know the wind had changed and I’m doing the circuit on the basis of when I took off, I did the left-hand circuit and so forth and coming, all of a sudden there is a Tiger Moth coming up beside me, it was my instructor and he was pointing down to the wind sock and I didn’t know what he was talking about, you know, so I didn’t, I just went up and landed, I did a beautiful crosswind landing, it was a good crosswind landing but that’s the last time I, I think I lasted for another half an hour or so flying and then they decided that I, you know, I hadn’t gone in twelve hours, didn’t look like it, so they scrubbed me, I was scrubbed and that was a terrible thing to happen to me, to be scrubbed, I wanted so much to be like my brother who could fly before the war. And, so, uh, I was then, I thought, oh, I’ll have it now the air crew but they transferred me. The boy that got a B in mathematics 1 and mathematics 2, the intermediate, they transferred me to embarkation depot as a navigator and so, but I, and then I stayed at the, I came from Narrandera back to Sydney and I stayed there at the embarkation depot and uhm, just as on the side, we used to, get my [unclear] at Burwood, that was a [unclear] about twenty minute train ride from Chatswood, we used to have a night down, tucked down under the barbed wire, get down a lady game driver, was not a lady game driver this near, walk up to take off, picked to be kept, seen the fiver air crew, when I say we there were a lot of fellows doing this, and we get, I get the train to Han, I spend the night at Ham (or Han), get out of bed at about five o’clock, then come back and up [unclear] at five o’clock ready for parade. And so that, that didn’t go on for long of course, but I did my, that was our waiting game but of course, we were going overseas an therefore we couldn’t leave Australia until we were nineteen, that was a government rule, they just couldn’t, you couldn’t leave, you couldn’t get out, be transferred out of Australia unless you were nineteen. So, I kept going, I was before I turned nineteen, I went to embarkation depot, so I kept [unclear] just about every day reminding them that I was, I’ll be nineteen on the seventeenth of April. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we were bound on a train up to, from Central Railway, we went up to Queensland and transferred to Kalinga and the army came, was a big army came and we slept in tents, oh, by the way, the train trip was terrible, we were in, we had to sit up or some fellows were sitting up, lying down on in the luggage racks upstairs but we had a terrible trip that night, that train, they put us like cattle in there, and so we got up to Brisbane to Kalinga and we had to wait there for our ship and that was somewhere around the first or second of July in 1943, ’43, yeah ’43, and we uhm, one night we had the cars or the truck all arrived and took us down to the boat, was the Noordam, was the United States army transport going back to San Francisco, empty or as empty, except for us air force, because they’ve been bringing all those hundreds of thousands of American troops over to Australia for the Pacific War and uhm, so uhm, we set sail from Brisbane heading or Morton Bay and then shortly about two or three hours out from Brisbane we [unclear] and we wonder what we were doing because of the Japanese submarines and all that sort of thing and it was the, only about three or four days before, or, yeah must have been before, we have to because the Japanese had sunk the hospital ship, the, the, the, the, because they sunk one of their hospital ships and we had two minutes of silence we expected to be torpedoed [unclear] and we headed on our way to, I think it took us about eighteen days to get to San Francisco and never been past Hornsby, past Wollongong, never seen the Blue Mountains, I hadn’t been out to the parks to the, in the [unclear] and to Dubbo in the army and, uhm, here I was, just coming into San Francisco harbour and so I made sure I was at the front of the ship and I never left that ship till about two o’clock in the afternoon, we came by, saw the Golden Gate bridge [unclear] I was nineteen years of age and we heard the, we saw the [unclear] prison and the San Francisco bridge and we landed at Oakland and from there we were put on a train and sent up to, up the uhm, West Coast of America, uh, to Vancouver, where we switched trains for our trip on Canadian national Railways, was a steam, was an old-burner train and we went to, went on our way through the Canadian Rockies to Edmonton and slightly north of Calgary at and the thing that strikes us, was the difference in travelling in Australia in the cattle trucks, where we had, uhm, they weren’t there for our Americans in those days but they were there for Americans were waiting on us, we had sleepers, everything was laid on, the Canadian people, the Canadian government were fantastic, and here we were, we were only leading aircraftsmen, we weren’t even sergeants, and so anyway, we got to Edmonton, I went to the, uhm, manning depot, manning depot and I have a big photo in my home here of the, uhm, on one of our parades, you can pick me out in the [unclear], we had the morning [unclear], you can pick out the Australians because of their blue uniforms, all the rest wore khaki, was in summertime, but anyway, you could pick us out, pick me out with the manning depot and then I was transferred from there, which was just across the road, really, to number 2 AOS Edmonton, that’s where I did my navigation course. My first trip on navigation course was a real, [laugh], was a real did last as far as I was concerned but I’ll tell you about it. We, uhm, I had a, uhm, another navigator, we were flying Avro Ansons and, well, just digress slightly on our Avro Ansons and then poor our navigator had to wind the wheels of the Anson, Avro Anson up, a hundred and forty-nine times to get the wheels up, that was their job for, just straight on take-off. Anyway, we went on from this first navigation trip, I had a second navigator with me, who was supposed to be giving me fixes and that sort of thing and I got lost and so while I was suggesting we do, the pilots by the way were all civilians, they were not in the air force, they were under civilian contract and that was [unclear] Canada and, uhm, Maxi Titlebomb his name was and he suggested we get out and have a look at the railway sign [laughs] so we went down to the railway station and were at a sort of place called Wetaskiwin, not far out of Edmonton, but it was Wetaskiwin so I proceeded to [unclear] I knew where I was, I got me air plucked for Wetaskiwin and went up and we continued on our course, I expected to be scrubbed straight off on that score but I wasn’t, no, they didn’t, was the best thing that ever happened to me because I made a mistake on my first trip, you were never, the navigators rule was never to drop your air plot and I dropped me air plot because if you kept your air plot [unclear] end your life to get a position, make some sort of, where you think it was but you, you’d always got the opportunity to do that and, so a navigator never had to, should never drop his air plot. But anyway I finished up, was about six months course, was about six months and we, incidentally we had to, people talk about the weather these days, it was forty degrees, one night it was forty degrees below zero, now was in Fahrenheit was thirty-two degrees and so was seventy-two degrees of frost. We had to warm the aircraft up in the hangers before we went out and we had winds, sometimes we had headwinds where we were going backwards up in the north part of Canada [laughs], you know, very, very frightening for a nineteen year old [laughs] that didn’t know a lot about navigation, but we got through all of it and we, I finished up with a reasonable max coming out of my course, I was always better at the air plot than I was, I always had trouble with my theory things, wasn’t very good on the theory but I was, even if I say so I was reasonable as a navigator. And so we got our wings there and was around December 1943 and I haven’t been out to find many [unclear] since I came across my fellows book called Navigator Brothers the other day and I wrote to the author, because in there was a photo of one of the group that was having their passing air parade, cause a big deal the passing air parade, the Canadians really put on all their pomp and ceremony for their passing air parade. The, uhm, uh, yes, we got our wings and we proceeded then to go to, uhm, to uhm, we’d being posted to Montreal [unclear] I just had a thought, we went to Montreal and we had to wait a bit to go over to England and, you know, during my stay in Montreal, we stayed at a place called the Sheen, we were sent off for six weeks up to a ski lodge, so they didn’t have a boat to take us over to England so they sent us, was about thirty of us, we were all sent up to a ski lodge, luxurious place for, you know, a couple of weeks, two or three weeks, we learned to ski, we learned to use the tennis rackets on the feet to walk in the snow, we learned to ice skate, to do all sorts of things, it was wonderful. Anyway, we got back from, we went back to the Sheen and I found out that my brother, was, uhm, who was a pilot in the Middle East and an instructor at Lichfield, which would probably entirely they said to be Bomber Command.
AP: Absolutely.
DES: But he, uh, I found out he was coming over on his way home to Australia having completed his tour, he was transferred back to Australia but on his way he had to go, he was [unclear] to fly back with a brand new Liberator and Bryan was in New York with his crew, but they’d been flying Liberators although a lot of these fellows who did this were Lancaster pilots, cause there’s two hundred of them eventually, and then Bryan and I we shared a room in Belmont Plaza Hotel in New York for a couple of days. Then he went on his way home or to California, I should say, where he did three months before he flew off back to Australia, If you like I might talk about that later on. But, then I went back to Montreal and we then got advised that a ship was waiting for us in Halifax, so we did a night trip to Halifax from Montreal and we joined the maiden [?] vessel called, the maiden [?] vessel called the Andes, was a flat bottom boat, a, yeah, a 20000-tonner I suppose, but it was very fast and on that boat we had a complete Canadian armoured division, were ten thousand fellows with their tanks and about a hundred aircrew, [unclear] pilots joining there, there were navigators, there were wireless operators, there was bomb aimers, all been trained in Canada and sending us all over and so we went over there on our own, we didn’t go in a convoy, we went on our own, took us about seven days, we went up towards the North Pole and [unclear] in Liverpool but we didn’t have any, uhm, we didn’t have any [unclear] things happening to us except that we, was a [unclear] taking more than seven days but it was a fast trip was what we did and we weren’t allowed about decks at night time, so, at night time you couldn’t go up on deck no matter what it was because people had a habit of lighting cigarettes and submarines could catch you but some of these, the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary, they were too fast for the submarines so they, we zig-zagged all the way across and we arrived in Liverpool and uhm, we uhm, got, we arrived nearly as the morning met by the salvation army, they gave us food and so forth, we went in the big tunnel out of Liverpool and came down to, went down to Brighton PDRC and that’s where I started my first, uhm, flying, my first events in England.
AP: What did you?
DES: Now.
AP: What did you think of wartime England when you first got there?
DES: When?
AP: As a nineteen year old Australian, you are now in wartime England. What?
DES: What I thought of it? Well, uhm, when I first got there I, we went by train down to, we skirted to London, we went to, Brighton was a lovely place but, we were, there was the IFF that had taken over the uhm, the uhm, the Metropole and the, the Metropole and the, the two big hotels, I have just forgotten their names but it was where Margaret Thatcher was blown up later on, she escaped the bombing near in Brighton some years later but we went straight down so, we didn’t see much of the, uhm, the countryside. We were billeted out from the hotels, the [unclear] were billeted out in homes quite near the hotel but we didn’t see any great, you know, people had their coupons, that sort of thing and I saw a lot of it after on my first leave to London, then was when I, you know, realised how terrible things were but there in Brighton, where we were, all the beaches were, they’re all pebble stones not sand all the beaches were mined so you couldn’t go there. If anybody knows Brighton as the Brighton pier, and then it had been chopped in half purposely and the bottom half was used by the air force to, but we used to go and gonna get paid there, we used to go and collect the money on a Thursday or whatever it was, and so uhm, we didn’t see, uhm, in all fairness, you know, I didn’t see, you know, it was, I wouldn’t say, you know, nasty looking, you know, there wasn’t, there was no visible damage that I saw down in Brighton but, my mother and father both came out from England in 1912 so I had relations to go to in England and so I was, uhm, my first leave I had when I went to, I went to a place called Maidstone where my mother was born and uhm, I went to see uncle Ted and auntie Gladys who became [unclear] mother while I was there and I stayed with them and they had a big two story home. He was the general manager of Fremlin’s Brewery, which was a big brewery [laughs] in London and Maidstone, and was a white, the emblem was a white elephant on all the London busses and he was the general manager of this [unclear] and so naturally I was well looked after. If they wanted some meat, if they wanted a steak or some, which was very rare, she takes it, make sure you keep the uniform on and we’ll go down to the butchers today and she, he’s my cousin from Australia you know and they’d toss out some special food for us. But uhm, they seemed to live pretty well you know I think they were, you had to be careful with petrol rationing and that sort of thing but in the group that I sort of as, you know, these people were part of, put in mind, you know, reasonably well off as people and, but she was a real mother to me, she used to take me round on, I always used to go there on leave but she used to take me round and onto, show me the Rochester cathedral or Ramsgate, where my mother used to go and swim as she was a kid and so forth, you know, and I’ve met all my relations but I, I don’t have any, it’s only when later on I went down when I was in the middle of the buzz bombs and the V2 rockets that I realised, you know, how terrible that, uh, what the Germans had done to our people here in London and, you know, when you see streets that are just completely, [unclear] smashed, it was quite something but generally speaking I can’t say that I, you know, I go shopping in London and I, one of the girls there I used to take out, Elisabeth Fulligan, she was a solicitors clerk in London and I used to see her every now and then when I was on leave but I generally speaking, you know, the, I go into a restaurant but we might have a bit difficulty in getting decent sort of stuff but, you know, I can always get eggs and bacon or some I think we had horse meat at some places in London but I didn’t know we were eating horse meat until somebody told us but. Uh, all I can say is about, the people there were marvellous [unclear] and if I can just get back, the people in Canada I missed them, I spent a lot of time when I was in Canada doing my course, one of the fellows on my course was Harry Thompson and he was a Canadian, he lived in 1065 107 Street and we used to go to weekends there and you know, they couldn’t do, his parents and their friends had us all out to their places and we go, they take us to their places and, you know, you can never pay for them, they , it was fantastic in what they did for us and I had, as I say, I had relations in England and they are all the same and I, I think that I was fortunate in that I had relations to go and stay with, all our on the other side of that I missed seeing a lot of England, I used to go down on leave to Wesperdale [?] , good to be when I was there, I was enjoying myself immensely you know, I didn’t drink beer, I drank cider and that was worse. I can always remember going to a Rotary club meeting in Maidstone and they introduced me to a sergeants household and I had to get up and say who I was and I didn’t drink beer and I thought I’d have some cider and I think I was silly as anything because I didn’t realise cider was, I any, I didn’t know much about the air force and before we finished I’d like to speak about to something about the air force that I would like to say but I answered that question there and that’s about the best I can do about the people and the conditions and that sort of thing.
AP: So.
DES: Except that I had a good time.
AP: Well, that’s the important thing.
DES: When I was on leave that was, all my leave [unclear], that’s when you notice these things.
AP: So, from Brighton, where did you go next?
DES: Oh, ok, from Brighton my first port of call was, I think it was 29 OTU, operational training unit at Bruntingthorpe, which was near Leicester and that’s, no, I’m sorry, that’s not where I went, I went to the advanced flying unit in Freugh in Scotland. There’s a good story about Freugh and that’s where we did our first lot of real navigation. We did all trips, day trips out to the Mull of Kintyre, we’re up right in the north of Scotland, no the north, but half way of Scotland, and we were doing all these trips. You went over pretty close to Ireland, we’re doing all these marvellous trips, you know, that’s where we really learned to be navigators, really into, we got our wings in Canada, but this where we really did the real thing and there we spent, West Freugh is near Stranraer and Stranraer was the main port of call when you go over to Northern Ireland and now we are on the maps, normal maps, you can find them on google now but on the normal maps you buy, you will never see West Freugh, I’ve asked many a Scottish bloke about West Freugh but they can never find West Freugh, they can only assume it was probably a farm of some sort but they had especially for that, they made it [unclear] because it was flying, we’re on Avro Ansons again, we were flying Avro Ansons there at West Freugh, they’re a two-engine aircraft, and they had two navigators on board and then we, uhm, so, I think from a point of view of a AF advanced flying unit, by the way, it was number 4 [unclear] which is [unclear], we stayed there about, uhm, oh, we didn’t stay there long, we stayed there from July ’44 to the end of July, early July, 5th of July to the 21st of July and that’s where we did our AFU advanced flying unit . Now, from there, we graduated from there and we were only doing cross country trips and that sort of thing from there. From there we went to 29 OTU at Bruntingthorpe and that’s where what we called crewed up and that’s where we, uhm, we’re all pilots, navigators, wireless operators, correct me if I’m wrong, there was, we didn’t have any engineers cause we didn’t have engineers at that stage we had two air gunners, not certain about if we had all, and the wireless operator and so we all, where we were, we were put in a big room and we were told to find yourself a pilot, navigators find yourself a pilot sort of, so, all was a real PR job, you know, we’d all yeah and there might have been a few drinks [unclear] around too as I say but they all, we were all supposed to be friendly and you wanted to find out if you, you wanted to find you’ll gonna have a team that you could work together with and I, I don’t know how I picked my pilot but I [unclear] [unclear] from [unclear] and was slightly older than me, he’s a big man and he had the biggest hands I’ve ever seen, he was a, he had a grape, not a vineyard, well it was a vineyard but he had dried fruits in [unclear] and now was to sitting behind a big bomber and we had to carry a full bomb load and with his hands gave him a great confidence. But I’ll get back to the Bruntingthorpe now, but we, we got together and we finished up with whatever we had to do and we all then did various cross country fighter affiliation where they send up and you get up in the air find another fighter plane to come and meet you and then attack you and all that sort of thing and all various subjects pertaining to air, Gee, H2S, all that sort of thing and we we’ve been introduced to, that was our navigational aids, air positioning indication, that was another thing we learned all about but that was, an hour on Wellingtons, Wellington bomber, well, they were bombers in the early stage, they were being used for training at this stage now and uhm, the uhm, and so we, when they thought the pilot was satisfactory, off we went then to, let me see, we went to, from to HCU which was the heavy conversion unit and that was our introduction to four-engine aircraft and we caught the Sterling, now said and the, uhm, we were there for a short time, that was just, this was mainly the, the pilot getting used to and the navigator, we were doing more, more uhm, things that we had done before, you know, were dropping bombs and packed us bombs and we were doing long, uhm, long cross countries, uhm, you know, five hours, two hours, that sort of thing and uhm, we, uhm, we’d be when the pilot was satisfactory trained, we were showed off to what we called the Lank finishing skill, it was the Lancaster finishing skill and we were introduced to Lancasters and the, from and that was once again, we all did our own thing with the pilot and he just had to become a professional on that particular type of aircraft and from there we were sent to the squadron. Which was Waddington, which was just a few miles away and, and that was when we started our operational flying.
AP: So, what was your first thought of the Lancaster when you first [unclear]?
DES: Oh, after being on the Sterling [laugh], after being on the Sterling it was marvellous, uhm, yeah, with, uh, yeah because [unclear], the carry under the Lancaster, you know, this was probably the best aircraft that had ever been produced at that time for the duration of the war uh, but everything was, when you are a new pilot on the squadron, you usually get the [unclear] aircraft, but some of them, some of had been there for a while had their own aircraft made sure that they kept their own aircraft, we were not allowed to do this, I was on my first start, we were on one particular type of Lancaster and but everything was so modern and up-to-date, you know for us the Gee was, the navigational instruments were all spot on, you know, we never, I don’t know who did the, to this day I don’t know who did all the mechanics and the [unclear], our aircraft was already, it was one of the ground crew base but, you never saw them at work, at least I never saw them at work, unless something really went wrong but yeah, the gap at the back steps of the Lancaster and to walk along the, yeah, it’s try I suppose when I first went up there, you wonder, Gee, where am I going, you had to walk over a big spare but then again I had my own room, well, area, it was just a small area with a black curtain around it but I had a nice desk, had the astro[unclear] up on top which would flashed the various maps down on the and the stars onto the table, everything was spot on and you know, we came to expect, we’re on a Lancaster, we’re on the best we had and that was the feeling that I had, that I was very, very fortunate, you know, some people like the Halifax , you know, but, you know, they say, I love the Halifax and so forth but we just happened to, uh, it had such a good reputation and such a wonderful aircraft and could carry so many more bombs than anyone else. Uh, you know, I think that, uhm, that was my feeling about my first, but I was amazed, really. I was in awe. Yeah.
AP: So, you then go to Waddington from, what’s it, I think, I saw Skellingthorpe in [unclear]?
DES: Yes, I did, I went to Skellingthorpe I thought that was after. I went to Waddington [unclear].
AP: [laughs]
DES: No we didn’t get to Skellingthorpe.
AP: You didn’t get to Skellingthorpe? [unclear] after.
DES: No, we went to Skellingthorpe after the war finished. We went to Skellingthorpe and we were all transferred to Skellingthorpe and we were, uhm, we had our final passing air parade in August, August 1945. We had our passing air parade.
AP: So, alright, we will get back to Waddington then.
DES: Yeah, get back to Waddington.
AP: Yeah [laughs]. Uhm, where and how did you live on the Squadron at Waddington?
DES: Oh, well now, Waddington was a permanent station in England, a permanent RAF station. It was, it had been there for many years and it consisted of what you would call apartment-type of accommodation, it was brick, big brick flats and in that we’d all, the officers, my pilot now was a flight sergeant right through but as soon as he went to the Squadron, he got his commission and that was the rule then he got his commission. And so he went to the officer’s mess and they had their own specific area and we had our own, we were in dormitories and, uhm, I had, I sort of, well, I was a flight sergeant a lot of that time but I was regarded as a bit senior, not senior but, I seemed to be the one that organises for when and what we are doing outside out of the, you know, for our recreation cause my pilot didn’t smoke or drink and that is marvellous, [unclear] didn’t smoke or drink, he was young too but, but he was a great one for, uhm. He was really wrapped in aircraft, which he should be I know, no, but he gathered at the end of the runway if we weren’t flying a particular day on the squadron he’d go off at the end of the runway and watch them all take off and that sort of thing, he was, he was a wonderful bloke and then he took a great interest in everything, but he. My brother was the same, he would do all that sort of thing, you know, they’re really wrapped but others might be doing something else, but, we used to, well, there were various things we could do, I used to take them down to the, we used to go down to The Horse and Jockey, which is still there, the hotel, but it was a hotel in the , you know, we could go and have something to eat down there, or we’d have a few [unclear], play darts, [unclear] balls and that sort of thing and there a lot of our lot, we had pushbikes and we could pushbike down to the Horse & Jockey and that was in the little town of Waddington, was only a little place and uhm, uh, a lot of our time was spent going around and then we’d have, every six weeks we’d have leave. But, sticking to Waddington, uhm, you know, we had a lot to do, we had dances, the west [unclear] we would have dances all night, yeah, we’re all, uh, I reckon that we were all well looked after and they really were, I’ve recently been back to the Horse & Jockey, and, you know, they are so pleased to see you and they were like that in England. Most, I think of most of them were, I’m not being a snob but I think most of them were pretty good party fellows, there were not a lot of drunks, gave me a favorite to drinks, we had a, we had right a bite back and a [unclear] who used to stop us every now and then and say: ‘Aye, aye, aye!’ but they wouldn’t do anything to us. They were quite, uhm, quite pleasant. But I’ve really found that the people there, I didn’t get involved in anything much outside [unclear] leave I had relations to go to [unclear] wonderful, cause I had my mother’s side and my father’s side so I had relations of both so [unclear] he was from, my father was from Maryport in Cumberland, right up in the north and I have been there a few times since. I met my grandfather that I had never seen and a bit quite of the other relations but the grandfather was the closest, he was a tenner and there was gaslight, there was no electricity, was gaslight, and he, I had to sleep with him, he had no other accommodation there was I think he had a family gone but there wasn’t a very big place and I had forgotten he had, I was [unclear] he was one of six brothers, my father was one of six brothers but later on I found out that my grandmother had fourteen kids so that meant we, in the last few years I’ve been chasing up all these people we’ve met, since I didn’t know we had but sticking to the, uhm, on the Squadron, yeah, we, uhm, I don’t think I had much more [unclear] than I, I had just a normal [unclear], I used to go to church at the Lincoln Cathedral every now and then, I used to go to Southwell. In case you don’t know that Southwell was six miles south out of Newark in Robin Hood territory and it’s a cathedral, it’s got a cathedral so it’s a city, it’s only a small place but it’s a city of Southwell, although they call it Southwell, and so I went there a few times, I was made very welcome and incidentally the Southwells in Australia is one of the biggest families in Australia but, and I am connected with them but they’re in Canberra and they, their offshoots are all, uhm, there is an enormous lot of them, probably the biggest family in Australia, the Southwells. You might, [unclear], but the government gave them a grant in the bicentenary they have their big reunion in Canberra, so there must be some truth in there.
AP: So, you mentioned The Horse & Jockey earlier. Uhm, if you walk into the Horse & Jockey, in wartime, what’s there, what does it look like and what’s going on?
DES: Looks like an old English pub.
AP: Yeah? Funny that.
DES: Yeah, a bit out [unclear] cause I went back a few months again and I hardly knew the place, it had been changed around, they moved a lot of the chimneys out, but I can’t remember getting to a reunion in 1995 at the Horse & Jockey and they had an upstairs everybody could go and we had a great get together that day which was been back on Channel 9 and I was lady in the singing of all the wartime songs in Waddington but it was a real meeting place down, there was another pub we tried [unclear] plus I didn’t drink much but I went to that, oh, I was drinking as at that stage I hadn’t started to drink but that’s another story. My brother, I didn’t mind, now I never drink in our family and my brother on his way back he came up to see me in Montreal at one stage and he said: ‘Would you like a beer?’ And I said: ‘Oh no, I will have a lemonade’. And he said: ‘I will have a beer’. I said, oh, so I didn’t say anything to him. And when since I got back to Montreal, I’ve had a beer and I’ve been drinking beer ever since [laughs]. But, you know, Canada was a funny place for beer because it’s a, they don’t sell beer in a, in those days they didn’t sell beer in a hotel, you had to go into a place that was especially designed and sit down and have a beer but you put salt into the beer to get the gas out of, it was so gassy, that’s another story. But, the Horse & Jockey now, I gonna say now because honestly I’ve forgotten what it was there like but now they have a lot of dart boards around, we played darts and we played balls outside, it was fun, uhm, but it was just, you know, there were members of the public, you know, the people that were working there, we would fraternise with them, they were all friendly with, so, it was generally, it was nice, actually it wasn’t a bad place to go and have a [unclear] and a [unclear]. No, I wouldn’t say that, [unclear] we were [unclear] but more recollections of the Horse & Jockey that was, I said, the crew kept together, I kept the crew together, we were all there together, it was the whole other six of us, there as, that didn’t mean, there was no worry about that but I would like to add that I had [unclear] to my place in about 1950 or 60 and he [unclear] smoked. So, [laughs], [unclear] it’s been a change, he remained a bachelor all his life. But he was wonderful fellow and he was another one, as I say he was very, very keen on, what he did, he took on the training course after the war in [unclear] and he was, he got a medal for that, an RFD or doing something like that, royal returned forces, no, not returned, what’s it, returned something forces decoration? Not returned forces. Anyway, as an RFD, as a, there’s a post normal or medal, but he, he got one of those. But he was a great fellow and he brought us home safely.
AP: [unclear] Alright.
DES: But I had a lot of confidence in him, as I was saying, earlier on, [unclear] blessed hands, they were bigger than mine, I got the tiniest hands you’ve ever seen, mine, my wife’s gloves won’t fit me, you know, they’re my hands, my hands are so tiny, but, yeah, he was, yeah, that’s about it, [unclear].
AP: Yeah, we’re going alright still. So, a little bit more about this daily life in Waddington. The Sergeants Mess, what was that like, what sort of things happened there?
DES: Oh yeah, the Sergeants Mess. Yeah, well, we spend a bit of time there, no, after a trip we do was going to the mess and there’s a lot of, a lot of untoward things went on in the Sergeants Mess and some of the other persons over there, a bit longer than I was, tell some wonderful stories about bringing a donkey into the mess and there’s the Officers Mess and all sort of that. But, we, uhm, I can’t recall, my memory is not that good for the Sergeants Mess. I can, I know what it was like but it was not a place that, you know, we all met there at various stages and had our lunch there and our dinner there and all that sort of thing but, uhm, this never stayed in my mind as being rather relevant to me, I don’t know why but I know we ate there and had our meals there and you know the ordering officer would come round and say: ‘Any complaints?’ [Laughs] Every day in the evening we had our meal there, the ordering officer would come round and say, quite often it was one of the, one of your pilots that, [laughs] you know, was his turn to come over from the officers mess and say: ‘Any complaints?’ What’s the officer, orderly officer, any complaints, I don’t know, that I had many complaints, no, I can’t help, I can’t recall a lot about the Sergeants Mess.
AP: Did 463 and 467 Squadron eat in, did they have their own officer’s mess [unclear]?
DES: No, we were all together, they had their own, the two were there together.
AP: So it was more [unclear] Waddington.
DES: yeah, yeah, yeah. Was Waddington, yeah. Yeah, when we went back to Waddington in, when we went to the Officers Mess there was just one place, yeah, there was only one place, there was 463 and 467, yeah, we got to know each other 463 and 467, as you know 467 was the first Australian Squadron, first Squadron on, uhm ,first was their own Squadron, they were formed in about 1941, something like that and then after they got a big bigger, we wanted to have another Squadron, so 463 grew out of [unclear]? Yeah, [unclear], grew out of [unclear], is it about November or December? ‘43, would that be right? 47 might have been ’42, I think it was ’43.
AP: Yeah, ’43.
DES: Yeah, it was ’43, I think. And so that’s how 463 was. Uhm, and that was under Wing Commander Rollo Kingswood-Smith, who send me off the parade ground for not having a shave. And I was only a young bloke who only shaved about four days a week and I was on, and they sent me off the parade ground for not having a shave. And then later on of course, I’m going ahead of fifty years I became the secretary of 463 Squadron, Rollo was, he is the patron at present, no, he is the patron, I think but he was and he came up to me, oh, I did know him a bit afterwards so. He came up to me and looked at me and said: ‘Oh, Don, you’ve done your shave today’. And days before he died, he said to me: ‘Don, you had your shave today’ and I reminded him when I came back from England but I became quite a good friend of Rollo, when I finished, cause he is really very, very good, he always [unclear], you know, he was a flight commander, no he was a CO, or was a flight commander, whatever he was, he wasn’t a station commander, because that was different from, but he was, he was a 463 commanding officer but he did his trips at the time, he never, he always did his trips, so, he could have quite easily have said, No, I’m going tonight or something like that, but Rollo would always do his trips and never fail. And he was always very good with his, I know, with his writing to people for, you know, lost their and lost their sons and but I believe he was a very strict, he was a very, very strict man, as I say, he was quite different in late years, well, he was, you knew where you stood with him but, and I think he had to be to be the commanding officer at that particular, and we had all walks of life in our, uh, in the air force.
AP: Did 463 Squadron have any superstitions or hoodoos or anything that you are aware of of [unclear]?
DES: Not that I am aware of, I always used to carry my RAF, I had no RAF scarf, always carry my RAF scarf, had to go back one night to get it, but, which I had forgotten, I had to get back but that was only a personal deal I don’t think I was really superstitious about I had to carry my RAF scarf, it was a scarf, it wasn’t a tie, it was a scarf, I didn’t see many of them, I still got mine on my top drawer beside my bed I’ve got my Royal Air Force scarf. I also had my Royal Air Force [unclear] [laughs].
AP: [laughs]
DES: Some [unclear].
AP: We were talking about off tape before we started. Very good. So, you flew nine operations [unclear].
DES: I did nine operations, yep.
AP: Do any of them particularly stand out?
DES: Yeah, was a couple I can have. The trip, uhm, I did to Pilsen. We took off, was a long trip, Pilsen was in Czechoslovakia and it was a long trip and not, we had a couple of hours and now one of our engines went and the skipper said to me: ‘Do you think we can make it?, and I said: ‘Yes, I think so. I think we can take a few short cuts [unclear] we might be able to make it, we don’t tell anybody whatever’. And he said, [skimming through pages of a book], yeah, the uhm, I said: ‘I think I could make it’ and I did a few calculations and even though I say [unclear] I reckon I did a pretty well navigation so I think that was that day because you know you had to be careful if you gonna take any short cuts it couldn’t stand out we were on a track that you were given and as long as you stayed four miles or five miles out of the side of the track you are fairly safe because that’s where all the other aircraft were going, and we were tossing out the silver paper, the Window, that made look as if there are more aircraft out and that sort of thing. But we had to be careful if we went out of it, you could be picked off by the German radar, so you had to be a little bit careful. So, anyway, we got there on time, uhm, we uhm, and uhm, so that was a long trip that I got a bit of praise for by my skipper in the briefing that we went back to and that was about uhm, eight hours and we bombed on three engines. We were diverted when we got back cause we didn’t have much fuel left, uhm, we landed at Boscombe Down that particular night and, uhm, then the next day went back to, uhm, to, uhm, Waddington but uhm, yeah, it was that. And one other night we went to [unclear]. I was in a couple of thousand bomber raids, daylight, we were over Essen and Dortmund and I, we bombed through a cloud there and this was, you realised we were getting towards the end of the war and the master bomber was down below the clouds and he’d come up the cloud, drop the target indicators and go back down again and see how they went and he turned on the RT, the radio telephone and he turned into [unclear] TI by ten seconds or something like that, you know, and he’d be conducting the whole operation from down below. And, so we were just, we just dropped bombs, we didn’t see where they go, we just dropped them on top of the cloud, and that was on the Krupp works at Essen and Dortmund and. But there was another one I was going to mention and we went to [unclear], and uhm, which is just south of Hamburg and the wind changed that particular night and the whole force was all over north-western Europe, we got a little blown away but well, I got a little bit off course, I got to say this, I got a bit off course and we were chased by the German jetfighters, the 263 I think it is? The 263, something like that, the 263? But, we went into a cork, we did have, we were well-trained, went straight away and went into the corkscrew and we did all that, and, cause they can only stay up for about ten minutes and so they, you know, you, if you did your corkscrew properly, probably you were safe so we got out of that but that was, we were picked off there because I got a bit off course. And then I went to uhm, smaller refineries, Bohlen, I went to Bohlen, that was out near Leipzig, for people that might know where Leipzig is, a lot of these synthetic oil refineries were in Eastern Germany and, uhm, we’re at the crossing of the Rhine when the British army were, uhm, crossing the Rhine, uh, we were given the job of bombing Wesel, we were given the job of bombing Wesel and, uhm, which we did and I think it was only, it was only our, you know, our group went that particular night but the British army were on one side of the river and the German side, the Germans were on the other side, and we bombed the other side but we were given a certain time because the British were going into the water at a certain time to go over and I took it with the loss of one life, I think it was in, General Montgomery, Field Marshall Montgomery, he, send the message back to, they brought it over to the loudspeakers the next day on parade, do you want something to eat?
AP: No, thank you.
DES: It was on parade and we were on parade and they read out a message from Montgomery to say how wonderful it was and we did a wonderful job bla, bla, bla, yeah, and uh, yeah that was interesting because you can, if you go to Wesel afterwards it’s quite, you know, I’ve seen some photos of it lately and I think they have rebuilt most of, most of the place. And lastly we did the last operation of the war which was on Tonsberg, which was in the southern part of Norway and we approached it from the North, so it was a long crossing over the North Sea, this was the last operation of the war, on Anzac Day, and with the, we came down the coast, I was coming down from Norway, with Sweden on the left hand side and Sweden was all beautifully lit up, all lit up and the other side was all black, blacked up there was the, Norway which was under the control of the Germans, anyway, we, uhm, that was the last operation of the war and we, uhm, that was bombed successfully but on, if I check forward about fifty years, I was at a funeral and, uhm, of a lady who was of Norwegian birth and the ex-consul of Norway was there and I went and spoke to him and I said: ‘I’ve never been to Norway except on the air’. And he said: ’When were you there?’ I said: ‘Oh, I was there on the 25th of April 1945’ and he said: ‘Well, your aim was pretty good that night’. [laughs] Not at all, so I thought we did pretty well. He said yes. He said, but some of your bombers did bomb the shipyards, some of them went astray and they bombed some of the civilians and he said that all the people of Norway, the war was coming to an end, the 8th of May was the end of the war, the war was coming to an end, they are all thrilled, all happy because everybody knew the armistice was coming on that particular day and he said, now, all the people in the rest of Norway, he said, we were burying our dead and he was very nice about the whole thing and, you know, he is, I got him down as a likely speaker for whoever wants someone to speak about it but, they were very understanding and. So I must really go to France these days, you know, the people in France they were terribly bombed, you know, was, they are thanking you and thanking you and we did an enormous lot of damage but they realised that we had to, that we had to do that for, uhm, sake of winning the war.
AP: So, you mentioned that Messerschmitt, or the jetfighter.
DES: Jetfighter, yeah.
AP: And the corkscrew. So, you are the navigator. You hear corkscrew port go. What happens next?
DES: I have been difficult. Well, we gotta a set of pattern what you got to do the, if the plane’s coming in from the port, you corkscrew port go the rear gunner or whatever the hillside part will do his corkscrew and he’d go down fifteen hundred and he’d turn and he’d go up fifteen hundred feet and it’s quite a ring morale to do but you fly, if you do it properly you fly, you know, a certain course even [unclear] and so, you know, it didn’t do much damage to our [unclear] we didn’t have to make much allowance for an hour in our navigation, if you had to corkscrew port, you, you could just sort of forget about it and just there’s, as long as you weren’t [unclear] too long but generally speaking you flew a net course for this business, all designed to and it was very successful the corkscrew but I, I think we did this about three times I suppose.
AP: What does it feel like?
DES: Oh, I don’t mind, don’t forget we are nineteen years of age there, this was just, this was just wonderful, trusting the aircraft. Oh, of course you were worried a bit about where you were being shot down that goes into it, but generally speaking the corkscrew never, we thought if we did the corkscrew port we would be safe. You’ve got that feeling in your mind that you’d do that, I always remember Redge Boys [?] he was our hero, he was [unclear], he was our navigation leader at Waddington and Redge he did two tours and he said he never believed himself that he’d ever be shot down and he tried to, he despite the fact that the pilot was the chief, he always made sure the crew were all, you know, positive about what we were doing, they were all, they were always convinced that they were gonna get through this. They had this positive attitude that they, you know, and I think it helped, while you’re up there, [unclear], I tried to adopt that attitude that, you know, we all wanted to get home and see the people and I want to get home but, I must admit that, when we were on a bombing run, I used to see, a navigator didn’t have his parachute on, he, you couldn’t work on a desk when, cause we had a chest parachute that fitted on a harness on your chest and you had it sitting beside you. Now, uh, if I was to leave there at my desk, I’d always put my parachute on and I would go, if we were on a bombing run, I would remember the course you got to steer after we dropped our bombs and I’d turn the light out and I’d go up and stand behind the pilot, and watch all the, what was going on and I could then pop down to the rear gunner, near the rear gunner and say, could I have a look at the pilot [laughs] and you’d see the fires and all that sort of thing in the background. But, you know, I felt as if I wanted to be part of the thing so I wanted to see what was going on. Cause everyone else could see what was going on except the wireless operator and what’s the name because we were sitting [unclear] bomb’s gone, you’d have to wait a while, while the photo was taken, away was given course 270 and off we go. And, yeah.
AP: Yes, that’s unusual, most, uhm, most navigators I have spoken to would, you know come up and have a look [unclear] take the head and go, no, don’t ask me to do that [unclear].
DES: Oh, now, that’s, that’s another story. Well, that is. After, a lot of people don’t know about this. But after the war we disarmed, the war had finished and we were disarming with all our, [unclear] disarmed and we had to get rid of all the bombs on the station. So, what they did was we’d [unclear] might have been a couple of weeks, I could look that up but that’s been a couple of weeks, we flew out of Waddington with four bomb loads, headed to the North Sea, about two and a half hours and straight course out, dropped our bombs, they were dropped safe, they weren’ dropped armed but they were dropped safe, and there, I know what the Greenies [?] had signed out because they knew all these thousands of bombs now there was really thousands of us, there was not only our Squadron but every other Squadron was doing this. We go out there and then we come back and if you were above the cloud, we used to have a lot of fun with the pilot with going over the cloud, as if you were low flying. We had some lovely time so, but what I’m coming to is I thought this particular dive [?] was navigation record, no had Gee operator, [unclear], I didn’t done any, I didn’t have to do any strict navigation set up, I, cause I had near position indicators which told me, anyway, we, I thought I’d like to get into the rear turret and I saw [unclear] was the rear gunner and he could come up and sit in the navigation seat and I’d coming in here for a couple of hours, you know. So I trotted off down to the and the [unclear] showed me what to do and [unclear] I couldn’t have gone out of there, couldn’t have gotten there faster, was scared stiff, you know I’d never been because you’re away from the tires of the aircraft, when you are sitting back behind you, so, you are sitting out in the open. You know, you’re away from the aircraft so you feel like it and I think [unclear] having to sit [unclear] on our trip to sit in this thing, you know, you’d be, mind you, these, while our air gunners had had the experience of flying they knew what they’d, you know, they’d got used to it I suppose but me as a person I was scared stiff, I was more scared stiff getting into, getting out of that turret than I was, say, sitting out there in the navigation and bombs, looking down and looking at bombs going off and [unclear] I was scared stiff on that trip. And I had the greatest of admiration for our rear gunner out there, how they could [unclear], and [unclear] you know, I’m not necessarily claustrophobic but I thought oh, Jeez, I couldn’t do this. And I realised how well off I was, because the navigator was lucky I reckon because, as I say, on a ten hour trip you’d have, you had to get a fix every ten minutes or so and, you know, you no sooner that you’d got your fix, you’d plotted it, as you got your fix, you plotted it, you’d make the necessary course, the course change and so forth so If you had to make any change and it took time and the time went quickly this was what the beauty was the pilot was the same, he may be sitting around looking, you know, sitting out on the front [unclear] putting on a [unclear] every now and then, yeah, most of the time but he, and but the navigator had to do and the wireless op was something similar to, he had a lot of work to do, he had to keep the schedules and report back and we had our jobs and our logs don’t forget, as soon as we got back, were handed in to the navigation leader and you were marked as if you were at school and you get 60 percent, or 50 percent or 75. And uhm, you know but this is why we had, oh I must say this as a navigator, that we had marvellous navigator, the navigators were, the Royal Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force, they were wonderfully trained, they, don’t forget, they took as about eighteen months to get into operations, the Americans, I understand can get in as navigating, get in about six weeks training, you know, and that’s not exaggerating, I believe as I say, because some of the B-24s out of Darwin carried, the Americans carried Australian navigators if you look up your history, which is not widely spoken about, but we were well trained and, as I say, we strictly [unclear], we knew our work was big marked anyhow so you had to be, you really gave you a greater incentive to be [unclear] but above all, you know, a ten hour trip might have seemed by far, you know, then, yeah.
AP: VE-day.
DES: Ah, VE-Day. This is all vivid with me, I had wonderful times on VE-day but VE-Day I did three trips to France bringing home, I think it was on VE-Day, yeah, it was on VE-Day, I don’t know if it was three or two we didn’t the next day, you know I did three trips of bringing home prisoners of war, we’d go over in Juvincourt in France and load up twenty five, it was called Operation Exodus and we were out, we load up to twenty five British war, British prisoners of war, they’d been, some of them had been there since Dunkirk in 1940 and the first load we carried, oh, they sit, the twenty five of them sat in the fuselage of the Lancaster on cushions, not seatbelts, uhm, they just had to hang on and [laughs] they just had to sit there and there were thousands of them, we brought out prisoners of war with this Operation exodus by the way, but they were, uhm, It was a wonderful experience, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life, you flew these guys out, they’d been prisoners of war all these years and they, uhm, the first load I carried they were all Sikhs, they were Indians the first lot we carried out. The next load we carried were all obviously from England and it seemed to be most obvious, I made sure that I went down and I got them to come up gradually when the white cliffs of Dover came, got them, and we ferried them up but it was nice and orderly and hear the tears was rolling down their cheeks, you know, was absolutely wonderful to see the, uhm, and they all shook hands when we, uhm, they all shook hands when they got off the aircraft and that was what I did on VE-Day. Now, shortly after VE-Day we had a lot of celebrations and I, you know, I can always remember smoking a cigar, having a few beers, I was Mister Churchill at one stage, you know, was a lot of hilarity and joyness and it was a wonderful feeling, they, you know, all the station was all together and we were all having, officers, ordinary, you know, the airmen, we were all together having a and they’d put on some wonderful [unclear] there and at that particular time and that’s my, I worked on the VE-Day there and we were so glad we were doing, and the guy that wrote our 463-467 book, Nobby Blundell he was a, uhm, he was a fitter, he was a fitter, uhm, an engineer and on a ground staff and he wrote our books incidentally, all the books on 464-647 fisher [?] books were all written by Nobby did a magnificent job but the uhm, was great the, uhm, he managed to, you know, get, gives us all the particulars that we wanted to know, I don’t know, and he was all of our flying set up, all of the, he’d used the, [unclear], is that called, the evidence of our doing your trip, he used to get all these information from the [unclear], he spend years on doing this and so we were forever grateful and he did this but, uhm, getting back to VE-Day, I was more than, more than pleased with what was happening and then of course we had to start thinking about what was gonna happen as it was after VE-Day.
AP: Uhm, how did you get back to Australia?
DES: Ah, that’s a good [unclear], you’ve got some good questions. They are very good, you know, [unclear], we uhm, the uhm, oh I made two efforts to get away. We were disbanded by the way, we were disbanded in August at, uhm, Skellingthorpe, I think it was Skellingthorpe, we’d moved to Skellingthorpe from the Squadron and they formed a Tiger Force for people that were gonna go out to fight the Japanese and uhm, we uhm, managed to particular Tiger Force the uhm, [unclear] you know just asking [unclear].
AP: How did you go home?
DES: How did you go home, yeah. Lost my train of thought. At my age you can.
AP: That’s one. That’s the first one in [unclear]
DES: No, I forget.
AP: Off you go.
DES: Oh, good. [laughs] I know you can scrub that out, yeah, but getting home. Yeah, but I wanted to mention about, we disbanded and then we were transferred to Brighton to wait for a boat and the [unclear] came along. Now, a lot of people in the Air Force know what happened there, there was virtually no, [unclear] but the conditions on the [unclear] which is the [unclear] boat, there was no P&O those days, [unclear] made all the newspapers that a lot of the trips walked off the ship at Southampton because of the conditions, I didn’t want to go twenty five days or so we gotta go and we went back through the canal and [unclear], well we didn’t stop, well we stopped in a few places, the uhm, it was, the, in Brighton we went from, we’d gone onto the ship on the [unclear], we’d got onto the ship and we sailed eventually, we sailed to half of it and wouldn’t you believe we broke down in the Bay of Biscay and the war was over, there was no submarines or so, the war had finished at this time, this was in August or September 1945 [unclear] and we, in between time we had been flying, we’d been doing, taking stuff out to drop the bombs and we’d been doing fighter affiliation and all, we then found work for us to do. Anyway, we set sail out of Southampton and we broke down, and we were flying the black flag, anyone knows it’s out of control and so we eventually we got, we slipped back to Southampton, the first time I have ever been sick was on that bay because we just it [unclear] and happened [unclear] it was about 20000 tons and was their luxury ship when the [unclear] luxury could have been made into a troop ship and we went back to Southampton we were sent then up to Millham. Now Millham is right up near West Freugh, up near Stranraer, right up on the North-West of England and [unclear] us all up to, it was the middle of winter. And we were in Nissen huts and we had to try and keep warm and they had to heat us there but ran out of coal, they couldn’t get, we were rationed the coal, so we smarty Australians [unclear], there was the coal, we got into the coal, [unclear] and pinched the coal, I caught a couple of sometime [unclear] about but we had to go and pinch coal to keep warm. And uhm, we eventually went from there, we were there about a week I suppose and then they found another boat for us which was the Durban Castle, it was a [unclear] ship which went from London, used to go from London to Cape Town and that was a nice ship was made up of air, the complement of going home was a lot of air force people, we had New Zealanders coming home uhm, was quite an interesting lot of people that were on board but we were in [unclear], I was a warrant officer then I’d got up to warrant officer and there under the normal chain, six months of flight sergeant, twelve months of, uh, sorry, six months of sergeant, four months of flight sergeant, then you’re put and made a warrant officer, that was the RAAF and so we’d became warrant officers and then was commission if you got a commission. And the uhm, we uhm, [pauses] [unclear] yeah, yeah, we’re back, we’re off from and, yeah, we were now on the Durban Castle, we’re on the, I forgot, the Durban Castle and the Durban Castle and we had a lot of, we pulled into Gibraltar, can remember Gibraltar, the conditions on the boat were good, the food was good, I put on a stain on the way back because, you know, we put a lot of potatoes, they had a lot of stuff [unclear] but they fed us well, it was a full ship really, but we picked up people on the way, we went to Gibraltar but that was to drop off somebody who was sick so we didn’t pull in, it was just off Gibraltar and we could see the place and if anybody is interested they oughta go to Gibraltar, it is one of the most interesting places to go there. Uh, you don’t expect to see what you see, so we, Gibraltar just a night, we dropped these people off and then we went to Taranto in Italy, in the heel of Italy and there we picked up the New Zealand war brides, that had married a lot of the New Zealanders, who were fighting in Italy, they’d either gone home or [unclear], but the war brides were on their own and so we picked up the war brides and that filled the boat a bit more and then we went from Italy to the Canal, went through the canal, and they wouldn’t let us off the boat in the canal and, you know, none of us would have been through the Suez Canal and so, that was working of course and so was [unclear] to Port Tewfik, Tewfik? No, Port Said, we went to Port Said and they, one of the guys in that was with me at the time, was called [unclear] and he had a DCM, Distinguished Conduct Medal which he had earned in the Middle East but he was in the Air Force, he was, he was a gunner in the Air Force but and he’d been to Port Said, you know, he knew all about this place and we had to get to Port, [mimics the gunners voice] so there was a ladder down at the back of the ship and so a few of us got out of the bumboats as they called them [unclear] and we went ashore, we went ashore, we didn’t take any notice of them people [unclear] we, most of the people were doing this but they were not supposed to. And so we were wondering around the town and the Arabs tried to come and sell us something, dirty postcards on sale [laughs], you know, and we were looking, [unclear] got out, went off and he hit one of these blokes, he hit one of these blokes, you know, because he was trying to do something wrong or I don’t know what it was but he knew what he can get away with, he slapped him on the face [unclear] we gonna get caught [unclear] being in a riot, anyway we got back to our ship alright and went up the gangway this time, no one said anything so. We went through the canal which was a great experience to go through and see how that operates, I’ve never been through the Panama but a lot of our fellows went through the Panama, which I would have liked to have done, uhm, then we went into Aden, and then we, that was near Yemen, and that was in Yemen where you nearly got a lot of troubles and then we went to, uhm, Perth, we went straight across the Indian Ocean to Perth and that’s where we dropped of the Perth blacks [?] and I remember carrying, not carrying but helping a bloke who’d had too much to drink in Kings Park and we were gonna miss the boat, cause you had to be up to Perth and the boat was at Freemantle, we had to get back by train and we had to get him back so [unclear] helped him back but he was not used to Australian beer cause the British beer was pretty, uh, pretty weak and this Australian beer was pretty, you know, pretty [unclear] anyway we got back, we came around the [unclear] to Melbourne, and was Melbourne we got off the boat and went to, uhm, went on the train, went on the train to Sydney, I don’t recall, must have been the train of the time, we sat up but we didn’t have sleepers, and no, we went up to Sydney and the Vietnam blokes all complain that they didn’t get a welcome home. Well, none of us got a welcome home but we were quite happy, cause we arrived at Central Station on platform number one, my mother and sister were there to meet me, they took me home and then a week later I was to report at Bradfield Park, I went to Bradfield Park, they gave me a dischargement home and I went back to work.
AP: That was it.
DES: That was it.
AP: Did you have any issues settling down again? [unclear]?
DES: No, no, no, I had no issues. The only thing is for a while so I went straight back to my job that I left at the MLC and I had been there eighteen months, for eighteen months so I didn’t know much about the business and so I got into, when I went to, I applied when I went back, this is in early 1946 I uhm went back to the MLC and they put me on, they had to put me on that was the law, they had to put you back on staff and they sent me to a department where I was the only fellow with a hundred and forty girls. I’d been in the Air Force all this time with fellows, we had the well WAAF around but generally speaking you weren’t used to mixing around with women, you know, and they put me there for, they put me there for a purpose, of course, and they put next to me the girl that spoke the most [laughs] she was a real gossip, she spoke the most, Shirley Reed, and Shirley, and I, the first two weeks I didn’t hardly, apart from doing my work I didn’t say anything but not because I didn’t [unclear], I was just out, I don’t know what to do, you know, I was just doing my work but I thought, and I wasn’t that good at conversation at that particular time [unclear] we had lunch at our desk in those days, we bought some sandwiches and had lunch at our desks, she kicked the chair from underneath me, I was leaning back and she kicked the chair it was dangerous, she kicked the chair, I went down under the [unclear], well, everybody laughed and I laughed and from that time on I was married [?] [laughs]. I was in that department for about two years and I was still the only fellow. And I have great memories of that, of that two years because I was single, I went to so many birthday parties and twenty-first birthday parties, to weddings, I talked to get a few other girls, my wife was one of them and well, became one of them and I went to work for her in the department and I made [unclear] she came to England for four years and then came back and I married her then but I don’t, was I was then move to, I went again they sent me to Tasmania to open up the office in Tasmania in Launceston and then I was there for two years and then I, they did that in those days, don’t do it nowadays, then I was sent to, I was in Sydney for a while and then I was posted to Adelaide in 1960 and I, I was in charge of the collector branch there in Adelaide and we had two children there, Dave and Jane and that was another wonderful experience and then. I’ve got to say something about the air force, don’t let me forget.
AP: [unclear] of course.
DES: But, we had, Adelaide was a wonderful place to bring children up, I became a fan of the, I was a rugby person, rugby union, I became a fan of Australian rules when I first went to Adelaide I was, uhm, every Monday we had lunch with a group in the industry, in the life insurance industry and I didn’t have much to, I didn’t have much to talk about because I didn’t know anything about the Australian rules, for all they talked about were the teams that played at the weekend so I thought, oh, the best thing for me to do was to join those, if we were gonna have, [unclear], I’d better join them, better go out with them, so, they were members, a few of them were members of the Stirling football club, Aussie [?] rules club, and, no, The Double Blues, I can sing you the song if you want me to sing it, but they are The Double Blues and I became quite a rugby, an Australian rules fan, I’m not forgetting me rugby cause I’m a rugby person still but the, I used to, family, it was a family setup, we’d go out on a Saturday and we’d go, we’d have the radio would be on at the eleven o’clock match and then we’d go on, we’d have lunch or something then we’d go up to see the afternoon, the main game in the afternoon and then we’d finish there we’d go and buy some beer and some food and we'd watch the replay of that game and then we’d watch the replay of the main game in Melbourne, that was our Saturday but all the kids were all around at home that particular day and they’d come to the game in Adelaide, then they got so much free bottle they could pick up and the kids used to go and pick it up and make a lot of money on a Saturday [laughs] and but I became quite a fan of that we won the premiership four weeks running and that was my introduction to Australian rules, what a wonderful thing to be, but it’s a wonderful game and I love Australian rules and I do follow the Swans, uhm, but I don’t go out and see nowadays, I don’t go and see the rugby except on [unclear] occasions again I go and watch the rugby but. And in Tasmania I played rugby union and my [unclear] was the president of the North Tasmanian rugby union, we had three teams and I played in one of the teams and, uhm, that was in Launceston and, oh I forgot, New Zealand. I was in, I was two and a half years in New Zealand and I was there for the Springbok Tour in 1956 and I saw quite a bit of the football there, I used to go to the football in those days but New Zealand was another great place to be I was married there but I came back to Sydney, married Dorothy and then came back to New Zealand when she came back, she came back to work at the MLC for twelve months and, uh, and then we came back to, and I had a wonderful time because I have got relations there In New Zealand, so, I had places I had to go, so, I’ve seen every city in New Zealand except Gisborne and I don’t know why I’m saying that but, uhm, it was a wonderful place for me and it was a good place to, uhm, yeah it was a good, I was the, I joined the Kendala Lawn Tennis Club and I played tennis and I became the treasurer of the Kendala Lawn Tennis Club and so I fitted into the New Zealand mob, cause New Zealanders by and large as a group don’t like Australians, you know, but they do like, when they meet individually we’re all great, you know, we might talk about the Anzac business but they have really odd, that’s only my observation of course, they don’t’ really and I’m a, I regularly go to funerals in New Zealand at the moment but you know I’m a great fan of New Zealand and they as a group, they are jealous of Australians, I think, cause we’re so big.
AP: Ok, could be something.
DES: Yeah.
AP: Yeah, worked with a few kiwis, anyway. Uhm, yeah, you were gonna say something [unclear].
DES: I was gonna say, I do a lot of this, you know, I’m gonna plug in for the Bomber Command Commemorative Day and I’ve been involved with 463-467 Squadron Association, I’ve been involved with, uh, the Bomber Command Commemorative Day Foundation but that’s just a little aside. Uh, I’m doing this really because [clears throat] I owe the Air Force something. [sighs] When my, when memoires bring us [unclear] when I went away on the Air Force, I didn’t know anything, I was a real greenhorn, I was a green eighteen, didn’t know anything cause mum, you know, we were never allowed to play cards on a Sunday as I’d never, we never had cards in the house, mum didn’t, mum was a bit, she was an Anglican and uh, but she wasn’t, she wasn’t an [unclear] or anything either but a [unclear] drink she might have been, we never had but grog in the place, I tried to have [unclear] sherry sometimes [laughs] she went [mimics and astonished expression] when she heard, she was a great mother by, a great mother by the way but our mum, I’m trying to get the message over that I didn’t know a lot about the world until I went to the Air Force and the Air Force made me and I feel I gotta make some contribution to the Air Force and the same thing applies to the office MLC, that they to me were absolutely marvellous and I only retired from there about two years ago when I, I retired in ‘84, I went back to do a job for three months, to set up the database, helped set up the database in the MLC and now twenty five years later I’m still there with two, with another guy, it was five of us who stayed on for a while, but then, three had died and two of us are still left. But the MLC were, they, you know, I was on a, I tell you I was on a two and half percent mortgage for a time at the MLC, and they didn’t pay as much as probably some of the other companies but you know, I never, you felt you had a real, uhm, you know, they never sacked anybody except if you pinched money [laughs] and that, it remarks the office that didn’t happen but the MLC were wonderful to me, the Air Force and the MLC were wonderful to me and a lot of my friends are not jealous of me but they would have loved to have had a job like I’ve got, working with the MLC until I was just on ninety and, uhm, and I was doing every bit as good a job as I was as the people beside me that I was working, I was doing all computer work and this sort of thing. Oh, when I say computer work, it wasn’t on a main frame but it was, was all the stuff was all set up for us to do but I did some work on the telephones and that sort of thing but there was a lot of sixty plus, sixty five plus fellows that could, they some of the companies could, instead of putting them off, give them extra time, you know, keep them employed on a, say, five days, four days, three days, because, you know, I was bored stiff for a while when I first retired and when I got this [unclear], I was a bit two-minded about going back and doing this and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made and so there for that, this is not wartime setup but the MLC they could have paid when I was in the Air Force but I was getting more money in the Air Force than I was in the MLC [laughs] so I didn’t much from it but. Had I not been in the aircrew I would have probably cause we were paid extra in the aircrew, not a lot but we were paid extra. And, yeah, so that was, I have a lot to thank the Air Force for and that’s why I’m doing, I do this work now with volunteering with doing various things on Bomber Command Association and the 463 business, anything to do with the Air Force I like doing, you know, and I meet a lot of nice people.
AP: Good. Final question. Uhm, what do you think the legacy of Bomber Command is and how you want to see it remembered?
DES: Uh, well, I don’t think we will ever see another Bomber Command, in these days we will never see another Bomber Command because the days of the, uhm, what do we call them? The, you know, the things that fly on their own? You’ll never see another Lancaster bomber bombing places, you will see atom bombs or, not atom bombs, but these other sort of, what do you call the little?
AP: Drones. Yeah.
Des: The drones, you see, just here in one of our Squadrons here now, the 462 Squadron in Adelaide, they are mixed up in drones, you see, and so, you know, I’m very proud of, uhm, joining and taking part in Bomber Command. I think they did a magnificent job; they’d had a rough trot until 1942, when they weren’t hitting their targets, [unclear] as things got better, they did the, I’m fully happy with all what the Bomber Command did. I think the world of Air Marshal Harris and I get, I get annoyed sometimes when people who want to criticize him. You know, every year I get a message from Melbourne about Dresden [laughs], which, you know, which annoys me, more than anything else, because Dresden deserved what they got, you know, Rotterdam, Amsterdam, London, Liverpool, Coventry, they all got a similar treatment and I don’t think, you know, there was a lot about Dresden that, and I’m sorry I brought that up but we know that there were a lot of people operating in Dresden which were military, they were hidden, slightly like the people today are putting, uh, children and some of these in where real targets are and there were definitely a lot of things in Dresden that deserved to be bombed and, you know, we’re at war, we had to do our best to do that but I’m quite proud of what we did in Bomber Command and I’m very, I think I finished my speech at the reflections at the Bomber Command thing in Canberra a few years ago and I was very proud and fine with Bomber Command and but I don’t think we will see another Bomber Command type of people, there will never be a group like us ever again, so I don’t’ think there is any future, but it will be done by the drones, what it’s gotta be done I think will be done by the drones and then that creates a bit of loss of life to civilians but I’m afraid when you are fighting a war it’s just, you know, it’s just the way it goes. Uhm, I don’t know, of [unclear].
AP: How do you want to see it remembered?
DES: How will I remember it?
AP: Yeah, how do you want to see it remembered, how do you want Bomber Command to be remembered.
DES: Oh, [unclear], oh, I just like the people here today to and that’s what we’re in the business with the Bomber Command Commemoration Day Foundation, we want the children of our people to carry on and thank the people of, like the 5000 who died, not us particularly but, ah yeah, the 5000 Australian airmen we hope you’ll remember them, you might forget them, as I hope you won’t forget the Vietnam people and the people who went to Korea and the people who went to [unclear]. We do remember them and I pray that they remember them on Anzac Day, uhm, but I think that, uhm, I would like to and I am amazed at, uh, the young people today that we have come into their [unclear] up to about four or five years ago and never heard of some of the things of their fathers and grandfathers had done. And I’m amazed by the number of people who came out of the woodwork to find out more about now and it’s up to us now, cause we are talking here now, it’s up to us to make sure that we get the message out to the younger people that their living today because of the sacrifice that the people made, that died over in the Bomber Command raids and that sort of thing, that they would be, uhm, might be leading a different sort of life, that they, uh, if it hadn’t been for the actions and the deeds of those who fought in Bomber Command. But I’d like them to think nicely of us and I think most of them do. I get, not amazed, but I’m really interested and pray that today for instance I’ve been talking to people that were involved and had involvements, you know, a lot of them didn’t know to a certain extent what things we’d done and how we’d helped shorten the war and that sort of thing, cause we did really and I suppose dropping the atom bomb bought us to and I’ve got no objections to the atom bomb being dropped either, it probably saved a lot of lives too. It’s a terrible thing but once, if I can say again, I’m amazed at the young people that are so interested and yet there are some families that they are not interested at all, not interested at all and parts of families, including my own, now, some of mine are not that interested, my son is and but, and I think [unclear] but one of my grandchildren is very interested. It’s on the other side but that’s their decision, we probably haven’t got the message over to them which is [unclear] and I am disappointed when I speak to some of my friends who don’t want to talk about it, it’s not boasting about these [unclear], people should know that these sort of things went on, that these, because of their actions, they’ve had fifty, sixty, seventy years of freedom here, even in Australia which might never have happened if those people hadn’t made the sacrifices that they did and volunteered and don’t forget, all the aircrew in Australia were volunteers, there was no, no one was conscripted, they were all volunteers. Yeah.
AP: Oh well, that’s the end of my questions. So.
DES: Well, that’s good. Yeah.
AP: You’ve done very well.
DES: [unclear] How long was that?
AP: That was one hour forty two.
DES: That was alright, well, that was [unclear]
Dublin Core
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Identifier
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ASouthwellDE160424
Title
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Interview with Don Southwell
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:42:57 audio recording
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Pending review
Creator
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2016-04-24
Description
An account of the resource
Don Southwell grew up in Australia and worked for RKO Radio Pictures and as an Air Raid Precautions Warden before volunteering for the Royal Air Force. After training in Australia and Canada, he flew nine operations as a navigator with 463 Squadron from RAF Waddington. He describes crewing up and everyday military life at the station, and gives accounts of his operations and being chased by Me 262s over Hamburg. He remembers ferrying liberated prisoners of war as part of Operation Exodus.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Canada
Czech Republic
Germany
Great Britain
New South Wales
Alberta--Edmonton
Czech Republic--Plzeň
England--Brighton
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Essen
Germany--Leipzig
New South Wales--Sydney
California--San Francisco
United States
California
Alberta
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Sussex
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Temporal Coverage
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1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
29 OTU
463 Squadron
467 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bombing
crewing up
fear
Lancaster
Me 262
memorial
mess
military living conditions
military service conditions
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Waddington
RAF West Freugh
Stirling
superstition
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1286/20097/PSutherlandD1901.1.jpg
7fdbcf2e8591da39d9bec6c5cb887d77
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1286/20097/ASutherlandD191211.1.mp3
aaf42e489f40275ed15b16ed9b7f62ba
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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Sutherland, Don
D Sutherland
Sutherland, Donald
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Don Sutherland (1919 - 2022). He was conscientious objector during the war and worked on a farm in Lincolnshire.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-05-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Sutherland, D
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DE: So, this is Dan Ellin. I’m interviewing Don Sutherland at his home in Lincoln. It’s the 11th of December 2019 and this is for the IBCC Digital Archive. So, Don, I’ll just put that there. You were, you were talking about your father and, and his work in, in the First World War. What is it you, you think that made the first and the Second World War so, so different?
DS: Well, the first, the First World War I think could easily have been avoided. Certainly, in comparison with the Second World War which the way things had developed in Germany it was quite inevitable that it would lead to so many countries becoming involved and, and there was certainly much more of a drive from the Germany who had become the enemy so to speak. And it became so inevitable that it should lead to war because the way Hitlerism originated and developed its prime intention was, was to make them masters of the, of a huge area which would, would, would together lead to quite a different sort of civilisation really.
DE: So why was it that you chose not to fight?
DS: It’s a very good question because it, it was something which in, in Newcastle where I I was brought up and first, first worked for, I’d say half a dozen years the fact was that we had this annual thing going on in the, in the town moor there where all sorts of meetings were held. And this was an opportunity which the, the Pacifist people used to talk about alternatives to war and it was through a meeting that took place there just before the war began more or less, a year before the war began that gave me any ideas about, about the history of war and what you might say the inevitability of war and that there was a possibility that the idea of war was something that was a historical fact that people had learned to accept as being inevitable and that there was no possibility of any objective. Any alternative to, to war. And when the idea came to me that you could refuse to accept war as being inevitable and that certain people had made that part of their life to devote themselves to propagating that, that purpose in life to oppose war rather than to accept it as an inevitable thing. And until, until, until that time in in nineteen, was it 1939 it began — ?
DE: Yes.
DS: That, and it began in such a sort of a mixed way from what, what was done in Germany and then the surrounding countries in a gradual way. And of course, we went to war. Germany didn’t declare war on Germany, on England as you know but we became involved because of promises we’d made to, to support the country that Germany had invaded.
DE: Yes. Poland. Yes.
DS: Yes. That was, that was the reason we went to war because Germany had never actually declared war on us and so I, there was a feeling of sort of, a ridiculous feeling I think that, that Britain wasn’t really interested. And they had no idea or I should say we had no idea that, that war was inevitable and would involve us as it involved all the other countries. And in the way, the way Hitler had little by little, and country after country become such a powerful set of people by using the most violent means which were completely foreign to us really. Germany had a set up a system which was, was quite unique and he was able to engage so many different people and, and use so many terrible methods gradually to dominate the areas which led to such a huge powerful and of course this was partly too with the, with the help of the other people with similar ideas who had already set up in Italy to, to dominate other countries. And it just became such a powerful theatre for war I suppose. It’s, it seems so foreign to us to understand how it could happen because we, we find now that that the so-called enemy is as much a friend as, as anybody else. And, and in fact is leading the way to try and keep people together and not to have one nation dominating another.
DE: So, I mean we spoke about this in the other interview when I was here a few months ago. So, we have on tape the process that you went through and the tribunal you went to. I’d like to ask you a bit more about your time on the farm in Lincolnshire. I wasn’t quite sure. Was it, where was it at? The farm.
DS: Well, there were two. Two farms, communities in, both in Lincolnshire. In Lincolnshire. And also there were similar types of communities involved in other parts of the UK. But I think the place at Holton Beckering which was the first place I went to was a set up by various prominent Pacifists. Pacifist people who centred in London and one, one section there by advertisement if you like to call it one way and, and by interviewing individuals set up, set up a very organised and financed thing. So that was, that was, that was at [pause] at Holton and it involved two separate farms. And I think that came more or less at the same time as two individuals, using their own finances set up a separate place right next door to it and I I joined first this main big one and I was interviewed in London to go, to go to that one because one of the, one of the the conshys who was a Quaker in [pause] where, where I lived and I went, I went and stayed with him when that community had started. So that was my first. It was just like a holiday there. I hitchhiked there and then when I happened, it turned out that I got the sack from work that’s where I applied to go. In the first place they said no. I didn’t, they didn’t, they interviewed me in London and took one look at me and said he, he’ll never make a farm worker. And then later on the same year when I, when I got the sack from my job I, I wrote. I wrote to them again and when I, one of the executive members of the committee came and talked, talked in Newcastle and I told him I’d lost my job and I’d already applied to them and been refused. It was a possibility that they might reconsider it you see.
DE: Yeah.
DS: Well, I got a reply straight away nearly. ‘Yes. We’ll take you.’ They’d set this place up and they were short of men you see and so they decided that they would take me. So, I went there straight away and joined. Joined one of the places which was adjoining but it was not, the other place was supposed to be the main place because they had the very highly skilled bloke, a local chap who was the, the boss, plus a local ex-farmer who was a Pacifist. And I worked there for two and a half years and that covered the time of the war because I didn’t start until 1941. I I was employed at work as I got complete exemption.
DE: Right. Ok.
DS: And then when, when the end of the war I I was somehow out of touch with, with, with what had happened to the first community because the fact that we, we had, I then moved on to the, the other one because the second community was just run by these two men and they were in charge so to speak. But not in charge in a dominant way but they, they’d financed it you see so it was completely independent from the first community I belonged. And, and that’s that first community slowly died off so to speak. I’m not quite sure exactly what happened because I was so much attached to the, to the new community and unfortunately it didn’t stand ground on its, on its own. Key people left who had been quite important in keeping it together and eventually it, it ended up in in the hands of two people who were, who were financially dominant. But we, those who wanted to were carried on, carried on as ordinary farm workers but, but we still felt it was a community. Very much so actually and so, I was working there for about twenty five years and then because of my health didn’t seem strong enough for the job I was doing I I changed my work and the house I was living in. We were able to buy it. So, although I was living in the area I had no direct attachment to the community. Although I was still attached to some of the people who were working there.
DE: And what was, what was life like in the community? What was, what was the sort of every, every day like? Or what was it like across the seasons?
DS: Well, we, we had married and unmarried helpers and we had, certainly in the, in the section that I lived and there were, there were in, in the second community we had, had separate houses but they were more or less adjoining. And the married couple were in charge and they sort of looked after us and we were just like a part of a family the rest of us. But it slowly, it slowly disintegrated unfortunately but we had young, quite young children there with us. But as I say that, that, that community lasted a lot longer than the much larger first one which was more or less organised in London. So, it was quite sad really. We had a, we had a very large farm. A farm with a very good quality flock of pedigree sheep.
DE: So, what was, could you describe what a typical day would have been like?
DS: Well, a lot of the work I did and of course on the farm it varied according to the time of the year what you had to do.
DE: Of course. Yes.
DS: And so, in the wintertime I would be working chop, chopping the hedges down, keeping them in track, digging out the ditches and that sort of thing. And in the early days it was all so run by human labour. We didn’t have many, many tools at all really to use. It was only latterly that we developed to a size where we became much more mechanised. So it was, it was quite tough work but we got used to it. I mean, I never dreamed that I would become so used to hard work. I just, it wasn’t in my, my training at all and so it was a completely new life for me as it was for most of them really and the thing was that this, this place where I belonged, the second place there was quite a tendency for the people there to, to have an upbringing in art and three of them or four, four altogether I think were, had already been training to get degrees in art. So, when they finished work for the day, farm work they would then go, go to their room at night and spend another few hours working at what was really their, their chosen ambition. So they, they were quite quick to leave when they had the opportunity to do so and that’s what they ended up doing.
DE: And what did, what did you do in the evenings?
DS: I think we just sat and talked most of the time. I I had a little cottage to myself. I don’t know what it was built for originally but it was big enough to, to have a bed in it and so I suppose I read a lot and —
JS: There wasn’t any electricity was there?
DS: No. Not at first. Not at first. But —
JS: So, you read with candles or oil lights?
[pause]
DS: Yes.
JS: I remember when Uncle Bill, which was my mum’s brother said when you worked with the horses you would throw the windows open wide very early in the morning and wake everybody up.
DS: [laughs] Yeah. We, yes, well yes. My favourite job was wagoning. Driving. Driving horses. But we had to get up quite early to give them their food because they were not, they were not as well looked after as they [pause] A lot of people would have their horses in stables overnight. Particularly in winter time but our horses were kept out in the open air right through the winter. So, we had to go out and they would reluctantly come with us so they could get fed properly before we put them to work in the day. And then later on they would have to go back outside again so it was a bit of a rough life for them but they were used to it.
JS: And you’d harness them up to the plough.
DS: Pardon?
JS: Did they go with the plough or did they just pull carts?
DS: No. We did have, we had tractors as well and the really heavy work was done by tractors. But when the land was prepared for sowing and it had to be worked down to get the right, the right place for the, for the seed to grow that was, a lot of that work was done by horses.
JS: So that was harrowing and —
DS: Yes. Keeping, keeping it clean. Clean and that sort of thing and of course in those days, those days too we didn’t have, we didn’t use a lot of manure. The, we would keep, keep the ground clean by dragging, dragging harrows over the ground to keep it clean. And, and then we’d also go over it by hand with, with hoes as well to clean the land. It was very much manual.
DE: Yeah.
DS: And hand, and hand working in the early days. And it was some time before we, before we had the combine harvesters.
DE: So very very very hard work.
DS: I couldn’t, I couldn’t believe when I when I saw the first combine harvester that they would find a method of harvesting without using the old fashioned way of, of using a plough system.
DE: I know, I know some farms used prisoners of war to help. Did, did you have any of that?
DS: Yes. Well, first of all because when the war, the war ended in two different stages because first of all we, we stopped being at war with, with —
DE: Germany.
DS: No.
JS: Italy.
DS: Another country.
DE: The Italians.
DS: Yes. That’s right. Yes. But Italy, you see that war finished first you see and so they were released from the, from the prisoner of war camps in the country and, and were allowed to go home before the Germans and the Germans were kept behind for three years after the war finished. They weren’t allowed to go home because there were so many troops, British troops still involved in in the countries that we were at war with. They were kept there and so we were short of people and employed the Germans for two or three years after the war finished. And we had four. Four working for us. Three, three were people who we got on well with and the other we thought he was a lazy beggar which he probably was and two of the others were they had both been teachers or heads of schools, junior schools in Germany and on the section of the farms that I belonged to we had one who we got to know very well. He had, his wife had one child who he’d never seen, this child and so the father was looking forward to be allowed home so that he could see his first, first baby. And we later, I later on went over to Germany and stayed with them.
JS: And his children came to stay with us, didn’t they?
DE: And then the, the son came over and stayed with us on more than one occasion and, and I still get Christmas cards from him but he —
JS: And they did a play didn’t they? The Holton Players. They put on a play.
DE: I wanted to talk about that a bit. Yes.
DS: Yes. Yes. They, they put on a play at Holton. This was where, this was where they were kept. At the ex-Army base there. And they had liberty during the day. They, they would walk around and have complete liberty but they weren’t allowed to go home so it must have been pretty tough for them. I think some of them must have tried [laughs] tried to escape but others felt that they were probably much better off where they were than going back to Germany because Germany was in a pretty raw state when the war finished. It was not a, not a very pleasant place to be because they were starving. A lot of them were. Because the, Germany treated the people so badly. It’s all so forgotten now, isn’t it?
JS: And the Holton Players you, they, they were the pre-the Broadbent Theatre weren’t they because they did plays in the Nissen hut that then got burned down.
DS: That’s right. But that was, that was a little time afterwards really.
JS: In the ‘50s.
DS: I’m not quite sure what, what year it was because the place we, the place we used at first was part of the place which the German prisoners of war had lived in. So it was a little time before the Players got, the Players got together and it was, it was some of the people in the, in the original community that I belonged to who were extremely good at theatre work and —
JS: Phil Walshaw. Her aunt was Sybil Thorndike.
DS: Yes.
JS: And she’d been to RADA for a year before she had to leave.
DS: Yes. Well, several people who, who were very experienced at theatre work.
JS: And Roy Broadbent, who was the father of Jim Broadbent he was a big part of the theatre wasn’t he?
DS: Yes. But it was, it was when he left, he left the community that I joined second of all. It’s when he left that I, that there were vacancies and they were getting the extra people in that I joined from the first, the first community.
JS: So, you went to Bleasby then?
DS: That’s right. Yes.
JS: With Dick Cornwallis and Robert Walshaw.
DS: Yes, but Walshaw wasn’t there. Walshaw had been there and left because he had the opportunity of joining a farm right in the southwest of England and it didn’t work out. And after I’d joined that second community he wrote to us asking if he could come [laughs] Come back. And we decided that he, that he could. He was welcome to come back.
JS: And his son still lives on the farm. He’s farmed it.
DS: Pardon?
JS: Chris is still, still lives on the farm and he’s farmed it hasn’t he?
DS: Yes. He has. Yes, well he lives on the farm but he doesn’t really do much.
JS: Any more.
DS: Work. It’s been passed, passed over for use by somebody who, who just developed a huge dairy farm.
DE: So, the communities were, were quite democratic. You sort of had votes about whether people could join or not.
DS: That’s right. Yes. The first, the first was. Was, we had we had a rough say in what happened but the second we were, we were all classed as equal people although we knew that the money was in the hands of mostly two people who eventually took it over and we were, we were told we could stay on with the terms which we could agree to. Which I did for quite a time.
DE: Yeah.
DS: Until I got this other job.
DE: So, if we can just go back a little bit to during the war you said that there were, there were Italian and then German POWs that sometimes worked alongside you. Did you have anything to do with any of the people from RAF Wickenby which was quite close I believe?
DS: No. What happened was that you had different groups of people among the Pacifists. Some were used to a different type of living and some were in the habit of going to pubs and some weren’t. Some were quite reversed and religious and you know they became preachers locally. Part time of course. And, and some of the others and they mostly came from the second community that I belonged to but some of them moved in to the, in to the other one which had developed into a, a varied group with different ideas and just fizzled away gradually. So, I didn’t have much, much contact with the err I never went to, to any of the of the pub gatherings which the others, others did and they really became much more in touch with the airmen and got on reasonably well with them apparently. But I never, I never saw that side of it at all because the aerodrome, you know the aerodrome disappeared soon after the war finished.
DE: How did you feel about being so close to, to the aerodrome?
DS: Well, it was more the Bleasby, the Bleasby farm that was really close and parts of it, gradually more was taken off the farm to be used by the Air Force. So because I I belonged to the community which was further away I didn’t see very, very much of the Air Force really.
DE: Ok.
DS: No.
JS: But you’d hear the aeroplanes.
DS: Oh yes. Yes. Of course, they took off at night time mostly and where they took off, and the direction they were going on the way to Germany would be, they would not pass where I was staying you see. So we didn’t see as much of them as you, as you might, might think really. We would hear them but not see them necessarily. And as far as I know there was not much bombing took place in Lincoln itself and very little where, where we were. I don’t know why but that seemed to be the case. There wasn’t much bombing took place but there were quite a lot of aerodromes all, all over Lincoln that, that did get, did get bombed. It was quite a, apart from the armament places which were one of the main places and the bombings that were done purely for the sake of killing as many people as possible which took part in London and other big cities. And that was sort of quite a long way from this area you see.
DE: Yeah.
DS: They just went for, for the big cities. I don’t think that Lincoln, you see we didn’t see much of Lincoln. We would never think of going in to Lincoln. There was no way of getting there. No, no coaches to take us.
JS: You worked very long hours, didn’t you?
DS: Pardon?
JS: You worked very long hours on the farm.
DS: Very?
JS: Long hours.
DS: Well, we had double summertime then. We had, we had, we had, so, so in the wintertime we we we were using the hours that we now use in summertime. So we changed, changed our clocks at the usual time but we were an hour ahead, an hour earlier in starting our summertime.
JS: And then you had to lock up the chickens later, didn’t it? I remember.
DS: It was midnight.
JS: Because you worked with the poultry later on. And that was your job.
DS: Yes.
JS: But pea harvest was quite something wasn’t it?
DS: Oh yes. Yes. That was, that was hard work. We used to have special things which we, we had props that we put up in the field and when we, when we cut the hay the [pause] would you call it hay? I don’t know. My memory.
JS: The pea stalks.
DS: Yes. We put, and take them into big round sheds so that the wind would get through and dry them all out more quickly than if you just left them on the ground. So that was all hand work. It was all hand work early on so, it made me stronger I suppose. Not that, I’ve never been big. I’ve never been, never weighed ten stone but I’ve, I’ve managed. It was a great experience really. It was a fine life. A fine life working together really. So, it was, it was a blessing to me really. But then I was also in the position of being in a safe, comparatively safe situation whereas so many of my friends at work had gone into the different forces in time and one in particular who was, hadn’t been married very long but was very tempted to register as a, as a conshy. He decided to join up and not long after he’d joined up he was killed. And I don’t, still don’t know how many of my friends at work came back. [pause] Unless this is something which people haven’t experienced they won’t, won’t understand. What war does to people. And why some people still think war is the answer.
DE: And you continue to campaign against war. I noticed on your door you have have an anti-war —
DS: Yes. Oh yes. Yes. I hope people will take the message but we leave it to other people now to do our dirty work [pause] And it tends to be romanticised.
DE: Can you tell me some of the ways that you’ve protested against war and tried to spread the message?
DS: Well, we, we still go down to the RAF and spread propaganda there.
JS: You’ve flown kites there haven’t you in solidarity with the Afghani kite flyers at Waddington, haven’t you?
DS: Yes. Yes. We go to Waddington.
JS: And you went to the different peace camps. You went to Molesworth.
DS: I don’t go anywhere now really.
JS: But you went to Faslane as well, didn’t you? When you went to the Quaker conference a few years ago in Scotland.
DS: Oh yes. Yes. My daughter, my daughter took us on a nice holiday in Scotland last year and the group fairly recently set up, we’d been to the performances. Have you been to any of the performances?
DE: I haven’t. I didn’t know about them until it was, it was too late. But can you tell me a bit about them?
DS: Well, it was, it was because this, this chappy who was I think the oldest member of the group who came to the area and met some of the original people in the community and since he, since in the few years that he’s been the area we’ve now only got one friend. One. One friend and there’s not just myself and one friend left who belonged but when he came there were two more alive who, who had belonged to the community. And so that’s how he’s been able to get all the information that’s gone in to the creation of this, this play which he’s written.
JS: Some of the other children from the community, one was a journalist and she’d done a lot of recordings. Sarah Farley who, who I grew up with and also one of the Makins did also some interviews. He wrote about it. So, Ian Sharp used these memories as well as interviewing you and Arthur Adams and Phil Farley to make the play.
DS: Well, I, it’s a little uncertain at the moment as to, as to whether there will be another production but I’ll be sure and let you know.
DE: That would be wonderful because it, it was, it was shown at the Edinburgh Fringe and it was shown at the Broadbent Theatre as well, wasn’t it? It was put on there.
DS: It’s been several times at the Broadbent Theatre and that’s where its likely to be shown again.
JS: And recently it’s been on at Quaker meeting houses. And this autumn we went a fortnight ago, didn’t we to Doncaster meeting, the Quaker meeting house which was the last performance.
DS: Yeah. It’s been held at various Quaker meeting houses.
JS: The meeting would have known about it.
DS: Not with, not with the large attendances as we might have had.
JS: In Chesterfield there was a very good turnout. A lot of the people from CND were there and one of the men was ex-RAF that we spoke to that’s a big part of CND because when we were children you belonged to CND and we used to protest didn’t we then?
DS: Yes.
JS: Carried placards and that was how you carried on campaigning for peace.
DS: Yes. I don’t know to what extent young people are interested in peace making. What do, what do you think? Do you think they take a real interest in peace making?
DE: I think it’s because to a lot of people wars today are, are quite far away. They’re quite removed and they don’t have the real experience. I think that’s probably the problem. It’s something that happens to other people who it’s too easy to forget about. I don’t know. What, what do you think?
DS: Yes. I agree with you but I’m not so much in touch with people as you probably are and I might see one, one side of it.
JS: Well, when we’re in a recession the rise of nationalism is always worrying, isn’t it? You know, like in Germany the war started because of recession and when you get a current situation that’s very much saying you know people from other countries aren’t welcome even though they, our country wouldn’t function without them it’s, it can make people fearful that that people from other countries are enemies rather than just our neighbours.
DS: Yes. I, I’m very disappointed with the general attitude of people in the UK now that we should think about ourselves and not about the world as a whole. And we’re all so interdependent. I think it’s only now when we, it’s been revealed to us the dangers of not working together. And yet we’ve still got people fighting one another. Actually, wasting the parts that are valuable.
JS: Well, the politics and the economics of war where countries sell arms to countries that are then used against them is totally absurd.
[pause]
DS: I I don’t know much about it but you’ve probably heard the report of what, when we’ve had meetings at Bomber Command. Have, have you, do you, do you get a note of what’s happening there as far as our meetings there go?
DE: Sometimes I do. Yes. I think mostly its Heather gets involved with those. Those things. But yeah, I know there have been several meetings because we’re thinking about changing parts of the exhibition up there.
DS: Well, it’s the room upstairs which is, the idea is to develop that more isn’t it?
DE: That’s correct. Yes. Yeah. I mean that part of the, that gallery at the Bomber Command Centre has tried to tell the story about how the war has been remembered and how that feeds in to wars and conflicts today.
DS: Yes.
DE: I’d just, I’d just would like to have a go at it and try and make it a bit better.
JS: I mean the title to me is so to me alienating of the place that —
DS: Well, you haven’t been to it, have you?
JS: No. No. But if it was combined with, with something that was promoting peace as well.
DE: Well, that’s what we’re trying to do —
JS: Yes.
DE: In part of it and we have tried quite, well, you’d, you’d have to go judge how successfully but we’ve not tried to glorify war.
JS: No. No.
DE: We’ve tried to show it from all perspectives and we’ve tried to show the shared suffering and sacrifice —
JS: Yeah. Absolutely.
DE: Of people in the air, on the ground and on both sides.
JS: It’s not about who’s right and wrong.
DE: No.
JS: It’s not a, you know —
DE: No.
JS: It’s not a divisive thing, is it? It’s —
DS: It’s unfortunate that my, my, I had my stroke, stroke it’s affected my memory so much that I can’t express myself as well as I would have liked to.
JS: But for a hundred years old you don’t too badly.
DS: A hundred years [laughs] years young you mean.
JS: And we had, we had three versions of the play to celebrate your hundredth anniversary, didn’t we? There were special performances where you had, where the play was adapted. It’s been a changing thing but it’s —
DS: It’s not been very well lately.
JS: The theme of it became more climate. The threat now of climate changes.
DE: Right.
JS: So, it’s like it’s a changing movement towards what is most close to, to causing harm to populations.
DS: Yes. And you’ve got, you’ve got countries which are a long way from here much much bigger than us and it must be extremely difficult for those people to feel they’ve got any say in in what happens. [pause] Whereas I don’t know how, how much the countries in the, in the UK area and a bit further away from us how much feeling we have of any sort of control of what the future is going to be. Are we just dragged along by some invisible force? Out of control. Is there a meaningful, meaningful force bringing us along in the right direction or are we at the mercy of something the invisible which is hiding us from the right direction? [pause]
DS: What difference do you think the election will make or could make?
DE: I I have no idea. No.
DS: I’m very disturbed at the number of people who don’t use their vote to say where they want to go. And I think that’s the most disappointing thing about the present day that people don’t feel how vital it is that we have a say in what, in what future we’re going to have.
DE: Yeah. I think, I think I’m going to pause it there.
[recording paused]
JS: Well, we got a knock on our door one winter night by Malcolm Bates who wanted to re-establish the theatre. He was an adopted son of a Lincolnshire family. So, they started rehearsing didn’t they at Faldingworth and did, “Oliver.” You were in “Oliver.”
DS: Yes.
JS: And Helen was in Oliver, my sister and a lot of the community people were in it as well as others.
DS: But it was in the big sort of big building which was used for accommodation for the for the conshies working at the other area of Lincoln. That was, that was where some of the first meetings and the cinema items items were done in the, in the early days because there were several people who had been used to performing as actors or actresses. So we were very fortunate that we had these people who were quite experienced and very very able and were able to draw other people in who hadn’t actually belonged to the community but were interested in plays that it was able to be, to to fill up and then to have our own theatre which was the generosity of one particular person that we got, got the place when prices were not so high as they, as they’ve become now that we were able to to get this which is still on the go. How long it’ll last for I don’t know because I think all the original people now must have died because it’s a long time since it began. They used to have a theatre at, at the [unclear] at least theatre company at at the main place. [pause] Well, I’ll be very interested in hearing what ideas you have about developing the complex. I, I’ve never actually got as far, so far as going through all the list of deaths shown at the Memorial.
DE: There’s only a few people who have because there are, there’s fifty seven thousand names there so.
DS: I know, but I mean I know the names of all the people who, you know, the full names of all the people who, who were with me when I worked and who, who were called up. And I know some of them went into the Air Force so I might have a record as to whether any of them were killed or not. But then there must be, if there’s a complete list of, of soldiers and other types of people. I don’t I don’t know what that would be. How much room it would take up to put all the names of the various soldiers who were killed. It would be a huge list wouldn’t it because I would, I would think there were probably more of other different types of soldiers than the Air Force.
DE: Yes. I don’t know if they’re all collected in one place actually physically but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission would have —
DS: Yes.
DE: All the names available on the internet. Right. I I think I’m going to, I’m going stop the recording there so I will just say that also present in the room, the other voice on the recording was Don’s daughter Janet Sutherland. Thank you very much, Don. That was absolutely wonderful. Thank you.
DS: My pleasure.
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Interview with Don Sutherland. Two
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Dan Ellin
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-12-11
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Sound
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ASutherlandD191211, PSutherlandD1901
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Pending review
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01:07:34 audio recording
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eng
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Civilian
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Lincoln
Description
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Don was brought up in Newcastle, where he worked for a number of years. He attended a meeting a year before the war began, about alternatives to war and that war didn’t have to be accepted as inevitable. Don joined a community which organised work on a farm in Lincolnshire. After two years he transferred to another similar community, where he remained for about 25 years. Everyone was classed as equal and could vote on who could join this community. Don described everyday life in the community and farm work throughout the seasons. His favourite job was looking after and driving the horses. He worked with poultry for a while and also remembered the pea harvest. RAF Wickenby was one of the nearest airfields to the commune. They had four German prisoners of war working with them, one of whom kept in touch with Don after the war. Don campaigned against war and would sometimes go to the RAF Waddington with anti-war propaganda. A play had been produced about the pacifists, which was shown at the Broadbent Theatre and also at Quaker Meeting Houses.
Contributor
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Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1941
animal
entertainment
faith
home front
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
RAF Waddington
RAF Wickenby
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/300/3457/AMcDonaldD151013.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
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Title
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McDonald, Donald
Donald Alexander McDonald
Donald A McDonald
Donald McDonald
D A McDonald
D McDonald
Description
An account of the resource
Five items. One oral history interview with Donald Alexander McDonald (1920 - 2021, 410364 Royal Australian Air Force) as well as two letters, a concert programme and notes on his interview. He flew operations as a pilot with 466 and 578 Squadrons.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Donald McDonald and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-10-13
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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McDonald, D
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AP: So this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre’s Digital Archive is with Don McDonald who was a Halifax pilot during World War Two [DM coughs]. Interview’s taking place at Don’s home in Doncaster in Melbourne [DM coughs]. It’s the 13th of October. My name’s Adam Purcell [DM coughs]. Don, I thought we’d start from the beginning. Can you tell me something of your early life growing up [DM coughs], what you did before the war?
DM: I was born in Melbourne and at an age too young to remember, the family moved onto a dairy farm at Koo Wee Rup [?] which is about seventy k south-east of Melbourne. I was born in 1920 and my first recollection of the dairy farm was in early school years, six and a half, seven. It was a pretty tough life, tail end of depression, appallingly low prices for our produce and there was a family of seven children, three girls and four boys so it was a, a tough life [emphasis]. As the result of poor income, low income, low prices, I had to leave school at age fourteen and I was lucky enough to have a, get work in the local post office and general store which was very much a part of Victorian Australian life. My wage was ten bob, a dollar a week for a forty-seven hour week. After a couple of years of that, I entered for an examination for the Commonwealth Public service and, and passed the exam. The examination was held in the Wilson Hall, the old Wilson Hall at Melbourne University. When I say the old Wilson Hall, it was a beautiful building but it was subsequent, post World War Two it was burnt down in a fire which was quite tragic. There was about four-hundred entrants for this examination and there were about twenty positions available, typical of the depression era or immediate post depression, world war depression era. And I was lucky enough out of the four-hundred, I came in ninth, and I misread one question, otherwise I would have gotten third, and I was pretty up, up staged about that because having only got to grade eight in school I was pretty happy with that outcome. And then of course 1939 came World War Two. In about 1937, just after I’d passed the examination for the Public service, I had to move to Melbourne to take up the position and was staying with an aunt and her, and her family. By the time I paid fares plus board and lodging there was no money left for anything else, and another guy who’d paid the same exam as I had, also from the country and equally short of funds, suggested that we should join the 4th Division Signals, because if you attended a parade one night a week you got the princely sum of five shillings fifty cents and, but that was one heck of a lot of money to both of us in the situation which we were in, and so we joined the Signals and so I was in the part time Army. Bear in mind there was no war, there was no ‘your country needs you,’ no loyalty, call on loyalty, no drums banging or cymbals playing to get you to enlist, it was pure economic necessity [emphasis] that we joined the Signals. I was a terrible [emphasis] soldier, absolutely shocking [emphasis] soldier. I didn’t think much of the Army and I didn’t give the Army any reason to think much of me. We attended our once weekly parade round and learnt Morse code and then came the outbreak of war, and with the outbreak of war within a month [emphasis] of the outbreak of war, I found myself in camp at Mount Martha, a newly formed military camp in Victoria on Port Philip Bay. Everything was absolute rudimentary. They were just still building the camp and our tents, we were living in tents and some of those leaked because they’d been stored at a military depot out in Broad Meadows, a northern suburb of Melbourne since World War One, and so they were pretty daggy [?] believe you me. As mentioned I was a shocking [emphasis] solider, I couldn’t – if something could be messed up, I would mess it up, and I’d do right turn instead of left turn on the, out in the bullring, the parade ground. My Morse was okay, I didn’t have any trouble with that, but apart from that I could drop a rifle in the middle of present arms and God, if you wanted to send a sergeant major ballistic that’s a guaranteed way I can assure you. I, I didn’t, I detested [emphasis] the Army and applied for aircrew and was accepted, and of course having left school at grade eight I was really playing catch-up. Our first Air Force camp was at Somers, purely ground subjects, no flying whatsoever, and it was rather amazing. As I say, I was on catch-up but in the evening quite often a lot of us would go down to the lecture huts and instead of going down to a picture show or camp concert or something like that where all the gym [?] there was – and we would help each other out on different subjects, whatever our forte might be, we would help someone, and I got a lot of help and made the grade as a pilot. I’d been brought up in a very [emphasis] strong, very astute Protestant family, and any thought of dropping bombs on people would have been absolutely abhorrent in our home, yet wartime dictated that was how and where I would finish up. I, I – after Somers initial flying training school, elementary flying training school was at Western Junction, the civil airport for Launceston, Tasmania, where we flew the Tiger Moth. Said to be unprangable, however I failed [?] up that story on solo flight. I apparently came in just a shade low, clipped the post on the boundary fence and finished up in an ambulance and in hospital. When I was well enough that prang meant that I had to have a scrubber [?] test with the chief flying instructor. He gave me an incredible [emphasis] drilling, he found out exactly what I’d learnt hitherto in my Air Force training, but I think he also found out what I hadn’t [emphasis] learnt and that was the important. And got to the stage [?] – he was very fair, very fair, he got to the stage of flying test and I think I – ‘cause this was a scrubber [?] test. Any, any messing up on this and my days as a pilot were finished. We, he put me through a few exercises in the air and then said [?] ‘trip’ [?], said ‘take it in and land it.’ And I think I did probably the best [emphasis]landing of my career. I absolutely breezed [emphasis] it on, you hardly knew when we, whether we were airborne or whether we’d touched down. Years later when I would try and relate this story about the perfect touchdown to my crew on a squadron they would laugh like all hell [emphasis], because they couldn’t believe that I could ever have done a decent landing. I from there went onto Point Cook, flew the twin engine Air Speed Oxford and – which was renowned as having bad stalling habits but I never did have any trouble whatsoever with them. Life – speaking from the viewpoint of mere male, to me life in the Air Force is very like life in marriage. Best to do what you’re told most times, the quicker the better, and as I say, happened to do what I was told I ended up in Bomber Command in, in England. Flew the, flew the Oxford again for a few hours and then OTU and crewed up and flew the twin engine Whitely, which was outdated pre World War Two and yet some of our very early people in Bomber Command had to fly the jolly Whitley on operations. No wonder their life span was so short. Alright, carrying on?
AP: That’s a, that’s a very good start. Sorry I wasn’t sure if you were carrying on or not there. Alright we might, might go back a little bit. The enlistment process – so you’re in the Army at this stage and you’ve decided to join the Air Force, so you go and sign the papers, presumably that was Melbourne. Can you remember much of the process? Was there an interview involved, some sort of medical tests? What happened on that day?
DM: Yes the medical test for aircrew was very, very strict, very exhausting and I passed that, not that I was in any great physical specimen then or now, but I managed to pass it. There were several interviews, one heck of a lot of questions, some of which seemed totally irrelevant but they were, they were there and they had to be answered. And it was a result of passing those questions and what have you that I was accepted and went to Somers on initial training school.
AP: What sort of things happened at Somers?
DM: Somers was great. Quite an emphasis on physical fitness, a lot of PT, a lot of square bashing or we used to call them the bullring parade ground drill. I formed an opinion there and it might be a totally incorrect opinion but I still reckon that to be a good drill inspector, the two main or the main attributes are a loud voice and not necessarily much between the ears. That might be quite unfair on DIs because they’re very decent blokes really when you got them away from the program, from the parade ground but they could give you one hell [emphasis] of a time when you were on the parade ground.
AP: From your assistive [?], your service flying training, so your Oxfords in Point Cook, you then somehow got to the UK. How did you get to A to B?
DM: We passed out of Point Cook, got my wings at Point Cook which was quite a thrill. Somers where we posted as instructors around various schools, flying schools around Australia. Some were posted as staff pilots flying trainees around other trainees such as navigators and bomb aimers around, flying them around to give them experience in the air and experience of navigation. I was from Point Cook and this, as I say, we had no say in, in what, in what happened to you. I was posted to pre-embarkation depot which was at the Showgrounds which are in a suburb of Melbourne. We were there for some weeks, awaiting, awaiting a ship. Shipping was very limited, very, very secret due to avoiding enemy action, not giving any secrets away in case – there used to be the saying: ‘tittle tattle buggers battle’ and tittle tattle, you know, words, things said unintentionally, if they got into the wrong ears, you have to be in a pub or something like that, and there was a fifth columnist there, well he would relay the shipping movements and make you ready made for a submarine attack. We, we were at Showgrounds for about six to eight weeks and then one Saturday morning, I can remember it quite well, they said ‘pack up all your gear you’re on your way.’ And we had no idea what ‘on your way’ meant. We finished up at Station Pier Port, Melbourne, weighed anchor late afternoon. Down port full of boat [?] and of course there was a lot of conjecture, a lot of guess work, ‘where are we going?’ ‘Well we’re going to Canada’ because a lot of our fellows went to Canada to finish their training, or ‘we’re going to South Africa’ because quite a few went there to finish their training. We got outside the hedge and turned port, so it was pretty obvious that we wouldn’t be going to South Africa. We hit it off, it was into the dark by now and about three days later we came in sight of land, and it was the coast of New Zealand. We entered a harbour, somebody recognised it as Wellington. We docked there, took on a few Kiwis and headed off again, much conjesture, conjecture [emphasis] and guessing. We all reckoned we’d be going to Canada – would we go around the, the Cape of South America or would we perhaps go through the Panama Canal, and we were heading off in generally speaking a north-easterly direction and after a certain time we were calculating our direction by the watch, you know, point the twelve o’clock at the sun et cetera, et cetera. And after a certain time we reckoned ‘oh no we’re not going around the Cape, we’re too far north for that,’ and then after several more days now, well we reckoned we must be passed the Panama Canal by now, and so it was guesswork, ‘where the heck are we going?’ And one beautiful, bright, sunny Saturday morning we woke up, walked out on deck, and were under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Harbour. Oh we reckoned this would be pretty good, we’d be able to paint the town red that night and, and, and you know, thinking up things we were going to do and not going to do, and about four o’clock on the afternoon, they pulled us into a floating jetty, probably a couple of hundred metres long, and on each side of which, shoulder to shoulder, were big black American policemen with rifles, all with rifles so there was no hope of jumping, escaping, doing anything that we, we would like to do. We were marched up on this floating jetty, straight into a train and that night instead of painting San Francisco red we were heading off east across America. And we spent five days and four nights on the train and ultimately – I better finish this [AP laughs] – we had five days and four nights on the train trans-America, experienced some very kind and generous hospitality from ladies clubs and that sort of things at stations where we’d pull up to refuel with coal or top up the water on the steam engine train. Some extremely [emphasis] generous hospitality, and we ultimately arrived early in the morning at a place called Camp Myles Standish. It was a transitory camp just outside Boston, from memory about thirty miles outside Boston. The nearest town was a place called Providence. We were given – ah when we arrived at Myles Standish we were taken off the train onto trucks and then dumped inside the gates of the camp, and the Americans had a band there to welcome us and they played us into out billets to the tune, among others, of “Waltzing Matilda,” and that was pretty great, pretty special of them to do that. We were granted leave that night and we went into the local what they call Legions Club which is the equivalent of the Australian RSL, and we were made very welcome, given the VIP treatment. We had heard during our time at Showgrounds in Melbourne that it was worth collecting a few kangaroo pennies. Now penny was currency at the time, the second lowest denomination of Australia currency, and some of the nine, pennies in the 1930s were struck with a kangaroos on the back of them, on the reverse side, and we were told that these were in great demand, the kangaroo. And we were having a drink at the bar of the Legions Club and one of us produced a kangaroo penny. Well the Americans who were in the club at the same time went berserk [emphasis] for them, and most of us had kangaroo pennies, as I say we’d been given the mail [?] about them, and if you produced a kangaroo penny you couldn’t buy a beer for the rest of the night. There wasn’t a bloke who – the recipient wanted to shout it for the rest of the night, so that was pretty good fun. After about, I think about two and a half weeks in Myles Standish, there was nothing to do. A few of us shall we say got itchy feet, and five of us decided that we would go AWL down to New York. Fancy being within a few hours of, you know, the Big Apple and not getting there, the temptation was too great. So we sneaked out of camp undetected, got into Boston to the railway station, and thankfully, very, very thankfully bought return tickets. It was a bit over a four hour trip down to New York and we had a great [emphasis] time. The Americans, the Australian uniform, Air Force uniform stood out fairly well because it was known as Air Force blue and it had Australia on the shoulder pads and we, we had a great time. The one thing though which we did [emphasis] discover was that an Australian pound didn’t go very far in New York and a sergeants pay as we then were, a sergeants pay was not very great and after about I think it was fourth day the five of us were all stone motherless broke [emphasis]. We didn’t have two pennies to rub together, and so this, as I say, was the good thing about buying a return ticket. If we’d, if we’d bought a one way ticket we’d have been stranded in New York, so we, we thankfully as I say, had the return ticket. Went to the station about ten o’clock, caught a train about ten o’clock at night, got back into Myles Standish somewhere between two or three o’clock in the morning. Again undetected, and hadn’t been in bed long and we were shaken awake, ‘wakey, wakey, wakey, wakey, you’re on your way.’ Well as I say, the good – there is a wonderful [emphasis] virtues of being stone motherless broke, not having two pennies to rub together. The great virtue on this occasion was okay we were awoken as I say after a couple of hours in bed, on another train and we finished up in Canada, a place called Halifax, a port, and we were put on a ship on our way to England. Now, the beauty about having the return ticket was this: had we not been able to catch the train to New York back to Boston [emphasis], we would have missed the ship from Halifax to England, and would have been classed as deserters. Now, desertion is a very, very serious offence in the forces and instead of getting the ship to England, we’d have been put on a ship back to Australia and arrived in Australia in handcuffs and gone straight to jail, so don’t ever worry I suggest about being stone motherless broke, it can have its virtues [AP laughs]. The ship was the, the ship from Melbourne had been the New Amsterdam which in peacetime was a luxurious Dutch liner. It had been revittled [?] in South Africa and there was only about three hundred of us airmen and about another forty or fifty New Zealanders so it was a pretty comfortable [emphasis] life. We got onto the ship in Halifax, it was the Louis Pasteur which had been a luxury French trans-Atlantic liner pre-war converted to a, a troop ship. America was in the war by now, and there were fourteen thousand [emphasis] troops onboard the Louis Pasteur. It was just incredibly packed, we didn’t get anything, the bell would ring for mess and there was nothing that even resembled edible food. You couldn’t blame the cooks, trying to cook for fourteen thousand people, they didn’t have a hope [emphasis]. The ship, for the first couple of days out we had a Destroyer escort and they were incredible, the way they would charge around. You’d swear they were going to be cut in half, they’d just you know, clear the bow of the Louis Pasteur and the Louis Pasteur, bear in mind you’ve got some pretty big Atlantic seas once you get out of a little bit from the coast, big, big waves, and the Louis Pasteur changed course every seventh minute. Quite violent change of course, and the reason for it being every seven minutes was it took a German submarine eight minutes to line you up and shoot a torpedo at you, so by changing course every seven minutes you had the German subs pretty much at your, your mercy, but it was very violent change of course. That plus the mountainous Atlantic seas, you really were getting your money’s worth I can tell you, and at times fourteen thousand troops – there was no treatment for the sewage it was just pumped out, raw sewage pumped out, and with these violent waves plus the also violent change of course of our ship, it was quite possible at times to have waves break over the stern of the ship and you’re up, you’re standing there knee deep in raw, untreated sewage. Strangely enough we didn’t hear – there may have been but if there was any sickness, any outbreak of sickness it was kept a very, very clever secret because there was never any word of it or any indication of a, a sickness outbreak from this as I say, almost living in untreated sewage sometimes. But after, after about three days I think it was, three or four days, the Destroyer escort just disappeared and one day we saw a speck on the horizon and there was much conjecture, ‘is it one of ours or is it one of theirs?’ It was an aircraft in the distant horizon and it turned out it was a four engine RAF Sunderland flying about and it took over the escort until we got almost, almost into Liverpool and another Destroyer came out and met us, took us under its wings for the last few hours, and so we landed at Liverpool late in the afternoon. Most wharf areas that you go to are not terribly exciting. This far from being exciting was rather depressing because it had had its share of Jerry bombs dropped on it and there was devastation everywhere. It was a quite a depressing sight actually, yeah.
AP: So that’s probably one of your first impressions of, of wartime England, is the –
DM: That’s right –
AP: You know, bombing damage.
DM: Yeah.
AP: This is the first time you’ve gone overseas presumably.
DM: Yes, yes, yes.
AP: As a young Australian, what did you think of wartime England?
DM: It was interesting. We’d left here at the end of early, rather early March, early March at the end of a rather dry and harsh Australian summer, and we got on a train at, at Liverpool and the first hour or two was in daylight and the – having left the harshness, the brown harshness of an Australian summer – there of course it, in March, you’re into spring and the various shades of green on the trees, the far [?] leaves. There was such a contrast to what we’d left back here about six or eight weeks earlier, and if it was very, very impressive without a, without a doubt. Beautiful shades of, of green, it was very, very impressive. We went from Liverpool by train down to Bournemouth. There were a number of delays in the journey, and we got into Bournemouth getting on towards midnight and that was our, we were to have our, that was to be our first English meal, a meal of English rationed foods. Our mess there had been an indoor bowling green in peacetime. Bournemouth is on the south coast as you almost certainly know, one of the most popular holiday spots in England pre-war but it had been evacuated. All the women and children had been evacuated out to the country. It was almost like a service town. All the hotels which had been packed with tourists in peacetime were taken over and used as billets for the three services. We – that was actually on a Saturday night and we got up on the Sunday morning and there was a church parade. Those of you who have been in the services know what it was, the Catholics went one way, the Jews went another way, the Protestants went another way, off to your various denominational services. We came out of our church service – the Catholics had an earlier service than us and some of their guys had gone back to their hotel, got their ground sheets which were a waterproof sheet, multipurpose thing, and laid them out on the lawns and there were a lot of lawns in Bournemouth, and they were enjoying a bit of Sunday morning sun [emphasis], and we came back out of church a bit later than them, and all of a sudden there’s a clatter, clatter, clatter. Now we’d been in England just over twelve hours – clatter, clatter, clatter. It was machine gun fires and so we suddenly realised ‘boy oh boy, this is a warzone.’ And the clatter, clatter from machine guns was German, what they used to call ‘tip and run raids.’ They didn’t do a lot of damage [emphasis] as such but they did cause one hell of a lot of disruption, and they were German fighter planes which would come in low, low, low over the English channel. Low so that the radar couldn’t pick them up, and when they got into, when they got over land they’d up to about a hundred and fifty, couple of hundred feet and they were just shoot. I don’t, I think at times they weren’t shooting at anything, they were just opening up their guns and as I say, nuisance value rather than damage. But interestingly enough I was saying these fellows had come home and come back to the hotel and got their groundsheets. Two of them were lying on a groundsheet, probably not much more than a metre apart enjoying the morning sun and a cannon shell ripped the groundsheet in two but neither of the blokes were harmed, it was quite, quite an initiation to, to fire and to the fact that they were in a warzone. We were there for a while, and there’s nothing worse for morale than having a congregation of guys with nothing to do so the powers that be decided that they would send us to a battle course up just outside Newcastle, Whitley Bay, just outside Newcastle. Here we were to have our introduction to Pommy drill instructors. Now when they use the word Pommy, often it’s used as a sort of derisive type of word. Later on I was to have five Poms in my crew, and whenever I use the word Pom it’s not one of disrespect, it’s more likely to be one of admiration. And anyway, I might have mentioned earlier about the main qualifications to be a good drill instructor being a loud voice and not much between the ears – these Pommy drill instructors did nothing to change that opinion. Whitley Bay had concrete strips, concrete streets, and this was a battle course to harden us up. We were, you know, scaling fences, going into trenches, God knows what, and marching clip-clop along the concrete streets with Army boots which had steel toes and steel heels, and we just about drove the Pommy drill instructors nuts when it came too hot [emphasis]. They would sound like a machine gun, and they used to let us know this, instead of – hot, you know, everybody exactly the heel on the ground at the same time sounded like a machine gun, and they, the more – they would take it out on us, they would make us double, they would make us run with our rifle above our head, but then at night we’d get in the mess or one of the local pubs and have a beer together and laugh our heads off with the Pommy DIs knowing quite well it was going to be more of the same tomorrow. But it didn’t do us, do us any harm, and from there we weren’t back to Bournemouth and on to AFU, an advanced flying unit which was where we flew the Oxfords again. Got a few hours up, the flying conditions were just so [emphasis] different there from what they are back in Australia, though Pommy instructors, and they bet us that they could take us up in the air, fly us around for quarter of an hour and we would be lost [emphasis]. They won the bet. The conditions, particularly around, we were just outside Oxford, and there are railways lines going everywhere [emphasis]. In Melbourne, Point Cook, if you’ve struck a railway line, spotted a railway line going west it’s almost certainly going to go to Bellarat. If it’s going north it’s almost certainly going to Seymour. Here you had railway lines going everywhere, little paddocks about ten, fifteen acre paddocks, whereas here we used to paddocks of hundreds of acres, and the instructors, as I say, won the bet. We were hopelessly lost after a quarter of an hour in the air. Good fun, all good plain sport, we used to have some good laughs about it, and from there we went to OTU, operational training unit. This was where you crewed up, which was quite an interesting exercise. There were probably about twenty-five or thirty of us on the course, and so you were going to have a crew of five, so it meant you had about shall we say thirty pilots, thirty navigators, thirty bomb aimers, thirty wireless ops, thirty tail gunners, and we were put in a hangar together and told to, you know, see if you could pick out someone you liked, you thought you’d like to fly with, and I saw a bloke standing there and went over and spoke to him, and his name was Pat. He was a navigator and started off, mostly, most people started off as a navigator. Skippers, most skippers started off as a navigator, and I had a bit of a yarn with Pat and Pat was, as the name might suggest, an Irishman and he was a wild Irishman. He’d been in a mercenary in the Spanish civil war when they were overthrowing I think it was King Alfonso that was overthrown. Pat was pretty wild sort of a guy and we decided, had a bit of a yarn. ‘Okay well do you want to try, do you want to, do we want to have a go together?’ ‘Yep.’ So then we looked around and saw a few bomb aimers and walked over and had a bit of a chat, and ‘ah yes,’ same sort of thing. So by now we were a crew of three, and the three of us then looked, went over to where the wireless ops were assembled, talking around and what have you. Incidentally, as I mentioned, Pat was a wild Irishman, the bomb aimer was a Kiwi, a New Zealander, the wireless op was from, a Pom from Cheshire, it was culturally [?] often called Cheese, nicknamed Cheese, and, and the – so we were a crew of four by now, picked, like picking number out of a hat really, and then we went over and had a look at the gunners and picked up a fellow, Taz Mears, who was a Pom from Brighton, and so there was the five of us and we decided we would give it a go together. The only unfortunate thing that broke that crew up was Pat got pneumonia and the Bomber Command appetite for replacement crews was insatiable [emphasis] so we couldn’t wait, we weren’t allowed to wait for Pat to get back out of hospital and rejoin us. That might have put a week or two weeks delay on our availability at the squadron, and so the CGI, the chief ground instructor, got us together and asked us would we try another guy who had been separated from his crew. Well this other guy was very, very different from, almost the opposite to, to Pat. He was an ex-public, an Englishman, ex-public school, a bank clark, and our initial meeting was to say the best was quite cool, quite – and when I say cool, not cool the way kids use it today, it was cold, it was frigid. But anyway, we didn’t have much option but to give it a try and it turned out to be good, he turned out to be a top navigator. He, he was ten years my senior, I was twenty-two, he was thirty-two. There were times where he was a steadying influence on the whole crew due to that bit of extra maturity, and we finished up despite the frigidity of our initial meeting, we finished up great mates. We, I went to his mother and sister, the father was deceased. The mother and sister lived at Exmouth, just outside Exeter in Devon, and I went down to their place numbers of times on leave, and the way they treated me was embarrassing. The food rationing in England was extremely severe, like two ounces per person per week of meat, two ounces of either butter or margarine per person per week, one egg per person per week, and we used to say perhaps, but they would save some of these rations so that when Wally and I – his actual name was Philip, Philip Hammond, but the English opening bat test, cricket batsman at the time was Wally Hammond, so Wally, Philip became Wally Hammond as far as the crew was concerned. But we finished up as I say mother and sister would save a couple of pieces of meat so we could have a bit extra and it was embarrassing [emphasis]. They killed us, killed me with hospitality. From OTU we were flying the old Whitley aircraft, a twin engine thing that was out of date before the war started and yet in the very early stages of the war, airmen had to fly the things on operations over occupied Europe, and it is no [emphasis] wonder that the losses were so great. As I say, there were hopeless [emphasis] bleeding aircraft, heavy on the control, sluggish to respond, low air speed, nothing going for them really. But we finished OTU, had a couple of nasty incidents there, and then onto the four engine Halifax. We were stationed just outside York and here further crew selection went on. We had to get a mid upper gunner and a flight engineer, and the same thing as I mentioned at the OTU, you went and had a yarn with a couple of blokes and we finished up with a fellow Pom from Newcastle, his name was Bell, surname Bell. To this day I have not got a clue what his real Christian name was because from day one with the crew he was Dingle, Dingle Bell, and what his true name was, as I say, I hadn’t a clue. And the other was a just turned eighteen year old, in fact I think he might have put his age on a bit, Johnny Cowl, and Englishmen from Kent as our mid upper gunner, so we had our compliment of five for the, for the Halifax.
AP: You mentioned a couple of nasty incidents at OTU, can you expand a little bit?
DM: Yes, the, the worst incident was there were only five crews on this particular course at OTU all of whom had been selected at OTU the same way as I mentioned ours, and we were briefed one night to do a cross country. Now cross countries were meant to get you ready, really ready for ops, and they could last five, six hours and the weather forecast was absolutely shocking [emphasis], and take off was postponed several times due to the weather forecast, and then ultimately it was decided that we would go [emphasis]. And as I say, why it was decided I do not know, but anyway, five crews, one had a crooked motor and didn’t get off the ground, another one of the crew took sick and I don’t blame him in view of the forecast [laughs]. I wish I [laughing], almost wish I had decided that I was sick, so there was two that didn’t get off the ground. Three of us got off the ground, one of them hadn’t gone far when he had a faulty engine and had to return, so that left two of us to – and of course we didn’t know anything about the other three, what had happened to them, we just pressed on. And after a while the control started to get heavy and as I say, the aircraft ultimately [?] was slow to respond and, and this was making it a bit worse, and then we started hearing things hitting against the fuselage and we couldn’t make out what it was, and it turned out, it was decided after we’d gotten back after everything was analysed that it was bits of ice flying off the propellers and hitting side of the fuselage. Things got worse and I lost our air speed indictor. Now what had happened, the pitot head – in case you don’t know what that is, it’s a little narrow tube that protrudes, protrudes out under the wing and the pressure at which the air hits that is converted to the air speed indictor in the cabin, via which we flew. Now, we lost the air speed indictor, and it’s a pitch black night, pitch, pitch black and so how the hell do you judge the airspeed if you haven’t got an ASI? Well with one hell of a lot of good luck, is all I can say. But anyway, we finished the, the course and got back over the airfield. Navigator did a marvellous [emphasis] job, incredible job, and bear in mind we’re only trainee crew, and I call out and said to the flying control, and told them, you know, ‘we’ve got no airspeed indicator and the aircraft’s hard to handle due to the ice, the wings and everything being so iced up,’ and the, the fellow in chargr of flying for the night was a flight lieutenant who’d done a tour of ops and a good bloke, good bloke, and he took over from the airfield controller and said, ‘okay, come in high, come in fast.’ And, which was good [emphasis] advice, no doubting the wisdom at all of his advice but how the bloody hell do you know fast when you haven’t got an ASI? So we, I, by the greatness of God and one hell of a lot, managed to do that and touched down. And it was screaming along the runway because I had come in really [emphasis] fast, screaming along the runway, brakes starting to overheat, no reverse thrust of course in those days, and the human mind is a funny thing really, I believe. I had my hands really full trying to look after and control the situation and I must [emphasis] say, just diverting for a moment, I must say the crew were absolutely marvellous [emphasis]. There was never a beep out of any of them, they each did what they were asked whenever they were asked, they fed whatever information they could to me, and they were absolutely brilliant [emphasis]. But anyway, as I say, we’re charging along the runway, brakes starting to overheat and lose their effectiveness and the human mind, suddenly it dawned on me about the excavation at the end of this runway. I would imagine there had been excavation and they’d taken the stuff out to build the runway and the perimeter tracks and what have you, and so ‘oh my God’ [emphasis]. You couldn’t possibly think of going into that, so I jammed on hard, hard left rudder, going as I say quite fast, and we went into a magnificent bloody ground loop and ultimately shuddered to a, to a halt and you know, we were off the runway, up the middle of the patty [?], out the middle of the airfield somewhere. And we hardly stopped, hardly come to a standstill and this flying duty officer who I’d mentioned to you, who’d gave us the instruction, ‘come in hard, come in fast,’ he, he was out there and up in the aircraft beside me, and anyway he was saying, you know, ‘good show, good show’ et cetera, et cetera, and we went off and, and were debriefed and went to bed. And we got up the next morning and they took us, drove us out to the aircraft, drove the crew out to the aircraft, and there were some bloody great slabs of rubber which had been ripped off the tyre when we went into the vicious ground loop at speed, and we, you know, looked and thought what might have been, what could have been. But we were by no means the main topic of conversation because the other crew I mentioned, you know, three didn’t go, we were the fourth. The fifth aircraft, he lost control [emphasis]. He couldn’t control his aircraft any longer, undoubtedly due to the icing and plus he may have let his airspeed get a bit low and perhaps close to stall. But anyway, he couldn’t control the aircraft and he gave the order to abandon aircraft, jump [emphasis]. And his bomb aimer – it was the bomb aimer’s job, he was the nearest to the front hatch, that was the only exit in the Whitley was the hatch at the front. He, his job was to lift the hatch, jump, and the others in theory follow, that was the theory. He lifted the hatch and froze, he couldn’t jump, and worst still he was blocking the exit, and the skipper, you know, he gave the order again a couple of times, and nothing was happening so he jumped out, out of the pilot’s seat to the front hatch, virtually threw this bomb aimer bloke out of the way and said ‘follow me,’ and he jumped because he knew quite well how low they were getting, so he jumped. Another two jumped and got out, but the bomb aimer and probably the tail gunner went in [?] and were killed. And I, I fell foul of authority because this skipper of course, he was being castigated. You’re supposed, you know, skipper’s supposed to be the last man to leave the sinking ship type of thing. Well I had the greatest admiration for him, because I’ve said, and our crew was agreed, better two blokes killed than five blokes killed, and I was told that I had to give evidence at, at a subject court of, subsequent court of enquiry, and I was marched in with a corporal with a bloody rifle, almost as though I was a criminal [emphasis], and I got in front of the desk where the chairman of the enquiry and a couple of other blokes were seated, and saluted and was told I may sit. And the way, the way the chairman told me, I think put us at loggerheads straightaway, you know. We used to talk cattle dog on a farm [emphasis] nicer than the way he spoke to me, and when I sat down he said ‘you’re, you’re required to answer some questions,’ and I [laughs], ‘I’ll answer any questions you ask me provided I can first make a statement.’ Well, t’was not spaghetti what hit the fan I can tell you. He lectured me about insubordination and this and that and the king’s regulations and God knows what, stathan’s [?] standing orders, and when he’d finished I repeated what I said, ‘I’ll answer any question provided I can first make a statement’ [emphasis]. And he was about to light up again when one of the other fellows on the board of enquiry asked what, why was my attitude such as it was, and I said to him just what I’ve said to you, I, the, ‘the skipper of that aircraft should be congratulated not castigated in my book.’ And anyway, after that a bit of reason prevailed and I was able to make my statement and the questions came thick and fast, and so that was, that was a rather nasty experience at, at, on Whitelys at the OTU so that was what I referred to before. From, from there it was – oh yes I, from there it was onto four engineer aircraft, Halifaxes, at a place called Rufforth which is now a suburb of York, it was just outside York at that time, and I finished HCU, that was called the heavy conversion unit, conversion on the heavy engine aircraft, heavy four engine aircraft, and I was posted to the Middle East. 462, an Australian Halifax squadron in the Middle East, and I thought ‘crikey.’ Just digressing a bit, my father came from the north of Scotland and he still had a couple of sisters, and I still had a number of cousins up near Inverness, right up the north of Scotland, and I’d been up to visit them a couple of times on leave since I’d been in England, and so going to the Middle East I sort of reckoned ‘well, I’m not half way home, I’m a third of the way home from Middle East, so I’ll probably be posted back to Australia.’ So I thought I’d better do the right thing and went up and saw my two aunties and cousins up in Inverness. We had a fortnight’s leave and I, after about a week or so, life up there was a bit dull and the bright lights of Lomond beckoned, and so I said to my auntie, said that I was going to go back down to have a few days in London before I left and that was all a-okay. If you change your address while you’re on leave you had to notify the adjutant’s office back on the unit where you were, so I sent a signal, no email of course in those days, sent a signal notifying my address as chair [?] of the boomerang club in London. I got down to London okay and sort of figured there won’t be much to spend my money on out in the Middle East, might as well have a good time here so there was no show I couldn’t afford to go to, there was no pub I couldn’t afford to drink at. I had an absolute ball and ala New York, just like New York I was stone motherless broke and went back to Rufforth, the camp where I was, the station where I was, and there was a party on in the sergeants mess so I borrowed ten bob, a dollar off one of my mates so that I could afford a beer and I was just about to have the first sip out of this pint of beer, and the CGI, the chief ground instructor came up to me and said, ‘what are you doing here McDonald?’ I said ‘just back from leave sir,’ and he said ‘well, your crew’s been, Middle East’s been cancelled, your crew’s been posted, you’ve been, you and your crew’s been posted to a squadron. The crew have all been over at Burn for two or three hours, two or three days. Be at the front door here with all your gear at seven o’clock in the morning and you’ll be on your way over there too.’ So, what had happened, I’d sent my notice as I mentioned back to the adjutant’s office, but they, they hadn’t profiled it, progressed it, hadn’t put it through the system and so I didn’t, the rest of the crew were recalled. They’d gone, you know the five Poms had gone home and Murray [?] had given the key, we, I don’t know where he’d gone, but they all got recall notices whereas mine hadn’t been put through the mill, and my change of address hadn’t been put through the mill, and so – but that was a great streak of luck, I would say, because I got over to Burn. The, it was almost straight into the CO’s office and he told me to sit down. He proved to be the greatest leader of men I have ever met or am ever likely to meet. He, I was Mac from the moment he met me. ‘Sit down Mac, I know you’re late arriving. Your crew’s been here for two or three days, but I also know that you sent a notice back to the adjutant’s office, you did all the right things’ he said, ‘you’re not, you weren’t in anyways wrong. This is a new squadron,’ and I think we were, I think we were the fourteenth crew there out of squadron strength was normally about thirty, maybe about thirty-two if you were lucky. We were about the fourteenth crew, and among other things he said to me, he said ‘Mac’ – and he’d already done a full tour, and had been selected to form up this new squadron, and one of things he said to me, he said, ‘Mac, you won’t – the only thing we’ll ask of you here is that you give off your best, and you’ll know whether or not you’ve given off your best,’ and so, you know, ‘go and get the rest of your crew round so we can have a bit of a yarn.’ And as I say, he was the greatest leader of men that I’ve, I’ve ever met but very, very [emphasis] sadly, he finished his second tour, was selected due to his ability and compatibility and all his virtues, he was selected to head up a very special training school and went over there. He always wanted to know what was happening to the men under him, and he wanted to find out more about what was happening, what was the routine with these fellows at the special school when they got in the air, and so he said to the commanding officer at this station, ‘I want to go up with, with a crew and find out a bit more detail.’ And the command officer looked his – ‘well everybody’s booked out, they’re all full crews today,’ and he says ‘doesn’t matter I’ll go with somebody, I’ll sit on the floor.’ And that was the type of guy he was. Sat on the floor and the bloody aircraft pranged on takeoff and he was killed after he’d done two full tours of ops, and as I say, his leadership, ah, outstanding [emphasis].
AP: What was his name?
DM: David Wilkerson.
AP: Wilkerson.
DM: Yes, David Wilkerson.
AP: [Unclear] record –
DM: Won a DFC on his first tour and a DSO on the second tour when he was in charge of us. David Wilkerson DSO, DFC.
AP: So you’re, you’re at your squadron now. This is 578 Squadron, am I right?
DM: That’s right, yes.
AP: Where and how did you live on the squadron?
DM: Beg your pardon?
AP: Where and how did you live [emphasis] on the squadron?
DM: On the squadron – David Wilkerson I just mentioned, the greatest leader of men, one of the things he said very early in the piece, ‘don’t muck around with saluting and things insofar as I’m concerned, unless there’s a senior officer there with me. If there’s a senior officer there with me, well then salute because they’ll wonder why you don’t salute me as a wing commander.’ And life on a squadron, there was no bull dust [emphasis], there was no drill, you did what was required of you. There wasn’t, strangely enough, a lot of flying because the aircraft was wanted for ops. The only time you did non operational flying was to do an air test if the aircraft had been damaged and you as a skipper and a crew who were going to fly it were entitled to fly it after it had been repaired, so you’d do an air test. Might be half an hour, you might go on a cross country or something like that, but there wasn’t, very, very little non essential flying. As I mentioned, David Wilkerson didn’t want any saluting. He didn’t have to demand respect, he commanded it by his own example, by his own demeanour, as, as squadron commander. He had to seek permission before he could go on an operation, the reason for that being the losses were such, highly qualified blokes were pretty scarce [emphasis] and promotion on a squadron could come incredibly quick. I knew of one case where a fellow got his commission, was a pilot officer and six weeks later he was a squadron leader. In other words, he’d pilot officer, flying officer, flight lieutenant, squadron leader, everybody above him had been knocked off, hadn’t returned from ops, and so within six weeks from pilot officer to squadron leader. Impossible if it wasn’t for the chop rate, and now and we – life was, I wouldn’t say on the squadron, I wouldn’t say it was ill disciplined, but there was no bull dust, there was no parade ground, no square bashing. As I say, David Wilkerson didn’t want to be saluted unless a superior was there, so it, other than when you were flying, I suppose a bit lay back is the, would be a suitable word. A bit lay back. The aircrew, the close knittedness if that’s the correct word of aircrew I couldn’t describe and I don’t know that anybody could describe. You just relied on each other, you were part of a close knit team. As I mentioned in that icing incident, not a mumble or a grumble from any of the crew and they must have wondered what the bloody hell was going on at times, but very – and mutual respect and likewise [phone rings] the ground crew [phone rings], they would do anything [phone rings]. That’s it, you got it. Absolutely anything [emphasis] for their aircrew, and the close knittedness if that’s the word between aircrew and ground crew was so close to that between the aircrew that it didn’t matter. We were, we were issued pre takeoff with compasses and escape maps and that sort of thing, and also with a thermos of coffee, some glucose tablets for quick conversion to energy, molten milk tablets, and a, and some very, very [emphasis] dark chocolate, was almost back, terrible [emphasis] looking stuff, and we would always try, the aircrew, try and save a few bits of that for the ground crew because as I say they would do absolutely [emphasis] anything [emphasis] for us, absolutely anything. And one night, I mentioned Wally Hammond, the navigator, an Englishman. Wally had quite a large nose – now I’m the last one who should speak about a large nose but Wally put mine to shame [emphasis], and one night we were on our way home and, bear in mind that the aircraft thermometer went down to minus thirty-five degrees, the needle went down to minus thirty-five, and it would disappear right off the clock, minus fifty God knows what, and this night Wally wanted to blow his nose. He had a bit of a dew drop, and he pulled off his oxygen mask but before he could get his handkerchief to his nose, a big dew drop fell down onto his navigation chart and was immediately snap frozen. Now, as I say it was a big dew drop and as you would know, a dew drop is almost semi transparent, and as I say, when these, with these chocolate molten milk tablets and et cetera, we’d always try to save something for the ground crew, and some crews they’d, they’d hide them, they’d have the ground crew in and have them hide and seek. We never ever did that, we’d always try and have something for them, and this night, as I say, this giant [emphasis] dew drop, almost transparent, and one of the ground crew came up into the nose, the aircraft, the navigator’s area [?] and looking for his goodies, and Wally said ‘would you like a dewb [?] Jonny,’ because it looked a little bit like a clear, transparent clear dewb and [laughs] well, Jonny – and he’d almost got it into his mouth and Wally smacked his hand and knocked, knocked it out [laughs] and told him the origin of the dewb [?] [laughs].
AP: What, what happened in an officers mess in a squadron? What, what sort of things happened?
DM: Well I wasn’t commissioned until fairly late in my tour –
AP: The sergeants mess then [laughs].
DM: Sergeants mess, you can have some real [emphasis] good piss ups at times without a doubt, and the officers mess wasn’t any, the limited time that I was in there wasn’t any, any different. No, no formality as such as there is in the permanent Air Force mess. They could be very, very formal you know. The draw with the wine at the end of dinner was a port night, you would, the waiter would put a port glass down in front of everybody, and then the very strict rule was that the bottle didn’t touch the table until it was empty, you had to hand it on hand to hand to the bloke next to you, right to left, right to left and things like that. Very formal in the permanent mess, quite informal in the, in the wartime mess. Just on the subject of mess, I would reckon the best Christmas dinner I had – well okay, take the ones you can first remember, first Christmas you can remember, they’ve probably got to be your greatest. For those of us who have little kids, the next best Christmas you could have was when your little kids open their presents and sat up at the table. My third, my best Christmas other than those two and nothing can supplant them, my next best Christmas was when I was instructing after I’d finished my tour. We were at a place called Moreton-in-Marsh, in the Cotswold country of England. For those who don’t know the Cotswold country, on the corner of the Moreton airfield was the four shire stone, a stone denoting the joining of Gloucester, Oxford, Warwick and Worcestershire, the four shires all joined together there, and I was instructing there, and magically out of nowhere about two or three weeks before Christmas about six or eight geese appeared and it was much activity making an enclosure for them. We pinched bits of wire form everywhere and made an enclosure for them, and so the geese was the, there was no turkey but there were geese for Christmas dinner. This was Christmas 1944 and there were a lot of Australians on the station at Moreton-in-Marsh, and a couple of them gathered the rest of us together and suggested, ‘look, we can’t get home for Christmas. What about if we go to the CO, the commanding officer, and tell him that all the Aussies are prepared to stay on the station over Christmas and let the maximum number of Poms go home for Christmas dinner with their family.’ This was accepted and all we Aussies, I was commissioned by then, and we went to the airmens’ and the WAFs’ mess and waited on them for their Christmas dinner. Went and got the, the meal out of from the kitchen and took it and put it on the table for them, which was great and they appreciated that, and then the same thing happened with eh sergeants’ mess. We went over to the sergeants’ mess and waited on them which was absolutely great [emphasis]. It was absolutely marvellous and we got our own Christmas dinner I suppose at about four o’clock or something in the afternoon, but that was very, very, as I say, next to being a little kid and then having your own kids. That’s the, my most memorable Christmas, mm.
AP: Do any of your, your operations stand out in particular?
DM: I suppose whilst it was – we had a pretty easy trip, although we did lose our flight commander. D-Day was incredible. As skipper, you’re pretty preoccupied watching your instruments, flying your aircraft, looking up from time to time for other aircraft because there were bloody kites everywhere [emphasis], but the rest of the crew were – and we were a very strongly disciplined crew, very strongly disciplined in that we didn’t tolerate any unnecessary chatter, but the sight on D-Day was such that I take my eyes away from the instruments and other things from time to time and have a look out. But the rest of the crew, you know, the, the, the gunners and the navigator and bomb aimer down the nose of the aircraft, the engineer had a window beside him, as did the, the wireless op. They, you know, the sight, all [emphasis] those watercraft, God [emphasis] it was an unbelievable sight. As I say, we had a, a reasonably easy trip but we did lose our flight commander who was very experienced, he was on his second tour, and [phone rings] he unfortunately, as we used to call it, copped the chop [phone rings], mm. Now that would be one of the most memorable. Couple of the others weren’t as kind as that [laughs] was, but that was an incredible sight.
AP: Are they, are those other trips something that you’re – are you able to tell us something of some of the other trips?
DM: Er, yes. Our – Karlsruhe was very unpleasant, nasty weather, a lot of electrical storms. Very, very nasty and it was pretty hot over the target. They certainly gave us a, a warm welcome. We were lucky, only, only minor damage. Now look, yeah Karlsruhe was the most, probably one of the most – Essen, they certainly didn’t welcome you Essen, you know, the home of crops. Germany’s biggest armament manufacture, they, they let you know that you weren’t wanted. My – you, as a skipper you were sent with an experienced crew. You’d done everything in the way of training except being put under fire, and to try to give you some experience there, they would send the skipper to an operational squadron to do either one or two ops with an experienced crew. We, I took off with one of the flight commanders and we had an engine fault and had to return early. The target was Berlin and that was, that was, this was the first briefing of course that you’ve been to and you’ve got no idea what you’re in for. And when the squadron commander ripped the curtains back from the map on the wall and said, ‘there’s our target for the night, Berlin,’ there were groans, there were moans, there were some said ‘not again,’ others screamed out ‘the big city,’ and that was interesting for a first time. And as I say, we had to do an early return. Couple of nights later, experienced by then, I’d been to one briefing, so I’m into the second briefing, and it was Berlin again and indicative of how temporary life on an operational squadron could be is this example. There were two of us sent over to, to Driffield, the Australian Halifax squadron to do our second dicky trip with an experienced crew. The other fellow, Doug, Berlin the target again, was shot down just before they were to release their bombs, so his total experience on an operational squadron was about four hours, slightly less than four hours. Berlin was about a seven hour, roughly trip seven, depending on wind direction and whatever, and his total experience on an operational squadron, four hours as I say, it’s indicative of how brief it could be. The second time I took off with another, with a different crew and we – interesting, you know, you’re sitting there in the co-pilot’s seat in a Halifax, take it from me, no aircraft, no wartime aircraft in which I entered had any consideration of comfort for the crew, and indeed they seemed to have protrusions everywhere which, you know, as though they set traps for you to hit your head on or bump your shoulder against or some such, but as second dicky in a Halifax you pulled down a wooden seat from the side of the hall. It had no padding on the back of it, just timber, and precious little padding on the seat, and nowhere to rest your feet. You dangled your feet in midair a little bit like a very small kid in a church pew, just dangled his feet and that’s all you could do. And so, as I say, no thought of comfort and the guy with whom I was flying on this second attempt at Berlin was a fellow named Gus Stevens. Very experienced and very good pilot, and I can remember approaching or probably about half way there, ‘oh this doesn’t seem to be too bad,’ and bit further, ‘oh I’m getting close to the target. I’m not too sure this is all that good.’ Getting into the target area, ‘oh my God, there’s, there’s, I reckon there’s a few places where I’d rather be,’ and then over the target itself, ‘I know bloody well there’s a whole [emphasis] lot of places where I’d [laughing] rather be.’ And anyway, we got in and out of the target area okay and we’re stinting [?] along on our way home when all of a sudden a heap, a trace of bullets started flying everywhere and we had one of the inner engines were, were knocked out. The rear gunner didn’t spot him. Obviously if it was one of those German night-fighter aircraft where they had the upward pointing firing guns, which was a very [emphasis] bloody miserable trick in, in my book. God, talk about all’s fair in love and war, there’s nothing fair about, about that. Anyway, the – this was interesting, we’d done plenty of fighter affiliation at heavy conversion unit. They’d set up Spitfires and Hurricanes to, with us and the gunners both had camera guns so that we could, the aim could be assessed when they got back on the ground. But anyway, and with, you know, we’d thrown the aircraft round corkscrew port, corkscrew starboard et cetera, et cetera, and generally speaking the rougher and more violent your corkscrew, the more effective it was likely to be. Would you like a beer by the way, or anything like that?
AP: I’m alright thank you, but you’re happy to keep going? Carry on?
DM: No, no I hope I’m not boring you.
AP: Oh not at all.
DM: Anyway, the, one of the, I think it was the port inner engine got knocked out, but Gus Stevens, the pilot, the skipper told me to feather the engines so he could keep his both hands on the control column and put it into a steep dive. Well, there was almost like a deadly silence other than air swishing around, and Gus had, we worked it out later what he’d done, he’d put it into such an incredible [emphasis] dive, used such force that all the petrol, all the fuel was forced up centrifugal force off the bottom of the fuel tanks, and you had what was known as constant speed control on your, on your propellers, but the moment they were relived of any load [emphasis] they just went into runaway mode, and so, as I say, you had this short period when the fuel was off the bottom of the tanks and you just had air rushing by and then when he pulled it back in and the fuel went back onto the bottom of the tanks and entered the fuel allowance [?], entered the motors – the motors of course as I say, they had constant speed, like governors on them and, which governed the air, the air screw, the propeller speed to about three and a half thousand revs, but with this load moved, taken off them, I reckon they were probably at about four and a half thousand. And then when the petrol went back and into the – the bloody row [emphasis], the vibration of the – I didn’t realise what punishment a hellick [?] would take until that moment. You know, I thought I’d done some pretty rough and tough stuff on [phone rings] when we were doing [phone rings] our fighter affiliation in training, but nothing [emphasis] like [phone rings] this. Bloody vibration it shake [emphasis], I thought the thing would shake to pieces.
AP: I suppose that shows the value of the second dicky trip, going with an operational pilot [unclear] –
DM: That’s right, that’s right, yes, ah yes, yes, yes.
AP: It’s yeah, unreal.
DM: Yes, and interesting side line to that was back at the heavy conversion unit, the training unit again the next day, the CGI, chief ground instructor – there was a class in progress, I’ve forgotten what it was, and I was marched in and he said ‘I want you to tell your experience, your experience from last night.’ So I started, and he said ‘hold up Pilot McDonald, hold up. You don’t have to say any further. We’ve been in touch with the flight commander and the skipper concerned and we know almost as much about it as you do, so you can save your voice.’
AP: Very good [DM laughs]. Well I guess flying operations wouldn’t have been the most stress free existence. What sort of things did you do to relax?
DM: Give the grog a good nudge [laughs]. Yes, there was sports. You could have, there was tennis courts near the squadron and you could have a – we used to play a game that was a cross between AFL and rugby. There was you know, plenty of blokes from New South Wales and Queensland. They, they’d never heard of AFL at that time, and so we would, we’d have a game crossed between AFL and rugby. And of course the blokes, the rugby boys would tuck the ball under their arm and never think of bouncing it or anything like that, and that, that, that was a bit of good fun, and most, most messes would have table tennis facilities so you could have a game, and some would also have billiards or snooker to fill in time at night. And of course you’d have the odd game of cards here and there and those who liked to play poker could put their pay on the line.
AP: Can you – I gather you probably spent a fair bit of time at the local pub?
DM: Oh yes [emphasis], yes, yes.
AP: [Unclear].
DM: Yeah, not really funny thing, but the mid upper gunner of my second crew – when the war finished in Europe, I had just started a second tour. Indeed I only did one trip and the war in Europe ended. I – back at Moreton-in-Marsh, I, flying the twin engine Wellington which were a lovely, lovely kite to fly. As I say, twin engine. I’d had about three single engine, I’d had three single engine landings in about five weeks, and it wasn’t the fault of the ground staff. The motors were copped, cuffed out, they’d, they’d had it and no matter how good the ground staff had been, they would have had troubles keeping them airworthy. So I’d had about five single engine landings in about five weeks. The first two were highly successful. The last one, the third one, I was very lucky to walk away from. And the – sorry where were we up to when I digressed [?] –
AP: So we were – pubs.
DM: Ah yeah pubs. Yeah, and, and so we – I was very lucky to walk away from it. And on the sort of subject of pubs, as I say I was an instructor at this time, and I finished up in an ambulance and at lunchtime I was about to have a pint of beer because the flight commander had said, you know, ‘your flying’s finished for today.’ And so I thought I’d have a pint of beer at lunch and I was just about to have my first sip out of it when the MO, the doctor came up to me and said, ‘I think you can put that down, and, and you better come with me.’ And I didn’t realise but I had concussion, and he put me into hospital. Now, there’s two things outstanding about this. Some miserable sod got that pint of beer and drank it and never owned up to me, never paid me for it, never owned up to me for it, and so if I ever catch up with him I’ll, I’ll get my [AP laughs] money’s worth. The other thing was at night a couple of the other instructors, they were, we were all instructors at the OTU were ex-op fellows, and a couple of them decided they’d come down to the hospital, the sick quarters and see how I was, and they bought a couple of beers with them. So that was great, very good medicine, and the next night about four of them came down and finished up after three or four nights was about six or eight of them, and, and we were having a great old time grogging on in the station’s sick quarters, and lo and behold, who should come in but the doctor, and caught us all with our grog there. He ordered the other blokes out and said to me, ‘you’ll be in the flight office at eight o’clock tomorrow morning McDonald, and I’ll be there to make sure you’re there.’ And so that was the end of that medication, so that’s, you know. Looking back, looking back at him, I sometimes wonder and indeed think that possibly we were pretty much at the stage of eat, drink and be merry, tomorrow you may die, and I think that did tend to take over, yeah.
AP: We’re getting, we’re getting close to the end of [both laugh] –
DM: No worries.
AP: We’ve been going for an hour and fifty-seven minutes.
DM: Truly? Oh my God.
AP: Believe it or not, flown by –
DM: Yeah.
AP: It’s been great [emphasis]. I guess, well yeah, coming back to Australia. How did you find readjusting to civilian life and what did you do after the war?
DM: I reckon for the – I had been in the Public service, as I mentioned, when I enlisted and when I got back I took twelve months leave from the Public service, leave without pay, with a view to hopefully [?] adjusting or readjusting myself. I went back to the bush, back on the farm, and I reckon for about the first three weeks I got up and helped with the milking in the morning and then spent most of the day sitting under a big pine tree. I’ve got no idea what I would have been thinking, and the, the owner of the local general store and post office said, ‘what about coming and working for me? I need someone.’ So it was a bit more than ten bob a week at that time of course, and I accepted his offer which suited me really because I was, meant I had to be meeting people, getting out amongst them, them coming into the store, me getting out amongst them, and I think that was a good move. At the end of twelve months I resigned altogether from the public service and got married and went into business on my own. First one was a little grocery store, a newsagents and post office out at Fawkner, northern suburbs of Melbourne, just near the Fawkner cemetery. I sold out of that and worked for another guy for a few months and then opened a grocery store in Hampton, a beach side southern suburb of Melbourne. That was when self service first started to come in. Prior to that when you went in to the grocer’s shop you asked the grocer what you wanted and he put it on the counter and gave you the bill and then self service came in. We had one of about the first twenty self service shops in Melbourne and then frozen foods came in, and we had one of I think it was about the first six [emphasis] deep freezers in Melbourne. After about six, seven or eight years in that business I sold out, worked around for a while and went into radio communications. The neighbours said, ‘look, we want someone – our company’s just going into radio communications. You know a bit about it from your Air Force experience.’ And the job was virtually painted [?] there on a platter for me so I worked in that, and I could see a need for some towers. It was roughly line of sight communication – radios such as in taxis and in trucks and plumbers and electricians et cetera, communications, mobile communications, and I could see that to increase the range we needed some towers, and the company with whom I was working wouldn’t listen to me, so I said to them ‘okay, you won’t provide them, let me provide them.’ And I did and we finished up with about six of these around Melbourne, and then I, I started renting a few radios. I could see a requirement for rental and people didn’t want to buy, and once again the company with whom I was working were disinterested so I started renting radios which I owned. And then later on I saw a need for little hand-held portable radios for security people and crowd control and parking et cetera, and actually I just sold out of the last one of them in the last twelve months. But we finished up with roughly a thousand of them little hand-held ones, and we, we do some, well I’m out of it now but we did some quite big jobs. Probably the biggest was the spring carnival at Flemington in Melbourne. The Melbourne Cup is a world famous race and a big requirement for these little hand-held radios, not worth them buying them because they only need them for about two weeks of the year. The rest of the year they would be on the shelf and be knocked off or the batteries would go flat and so there’s the, you know, just a little inside there, there’s the parking, there’s security, there is crowd control, catering. Imagine what it would be like if the bird cage or some of those quite exclusive enclosures at Flemington ran out of champagne, so you’ve got to be able to engineer, develop a system so that they can get down into the bowels of the earth as it were, under the big grandstands and everything so that we could control the flow of champagne up there to marquees and the likes spread around the ground. Quite, quite an interesting, quite a challenging exercise, and, and it was, as I say, I’m sold out of it now but it was financially fairly favourable, and no Lord Nuffield or Rockefeller or anything like that but enabled a quite good standard of living.
AP: Excellent. I guess the final, the final question, perhaps the most important one. From your personal perspective, how was Bomber Command remembered and what sort of legacy do you think it’s left?
DM: A good question. A lot of condemnation on Bomber Command. If Bomber Command hadn’t done the duties they were called upon to do, and likewise many other branches of the service, if they hadn’t done the things they were called upon to do, goodness knows how much longer the war might have gone on. The French government just this year, seventy years later after peace was declared, seventy years later gave, made some awards. Now, one of the qualifications was that you had to be involved on D-Day. D-Day for a lot of the French people and a lot of the people of occupied territories was the first time for five years that there was any light to be seen at the end of the tunnel. That D-Day signalled in my book, the beginning of the end and Bomber Command were well and truly involved in D-Day and they were involved subsequent to D-Day, stopping Germany getting their troops and their supplies up to the front line. The V1s and V2s, the Doodlebug, flying one, call it what you like, if Bomber Command hadn’t put down the launching pads for those V1s, almost all [emphasis] of London and southern England would have been laid waste in my book, there’s not any doubt about that. And of course the V2, terrible [emphasis] weapon. There was no combating the V2 once it was in the air, there was no ways [unclear], and so what did they do? They sent Bomber Command over to the launching pads and manufacturing plants in Scandinavia. Some of those aircraft were in the air fourteen hours. Now, as I mentioned, there was no thought of comfort for the crew in a bomber aircraft. Temperatures, as I mentioned, the thermometer went down to minus thirty-five and the needle used to go right off the clock, right [emphasis] off the clock. The gunners had electrically heated gloves, other crew members had three pairs of gloves on: silk next to the skin, woollen to try and keep the warmth in and then the big elbow length, fleecy lined leather gauntlet. Bomber Command [phone rings] didn’t get, did not [emphasis] get the credit [phone rings] for which it was due [phone rings]. Almost sixty thousand people killed [emphasis]. Young men in their prime, fit, you had to be fit to be an aircrew. Fit, young men in their prime, almost – now for Victorians or Australians, almost sixty thousand, that is the equivalent to every man, woman and child, the city the size of Bellarat. There were eight thousand killed on training – I mentioned the icing experience before, eight thousand killed on training. Now, for any Victorians, that’s the equivalent of a provincial city the size of Bellarat or the size of Colac. Every man, woman, child in that city, killed. So as I say, the legacy of Bomber Command, the ruddy war might still be going on. It did not get its true dues in, in, in my book, and as I say, it would have gone on a lot longer. Yes, we’re finished I think.
AP: I think we’re done.
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AMcDonaldD151013
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Interview with Donald McDonald
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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
Format
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02:10:05 audio recording
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Pending review
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Adam Purcell
Date
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2015-10-13
Description
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Donald McDonald grew up in Australia and worked for a general store before he volunteered for the Royal Australian Air Force. He flew operations as a pilot with 466 and 578 Squadrons. He returned to Australia after the war where he became involved in radio communications.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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Australia
Great Britain
England--Gloucestershire
England--Yorkshire
Victoria
Victoria--Mount Martha
Victoria
Contributor
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Katie Gilbert
466 Squadron
578 Squadron
aircrew
coping mechanism
crash
crewing up
entertainment
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
mess
military discipline
military living conditions
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
perception of bombing war
pilot
RAF Burn
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF Rufforth
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Whitley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/700/10101/PBeasleyDG1727.1.jpg
3e6476a4caca883b605d7c511cc297fb
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/700/10101/ABeasleyDG180326.2.mp3
d30a8491f63c56f32a83d26c6d06fe2d
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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Beasley, Doug
Douglas George Beasley
D G Beasley
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. An oral history interview with Doug Beasley (b.1925, 1876732 Royal Ar Force) and photographs of aircrew. He flew operations with 76 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Doug Beasley and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-11-03
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. 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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Beasley, DG
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DK: So, I’ll just introduce myself. So, it’s David Kavanagh for the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Doug Beasley at his home on the 26th of, where are we? March 2018. So if I just put that there.
DB: Yeah.
DK: If I keep looking over I’m just making sure it’s working.
DB: It’s working.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Right. Yeah.
DK: It is. Sometimes get caught out with the batteries going or something.
DB: They’re quite good those aren’t they?
DK: They are nice. A very handy little —
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Little bit of kit that. Right. So, if I can just ask you —
DB: Yeah.
DK: What were you doing immediately before the war?
DB: Well, I, I was still at school when war was declared but in, when I was [pause] yeah I left school and when I was sixteen I started work in, in a company called British Glues and Chemicals Limited.
DK: Oh right.
DB: And I was studying really accountancy. I also was in the Air Training Corps immediately I was sixteen. And that meant that as soon as I was eighteen I went to, to the Aircrew Reception.
DK: Right.
DB: Selection.
DK: Yeah.
DB: People.
DK: Was the Air Force your first choice then?
DB: Oh yes. Yeah. Well, I was in the Air Training Corps.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And the, three months later I was in the RAF. And the reason was, I was accepted as pilot, navigator, bomb aimer which everybody wanted to be and they said, ‘But it will be at least a year before you join up.’ And I said, ‘Well, all my friends have gone into the RAF as well.’ And the new position of flight engineer was just coming in.
DK: Right.
DB: And they talked, well I don’t say they talked me into it but you acted as second pilot anyway.
DK: Yeah.
DB: So, so —
DK: If I could just take you back a bit.
DB: Yeah.
DK: What was the first things you had to do when you joined the Air Force? Because presumably there was a bit of square bashing going on or something. Or —
DB: Well, yeah, the first thing was I joined up at of all places Lord’s Cricket Ground.
DK: Right.
DB: And thirty thousand of us turned up there. And as I’m a cricket fan I’m part of the history of Lord’s, you see.
DK: Oh excellent.
DB: So, and we —
DK: You, have you ever been out to bat there, Doug?
DB: Hmmn?
DK: You’ve not been up to bat. No. No.
DB: No. No. No. Nothing like that but —
DK: That’s what I always wanted to do.
DB: There’s a special plaque up in Lord’s Cricket Ground.
DK: Yes. I’ve seen that. Yeah.
DB: So we were there for three weeks and then funnily enough I was, I then went to the Initial Training Wing which was [pause] I found all these things.
DK: Ok.
DB: Which was at Torquay.
DK: So if just say this for the recording then.
DB: Yeah.
DK: So you were at Number 3 Initial Training Wing.
DB: Yeah.
DK: C Flight of number 2 Squadron. And that was in October 1943.
DB: That’s right. Yeah.
DK: So whereabouts are you then? Are you —
[pause]
DK: Ah.
DB: The names there as well.
DK: You haven’t changed much.
OJ: I couldn’t find him earlier [laughs]
DK: So they were all sort of the same age as you then were they?
DB: Well, no they weren’t.
DK: Oh right.
DB: I was explaining to my grand-daughter a lot of them were policemen.
DK: Oh.
DB: And they were not allowed to join until they were thirty years old.
DK: Right.
DB: So I found myself, all that back row were policemen basically.
DK: They do, and now you’ve said they do look a lot older don’t they?
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And —
DK: So how old would you have been in October ’43?
DB: I was just, I was just eighteen then.
DK: Eighteen.
DB: Yeah. Eighteen and a quarter. Yeah.
DK: So presumably they couldn’t join earlier because they were in a Reserved Occupation.
DB: Yeah. They couldn’t join earlier.
DK: Yeah.
DB: No. I mean we were you know the younger ones. I don’t know how many were in the same category as me but I always seemed to be about the youngest at the moment, you know.
DK: Right.
DB: But I think it was because of this Air Training Corps I was in. As soon as I was eighteen I was interviewed and then three months later I was in the RAF. And that was when I joined up to Lord’s Cricket Ground you see.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: So 3 ITW was based where?
DB: Torquay.
DK: Torquay. Right.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. And we were there for about six weeks I think. Yeah.
DK: And what used to happen at Torquay then?
DB: Well, that was, that was when they really [laughs] they really, you got, you got a pretty awkward flight sergeant looking after you and they were basically getting us absolutely fit. There was a lot of running going on etcetera. But it was your initial training for the RAF.
DK: Right.
DB: Yeah. On that.
DK: Was it something you took to well at the time?
DB: Well, yes. Well, there’s a lot worse places than, to be than Torquay. So that was quite interesting. Yeah. And then after that I started my basic training which was at St Athans.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Which was one of the largest, well I think it was the largest place in the, outside Singapore. Something like that anyway. And I was there then for, oh that was quite intensive training. Yeah.
DK: And was that training to be a flight engineer?
DB: Oh yeah. Very definitely.
DK: So you didn’t, you said you tried to join as a pilot.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Bomb aimer. Navigator.
DB: Yeah.
DK: But was turned down for that then presumably.
DB: Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t really turned down. I could have taken it if I was prepared to wait twelve months.
DK: Right.
DB: But as I mentioned most of my friends had joined the RAF.
DK: Right.
DB: And, well I didn’t want to miss it.
DK: Yeah.
DB: I know that sounds a bit foolish but —
DK: So, what was the training like then at St Athans? What did you have to do?
DB: Well, it was, it was very comprehensive really because I wasn’t ever trained as an engineer. But of course the most important subject you had to be good at was mathematics because in the air you did everything.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And so there was a lot of basic training on engines and stuff like that but what, what was really always mentioned was it’s what we had to do in the air.
DK: Right.
DB: If things went wrong. And of course there was a lot of basic training because the pilot and myself were the liaison group with the engineers. Ground engineers. So it was pretty intensive. The training.
DK: So, at St Athan did they actually have aircraft that you worked on or was it all parts?
DB: Yeah. Well, there were aircraft there but part of the training was we went to Speke Airport.
DK: Right.
DB: Where at that time they were producing Halifax aircraft which I was on, and so we saw, saw them in production then and I think we spent about three or four days there.
DK: Right.
DB: Really learning all about the thing. And, and that was the first time I saw a lady pilot, you know taking off.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Because it was an airport.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Well, it still is. Liverpool Airport now. So that was quite an interesting background. And then after that I went straight to the Heavy Conversion Unit. I mean, and that’s, that was immediately on to four engine aircraft.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And the flight engineer, we were all flight engineers there in the Heavy Conversion Unit and I think I was there a good two or three months ahead of the crew.
DK: Right.
DB: Because the ordinary crew went to Operational Training Units, and what happened was then they came to the Heavy Conversion Unit and we flight engineers all lined up and, and the respective pilots came along and —
DK: Picked one of you.
DB: Picked. Well, it was quite interesting with mine because he was a Canadian and he was thirty one years old. And he just said, ‘What’s your name?’ So, I said, ‘Beasley.’ He said, ‘No. Christian name,’ you see.
DK: Right.
DB: So I said, ‘Doug.’ He said, ‘My name’s Doug.’
DK: Yeah.
DB: So we had something in common straight away. And so it was a funny form of selection.
DK: Yeah.
DB: What crew you were in.
DK: Do you think that, do you think that worked well then with the pilot just coming up and choosing his flight engineer?
DB: Well, it did as far as we were concerned. Yes. I know of no complaints at all. We all, we all got on very well. The two gunners were British. One was Welsh.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And one was English.
DK: Can you remember your pilot’s name? Doug?
DB: Yeah. Kerr. K E R R.
DK: Kerr.
DB: I’ve actually as a matter of interest I only found this the other day myself but it’s, I’ve got somewhere here photographs of them all. All —
OJ: I thought I’d be nosey.
[pause]
DK: Oh wow.
DB: That’s, that’s the same as that one.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: That was one of my pals. That was when I first joined up.
DK: Yeah.
DB: But that was the, that was the pilot. Kerr. Pilot Doug Kerr. This was July 1944.
DK: Just, just for the recording.
DB: Yeah.
DK: That’s Kerr. K E R R.
DB: K E R R. Yes.
DK: Dg Kerr.
DB: The navigator was Alec Marshall.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And then that was the bomb aimer. Jerry Lowe.
DK: Jerry Lowe. Yeah.
DB: The wireless operator was Mel Magee. And these, these were the two gunners.
DK: So the two gunners.
DB: Yeah.
DK: The mid-upper gunner was?
DB: Vic Hewitt.
DK: Vic Hewitt.
DB: Yeah. And Wally Hearn.
DK: Wally Hearn.
DB: Yeah.
DK: That was the rear gunner.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. So I only found this the other day.
DK: Wow.
DB: So that was quite interesting.
DK: That’s superb that.
DB: I think, I think it just goes on to all sorts. Well, I think there’s another one here. This is with the crew.
DK: Right.
DB: That’s me there. And this was another part there. This is the —
DK: That’s the Halifax in the background there, isn’t it?
DB: That’s right.
DK: This was the Heavy Conversion Unit at Marston Moor.
DB: Yeah. That’s right.
DK: The Heavy Conversion Unit at Marston Moor.
DB: That’s right. Yeah.
DK: I’m just saying this loudly for the recording.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Oh wow.
DB: So, and then the, you were at Heavy Conversion Unit for, well I was the lucky one. I had already had experience of the Halifax and they hadn’t you see.
DK: No. So what had they trained on then before?
DB: Well, they were, on Operational Training Unit was on Wellington aircraft.
DK: Right.
DB: And so there was six of them in the Wellington. Training. And I just didn’t go into Wellingtons at all. I went straight on to the, where the flight engineer had to be you see. Yeah.
DK: So was it the Heavy Conversion unit then the first time you actually flew?
DB: Yeah. Yes. And I was flying with, with well the trainee flight engineer people.
DK: Right.
DB: Yeah. And it was quite a hectic course you know because you were then taught how you had to handle the four-engine aircraft. Eight petrol tanks and all the, everything the flight engineer should know basically. So it was, it was quite a course. And then I, the rest had done ordinary flying but they hadn’t flown in a Halifax before.
DK: Yeah.
DB: So we had a trainee. An instructor for the pilot.
DK: Yeah.
DB: But nobody was with me. I was, I was on my own.
DK: You were on your own.
DB: Right from the word go.
DK: So how did you feel then when you had your first take off in a Halifax?
DB: Well, I had done.
DK: Yeah. Done it before. Yeah.
DB: I’d done plenty of flying before.
DK: Yeah.
DB: With, with the instructors.
DK: Yeah.
DB: So, so I did, you know but that time well I was I had to know it all, you know. And, and then the first time I flew with the crew I mean the, the rest of them they didn’t know what the flight engineer was for or anything particularly.
DK: Yeah.
DB: So that was when we started to form as a complete crew.
DK: Right.
OJ: And was that still when you were eighteen?
DB: Yes. I was. No. I was nineteen.
OJ: So you were nineteen then.
DK: Nineteen now.
DB: Nineteen.
OJ: Flying a plane at nineteen.
DB: No. I was nineteen by then. Yeah. Yeah.
OJ: Gosh.
DK: So your pilot then was quite, for most of the pilots quite a bit older then if he was in his thirties.
DB: Yeah. They called him pop.
DK: Yeah.
DB: He was naturally —
DK: The old man of thirty.
DB: Naturally grey haired.
DK: Yeah.
DB: But he was, he was a wonderful character. Extremely good and we, you know while we were at Heavy Conversion Unit we learned our business really. What it all meant.
DK: So at Heavy Conversion Unit what were you doing? Were you going on cross country flights?
DB: Oh yes. We were doing day flights. Night flights.
DK: Yeah.
DB: The lot. And even one, one was dropping leaflets over enemy territory. Not, not anything too serious but in the end it counted as our first op.
DK: Right. Right. So your first operation was from the Heavy Conversion Unit.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. And then of course what happened after we finished at Heavy Conversion Unit which I think it was August ’44 we then went to [pause] well, Holme on Spalding Moor.
DK: Right.
DB: Which was the 76 Squadron base. Previously 76 Squadron were in [pause] I said the name of the [pause] but it’s a famous —
DK: Linton on Ouse.
DB: Linton on Ouse.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And the famous one there was Leonard Cheshire you see.
DK: Yeah.
DB: So we were we were quite a famous Squadron because of him.
DK: You didn’t meet Cheshire there then?
DB: No. But at Holme on Spalding Moor, in the Memorial Gardens there is a special thing for him.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. That’s at Holme on Spalding Moor.
DK: Right.
DB: No. We never met him because by that time when I was flying he was, he was in the Pathfinder.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Pathfinder Force. And, and of course as you know he was in the crew that dropped the atom bomb.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And I think that was what made him do the work he did afterwards. So we then went to the Squadron and in pretty rapid time we, we did our first operation.
DK: Right.
DB: Which I think I —
OJ: One of these.
DK: The logbook.
DB: The logbook.
OJ: That.
DB: That’s the one. I think it was [pause] it was August I think if my memory is right.
[pause]
DB: 17th of August.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And these, these were the sort of —
DK: Right.
DB: Before. And that was our first operation on the 27th —
DK: So is that first op?
DB: So we were there say from the 7th, after about a week.
DK: Is this a week?
DB: No. I’ve, this is when I was just flying as the engineer.
DK: Right.
DB: No crew.
DK: So just for the recording then —
DB: Yeah.
DK: When you were at the Heavy Conversion Unit you were flying Halifax 2s and 5s.
DB: That’s right. Yeah.
DK: And they were with the Merlin engines.
DB: Yeah. They were.
DK: Right.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. And then we went to the radial engines. So this is when I, my own crew, there’s the Marston Moor.
DK: So just for the recording again.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: It’s 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit at Marston Moor.
DB: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And, you know this is where I was learning my stuff. Second engineer.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Every time. And I flew with those people there. And then this was when I started doing the real, real —
DK: With your crew.
DB: Real. Yeah.
DK: So that’s between the 4th of July ’44.
DB: Yeah.
DK: And the 7th of August ’44.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Oh, no. Carry on. It’s the 12th. It’s the 12th, the 12th of August.
DB: Right through to that, yeah. We did about sixty one hours one way and another.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: In the Heavy Conversion Unit and they counted that one as an op you see.
DK: So your first operation then was the French coast.
DB: Yeah. 12th of August. Yeah.
DK: A bullseye.
DB: We were dropping leaflets and stuff like that.
DK: So that’s referred to as a bullseye.
DB: Yes. Yeah.
DK: This one.
DB: Yeah. It —
DK: Ok.
DB: And then this is when the real —
DK: Right.
DB: This is when we converted to the Halifax 3 so we had —
DK: With the radial engines.
DB: Yeah. You know, those first parts were basically learning.
DK: Yeah.
DB: With the radial engines.
DK: Did you find much of a difference between the Merlin-engined Halifax and the Bristol Hercules?
DB: No. Not really. The basics were the same as far as the flight engineer was concerned. I mean our main responsibility was looking after the fuel and keeping the balance of the aircraft right. So we were, we were, well I was always pleased. There was always plenty to do. You know.
DK: So that —
DB: Yeah.
DK: So the fuel systems were similar.
DB: In both.
DK: In both aircraft.
DB: Yes. Yeah. It was just the engines that were different.
DK: Yeah.
DB: There has always been an argument that the best aircraft of all was the Lancaster with radial engines. The Lancaster 2.
DK: 2, yeah.
DB: But well I noticed even last night they kept mentioning the Lancaster all the time and, but it’s the, it’s one of those funny things. It was the Spitfire all last night. No mention of the Hurricane, you know.
DK: The Hurricane. Yeah. Yeah.
DB: This always upsets us a little bit.
DK: Yeah. I’m not surprised.
DB: But that’s the way it goes and then —
DK: So you joined 76 Squadron on the 17th of August ’44.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: And you’re flying your first operation on 25th of August ’44.
DB: Yeah. And that was —
DK: So that was an operation to Watten.
DB: Yeah. That was the, this was the V-1. The V-1 unit.
DK: I’ll spell that for the recording.
DB: That’s in Calais.
DK: That’s W A T T E N.
DB: Yeah. Watten. And, and that was, in fact you’ll notice it was in daylight, which was most unusual and they always say the first one is, is can be fatal. A lot of people went on their first op and this was quite hairy. We, in my diary we saw three aircraft shot down and we were hit by anti-aircraft fire and we lost an engine. So that was a good start, you know. And anyway we survived it and —
DK: So you came back on just three engines.
DB: Three engines. Yeah. And of course when we got back, when you land damaged it’s the pilot and myself with the ground crew and it was quite frightening, you know. What we saw there. But I’ve never forgotten what my pilot said. He said, ‘Well, one thing I’m pleased about is, we all did what we had to do.’ And I’ve never forgotten that.
DK: Yeah.
DB: But that was really what crews were all about.
DK: Yeah.
DB: So, so it was a good baptism in a way.
DK: Did you find that because of that danger you kind of bonded then as a crew? If you’re doing your, your part.
DB: Well, it did, it did a lot of good. Yes. I mean we all got to know each other reasonably well but not, not in, not in actual duties like that.
DK: Yeah.
DB: So, yes it did do a lot of good because it paid off, you know.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
OJ: And you were saying three planes got shot down. Were you the only ones that came back? Or how many others? How many others went out on that?
DB: Well, we didn’t lose any in our Squadron but there were three we saw shot down.
DK: From other Squadrons.
DB: We had to take evasive action when we lost an engine. Well, I mean it momentrally things aren’t right. You know.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And you know I’m, I’m saying to the pilot, ‘Feather the engine,’ and he does what he has to do but of course we’re taking evasive action as well and we found ourselves going over Dunkirk and I think I’ve mentioned that in the diary and we saw another one shot down there and so we were lucky.
DK: Yeah.
DB: We survived it. The first one.
DK: And that was flak that damaged the engine.
DB: Oh yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. I mean it was very, I mean they were heavily defended those V-1 sites and this was when it was really at its peak. The V-1s. And we did a lot of, a lot of French flying in those early stages. Yeah.
DK: So, obviously it’s just after D-Day, isn’t it, so?
DB: That’s right. Yeah.
DK: So your, so your next operation then was two days later. The 27th of August.
DB: Yeah.
DK: And that was to —
DB: And that was a place called Homburg. Yeah.
DK: Homburg. Homburg.
DB: And again that was a daylight one as well. And then you’re, there are all sorts of things here. There was Le Havre, look. We went there.
DK: So, Le Havre on the 10th of September.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. I’ll just read these out for the recording.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: So the 10th September Le Havre. 15th of September Kiel.
DB: Yeah. That was the first German one. Yeah.
DK: 20th of September Calais.
DB: Yeah.
DK: 23rd of September Neuss. Near Dusseldorf.
DB: Yeah. Near Dusseldorf. Yeah.
DK: Near Dusseldorf. That’s N E U S S.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Then where are we? 25th of September.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Calais.
DB: Yeah.
DK: And then 26th of September Calais again.
DB: Yeah. So it was quite, quite a busy month one way and another. Yeah.
OJ: Can I just take a look at [unclear]
DB: Yeah. And then we go in to sort of October.
DK: Ok.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Can I read those out for the recording?
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: So 7th of October was Kleve. 9th of October — Bochum. 14th of October — Duisburg. 15th October — Wilhelmshaven. 25th of October — Essen. 28th of October — Westkapelle.
DB: Yeah. Its Walcheren Island.
DK: Walcheren Island. Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: And then 30th of October — Cologne.
DB: Yeah.
DK: And then the 31st of October — Cologne again.
DB: Yeah.
DK: And those, those were all at night then were they?
DB: No. Where it’s in red they were at night.
DK: Oh right. Sorry. Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. So it was pretty hectic going. And then November.
DK: So, November then.
DB: Yeah.
DK: 2nd of November — Dusseldorf.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Another back there. 6th of November — Gelsenkirchen. 16th of November — Munster.
DB: Yeah.
DK: 21st of November Sterkrade. S T.
DB: Sterkrade.
DK: Sterkrade.
DB: Yeah.
DK: S T E R K A E E and then 29th of November — Essen.
DB: Yeah.
DK: I’ll get back to those in a moment.
DB: Yeah.
DK: So what was, what was it like then? Operations actually over Germany?
DB: Well, all, they were always heavy flak. You were lucky if you didn’t get anti-aircraft fire and, of course it always looks a lot worse at night. Although having said that that first operation we did where we lost an engine it wasn’t much fun in daylight when when, when you’re under a lot of pressure. The main problem at night was, I mean I think there was one of those, I think it was one of the Cologne ones where we were the thousand aircraft and the mind boggles. A thousand aircraft over the target in twenty minutes.
DK: Yeah.
DB: You know, its —
DK: Could you, could you actually see much at night though from your aircraft?
DB: Well, at night time there were no lights on or anything like that. In daylight sometimes you were supposed to be flying at say twenty thousand feet and sometimes the aircraft couldn’t get up to that. Not necessarily your own. So you could have some below that if the aircraft wasn’t as good as, we were lucky. We had fairly new aircraft. These Halifax 3s. So sometimes we seemed to be above but it was not much fun if they opened the bomb doors.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And a lot of that happened of course and hit aircraft below them. So none of the German targets were, were easy, you, you, because the fighter force was pretty engaged at that stage, you know. So there was very seldom. It was either heavy anti-aircraft fire and of course where the fighters were concerned they tend to come up underneath you.
DK: Right.
DB: Yeah. They were, they were quite good.
DK: Can you recall actually seeing any German fighters?
DB: Oh yeah. We were hit by one. I’d have to look in my diary —
DK: Yeah.
DB: To see which one it was but we, we were attacked by a night, a Junkers 88. In fact, if you go in there.
OJ: Do you want me to have a look with me?
DB: What are we up to?
DK: Up to 29th of November.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. If you —
OJ: That’s December.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. I can’t remember. It’s in the diary.
OJ: November the 18th or was it November the —
DB: Well —
DK: Would it be in the logbook somewhere?
DB: Yeah. It’s in the, no it wouldn’t be in the logbook I don’t think.
DK: [unclear] ok.
OJ: That’s in to November.
DB: If you can —
DB: That’s November 6th
DK: Oh, here we go. It is in the logbook actually. 12th of January 1945. Attacked by Junkers 88.
DB: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That’s right. That’s when it gets [laughs] Yeah. Well, that’s good I put it in there. Hanover. Yeah. I thought. I said Cologne didn’t I? So that was pretty, pretty you know it was mainly German targets and it was about that time when we, you know a tour of operations was thirty.
DK: Right.
DB: But the weather was so bad and I really genuinely mean that. Terrible the weather was. And we took off sometimes when, when we shouldn’t have done one way and another. And, and we the weather, the weather was so, so bad that what they did instead of doing thirty they brought in a points system. So you had three points for French targets, four points for German targets and because of that instead of doing thirty we ended up doing thirty eight, you see. And this was all because of the bad weather. The replacement crews couldn’t come in. And if you look at the last eight that we did and you’ve got to remember psychologically we’d got away with it —
DK: Yeah.
DB: For the thirty. And this coincided with the Ardennes Offensive and we, that was, you know that was before we’d done thirty. When the Ardennes Offensive was on. We went to a place called St Vith, and it was, we were going to take off on the Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and finally took off on Boxing Day because of thick fog. And we took off in thick fog because we had to go to St Vith. It was so critical. This was when the Germans were —
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: Getting the upper hand. And it was, it was very heavily defended but it was a daylight as well and we, I think well we saved the day for them.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Because it was the railway station we took and they were reinforcing.
DK: Right.
DB: Reinforcing the troops.
DK: And that was to support the American troops on the ground was it?
DB: Well, yes.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And it was very difficult. And when we got, when we were going back we still couldn’t land at Holme on Spalding Moor because the fog was still thick, and so we got diverted to East Fortune and I always remember it. We’d never been to East Fortune. This is in, in Scotland and I, I remember saying to the pilot, ‘There’s no going around again,’ because it was pretty hairy. We were on, we were, you’re not ever quite empty but it was quite serious. Anyway, he was a good pilot and we landed.
DK: So you were down to your last drop of petrol.
DB: Yeah. And in fact we had thirty gallons left. Which is nothing in a four engine aircraft.
DK: No.
DB: And then we went back and the weather was, was, that would be around Christmas time when we did the St Vith one.
DK: Yeah.
DB: When we had to go. Then we got onto the last date and again it was, it was, the weather was unbelievably bad. And this was when the Russians were asking Bomber Command to help them out and because, you know they were winning but they didn’t have the heavy bomber force and we were, we were attacking troop concentrations and everything else. And the trip we did was a place called [pause – pages turning] Let me just get the page. These were the last eight there.
DK: Yeah.
DB: We, we went to, to Böhlen which, we were the diversionary flight for Dresden.
DK: Right. Yes. Yeah.
DB: And it’s only recently I realised that. So look at that flying time. Eight hours twenty minutes you see.
DK: Eight hours twenty minutes in the air.
DB: Yeah. And so sometimes when you’re the diversionary raid that is to draw the fighters away. But it, I don’t think they were expecting it. The Germans. So in a funny sort of way we, we got away with it. Then if you notice the next night, again to help the Russians, eight hours.
DK: To Chemnitz.
DB: Eight hours five minutes again.
DK: Yeah.
DB: So those last ones, this is, I mean we were on borrowed time in my book. But you know you notice there that there’s the thirty eighth one. So the last two were daylight ones.
DK: Right.
DB: So it’s —
DK: So then just go through them. Böhlen was on the, where are we? That was on the 13th of February.
DB: Yeah.
DK: And then Chemnitz on the 14th of February.
DB: Yeah.
DK: And then the last two. 23rd of February — Essen.
DB: Yeah.
DK: 24th February.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Near Dortmund. Kamen.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. That was our last one.
DK: Both daylight.
DB: Then. Yeah.
DK: So what was it like flying daylight at that stage?
DB: Well, the last two were daylight. I mean Essen is always a worry because it was very heavily defended etcetera and they weren’t, I mean the Germans were suffering a bit then with, there wasn’t much fighter opposition towards the end. But funnily enough saying that after I finished flying, I don’t know whether this has been mentioned before but I think it was in April our, our Squadron were badly affected. The Luftwaffe made their last, and they followed the bombing, bombing fleet back to bases and quite a few of my friends they were shot down over, over our own ‘drome. And I think in total we lost about twenty aircraft that night but that was the last fling of the Luftwaffe.
DK: Yeah.
DB: They never gave up.
DK: No. No.
DB: Unbelievable really. So that virtually covers the flying part. But the other thing which is relevant is after I finished flying I became an instructor at Operational Training Units.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And this is where it was Wellington aircraft and it was where my crew trained. All of them. And that, that was interesting. And I think it was in 1946 it was my first time I’d ever been to Southampton and I was nominated to be the air sea rescue officer.
DK: Right.
DB: And the course was at Calshot, near here. And it’s something I’ll never forget because it was about a month’s course and of course you realise what you didn’t know when you were flying. But on the, towards the end of the course we were all told we were going to have some very important visitors, and it was McIndoe’s.
DK: Right.
DB: The famous surgeon.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And what he’d arranged is we were all aircrew on this course, and this was part of his mental treatment and we were told, each one had a gorgeous nurse with him, and I think it was a coachload that came. And I’ll never forget it as long as I live. It’s very difficult talking to people who haven’t got a face basically. But they were talking as, as if they because that was his secret. He said, ‘You’re no different now than you were before.’
DK: Yeah.
DB: And mentally he’d got them and they were conversing and of course it was very clever, with other aircrew. You know. And it was very upsetting for all of us.
DK: Yeah.
DB: As you can imagine. But that was something which is very relevant to the flying.
DK: Did he —
DB: To experience that.
DK: Until that time then it hadn’t really crossed your mind about what could happen then and the dangers and the fires and whatever.
DB: Well —
OJ: Did you kind of not think about it?
DB: I think it’s it —
OJ: Yeah.
DB: I think its [pause] yeah.
DK: [unclear]
DB: Of course we’d lost, we’d lost crews.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And funnily enough it was only just recently — three aircraft were lost and in three cases they were sharing our billet. The crew.
DK: Right.
DB: And that’s pretty awful you know but you’ve got to remember they weren’t dead. They were missing.
DK: Right.
DB: I know now what’s happened to them but you didn’t know. So it is very difficult to [pause] I think it’s because you think it’s never going to happen to me, but it comes pretty near to it when you’re asked to leave the billet and then they collect all their belongings.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And the same night there’s a new crew in.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. It’s very very difficult to comprehend that sort of thing.
DK: How did you get on with the new crew when they came in? Did you, was it more difficult to make friends with them then?
DB: Well, no. No. Well, you were just aircrew.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And, and I mean they were always in awe of us if, particularly when we’d done about twenty five. They always reckoned if you could get to twenty you stood a chance.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Did you find then, did you feel you were more confident then, the more operations you did?
DB: Well, now it’s very, yes you’re more confident as a crew. Yeah. Because you knew each other inside out.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Sort of thing. But I wouldn’t say you were any more confident because it might be your turn.
DK: Yeah.
DB: You know. And I always felt sorry for the ones who had done twenty plus and then went missing.
DK: Yeah.
DB: That sort of thing. And the worst ones for us were that last eight. And look, look where they were. You know. So that made it worse.
DK: Can I just take you back to, as I say this is the 5th of January 1945.
DB: Yeah.
DK: And this is Hanover and you’re attacked by a Junkers 88.
OJ: That’s Jan 14th.
DB: Yeah.
DK: So you’re in Halifax 3 NA218.
DB: Yeah. What date was that?
DK: It was the 5th of January. January 1945.
DB: 5th of January.
OJ: That’s Jan 14 —
DB: Yeah. Here we are. Yeah. Hanover. Yeah.
DK: Do you do you want to read it out?
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yes, I will do.
DK: Yeah.
DB: “Tonight our target was Hanover. This was a trip on which we were over enemy territory for quite a long while. Everything was ok until we started our run up.” That’s to the target. “A Junkers 88 attacked us from a head on position and slightly below and raked us with machine gun and cannon fire. It was shaky for a minute or so and we were hit but nothing vital had been put out of action. On return we found damage to the wings, fuselage and starboard rudder. In places it was just like a pepper pot. When one shell went right through the starboard inner air intake but by some chance it never hit the propeller. We considered ourselves very lucky as nobody was hurt. The flak was moderate at the target and we dropped our eight and a half thousand pounds of bombs through cloud.” So it, but one remarkable thing was I sat behind the pilot and, and the bullets, we heard them, you know. They were that close. And the pilot was just a slight bullet —
DK: Grazed.
DB: Grazed.
DK: Grazed. Yeah.
DB: So that was how close it was.
DK: Yeah. And that was in his neck.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: That was how close it was. But of course we didn’t know that ‘til, in fact he didn’t really know it until we got back that he was bleeding a bit, you know. But that was a bit shaky because again you had to take evasive action and if my memory is right we went down from about twenty something thousand feet to about ten thousand feet taking evasive action. And of course at the end of that you don’t know quite where, where you are and the navigator eventually gave a course and it, it turned out to be a reciprocal course which is easily, easy to do. But fortunately one of the gunners said, ‘I think we’re going the wrong way,’ [laughs] and [pause] it wasn’t a joke at the time.
DK: Yeah.
DB: But we, we successfully, that’s why you know, you rely a hundred percent on your crew and it was all put to right in no time at all. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And of course I come into my own when, something like, because sometimes what I think it was on that particular one we couldn’t make contact with the rear gunner and that was my job. I was the roaming one, you know.
DK: Right. Yeah.
DB: And had to go. But everything was alright you know. But so it was tricky. Yeah.
DK: So when you can’t hear anything from the rear gunner what do you have to do?
DB: Well, I just go down and I’ve still got, you know I’ve got all my equipment including the intercom and all that and when I, when I got down there I think in in the excitement he’d obviously taken evasive action and his thing had just come out.
DK: Right.
DB: Yeah. So it was nothing to worry about.
DK: Right.
DB: But it wasn’t easy. I had to go up and down the plane a few times because once we had [pause] well, it could have been quite serious. We, we, you know when the bombs have gone and on this particular one there was one sticking. And that’s again, I have to be the one who goes down to the bomb bays and in this case it wasn’t noticeable at all. And then, also to make certain that all the bombs have gone when you get over the Channel on the way back you open the bomb doors again and, everything all right. The next morning, ‘Will Flying Officer Kerr and Flight Sergeant Beasley report to the commanding officer’s, immediately.’ And we didn’t know what it was for. And this this was when this thousand pound bomb had, was somehow icebound or, or I don’t know what it was. And of course after we’d you know opened the bomb doors and everything else and of course what happens is when you landed at night they don’t open the bomb doors ‘til the morning.
DK: Right.
DB: And the ground crew immediately spotted this.
DK: So the thousand pound bomb was still in the bomb bay the next morning.
DB: Yeah. It was hanging loose.
DK: Loose.
DB: And of course, I mean we, you know you’re not quite on Christian name terms with the commanding officer but he’s a pilot like.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Like an aircrew like yourself and he said, ‘Well, I can’t say you’re inefficient,’ he said, ‘Because you’ve done —’ I think it was about twenty odd ops we’d done. And he said, ‘These things happen.’ But it was a bit disconcerting you know.
DK: So you wouldn’t have known. Well, you didn’t know you were landing with a bomb on board.
DB: Yeah. Well, we landed with a loose con. Yeah. Yeah. Or probably that loosened it but it certainly wasn’t visual to spot it.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. So how did you visually see the bombs? Was there something you looked down.
DB: Well first of all the bomb bay was open and then you get a pretty good view. You knew where the bombs were.
DK: Right.
DB: Supposed to be. It wasn’t easy. It was quite easy to make a mistake and the saving grace was always opening your bomb doors over the ocean.
DK: So if there were any hung up they’d drop.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: They, and we never, we’ll never know to this day what the real story was but we ended up with one loose one in the bomb bay.
DK: I bet that gave the ground crew a bit of a shock the next morning.
DB: Well, they were very nice about it because [laughs] because you know what anybody says the ground crews were unbelievable.
OJ: Did you have —
DB: There’s no other word for it.
OJ: Different ground crew or was it the same one each time?
DB: Oh, it was the same one all the time.
OJ: So you had a really good relationship with them.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. And of course when you finished your tour of operations it’s a real, real good booze up. All. Everybody. Yeah.
DK: As, as the flight engineer then did you have to, did you want to know all about the mechanics of the aircraft? So did you talk closely —
DB: Oh yeah.
DK: To the ground crew about what they were doing?
DB: Oh yeah. I had a working knowledge of everything.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. So as they were working on something you would know about it.
DB: Yeah. What happened was if there was something wrong with the aircraft it was the pilot, myself and one of the ground crew who, who went up. You know. You’d see in my logbook it’s quite often that we, when we were having the aircraft tested.
DK: Right.
DB: And no, they, I, I always felt well one of my friends from the Squadron now he was ground crew and they had one night when the, when their, when the plane didn’t come back and he was, he was making the comment, he said ‘We always wonder where it was something we hadn’t done,’ you know. That was the relationship between them.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And it must be very upsetting.
DK: That must be difficult for him. That —
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: He was thinking had you done something wrong.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: So your, the crew itself did you used to socialise with them at all? Did you?
DB: Oh yes. We went everywhere.
DK: What did you used to do off duty?
DB: There are photographs.
DK: Yeah.
DB: I think in there somewhere where, where we’re all out, I don’t know I think it’s in this one but —
OJ: On the razzle [laughs]
DK: On the razzle [laughs] in pubs and things.
DB: No. But we were, we were socially I don’t think it’s in yeah there’s, there’s where we were fumigating the billet at seventy —
DK: Right.
DB: So, that’s when we first arrived there. And they were nissen huts. I never lived in anything other than nissen huts.
DK: So, what, what were you actually fumigating for then? Because there would be —
DB: Well, because it was a nissen hut which, which was awful.
DK: Right. Yeah.
DB: Yeah. It looked awful. Yeah.
DK: Nasty bugs in there.
DB: And they were very cold.
DK: Right.
DB: Yeah. Yeah, and so, you know all the crew were —
DK: So there was nasty bugs in there was there?
DB: That’s right. Yeah. You know. There’s where we were out on the river.
DK: Oh wow.
DB: Having a —
DK: So just for the recording its —
DB: Yeah. We all, we all —
DK: You’re off duty at Knaresborough.
DB: That’s right. Yeah.
DK: And that’s July 1944. So you’re in a boat there are you? A rowing boat.
DB: That’s right. Yeah.
DK: Are you there?
DB: I’d be there somewhere. Unless it was me took the photograph.
DK: The photo.
DB: Oh. There’s me there.
DK: Oh, right. Ok.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. But so we we were always together and —
DK: Can I?
DB: The other remarkable thing about it was we, we and you will probably find this goes on we had six, seven days leave every six weeks.
DK: Right.
DB: When we were flying. And the bomb aimer and the wireless operator they always came to our house. We lived in Welwyn Garden City then, and they always came to our house and my sister was only talking about it the other day. She was fourteen at the time I think, and she said the wireless operator as soon as he came in he’d put his photographs up on the mantlepiece. He said, ‘I’m in a home now,’ you know. And she remembered this, these things very vividly.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. And my father always enjoyed them turning up because with them being Canadians they had all sorts of goodies. And it was funny. Our crew. It’s most remarkable. Three, three didn’t drink, and four didn’t smoke. Including myself. That was most unusual then, you know.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: Most unusual. So my father did very well with cigarettes. Yeah.
DK: So where would you go on your off duty times then? Where did you used to go on your off duty times then?
DB: Well, mainly York.
DK: Right.
DB: Yeah. Because York, when we had a stand down it was York where we mainly went to. Sometimes we went to Goole. And Market Weighton was another place near. And the village. The village was quite good at Holme on Spalding Moor. There was a very good pub there. In fact, when we have our reunions we still go there.
DK: You go there. To the same pub.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. And, and it’s still a good pub.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Oh right.
DB: Yeah.
DK: If I could just go through the log book again.
DB: Yeah, by all means.
DK: Just to say. I think we got up to the 31st of October didn’t we?
DB: Yeah.
DK: Oh no we didn’t we got to November here. So just for the recording again then so just carrying on the 17th of December ’44, Duisburg. 26th of December it’s —
DB: That was, yeah that was the Ardennes Offensive one.
DK: The Ardennes Offensive.
DB: Yeah.
DK: So, the 29th of December — Koblenz. 30th of December — Cologne. 1st of January 1945 — Dortmund. 5th of January — Hanover where we know you were attacked.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: By the Junkers 88. So the 14th of January Saarbrucken. I’ll just whizz through these if you don’t mind. 1st of Feb Mainz, 2nd of Feb Wanne-Eickle.
DB: Wanne-Eickle. Yeah.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Bonn. That’s a well-known one.
DK: Yeah. 4th of Feb — Bonn. 7th of Feb — Goch. 13th of Feb —
DB: That’s a long one.
DK: Böhlen.
DB: Yeah.
DB: Böhlen near Leipzig.
DB: Yeah.
DK: In support of the Dresden raid.
DB: Yeah.
DK: 14th of Feb Chemnitz. 20th of Feb near Dusseldorf. 23rd Of Feb — Essen. 24th Of Feb Kamen, and that was the last.
DB: Yeah.
DK: The thirty eighth.
DB: Yeah.
DK: And so, and that’s total flying here. Total. So operational flying hours. That’s your total flying.
DB: Yeah.
DK: So, well that’s seventy nine hours five minutes daylight, and a hundred and twenty two forty night time. That’s a total two hundred and one hours forty five minutes.
DB: That’s pretty, pretty good.
DK: In thirty eight operations.
DB: Yeah. It was quite funny.
DK: Just put that down for the recording.
DB: I’ve never looked at the [pause ] my wife and myself we, we had, in the rubber business we were, and we were going of all place to a rubber conference in Essen.
DK: Right.
DB: And on the way there we, we stopped at a place called Munster. And I [pause] and the cathedral there was badly damaged and they had an arrangement with the Coventry one.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
DB: And I said to my wife that I was flying at that time, and do you know that was the first time I’d looked in my logbook. I fact, I had job to find it. Yeah. And I was on it.
DK: Yeah.
DB: The Munster raid there and it, it was, that was I had been to Germany on business but I’d not been to where I’d been.
DK: On [unclear] yeah. Yeah.
DB: Well, I went to Cologne.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Because they were the main. They were the difficult ones.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Cologne. Essen. Well, they were all difficult but you remembered that you, if Essen came up on the board you weren’t very happy to go there because it was heavily defended you know.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: So how did that make you feel then? You were going to Germany on business.
DB: Well, I —
DK: Is it something that was in the back of your mind at the time when you were there?
DB: No. I think the worst was over. You know. When I went, it could have been almost twelve months after the war ended when I I’m talking about.
DK: Yeah.
DB: In fact it could have been longer than that, and things were almost normal back in Germany by then. It was, it was probably later than what —
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. It would have been. It would be in the 1980s. Well, that’s a long time.
DK: A long time afterwards. Yeah.
DB: After the war you see. So things were getting back to normal. But I, I was, you do get brainwashed you know. You hated the Germans and I very much disliked the Japanese because one of the neighbours where we lived in Welwyn Garden City he came back and well just looking at him was enough. Terrible. And but they were brainwashed as well, weren’t they?
DK: Yeah.
DB: So were the Nazis, so, and you can still see it really.
DB2: If I can just intervene a minute.
DB: Yeah.
DB2: We went to the church in in Munster. Or part of the Cathedral. And part of it had been bombed. Was it the entrance? Entrance lobby that had been bombed?
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DB2: And [pause]
DB: Yeah. That was Munster was it? Yeah. I’ve mentioned that.
DB2: Yes. Well, it’s on my mind. Munster.
DB: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
DB2: A university town.
DK: Yes. Yeah.
DB2: For two reasons. But it’s a university town and the Cathedral had been bombed.
DK: Yeah.
DB2: Part of it.
DK: Yeah.
DB2: And over the, you know a sign had been put up, “May we forgive each other as He forgives us all.” He.
DK: Yeah.
DB2: The capital H.
DB: Yeah.
DB2: Forgives us all.
DK: Yeah.
DB2: Which I thought was rather beautiful.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yes.
DB2: And the, the students, the university students were some of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen. Men and women. They were supreme examples of the human race.
DB: Hitler Youth.
DB2: And yes.
DB: Yeah.
DB2: They were obviously the start.
DB: That’s right. I’d forgotten that. Yeah.
DB2: The start. The start of another of Hitler’s dreams you know.
DK: Yeah.
DB2: Yes.
DB: Well, at the end of the war when the war was ending we were warned that the, the main if if you crashed or whatever happened you, if you were picked up by the Luftwaffe you were alright. If you were picked up by the Gestapo you weren’t.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And if you were picked up by the Hitler Youth you weren’t.
DK: Yeah.
DB: They were absolutely brain washed, you know.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And they were fighting right to the end. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
DK: If I could just ask just very briefly what would a raid actually involve? When you got up in the morning what sort of procedures did you go through?
DB: Well, first of all you were warned that we were flying.
DK: Operations were on.
DB: That operation was on. And you didn’t know where you were going of course. And then you, in other words you had you had to be aware that that evening or whatever daylight whatever it was you were flying so you took the suitable precautions and then you were called for briefing.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And we had separate briefings. All, we went to the engineer’s department. The navigation department. We never knew where we were going but we all, and the gunners we were told what the bomb load was and everything else, but we never knew the target until we actually went into the actual briefing. And then sometimes it was, and none of them were good news but some were better than others [laughs] you know.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. So that was basically the procedure.
DK: Yeah. And then you went out to your aircraft at that point.
DB: Oh yes. You went out to your aircraft and of course it [pause] there was a very good article. A book just written. Been written for the, you know with this anniversary.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And he, in the book it says that in the aircraft the main people who were working all the time were the pilot, the flight engineer and the navigator.
DK: Is that the Patrick Bishop book?
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. And I’d never looked at it that way but I was glad because I thought well I was occupied most of the time.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And I was. The only time I wasn’t occupied was when we were over the target and I was up in the astrodome. But you know all the petrol was right.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Alright, when we lost an engine that gets a bit difficult. But —
DK: Yeah. Was that, on the Halifax I’m not too sure. Whereabouts are you in relation to the pilot?
DB: Yeah. I’m sitting right behind him.
DK: Right behind him. Right.
DB: And the idea behind that and this was the, normally if I’d have been in a Lancaster all the time I’d be sitting next to the pilot you see. But it was very clever in the Lanc, in the Halifax. I was sitting immediately behind him. And the bomb aimer assisted him on take-off, you know. And then there was a clear entrance all the way down the aircraft so that if anything went wrong the crews could get out much easier than they could in the Lancaster, you see.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: It annoyed me a bit last night. I don’t whether you watched.
DK: I did. Yes.
DB: The programme.
DK: Yes.
DB: It annoys me every time. It was Lancaster.
DK: Yeah.
DB: No mention of the Halifax.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And then it went on to Spitfire. No nothing on the Hurricane. And then it went on to, no mention of a Wellington aircraft.
DK: No. No.
DB: Which was a very critical one.
DK: And then when you looking on later our next door neighbour here he flew —
DK: Do you want to just —
DB: And he flew, he flew Victors. Next door. No mention of the Victor. The Vulcan bomber.
DK: Really?
DB: Yeah.
DK: Is that a neighbour who flew Victors then?
DB: One of my neighbours. Yeah.
DK: Oh right. Ok.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. My next door neighbour here.
DK: Oh right.
DB: This is, you know after.
DK: Yeah.
DB: But he flew in just as awkward circumstances and it’s always the same. I mean, I’ve nothing against the Lancaster but funny enough it’s been proven that the Halifax was a much more versatile aircraft.
DK: Yeah.
DB: I mean it served on Coastal Command. It took paratroopers.
DK: Pulled gliders.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And it even dropped off spies in various places.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And, and, there was in fact there was an article the other day about the Halifax where one crew they, they were right out in the middle of the Atlantic somewhere and they attacked this U-boat and sunk it, but the U-boat also put the Halifax down and they were, six of them got out and it was somebody local here as it turned out.
DK: Oh right.
DB: They, six of them were in the dinghy for eight days and survived. And how they [pause] they were trying to get, get fish. And when I did this course you know on this air sea rescue the thing, the last, well one of the last days we were there we were in the Solent and they put us in a dinghy at 8 o’clock in the morning. This was in March. And left us. And we were there ‘til it went dark. So that was one day, and then the air sea rescue boat came out and picked us up. And that was enough for me.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: It was enough. I thought to myself how can, but of course you’ve no choice have you if your shot down. Yeah.
DK: I noticed that the TV programme last night didn’t even mention Coastal Command, did it?
DB: No. It didn’t.
DK: And the U-boats that were attacked and all the rest of it.
DB: That’s right. No. It was, it was a good programme but not —
DK: Yeah. The usual suspects.
DB: Yeah.
DK: The Spitfire, the Lancaster and the Vulcan.
DB: And of course the, the thing that annoys us most of all was, was, they had to mention Dresden. You know. That’s automatic. Particularly with the BBC, you know. And that’s unfair as well. And in fact one of the things I did for a friend of mine he, he, he was talking about Dresden and etcetera and the last magazine that came out from Bomber Command was the truth about Dresden. I don’t know whether you’ve read —
DK: Yeah.
DB: The last Bomber Command. And I’d written about the last eight for this friend of mine. And of course we were on that. On the raid indirectly. On the thing.
DK: Yeah. On a diversionary.
DB: And I think this article said they first of all claimed it was three hundred and fifty thousand were killed and in the end, I mean it’s it was a terrible number but it was twenty five thousand, you know.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. But all these do-gooders they don’t understand do they?
DK: No.
DB: But what I like was the Dambusters pilot, err bomb aimer who’s the only one left now.
DK: Yeah.
DB: What’s his name?
DK: Johnny Johnson.
DB: Johnny Johnson. Yeah. His article. He was, he’s fed up with it. I don’t know whether he was on the raid.
DK: Yes. I’ve met him a few times.
DB: Yeah. Well, he always says, ‘Were you there?’
DK: Yeah.
DB: And of course they never were. ‘Did you know the circumstances at the time?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well, keep your bloody mouth shut.’ You know. And, and I thought well I couldn’t put it better myself.
DK: Sums it up doesn’t it?
DB: Yeah. It does. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Ok. Well that’s great. Just one final question. I think you’ve really answered it there but all these years later how do you look back on your time in Bomber Command?
DB: Well, I’m glad I did what I did. You know. I don’t think I’d want to do anything else.
DK: No.
DB: At all. And I did what I wanted to do which was to serve in Bomber Command.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. So I’ve no regrets at all about it.
DK: Did you stay in touch with your crew after the war?
DB: Well, we did up to a point. In fact, I found, found a letter from the navigator and the wireless operator but with I think the answer is that you want to forget the war when it ends. And the first time I ever thought about it was, it was in the 1980s I think it was, and we’d, we had a place in Spain. In fact, we’ve still got it but we, we were on our way back and we stopped at a hotel. We came in at Plymouth and we stopped in this hotel and there was a fella there who, he had the aircrew [pause] what did they call, they called it the Aircrew Association you see. And I said ‘What’s all that?’ And he, he said, ‘Well, the Aircrew Association’s just been formed.’ And this was in the 1980s you see.
DK: Right. Yeah.
DB: And that was the first time it had ever registered. And I said, ‘Well. I was in the aircrews,’ and I said, ‘How do I apply to get in to the Aircrew Association?’ You see. So he told me how to do it. And they kept saying he was too young that fella [laughs] A nice compliment. So, but anyway I wrote and thanked him so he knew it was genuine, you know.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Because they check you out at the Air Ministry. So and, and so I joined the Aircrew Association and then not long afterwards I got a phone call again saying, ‘We’re now forming the Squadron Association.’
DK: Right.
DB: And that was how the 76 Squadron Association, and this was in the 1980s. So it’s only resurfaced since that.
DK: After then.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Did you leave the RAF soon after the war then?
DB: Yeah. I left in 1947.
DK: Right.
DB: Yeah. And funnily enough I think I said in what we talked I ended up in Swinderby. That was the last station I was on. And in the Operational Training Unit there.
DK: Right.
DB: So can’t be much nearer to Lincoln can it?
DK: No.
DB: Than that. Yeah. So I know I know Lincoln quite quite well. So I I was thinking of staying in the RAF because I was invited, invited to because anyway the remarkable thing was I’d also heard that the Halifax had been converted. I forget what they called it. The Hastings or something like this, and it, it was commercial flying. And all they needed was a pilot and, and navigator and, and first engineer.
DK: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
DB: Like a second pilot I would have been. So I applied for this job and he said, ‘You’ve got all the qualifications,’ he said, ‘But we can’t appoint you.’ So I said, ‘Why is that?’ He said, ‘You’re not old enough.’ And you had, you had to be twenty four then.
DK: So how old were you at the time?
DB: Twenty two.
DK: So you were twenty two. You’d flown thirty eight operations.
DB: Yeah.
DK: In Halifaxes.
DB: Yeah.
OJ: And how many hours?
DK: Yeah. Well just operational over two hundred and one hours.
DB: Yeah.
DK: And they wouldn’t let you fly the civilian version.
DB: Yeah. They were most embarrassed.
DK: Right.
DB: But that was the rule. The ruling at the time. And funny enough, well I ended up alright anyway but if if I’d have flown with them I’d have eventually ended up with BOAC.
DK: So you could have carried on.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Flying with the airlines.
DB: Funnily enough you know when the Squadron Associations were formed one of my best friends who was in the same flight as I was he knew my pilot extremely well and he went on that, and I told him. And he said, he said, ‘I only just made it, Doug,’ as well. You had to be twenty four. Yeah. Unbelievable.
DK: Absolutely.
DB: Yeah. And I’ve never forgotten that. So I could have carried on flying but I went to the accountancy work.
DK: I think it was the Halton. The civilian version.
DB: Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: The civilian version of the Halifax.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. So it was quite interesting to be. So —
DK: Bonkers isn’t it?
DB: You talk more about it now than, I mean from 1940, well when I came out let’s say 1950 to 1980 you never really really talked about it. I was in the RAF Association but the only thing I remember there was they did the Dambuster film. 1953. And that was a story in itself really. One of my friends there, all you had to be was in 617 Squadron you see and he didn’t serve on the Dambusters raid but he was in 617 Squadron, and we had another fella who was a member and he said he was on 617 Squadron, you see. So again you had to do it through the Air Ministry and all this.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: And this fella who was the chairman at the time he said, ‘We’ve got a problem, Doug,’ he said, ‘This other fella. He’s never even been in the RAF.
DK: Oh.
DB: So,’ he said, ‘You’ll have to help me out when he comes in.’ So he duly turned up, and this Harry, Harry Nutall his name was, he said, ‘Have you had your invitation yet to the premier of the Dambusters film?’ ‘No. No,’ he said, ‘I can’t understand it.’ So he said, ‘Well, let me tell you something,’ he said, ‘You’re not going to get an invitation. You’ve never been in the RAF.’ And we never saw him again. And it just shows that some —
DK: Yes.
DB: I think they kid themselves to believe it.
DK: Yeah. Walter Mitties. Walter Mitties they’re called.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And I’ve never forgotten that.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And that was the only time really it came to life. Because after that again it all went back.
DK: Yeah.
DB: But now it’s, I mean you know the Bomber Command Memorial in London.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Is quite something isn’t it?
DK: Have you, did you get to the unveiling of that?
DB: Oh yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Well, all the family came to that.
DK: Yeah. I was at that.
DB: That was a memorable moment that. Yeah.
DB2: You couldn’t get him away.
DB: That was quite something wasn’t it?
DB2: Yes.
DB: Yes.
DK: So what are your feelings on the new Memorial then?
DB: Well, I think it’s going to be good. I’m looking forward to seeing it but I’ve made up my mind as well that, you know at one time we, we weren’t going to go to the official one and now I’ve got the feeling well I should go you know.
DK: Yeah. Yeah. Right.
DB: Sort of thing. But I want to go again because this time it’s more important because that Memorial must, must be quite something. To see all those names on.
DK: It is. Yeah.
DB: Yeah. It’s very emotional I should think. Yeah. And funnily enough one of my, one of my, well best pal, in fact I’ve got his, you know looking through this stuff. He flew when it was much more dangerous than I was. He was on the Nuremburg raid.
DK: Right.
DB: And he survived. He survived that and he went to Ceylon afterwards. It just says, “Ceylon Air Force,” and I’ve just found a letter from him where it was dated September the something 1945, and then there’s a note on there. Went missing in October that year. And I am concerned that his name goes on this board.
DK: Right.
DB: Yeah. Because I’ve got his name, rank and number. He was a warrant officer like I was you know.
DK: So that was, what year was that then?
DB: ’45 when he went missing.
DK: Right.
DB: Yeah. But he’d served a full tour. Yeah.
DK: But the war had ended though presumably.
DB: Well, yes it had because he was obviously sent to the Far East.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: To carry on there. So he’d started there but he just went I don’t know where.
DK: Yeah.
DB: I never got the detail.
DK: I know this is a bit of an issue at the moment.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Because those on the Memorial are those that served with Bomber Command within the UK.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Those that went to the Far East.
DB: Yeah.
DK: And even the Middle East.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Aren’t included. If that’s where they were.
DB: Yeah. I read that article about that.
DK: Even though they might have served in the UK. I know we’re trying to get around that.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Not get around it. That’s the wrong phrase. But to include them.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. They want to include those that were in both the Middle East flying bombers. And Italy. And then the Far East.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: So at some point, all being well he should appear on there.
DB: Yeah.
DK: But not, unfortunately not at the moment.
DB: No.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. because he was serving in the Far East you see.
DK: Can you —
DB: Because we were, we were —
DK: Can you remember his name?
DB: Yeah. I’ve got his, I’ve got his —
OJ: Is it in the office?
DB: Can you just.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Look on the desk in there Tavie. You’ll see a letter in there from him.
DK: Cool.
DB: And his name rank and number is all on there.
DK: Yeah.
DB: He was a warrant officer like I was. He finished his tour of operations. He did the Nuremberg raid so he, he was always about six months to a year ahead of me.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. And he —
DK: They went —
DB: There’s a letter from him which is dated September ’45 and then I heard in October.
DK: Right.
DB: He went.
OJ: He knows exactly what he’s talking about.
DB: His number is on, on here. Everything. Yeah. That’s, I think that’s my, that’s his writing.
DK: Right.
DB: And I think that’s my sister’s writing, but I’ll have to find out. But I think here is his, yeah his full rank and number are on there you see.
DK: Oh right. So —
DB: Yeah.
DK: That’s warrant officer JE Topple.
DB: Topple yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Can you remember what JE stood for?
DB: John. John Topple.
DK: So, he’s, for the recorder he is Warrant Officer John E Topple.
DB: Yeah.
DK: T O P P L E.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Service number 1874884. And he was with 99 Squadron in Ceylon.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: But he’d done a full tour of operations before.
DK: Right.
DB: Yeah. In the UK.
DK: He went missing out there.
DB: Yeah. But you know he was on when it was at its worst.
DK: Yeah. Yeah.
DB: So I feel I his mother and my sister were only talking about it the other day. She always thought he’d knock on the door some time, you know. Yeah. But so I don’t know the circumstances but —
DK: No. But he went missing in September 45. Or October.
DB: Yeah. Went missing October the 7th 1945. So —
DK: Right.
DB: I don’t know what he was doing out there particularly.
DK: 99 Squadron then were flying the Liberators out there.
DB: Oh, were they?
DK: So he was on the four engine bombers.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: So they stayed in the Far East for quite some time after the war.
DB: Did they? Yeah. Yeah. He was still active service. Well, I was still really until 1947 really. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: That’s even more of an issue actually because it’s actually someone on bombers in the Far East.
DB: Yeah.
DK: After the war has ended.
DB: Yeah. But —
DK: Officially. Though still on active service. Yeah.
DB: Yeah, but he served in. I forget what squadron he was on in the UK.
DK: Right.
DB: But he did a full tour. He did his thirty ops anyway. Yeah.
DK: Well, it’s something, certainly something we need to look into.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. But I feel it’s my duty to, you know. You know.
DK: I know this is you know the Memorial round there and the names on there it is expanding.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Because a lot of the records only showed those who died on operations.
DB: Yeah.
DK: While the aircraft was in flight.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Some of those who died when came back.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Aren’t included.
DB: No. I know that.
DK: So, that’s why some records say fifty five thousand.
DB: Yeah. Yeah.
DK: But our records are showing fifty six thousand.
DB: Yeah.
DK: It’s increasing.
DB: Yeah. I think in our book which is, you know there’s a 76 Squadron book. We’ve got, we’ve got everything in there.
DK: Yeah.
DB: And I know we were about seven hundred. Over seven hundred casualties.
DK: And that’s one Squadron.
DB: One Squadron.
OJ: That’s scary.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
DK: Ok. We’ll press on.
DB: Quite a lot of detail as well.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it’s been good for me to go through everything.
DK: Excellent. It’s been great for me. I’m rather conscious of how long we’ve been but thanks very much for that.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Just for the recording can I just have your name.
OJ: Yeah. I’m Octavia Jackman.
DK: And your grandmother’s name?
OJ: Doreen Beasley.
DK: That’s excellent.
DB: Oh you’re still there.
OJ: I’m still there.
DK: Ok. Well, thanks very much for that. I’ll switch the recording off now.
DB: Yeah.
[recording paused]
DK: So that’s completion of a tour of 76 Squadron. February 1945.
DB: Yeah. Well, that [pause]
DK: So who’s, do you remember who that is there?
DB: Yeah. That’s the, that’s the navigator.
DK: Yeah.
DB: That’s the wireless operator. Pilot. Rear gunner and myself. I don’t know where the other two are on it.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Yeah. But I don’t know where that photograph is now.
DK: Right.
DM: With the —
DK: With the ground crew.
DB: Wait a minute.
OJ: Which one?
DB: I had it’s it’s I did I did find it. Is this some old photographs?
OJ: That’s your whole envelope of photographs. And you’ve got —
DB: Yeah. I think. I think [pause] No. That, that’s 76 Squadron, you know dinners, and all that sort of thing. But there is one somewhere of, of all the ground crew as well.
DK: Yes. It’s unfortunate it’s not in the album isn’t it?
DB: Oh, wait a minute. I’ll tell you where it is. It’s in my other room.
OJ: Do you want me to go up?
DB: It’s in there isn’t it.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Doug Beasley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
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
2018-03-26
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABeasleyDG180326
Format
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01:21:34 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
At the start of the war, Doug Beasley left school at 16 to start work. Initially a member of the Air Training Corps, he was sent for aircrew selection when he became 18. There was a 12-month wait to enlist as a pilot, so he opted to become a flight engineer. He joined Number 3 Initial Training Wing in Torquay, after spending three weeks at Lord’s Cricket Ground, in October 1943. Many of his fellow intake were ex-police officers, older as they were not released from the police until they were 30 years old. After six weeks he was posted to RAF St Athan for basic training as a flight engineer on Halifaxes, then to 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Marston Moor. It was here that he was formed in to a flight crew when they transferred from their Operational Training Unit. At this stage they were flying the Halifax II and V. It was with this unit that he flew his first operation, a leaflet dropping operation over France on 12th August 1944. He joined 76 Squadron at RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor flying the Halifax III. He describes in detail many of his operations, mainly over Germany. One in particular occurred in January 1945 when his aircraft was attacked by a Ju 88 night fighter. Though struck by many bullets and cannon shells nothing vital was damaged though the pilot’s neck was grazed by a bullet. After completing his tour of operations, 38 rather than the normal 30, he became an instructor with an operational flying unit flying Wellingtons. In 1946 he became the Air Sea Rescue officer attending a course at RAF Calshot. He left the RAF in 1947 to return to civilian life.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Nick Cornwell-Smith
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
England--Torquay
England--Devon
England--London
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
England--Yorkshire
France
Germany
Great Britain
Germany--Essen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10
1944-08-12
1945-01
1946
1947
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
1652 HCU
76 Squadron
air sea rescue
aircrew
bombing
crewing up
flight engineer
ground crew
Halifax
Halifax Mk 2
Halifax Mk 3
Halifax Mk 5
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Ju 88
Lancaster
McIndoe, Archibald (1900-1960)
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
propaganda
RAF Holme-on-Spalding Moor
RAF Marston Moor
RAF St Athan
RAF Torquay
training
V-1
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/705/9285/PBegbieD1701.2.jpg
18a01cc7d4dd62e0e87065d6139e966d
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/705/9285/ABegbieD170113.2.mp3
c8433c7d5b6db55d084acc1c6d2fe5e4
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
Begbie, Doug
D Begbie
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Doug Begbie. He flew operations as an air gunner with 76 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-30
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Begbie, D
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
DK: I'll just introduce myself. It’s David Kavanagh from the International Bomber Command Centre interviewing Doug Begbie on the 13th of January 2017. I'll just put that down there and if I keep looking over I'm not being rude. I'm just making sure the tape's still working.
DB: Okay.
DK: You mentioned there that you used to live in Lincoln. Were you born in Lincoln?
DB: No. I was born at Cranwell.
DK: Oh, right. Okay.
DB: Yeah.
DK: And what were you doing immediately before the war?
DB: Before the war?
DK: Yeah.
DB: Well, I was an apprentice chef with my dad.
DK: Okay. And what was your, did your dad have a business then as a —
DB: No. He worked at Cranwell as a civilian chef.
DK: Oh. Actually in the RAF.
DB: Yeah. Catering for the officers.
DK: Okay. So, next question would be then was that the reason that you wanted to join the RAF?
DB: I don't know. Yeah. I've tried to work that one out but what I think perhaps I could, as a baby I could hear aircraft. That must have had some effect on me.
DK: So what year are we talking about then that you first heard the sound of aeroplanes?
DB: Yeah.
DK: In the 1920s would this have been? The 30s?
DB: Yeah.
DK: So, what, can you remember what year you actually joined the RAF?
DB: When I joined them.
DK: Yeah.
DB: Must have been 1943, I think. About October.
DK: Okay and were you selected then for Bomber Command at that point?
DB: Yeah.
DK: Okay. And so what was your, your aircrew role then? What did you actually do?
DB: I was a tail gunner.
DK: Okay. And can you remember how your training went? What sort of training did you have before you joined a squadron?
DB: No.
DK: No. Okay. And can you remember which squadron you were with?
DB: Hmmn?
DK: Can you remember which squadrons you were with?
DB: 76.
DK: Right. And flying what type of aircraft?
DB: Yeah.
DK: The Halifax was it?
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah. Okay. And can, can you remember anything specific about the operations you did?
DB: Well, I did thirty two.
DK: Right.
DB: Mostly night raids. Some were daylight
DK: And as a tail gunner what was your job to actually do?
DB: Well, to protect the rear of the aircraft.
DK: Right.
DB: We used to have an evasive action.
DK: Okay.
DB: Which was to corkscrew into the attacking fighter. So because being at the tail end you have to rethink the direction you were flying.
DK: Right. Because you're facing the wrong way.
DB: Yeah.
DK: Yeah.
DB: So, you have to say corkscrew starboard or corkscrew port.
DK: Right. So how many times were you attached by enemy aircraft?
DB: How many?
DK: How many times were you attacked by enemy aircraft?
DB: Only a couple of times
DK: So did you actually fire your guns at them?
DK: Only once.
DK: Okay. And can can you tell us a little bit about that?
DB: Well, it was one of their new fighters that they had. A jet-propelled thing. Rocket propelled.
DK: Really?
DB: And both the mid-upper gunner and I fired at it and it exploded.
DK: And, and were you credited with that?
DB: Hmmn?
DK: Were you credited with having shot that down?
DB: I don't know what happened.
DK: Right.
DB: No.
DK: So, what, it must have been a bit of a strange thing to see. A rocket-powered aircraft.
DB: Yeah.
DK: So, what was your thoughts as you saw it coming towards you?
DB: Well, we [pause] I'm just trying to think. We, we hadn't, we hadn’t been reported anything like that.
DK: Right.
DB: But we've got some idea that they were trying these things out. So —
DK: So did it come as a bit of a shock to you to suddenly see this rocket powered —
DB: Yeah.
DK: Aircraft.
DB: So we just fired at it and it blew up.
DK: Okay. So I'll finish here now but looking back on your time in Bomber Command how do you feel about it now?
DB: How do I feel about it now? Since that time I've become a Christian.
DK: Okay.
DB: So I consider war is a waste of time. Killing people. We must negotiate things. Talk to people about things.
DK: I think you're right there. Okay. Well, I know you’re going to have a busy day so we can stop it there. But if I can ever come back and speak to you again that would be marvellous.
DB: Okay.
DK: Okay. We'll stop it there. Thank you.
DB: Right.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Doug Begbie
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Kavanagh
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-13
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. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ABegbieD170113, PBegbieD1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Format
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00:06:04 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Doug Begbie was an apprentice chef before he volunteered for the RAF. He trained as a rear gunner and was posted to 76 Squadron. He shot down what sounds like an Me 163.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
76 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Halifax
Me 163
perception of bombing war
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/7/3394/ADerringtonAP150715-02.1.mp3
6cd1f162411f8a65aa035d4d1151c5ab
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
Derrington, Arnold Pearce
Arnold Pearce Derrington
Arnold P Derrington
Arnold Derrington
A P Derrington
A Derrington
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Dr Arnold Pearce Derrington DFC (- 2016, 187333 Royal Air Force), a navigator with 462 and 466 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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
Derrington, AP
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-15
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: It’s 15th July 2015. My name’s Adam Such. I’m a researcher for the International Bomber Command Centre and this is the second half of an interview with Flight Lieutenant Derry Derrington former DFC, former navigator on 466 and 462 squadrons RAF.
Derry first of all good morning thank you for allowing me to come back.
DD: My joy.
AS: Great. I’d like first of all really to take you back to briefings. I know that they weren’t all exactly the same but can you give me a general idea of how long they’d go?
DD: Well a briefing used to last about three quarters of an hour at most. Sometimes it could be done in a quarter of an hour and once we had the briefing the navigator would settle down to make out what his flight plan. Do you know what a flight plan is?
AS: Roughly. But if you’d like to go through it.
DD: It’s on every chart and every log I’ve got here and you’ll see that we knew the complete journey that we had to make and it wasn’t always direct. It would appear that it should be but we had to do all sorts of diversionary courses in order to fox the enemy and I’ve got a chart that I want to give you which shows every target we went to with, as it were, a straight line going from Driffield or our take off point was called Flaxfleet and it wasn’t a straight line as my chart shows but it’s easy for anyone to notice and we didn’t go in straight lines like it appears to be. I’d like to give that to you now while I think about it.
AS: Ok.
[pause]
AS: Now I now have your chart in front of me with your thirty one missions on it.
DD: Yes.
AS: Yeah, as you say straight lines but the doglegs would be quite substantial I suppose depending on where the -
DD: Well depending on the time. We could always lose time. We couldn’t pick it up unless the pilot really stepped on the gas but two minutes was the most that we have to, we mustn’t get there too early or we had to lose some time but we didn’t do that very often but of course once your jigging around like that you’re crossing the path of other members of the stream of aircraft and you were taking a risk. You’ve got to be very alert. You don’t want collisions in the air.
AS: Back, back to the briefing where we started did, did the whole crew go just to one briefing or was there separate briefings for pilots and navigators.
DD: No it was a total, all the crew was there for it and they went back to do whatever they wanted to do with their equipment but we had to sit down and work out our flight plan and the flight plan was a very handy thing because it depended of course on the forecast winds of that time. They may have changed completely by the time we would do the operation but they would have been just about five or six degrees difference perhaps from one course to another and it wasn’t just a case of the calculation course you had. You had to work out deviation and also each aircraft was tuned differently so that you had to amend the calculated course that you were going to steer. You applied correction and deviation but that was the navigators job to do that and well it took some time with the computer working out the courses that we had to go but the bomb aimer might have been with me on these occasions. Jonah our bomb aimer was quite keen and he would be watching what I was doing. And we were great pals. They were wonderful crew to be with.
AS: After, after the briefing and you’d worked out your flight plan it’s, what happened then? I mean
DD: Well.
AS: We hear about the operational meal, the operational egg. What -
DD: Well we had, some of the chaps said they had a good meal beforehand. I only seem to remember a good meal afterwards [laughs] they gave us plenty to eat. Two Eggs on My Plate is, I believe is the title of one book written about our experiences in those days. But they did feed us very well with a good old fry up.
AS: Then out to the aeroplane.
DD: We felt we were very privileged people because in those days were the days of rationing.
AS: Then out to the aeroplane. How long before take-off would that, would that be?
DD: Probably two hours, two and a half hours or so before take-off. And it wasn’t a case of being waved off we just were there and we went and didn’t know who was waving us off or what we were just intent on being there and doing our job.
AS: You were, were 4 Group, in, in Yorkshire.
DD: I was - ?
AS: 4. In Number 4 Group.
DD: 4 group yes.
AS: Now that’s between the 6 Group North.
DD: Yes.
AS: And the other groups South. Did you climb out directly on course or or did you have to avoid the other aircraft from -
DD: Well we had a collecting point to move from near Spurn Head, a place called Flaxfleet and we didn’t set course from the airfield as such we were out warming up and going around, flying in orbit around the area but we wanted to be at Flaxfleet by the time of take-off. TOT time of take-off or time over target TOT. And we set off from there and well we were on the alert all the time to see we weren’t too near other aircraft. I say we - especially the gunners. They were the eyes of the plane and the pilot.
AS: Once, once you had formed up and I presume for daylight operations there was more of a coming together than, than at night time?
DD: You mean the aircraft flying close to each other?
AS: Yeah.
DD: I suppose there must have been. Most of our operations were night time, dark, in the darkness but we did some daylights. The Yanks were daylight people. They didn’t do too much dark, night time flying but we were day and night. And our trips were not quite as long as some people spent a long time. I suppose the maximum length of time you’ll see from our logbooks the maximum length of time on any of our operations was approximately eight hours but some people had time longer than that.
AS: Yes, I -
DD: We didn’t have any very long drawn out operational time. I’m amazed we did what we did in such a short time.
AS: I see Magdeburg probably was, was the furthest you went.
DD: Probably, yes.
AS: On your trips or perhaps Koblenz.
DD: Ahum
AS: Yeah. Coming, coming back now if I may coming back from the trip was there much of a desire to be home first? To open the taps? To -
DD: No. No, we went along steadily the only thing was in the funnel when we were coming to land we sometimes the Germans had a fighter lurking around and we had to be equally alert at landing time as we were taking off. That was that. Have you heard much about that happening?
AS: No I’d like you to tell me about -
DD: Well -
AS: The whole process.
DD: They had fighters in the funnel sometimes and of course our fighters were up to combat them but we had to be on the alert because of that.
AS: Could you talk I know you were inside behind your curtain but could you talk me through perhaps the, the sort of aids to final navigation? The funnel lights, the drem pundits, Sandra - that sort of thing. Could you talk me through the process of coming back to base and landing?
DD: Well I didn’t have much to do with that. I got them back to the area where we had to be and the crew looked after that as a whole. They got their eyes open and the pundits, those are, those are the flashing lights you’re talking about?
AS: Ahum.
DD: Well the pilot had his job to do and the bomb aimer might have been there to help him and be observing with him but as a navigator I’d was, I’d got them back to very near the base and I’d done my job but I was alert to write and record whatever had to be done and I’d hear the conversation of the crew and if I heard anything significant then I’d make a note of it on my log.
AS: Which brings me nicely into afterwards. After landing. You said you’d done your job but perhaps you were the most important man at the debriefing. What was the debriefing like?
DD: We were asked all sorts of questions and were you at the target in time? What opposition did you get there? And of course the crew would say as much as I would about that. If they’d said at the time they would have been on my log recording it. I believe my logs are pretty neat. I’m not as tidy and neat now as I was then but I know you’ll their fairly clear. I did everything printing. I didn’t do anything cursive writing at all. It was fine print.
AS: And they, they would they go through your navigation log either then or afterwards,
DD: Oh they’d have an overview quickly. And after the operation was over the navigation leader would have a look at the log and the chart. They were handed in together. And he’d write a comment do you see there are comments on the front page of it - A satisfactory trip or did you take enough fixes, take more than you do and what they may say what was your opinion of H2S when it came in to us initially. You’ll see one or two of my charts are in a colour different from the others instead of the normal red printing on a white background.
[OTHER: LONG PERSONAL CONVERSATION NOT TRANSCRIBED]
DD: Yes they had a white background and the towns shape is in brown and the brown showed up very good against the white background and if a town it isn’t just a red glowing dot on the fluorescent screen it was a shape on the chart that we had and if there was some projecting point in some way that you could identify then that a bearing on, from that could be taken and that would give me my position. It was, your attempt was to get a position every six minutes at least apart from any visual sightings there may have been and this radar was a wonderful help.
AS: Was it generally reliable?
DD: Oh yes. They did try to jam us but we didn’t have much of that to worry about. They couldn’t jam the H2S but the window that we scattered was supposed to confuse their ground systems for identifying us.
AS: But the actual installation in the aeroplane? Could you be confident you’d go in there and turn it on and it would work?
DD: Oh yes.
AS: And work in the air
DD: Oh yes it was very reliable.
AS: Was that generally true for the aeroplane? You’d walk to your allocated aeroplane and it would be fully functional for the trip.
DD: Yes. Oh yes.
AS: So the standard of maintenance was, was pretty high.
DD: Very good indeed. The ground crews were very helpful. And if we weren’t satisfied they soon knew it. [laughs]
AS: Were your ground crew predominantly Australians by the time you were on ops or a mix?
DD: We were a totally pommie crew with an Australian captain. And I don’t think we were, it wasn’t a case of tolerated we were treated as equals. We had a very good company. A jolly good lot they were too.
AS: The ground crew? Were they mostly Australians?
DD: No I don’t know any ground crew were Australian. They were all British I believe.
AS: Ok.
DD: One thing which was rather interesting I ended up as a lecturer in Manchester University eventually and there was one fellow who came on the staff. He said, [?] ‘My job was I trained as a navigator but they were beginning near the end of the war not to need any more air crew things were going on so well and it was my job to load you up with our bombs, with the bombs. I was doing that job’. So he has diversified to be loading up bombs for us and well we just took off with what they gave us.
AS: When we talked yesterday we talked a bit about the French at Elvington. Did you have much to do with the Free French squadrons?
DD: We just knew they were there and we were just delighted I think that we were cosmopolitan as we were. We had a Maori in our squadron and well we were British and the French were there and well they had the same directions and the same intentions as we did and we were just delighted I think that we were a multinational gang, 4 Group
AS: Yeah. Indeed you definitely were.
[pause]
There we are. So we talked that you were an Australian squadron fully accepted as English people.
DD: Ahum.
AS: The Australians were far from home can you tell me a bit about their life. What they did for leave and how - ?
DD: Well quite a few Cornish people went overseas mining years ago. There’s an adage if there’s a hole in the ground there’s a Cornish miner at the bottom of it. And the thing is that some of these Australians who came over had relatives in England. They weren’t all convicts [laughs] and they went off and had leave and visited relations and well they liked going to London to see the bright lights.
AS: Did your Skipper, did he come home with you? Did he?
DD: No. He has been home since but not during operational time.
AS: On the squadron can you recall any real characters and why they were characters?
DD: Oh there was a chap called Tiny Cawthorne. He was a very big chap. Very tall. There was a man called Ern Shoeman and Ern Shoeman was reputed to be a millionaire property wise and he and I were good friends. He used to write me quite a bit and he knew we had a handicapped daughter. Our daughter Mary is fifty nine, she’s Downs Syndrome and she’s a very sweet, gentle little soul. She’s at a home up in Wadebridge and she’s got a very good carer looking after her. My nephew Michael is very good to her, takes her out for morning coffee and so on. She doesn’t speak because she lost her voice when my mother in law died and she was annoyed. Or Mary’s reaction was, ‘I’m not going to speak any longer ’cause granny’s not here and she didn’t tell me she was going.’ And we’ve had speech therapists for her and she is not speaking but my son David is coming down, takes her off for a walk somewhere when they’re the only two there and she’s able to make herself known. She understands sign language and she’s a great joy and friend to us and we’re very relieved to think that she’s looked after so well because we’re ancient and we shall probably pass on before she does but normally Downs Syndrome people don’t live beyond the age of fourteen but we were told that she wouldn’t live beyond the age of two but she’s still going on ok.
AS: That’s
And they treat her like a little doll up there where she is with the Home Farm Trust. That’s the name of the organisation looking after her at Wadebridge.
AS: And she, she used to interact with this character from the squadron. The property developer.
DD: Oh no, Ern Shoeman -
AS: Yes.
DD: Used to write and ask how she was getting on.
AS: Ok.
[phone ringing]
DD: He was a very pleasant man. He was a pilot I think.
AS: Are there any other characters that you can recall?
DD: Well there was this chap Jackson who used to smoke his pipe through the inside of the oxygen mask [laughs]
AS: That was insane.
DD: Very risky business.
AS: Presumably when he was on oxygen.
DD: I think so.
[PERSONAL CONVERSATION REGARDING PHONE CALL NOT TRANSCRIBED]
AS: So there was room in the squadron for characters was there? Discipline was, was reasonably relaxed?
DD: Oh yes. Yes. We didn’t go on parade very much. I can’t think of many more. We were characters I suppose.
AS: Characters and survivors yeah. So, what, what would a day on the squadron, a non-flying day on the squadron have been like?
DD: Difficult to say. I did some of my book. You’ve seen the -
AS: Yes.
DD: Song of Songs. Places like, let’s see, Mablethorpe. That seems people used to go there for a day out if there was a forty eight hour pass or a stand down I ought to know if I thought of that I could think of that easily I just can’t think of any. They would go to one or two coastal towns between Spurn Head and oh I just can’t think of the names of them.
AS: Don’t
DD: [I ought to. I’m ancient you see [?]
AS: Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. So switching tack a bit. You have the DFC.
DD: Yes.
AS: How did you hear about your award and how was it presented to you?
DD: I’ve got a newspaper cutting about it there. It was in the Gazette. Rotherham Gazette I think and I had a very nice letter from the George VI - Secretary presumably. The king was indisposed. Wasn’t able to be presenting personally as he would wish to do and wished me well in my future career and it came through the post [laughs]. No ceremony or whatever. My wife has the MBE. We went to Buck House to get that and my sister in law and my daughter could go with us.
AS: Fantastic.
DD: But there was no ceremony about it and immediately after the war and for at least twenty years Bomber Command was almost in the dog house. They were thinking in terms of all the damage they did to oh someplace or other. Let’s see which would be the one?
AS: Was it Dresden?
DD: Dresden.
AS: Yeah
DD: That’s the one. Well we weren’t involved in that at all. We don’t know if we injured many civilians. There were bound to have been at times but you couldn’t be that selective. Necessary they might have been injured or killed. We tried to do our best not to damage local human beings but bombing is a very, well not exactly indiscriminate but we had taken, aimed to be as accurate as we could.
AS: You mentioned at Bomber Command as you put it was in the doghouse after the war. Was this a real feeling that, that you and your comrades had that your -
DD: Oh we didn’t feel that. It was the attitude of the general public and Bomber Command wasn’t popular with the national attitude for some time. It was some, afterwards I think people have come around to believe and to know that we were the only ones to really get to the heart of Germany and the industrial heart of it. And if it wasn’t for Bomber Command well the war would have gone on much longer. And of course Guy Gibson’s dam busting that created havoc and that shortened the length of the war, the length of the time of the war finishing.
AS: I’m, I’m really interested in the fact that you think that it’s, it’s changing. For what it’s worth I agree. But do you think things like the Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park and what we’re doing up in Lincoln, do you think that is, signifies a change in public attitude?
DD: It was very popular at a time when the green park memorial was the biggest attraction in London and some silly fools went and defaced it with some paint.
AS: Yes I saw that. It was
DD: You saw that?
AS: Yes I was up there for the opening as you were.
DD: Oh it was a lovely day.
AS: Yeah.
DD: Yes they fed us well. They provided positions for us. We booked to go to it in good time to go see it. I went a day or two earlier I was so excited about going and Charlie and I were together and my son and my grandson went with me. They were the two guests I had and they were very impressed and delighted.
AS: There, there was this feeling amongst the aircrew that they weren’t appreciated before that. Is that the case?
DD: We didn’t think or care about it.
AS: No just -
DD: We were there and did the job and it had to be done. We didn’t care what the public thought. I will say this in terms of the public and Bomber Command I’ve been to a few reunions and I sometimes had a taxi to go from Paddington to another station, our reunions were often up in York, and I met a taxi man and he said, “Oh come with me I wouldn’t dare charge you chaps. I know what you went through.” And that was a lovely gesture. I’ve met that on two or three occasions.
AS: Moving completely different track if I may for a moment - use of wakey wakey pills - amphetamines or Benzadrine I know they were in the escape packs but were they ever offered to you before flying?
DD: I don’t recall anything about it at all. I don’t think so. No, we didn’t, I didn’t take any. I knew they existed but I didn’t want any or need any and neither did our crew.
AS: Excellent that’s good. Continuing on with the escape kit theme did you have any sort of escape training?
DD: Yes.
AS: And what did that consist of?
DD: We went to battle school and I seem to remember walking around on my hands and knees and I believe we had details to store a map in our caps or in our shoes in case we needed to make reference to the land to find our way around. We did escape training about a fortnight as far as I know.
AS: In your training before going on operations what, what sort of, of flying did you do? I’ve heard of bullseyes for instance. What were they all about?
DD: Yes they were practice flights to targets and they gave the bomb aimers and the gunners experience and the bullseye was operational experience and the bullseye was operational experience and a part of operational training. We didn’t do that when we were on operations. That was prior to operations.
AS: And did you get involved in leaflet dropping as well in training?
DD: No. I think the wireless operator’s job was to throw leaflets down through the chute and he’d take a handful every three minutes or so and they were in different languages. Some of the leaflets were like little booklets. I’ve got one or two there stuffed away in my general folder but I did have a lovely collection of leaflets and I went out to give a talk on one occasion and I’m sorry to say someone obviously pinched them.
AS: Oh Lord.
DD: I reckon I lost about twenty different leaflets on that occasion.
AS: That’s not a very nice thing to do.
DD: One leaflet I remember particularly was about the flying bomb site Watten that we went to and that’s now a visitor attraction with a coloured leaflet to hand out to people. And we knew that we had an aiming point. There was a great hole beside of the take-off place for these V1s and the walls of it were eight feet thick so you can imagine they needed to give good protection to the missiles which were stored inside.
AS: And you destroyed it.
DD: Hmmn?
AS: And the bombers destroyed it.
DD: Well they shook it up a lot [laughs].
AS: All the way through the crew has been the major part of your experience I think. Since the war I think you’ve kept in touch. Have you had -
DD: All the time.
AS: Have you had reunions?
DD: Oh yes we’ve had reunions. We went to Llanelli where Charlie the, Dennis Cleaver was, he married a Welsh girl. Whether we went to the wedding or what I don’t quite know. I did give an address at Jonah’s funeral. I am a Reader in the church and I wanted to talk about Jonah at the time. He was my particular close fellow ‘cause he sat beside me while we were on operations.
AS: What, what, what form did the reunions take? Would you all go off to a hotel somewhere or go back to Driffield or what?
DD: In York itself I think, mainly. It was Betty’s bar they used to talk about. They used to meet there when - you said what do people do on their day off or when they had free time - Bettys Bar in York was popular. I wasn’t a drinking fellow and that was very popular. They were a very hearty, jolly lot the Australians. Very easy to get on with.
AS: And you’ve been to Australia yourself a number of times.
DD: I’ve been nine times. Not just because of our daughter but there have been reunions in Australia. I did have some reunions to do with South Africa too. The [Hornclip?] Association. [Hornclip?] was a volcanic mountain with a flat top near where we flew from and that Association has packed in now but that was quite a popular meet up. I think we had one or two reunions in London.
AS: I think we’ll, we’ll pause there.
[pause]
DD: I don’t think we were using H2S until the end of our tour.
AS: We have from your fantastic folder here we have a, a collection of souvenirs[?] papers from each mission and one of them we have here - Mission 25 to Cologne does in fact have your H2S map here. Could you, could you talk me through what we’ve on this map?
DD: Well we had a fluorescent screen same size as the Gee was and the shape of the town would come up as a darker pink glow against a faint background and the shape came up like you see here. These different shapes of towns. You see London over there, a big patch, different towns in England and that was a case of navigating by H2S and I could take a fix every six minutes with no difficulty. See the scattering towns look.
AS: Yes.
DD: That’s the Ruhr there. You can see the shape of towns alright there.
AS: But on here you have a number of different coloured lines and writing could you, could you talk me through those. Base at Driffield there with -.
DD: Yes on the track that we wanted to keep there’d be two arrows and the wind that we found would have three arrows on it, the vector with the wind and we took off from Flaxfleet but you see our base Driffield is about twenty miles north of Hull and there’s a place called Flaxfleet not far away. That’d be the start of that thing. It was a village I suppose. I’ve never been to Flaxfleet. I’ve got a, somewhere over in that file over there big file I think I’ve got a postcard with a picture of Flaxfleet on it. Not that it’s very important but that’s the name of it.
AS: And then this, this is your track pre-planned. This is the track you’d planned beforehand.
DD: That’s right. On the way out. That was the wind vector there. That green.
AS: Ahum
DD: The target would have a triangle there.
AS: So you’re routing over, over Reading on this particular occasion.
DD: Yes.
AS: Is that, is that a regular route?
DD: I don’t know. Not often.
AS: But would you, would you always avoid London?
DD: Oh I suppose so. It’s such a sprawl. Anyway so long as I got my fix every six minutes that was all I really needed to have, needed to do.
AS: And you’re calculating a lot of wind vectors. One two -
DD: We were probably wind finders about that time and maybe[?] transmit that to PFF. There’s a rash of towns along -
AS: And as you say they all have different, different shapes.
DD: Shapes.
AS: What was the -
DD: Cologne.
AS: What was the target in Cologne?
DD: Railway. Railway marshalling yard.
3549 Other: Morning.
DD: Morning Abigail everything ok
PERSONAL CONVERSATION WITH ABIGAIL FROM MARKER 3605 - NOT TRANSCRIBED.
AS: So an enormous amount of information on here and you put this, which of this would you put on before you took off.
DD: Nothing.
AS: Information -
DD: Maybe that green, we dropped leaflets or something.
AS: That’s window, says window or something.
DD: Oh yes that might have been put on there before we took off.
AS: Also with your chart here we have a second chart and that’s -
DD: Sometimes we were asked to replot an actual operation and that might have been such a case. I don’t know.
AS: At short notice.
DD: After the operation. Analysing what we did.
AS: Ok.
DD: They kept their eye on us pretty well.
AS: And we also have a flight log. Flight plan, excuse me.
DD: Yes that was, that was target there. Before the target. After the target.
AS: Ok.
DD: What does it say here?
AS: Ok. - KJ Brown , Flying Officer.
DD: Hmmn
AS: So he was -
DD: He improved.
AS: Entirely satisfied with that one, with the Cologne trip. Can you, can you talk me through some of this. Here where it says watch - fast and slow. What’s that all about?
DD: Oh by watch when they gave us the time signal. Was it four seconds ahead of the actual Greenwich time signal or four seconds behind. That would be recorded there and the time would be important if I was doing anything to do with astro navigation but to the nearest minute well in terms of astro navigation a minute meant, a minute in time meant a four miles position difference and we had to correct for that.
AS: So you were navigating to that, that degree of accuracy?
DD: Yes.
AS: Ok. Here we have - is that required track?
DD: Yes, and those were the different winds we used.
AS: These would be given to you before the op would they?
DD: Yes. Yes that’s right.
AS: And then is this after take-off. This section of the form is
DD: That’s right
AS: After take off
DD: Yes.
AS: What actually happened rather than -
DD: That’s right. Watches synchronised so my time was what the pilot had in front of him. Why did I underline that I wonder. Is that take off time?
AS: Airborne. Yeah.
DD: Yes.
AS: Climb to six thousand over base. That must have taken quite a long time with a -
DD: Heavy aircraft.
AS: Heavy aircraft.
DD: The pencil’s a rather light colour. You can read it anyhow.
AS: Ahum [pause] and what’s that say?
DD: Master switch off. The master switch meant that the bombs couldn’t be released afterwards once it was off. We had a hang up or two once or twice with bombs. It’s not easy landing when the bombs are held up.
AS: Can, can you recall what size of bombs they were?
DD: Oh there’s a list of it. I’ve got a list of it on, let’s see, I think in the logbook there’s a list of the weight of bombs which we carried. You remember you’ve got the logbook?
AS: Yes. Yes, we can, we can have a look through that but this is marvellous this is a record of every single thing that happened isn’t it?
DD: Well that’s what the navigators job was you see. Not that we were going to do a post mortem or anything like that but at the debriefing they may have had questions to ask us.
[pause]
AS: And also you have a target photograph.
[pause]
DD: Cologne.
AS: Yeah.
DD: Anything on the back? No.
AS: What’s that telegram say?
DD: Best wishes and love, Helen.
AS: Fantastic.
DD: And that was the envelope the telegram came in. You don’t get greeting telegrams, you don’t get telegrams at anymore I suppose.
AS: And what’s the address there? Is that something Hall? Is that your officer’s mess?
DD: [Arley?] House, Marazion. That was my home address.
AS: Ah ok. Right. Shall we?
[pause]
Derry in amongst the things that you’ve kept is this Gee lattice chart here.
DD: Yes.
AS: Gee lattice chart North German chain. Could you talk me through what Gee was and how you used this chart?
DD: Well Gee was signal which came to us from a ground station and sometimes of course those did get attacked but we were delighted to be able to pick up these transmissions and we had a screen in front of us and we could find out where we were and the position lines as you see had certain values written on them and the value on that it made sure we were keeping to the same signal all the time and we had to record our position and we wanted to get two signals. One signal to cross the other and the better it was in terms of being a right angle it was more spot on. If it was say a thirty degree angle between the two position lines it wasn’t very satisfactory so we had to pick out the signals that were the most suitable to give us an accurate position and when we got our fix we used to make a mark with a cross on the chart according to where we were and it was my hope all the time to take a fix whichever method we did it every six minutes because six minutes being a tenth of the hour it was easier to work out by moving the decimal point the speed that we were doing and the Gee fix that we got showed us our ground position. By joining the air position to the air position we got an angle, a vector from which we could work out the wind direction and speed and that was the navigator’s job. The duties of a navigator are shown very well in the AP1234.
AS: Yeah, we, we’ll come to that.
DD: Does that tell you a lot?
AS: That does tell me a lot thank you and I can see here the crosses that you, some of the crosses that you’ve made.
DD: Yes.
AS: The lines are the Gee lines, the lattice lines are in green, red and purple. So were they different lines for different stations?
DD: That’s right. Yes.
AS: Ok and what would you see on your instrument, your Gee instrument? Would you see the values or -
DD: No I would set with some little tuning knob which station I was on which, and then take the reading for the position line and transfer that on to the chart I was navigating on.
AS: Ok and on here also apart from the crosses we have this pencil line coming down from [Maesemunde?] along the Dutch coast and then inland to by Krefeld.
DD: Yes.
AS: What, what was that? What does that represent?
DD: I don’t know. It might be if we were flying in that area whether we would be dropping window or whether we’d be dropping leaflets. It should be labelled but I’m not aware of it if it’s not labelled.
AS: Ok
DD: Is it a man-made line or a printed one?
AS: It’s a thick, thick pencil but no matter, it was a general query. Do these grid squares do they match up to a GJ there. HJ
DD: Pardon?
AS: They match up to your squares on your -
DD: The transmitting units? Those are different, the transmission would be here.
AS: Yeah excellent.
DD: Well modern laptops, on the computers are quite a frequent things but this is a laptop and it’s a circular side, slide rule and here we set the speeds and we used to prop the wind from that centre point how long it was, each one of these is ten miles and when we rotated this we set on the course that we were going to fly and take the reading off at that point there and I don’t really remember how I used this completely but it was a very useful tool.
AS: Which course would you pass to the pilot? Would you pass the true course?
DD: No. No, it had to compass the deviation and the compass correction and the true course was just, was a mathematical figure but that wouldn’t be handed to the pilot. And that was for converting statute to nautical. Centigrade to Fahrenheit. Indicated air speed.
AS: That’s a remarkable tool. It has a green and red pencil. What, what was the significance of the green?
DD: Well.
AS: And the red end?
DD: We used green for the fixed position and red for the target position but the green was used much more frequently than the red. And you’ll see the different colours on the charts that I’ve got.
AS: Yeah.
DD: Used occasionally but I think more likely than not ordinary pencil is more significant in my calculations than the different colours.
AS: Ahum
DD: I hope I’m talking sense.
AS: Absolutely. Now amongst your souvenirs alongside the computer is this air navigation.
DD: Oh AP1234.
AS: Now that is your bible perhaps.
DD: Yes.
[phone ringing]
DD: The ladies will answer that.
AS: Yeah. Now it -
DD: Somebody will come up very soon
AS: It seems.
DD: Oh she’s got the extension with her I expect.
AS: Fantastic. Quick thinking. It seems incredibly comprehensive
DD: Yes.
AS: Scope of navigation, bearings, compass error - was this a tool you used every day or something like a textbook from, from training or both?
DD: In training time. It wasn’t taken in the air with us. If you look somewhere around page thirty.
AS: Page thirty.
DD: Yeah that’s, that’s the -
AS: The circular slide rule. Excellent. Which is what we’ve just been looking at. The navigation computer mark III.
DD: Yes, I used that which is in your hand if I was giving a talk somewhere and that would have been put on top of that page I expect.
AS: Ok.
DD: These straps were there for a Mosquito pilot who was wearing it. He’d strap it to his knee and it had, it mustn’t move, like that. That would keep it from falling off his knee and being readily found if he needed it ’cause more likely than not he didn’t have a navigator with him and that was, he did his own navigation.
AS: Good Lord.
DD: [mentioned?] about arrows? Yes. Track two arrows the course that the pilot had to go was with that single arrow and three for the wind I think. Yes the vector of all wind velocity. The triple arrow.
[pause]
AS: It’s completely comprehensive isn’t it? The formula and the dos and the don’ts.
[pause]
What sort of examinations on all this did you have in training that you had to pass? Were they very detailed or - ?
DD: I don’t remember at all.
AS: Ok.
DD: We passed those exams that’s the thing.
AS: Yeah. You did your training in South Africa. Was there any anti-British feeling that you came across amongst the Boers?
DD: Oh yes we had to walk out in fours because there was a group of desperate Boers called the OBs [?] the Brothers of the Wagonette they were horse drawn people and they, they would assault air force people because of the pro-Boer feeling. South Africa had apartheid going on out there, colour bar, and that was cancelled later on but we kept together if we were walking out so we wouldn’t be attacked by these desperadoes.
AS: Was there, the other side of the coin was there a lot of kindness shown by other -
DD: Yes. .
AS: South Africans to you?
DD: Oh yes. South African families. Met some very interesting people called Thornton at East London and the lady of the house her husband was supposed to have the best stamp collection in South Africa. He was delighted to show that to us. They had a son and his friend, same age as myself and a friend, and they were training as doctors and I kept in contact with their son Geoffrey until he died about ten years ago and they, they were delighted to look after us. And the lady, Mrs Thornton, it so happened that when we moved to Queenstown from East London they were in a Red Shield Club, Salvation Army there was a friend who’d been to school with the lady that had met us in East London.
AS: Incredibly small world isn’t it?
[pause]
AS: Derry, one of the other the other things you’ve kept is your, your logbook.
DD: Yes.
AS: Observers and Air Gunners Flying Logbook. It’s not a blue one. It’s not a nice blue one. Why is that?
DD: Oh yes well of course the thing the normal ones are issued in England had a cloth binding. This one in South Africa just the bare boards. And this started to come to pieces and the repair I had done with that that blue colour there is the colour it should have been and it’s repaired somewhere in the St Just area. There’s a very good shop in St Just called Cookbook and they, I buy books there occasionally, I sell them books occasionally and they bind books as well and they repaired this for me.
AS: It’s a wonderful job.
DD: That you see there was my log when I went to grading school at a place called Ansty near Coventry flying Tiger Moths. Only small amounts of time.
AS: And these exercises 1, 1a, 2 they’re still used today.
DD: Oh are they?
AS: Yeah. Still used today. Very short time. September the 13th to what, the 26th is there any more on the back. Less than a month. Twelve hours.
DD: Ahum
[pause]
That’s Guy Gibson.
AS: Yes. So grading school and then in October 1942, and then jump straight to Queenstown in South Africa.
DD: Ahum.
AS: In October ’43.
DD: That’s when I passed out.
AS: Ok. Qualification.
DD: Do you know the pewter tankard I’ve got? It’s got a glass bottom in it. Do you know why?
AS: No.
DD: You don’t know?
AS: No.
DD: Well if it was a solid bottom and you were drinking than someone could easily draw a knife or whatever and give you a prong and that’s so you can see what was happening.
AS: I didn’t know life in an officer’s mess was so dangerous.
DD: Hmmn.
AS: Right. This is your result of your ab initio course.
DD: That’s right.
AS: At Shawbury.
DD: Shawbury?
AS: Ahum.
DD: Ahum that was a speck end course we called it. I’m entitled to the letter capital N like people put BA after their name but I don’t use it.
AS: And what, what’s your remarks there? What do, what do they say about you?
DD: Good results on course. With his pleasant personality and keenness this officer can satisfactorily fill a staff position. So you see I was called a staff navigator. They might have called me into a briefing room or something like that and there we are, that’s part of it.
AS: I’m just trying to get a sense of how much flying you did in training.
DD: I don’t think I did more than six hundred hours.
AS: It’s quite intensive Derry.
DD: Ahum.
AS: In South Africa on Ansons. I mean here - 14th of July. Good Lord, that was, 14th of July 1943, that was seventy two years ago yesterday.
DD: Yes ahum.
AS: Yesterday. You did three trips in an Anson.
DD: Ahum. Usually two as first navigator and second navigator. My friend Harry Dunn I was telling you about would be flying with me then and they had all sorts of strange names, Dutch names, these Boer people. South African Air Force they wore a khaki uniform.
AS: And army ranks.
DD: Yes.
AS: I believe. Yeah. In training did you feel it was high pressure and very intense or was it reasonably relaxed?
DD: Oh reasonably relaxed. My terrible feeling all the way along was will I be ready in time to do something worthwhile and we used to blame Air Commodore Critchley who was supposed to be a Training Command Officer and we used to blame old Critchley for not moving us on quickly if we got waiting and waiting and waiting for the next posting and I didn’t think I was going to live long enough to do operations but thank God we did.
AS: So did you get the feeling that there were an awful lot of aircrew in the system by time this time?
DD: No. No, we just accepted the fact we were a course going through and they must have planned well ahead to make places for us in South Africa and in Canada and in Rhodesia. I did write something about our overseas training. The Empire Air Training Scheme they called it.
AS: Was that published somewhere or -
DD: I don’t think so.
AS: Ok.
DD: It might have appeared in, there was an aircrew magazine called Intercom and I believe it was published in that but I’m not sure.
AS: I can look out for that. And then from South Africa by the time you left South Africa you had done what forty two hours day.
DD: Not very much.
AS: No eighty eight hour day flying and twelve hours twenty at night. Total flying. Left South Africa. And how did you get back to -
DD: On a troop ship called the Orduna.
AS: Ahum
DD: A South American boat. And there were a lot of women and children on board being repatriated out of India, service wives and children, and we went up through the Red Sea and we were kept at Tufik on the Red Sea until the Germans were cleared out of Italy and then they were afraid that we might meet some submarines in the, in the Mediterranean so we were well protected. They made well and truly sure that we’d be safely transferred.
AS: Ok. And you came into, to Liverpool?
DD: Liverpool again, yes.
AS: Super. Had you been commissioned by this time?
DD: Oh yes but we didn’t have commissioned uniforms until I’d travelled from Liverpool to Harrogate and that’s where the measurement and fitting of pilot officers uniform came into it.
AS: I hope you got a first class travel warrant.
DD: I suppose so [laughs]. I expect I did.
AS: And then we’re at Number 4 AFU is that Advanced Flying Unit?
DD: Yes, Advanced Flying Unit yes. Was that West Freugh?
AS: West Freugh, yeah.
DD: Stranraer.
AS: Yeah. And this was still, I suppose, individual training for you. You hadn’t crewed up at this point?
DD: No.
AS: And this was on Ansons?
DD: That was Ansons again. To get used to British conditions.
AS: Navigating in the fog. Yeah. Was it, was it a shock coming from the, the bushveld and the plains of and South Africa to what, what we have in the UK.
DD: No. We just took it for granted that it would be slightly different and we coped.
AS: And all the principals and all the training were - you could carry them straight.
DD: Yes.
AS: Straight across. Ok. Right, so we’ve got here a pundit crawl. Can you remember what that was all about?
DD: Travelling from red light to red light I think.
AS: Really ok.
DD: Whether it was the gunner’s point of view or from my navigation point of view I don’t know. Maybe I just had to record what was done. A pundit crawl.
AS: Yeah. And then 21 OTU.
DD: That’s Moreton, Much Binding in the Marsh.
AS: And it seems to get really serious at this point. You’ve got a page of dinghy drills, parachute drills, wet dinghy drill.
DD: We went to the Baths at Cheltenham for that. In the middle of England well away from the sea.
AS: Yeah. And by this time you, you’d crewed up?
DD: Yeah. No.
AS: Ok.
DD: Yes at OTU we crewed up, that’s right.
AS: Ok and you were using Wellingtons.
[pause]
Right.
[pause]
And that is super we did your OTU and crewing up and whatnot yesterday so I think we’ll draw a pause there if we can.
DD: Ahum
[pause]
DD: Turning on now?
AS: Yes.
DD: Occasionally we had a little wicker cage with pigeons in it and I believe the idea was that if we were shot down or if we were captured then the homing pigeons would come back with the news [laughs] and it only happened to us two or three times but I was aware that it did happen occasionally.
AS: And did you carry them on every trip or just -
DD: No. No.
AS: Just a few.
DD: Just occasionally.
AS: What, one wonders how you could release a pigeon from an aeroplane at two hundred miles an hour but perhaps it was if you crash landed.
DD: The crash would release the cage. The poor pigeons.
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Interview with Dr Derry Derrington
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
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Sound
Language
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eng
Format
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01:08:21 audio recording
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Pending review
Creator
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Adam Sutch
Date
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2015-07-15
Description
An account of the resource
Dr Arnold Pearce Derrington grew up in Cornwall and joined the University Air Squadron at Exeter. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1942 and completed training at RAF Ansty, South Africa, RAF West Freugh and RAF Moreton in the Marsh, where he trained as a navigator on Wellingtons. He was posted to RAF Driffield where he served with 462 and 466 Squadrons. Most of his operations were over the Ruhr. He discusses H2S and Gee in detail. He was later an instructor at RAF Moreton in the Marsh and was demobbed in 1945. He kept a diary of his time in Bomber Command.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
South Africa
England--Gloucestershire
England--Warwickshire
England--Yorkshire
Scotland--Wigtownshire
France--Watten
France
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
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1942
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
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Julie Williams
462 Squadron
466 Squadron
Advanced Flying Unit
aircrew
animal
Anson
bombing
briefing
Gee
H2S
Halifax
memorial
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
RAF Ansty
RAF Driffield
RAF Moreton in the Marsh
RAF West Freugh
training
Wellington
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/545/11671/PSmytheE1701.1.jpg
742a20ab96dbb7a32a4f6a88b5935e69
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/545/11671/ASmytheE170802-01.2.mp3
b6694953c10b54673114646859a36227
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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Smythe, Eddy
Eddy Smythe
E Smythe
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. A photograph and two oral history interviews with Eddy Smythe about his father, John Henry Smythe (1915-1996, 144608 Royal Air Force) who served as a navigator in Bomber Command.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-02
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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Smythe, E
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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HH: Ok. We are sitting in the living room of the home of Eddy Smythe in Chinnor near Oxford and this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre. It is the 2nd of August 2017. I’m Heather Hughes. Also with me today are Eddy Smyth himself, Iyamide Thomas, Sidney Macfarlane and Alex Passaro. Thank you very much Eddy for agreeing to do this interview and also for Iyamide to come, for coming up by train from London.
IT: That’s ok.
ES: You’re very welcome.
HH: Eddy, I wonder if we could start this interview by talking a little bit about you and your, your memories of your dad because I think one of the things that you were surprised by was that he didn’t really talk very much about his war experiences until quite late on. So could we start off just by talking about what it was like for you growing up with him, not really knowing his background in the war?
ES: Yeah. I mean that, that’s very true. I knew very little of the detail of what he did during the war. I obviously knew that he was in Bomber Command and I knew that he was a navigator. I also knew that he’d been shot down over Germany and he’d spent a couple years in the prisoner of war camp. But in terms of actual detail, how he felt, what the experiences were like, I mean he just, he just never discussed them. It was impossible to get it out of him. I mean this was at a time when, you know as a little boy, or as little boys my brother and I used to buy the little war comics and were always reading about the English fighting the Germans. It was all really exciting and I knew my dad had played a part in it but quite frustrating that he never, he never talked to us about it. He, I always remember him throwing out his uniform. His actual RAF uniform. And I remember thinking even though at the time I was probably ten years old but I thought this is sad. And I went and cut his wings out of the jacket and kept the wings. I also remember him going to throw out the logbook which he kept when he was a prisoner of war. It sounds amazing now. I think why would anyone want to do it but he didn’t want to discuss the war. He was happy to talk to you all day about him being a lawyer and the cases that he tried and you know he was, he was happy. You’d sit and he’d talk to you literally all day and all night but as soon as you mentioned the war he just went silent. He’d never talk about it. He threw out his uniform. He wanted to get rid of his logbook and he didn’t want to talk to about it. You know, that’s, that’s kind of how it of was for us growing up. I mean thinking back about it you know there were some signs that he was, he was affected by the war. Because one of the things that we used to have to draw straws about was who would, who would wake him if he needed to be woken up. As children. So my mum would say, ‘Right, someone go and wake daddy.’ And we’d look at each other and go, ‘No. It’s your turn.’ ‘No. It’s your turn.’ Because no matter how gently you tried to wake him up, no matter how gently. you could tiptoe in and you could whisper but the moment he woke up he woke up with a scream. Every time. And leapt out of the bed. He literally used to be like a foot out of bed. No matter how gently you tried to wake him. And as children it was quite frightening. So we used to always go on and on. I’d say, ‘John it’s your turn to wake him.’ ‘No. No, you’ve got to wake him up.’ And, and I suppose as a child you don’t really understand why. You just kind of think it’s something that might have to do with experiences in the past. But later on as you get older and you get a bit wiser you start to realise what it was about. And I think I did, I did find out what it was about probably about three years before he died. You know, when I got to talk to him in some detail. But no, the war didn’t really form much of a, much, didn’t take much [pause] it didn’t play much of a part in our lives growing up other than the fact that we knew that we had this father who had been in the RAF. That was it. It was not discussed till much much later.
HH: And when it was discussed?
ES: Now, you’re talking about when he was much older. There were two occasions that I specifically remember. One was probably, I would say something like twelve years before he died. I was living in England. He was still in Sierra Leone. He came over on holiday. And I’ve always had an interest in flying and I remember talking to him about navigation and it was incredible because at that stage of his life he struggled to remember things that happened the previous week but he could remember in incredible detail and with enormous clarity how he used to navigate from Britain over to whatever target it was. Whether it was in Germany or in France. And all the techniques they used at that time which, you know were incredibly basic but you know they allowed them to. I mean that’s why the RAF brought in navigators. He started off, he trained as a pilot, he got his wings and then anyone who had a decent pass mark in maths was converted to a navigator which he was disappointed with. But they realised that the bombers, they’d fly over, they’d get to Germany, drop, or France, wherever, they dropped their bombs and I think it was one bomb out of every payload that fell within five miles of the target. They just weren’t hitting the target. So they got navigators. They trained navigators to do that and he was one of those. And I remember him explaining to me in a lot of detail about how they got the aircraft there, how they found the target and how they got back because they flew at night, you know. So that, I remember that, that incident but I think two or three years before he died he needed a lot of care and my mother effectively was looking after him. He had an injury from the war where he was shot and he lost a couple of ribs. And when you were a young, fit and healthy person you know, you don’t notice the effects but as you get older these things all catch up with you. And it ended up causing him back problems and then problems with walking. So he needed a lot of care. And I remember my mother went over to visit her parents in Grenada and I went over and spent a lot of time with him. And I remember sitting there. We got a chance to really, really talk. My dad wasn’t one for going into a lot of detail. He just wasn’t. But we got a chance to talk and I said to him, ‘So tell me about how you, what it was like when you got shot down.’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, one of our engines got knocked out by anti-aircraft fire and we got over Germany and a night fighter shot us down and I parachuted out.’ I said, ‘Yes, but tell me what it was like.’ He said, ‘Well, we got shot down.’ I said, ‘Yeah. Well, even in your memoirs you’ve just written, “We got shot down,” you know. I know how terrified I am when I’m, when we hit air pockets in a plane. You were shot. One engine wasn’t working. You had a night fighter circling you, shooting. How did you feel? Talk to me about it.’ And then he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was already wounded,’ because when they were hit by anti-aircraft fire he was wounded. He had shrapnel which went up between his leg and through his side but they had morphine which they took and they continued to the target. And as the aircraft was being riddled with bullets, you know a couple of people died straightway and there was screaming. I said, ‘Right. So what, was there smoke? Was it dark?’ He said, ‘Oh yeah, it was really smoky and the plane caught on fire.’ ‘And then what?’ You know. Trying to get him to talk because he never talked about his emotions. Never ever talked about his emotions. And he said, ‘Well,’ he said, ‘One of the crew members was badly wounded. I managed to get him to the door and push him out so that he could actually get out and pull his parachute,’ and he said, ‘By which time the plane was started to spiral and he jumped out.’ So, but he took, I mean this was, you know right at the end of his life and even then he still never discussed his emotions. He didn’t say, which is what I would say is, I was absolutely terrified. You know. It was just something he said. So I got him to talk about physically what happened in the plane and the smoke and the confusion and the shouting and the flames etcetera. And then he, he parachuted. And he landed, he was bleeding and he stole a bicycle. He remembered stealing a bicycle and he cycled so trying to get away from villages and find somewhere secluded and he hid in a barn. But with the loss of blood I think he got a bit delirious and he, he lit a cigarette and it was spotted. And he was, he was then captured and he was handed over to the SS for interrogation. They made him walk in the snow without shoes. And, and this is, this is another bit which he told me which I would have loved to have heard this as a child, you know. Bearing in mind he’d written his memoirs and he didn’t mention this detail but I actually said to him, ‘So what happened when they interrogated you?’ He said, well, they were hitting him, you know, punching him. And there was an officer. The officer in charge of this little group of SS men. He said he was a little guy and he kept coming up and smashing him in the stomach with the butt of his rifle and he kept falling and getting up. He decided, ‘I’m going to be killed. I know I’m going to be killed.’ Now, you’ve got to remember that at this stage of his life my dad was six foot five, you know and he was fourteen and half, fifteen stone. Absolutely, you know, in his prime. Very strong. Very muscular. And he said to me because I said to him, ‘Come on. So what did you do? How did you react?’ He said, ‘Well at this stage,’ he said, ‘I decided that the next time he came to hit me I worked out that,’ [pause] I’m sorry to be so graphic but this is what he said. He said, ‘As long as I can get him within reach I can snap his neck before they kill me.’ Because that was his mindset. He thought, last bit of, you know — payback he said and he was determined. He thought, ‘All I need to do is get my hands on him because I know I can snap his neck before I’m killed.’ He said, ‘But as it happened he never came within reach.’ And he would, all he would say, he would give his name and his rank, you know. I’m an officer in the RAF. They couldn’t understand what he was doing in the RAF because he was a black man. And he said, ‘But you’re from Africa. Why are you in an RAF uniform?’ And he said, ‘Well, Sierra Leone is a, is a British colony and I’m fighting for my queen.’ And after this interrogation, brutal as it was, he was then sent to a German hospital where he was treated and then ended up going into a prisoner of war camp for officers. So that was all new. And then it went on because I didn’t let him off then because I wanted to find out what it was like being in, in the camp. I said to him, ‘Well, how did you feel? There were no black people there.’ He said, ‘To be honest with you,’ he said, ‘I only remembered I was black when I looked in the mirror.’ And he always said being in the RAF was his happiest times. He said there was no, no one, the issue of colour never came up. You were just one band of people fighting for the same cause. And, you know, do you want me to go on? Talk about his experiences. Because I wanted to know what life was like in the camp because this was all new to me. You know, I was sitting there thinking, this is my father who I’ve known all my life and I’m hearing these stories as though they’re from a stranger. Because, you know but he seemed willing to open up. You know it was the first time he was willing to open and also I think he perhaps saw me in a different light as well. I was no longer the little boy who just wanted to hear war stories. Now I was interested in my father. I wanted to know what happened. You know. And as you grow old as well and you mature your thought processes change and you start to be a lot more aware of things that may have happened. Which, as a child, well he was in a prisoner of war camp for two years. And I said, ‘Did you know what was going on outside the camp?’ And he said, ‘Yeah,’ he said, they had one chap who was a sort of electronics expert and he was able to put together a little transistor radio just with bits of wire and bits and pieces. So they could monitor what was happening but equally if the guards came they could dismantle it in a second. You know. Someone could take one bit there and some bit so that the guards never knew. But they could follow the progress of the war so they knew the Germans were losing. They knew the Russians were making their way in. They knew the allies were making their way in. So they could follow it. And he said the, your, your obligation as a military person in a prisoner of war camp is always to escape. So he was in a lot of escape committees but of course he could never ever be a person that could escape. Not a chance because the point of escaping was you got out there and you put on civilian clothes.
IT: [unclear] a black man.
HH: He wouldn’t have been —
ES: No.
HH: Exactly invisible.
ES: No. No. So there was no prospect. No prospect of him ever trying to escape but, you know he told me about lots of attempts that they made. And I asked him if the guards were brutal. He said, ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘You know the Germans were like any other types of people. You had some really nice guys. You had some really vicious ones and, and some of them were, were pretty bad.’ He said, he always recalls one incident where one of their guys was, he was throwing up, it wasn’t a ball but something he was, he was just throwing and catching. He threw it and it fell close to the perimeter wall and when he went over to retrieve it he was shot and killed outright by the guard. He said, and that’s the closest they came to rioting, you know. But they just knew that you know the senior officers had to say, ‘Look you just can’t because we will be wiped out. We will just be shot.’ You know. So they clearly saw some pretty horrendous things whilst, whilst they were there. But I think that officers did get treated a little bit better than other people in the, in the, who were in the prisoner of war camp. But because they could monitor the war they, they sort of knew what was happening. They knew that the allies were very, very close. And he said one day they woke up and normally you get, you know a call from the loudspeaker etcetera. There was nothing. There was silence. And they walked out and they thought — the guards are gone.
IT: No guards [laughs]
ES: The guards had just gone. Disappeared. They were on their own. So they all wandered around thinking, well this must be because the allies are close. So for two days they just had to organise themselves. Trying to source food. That was the biggest problem was getting food. They just had to survive and he said, I think it was on the, either the end of the second day or the third day he said the Russians turned up which would account for the guards disappearing. Because had it been the other allies, had it been the western allies — the British and the Americans — slightly different. You know, the Germans would have been, would they themselves would have become prisoners of war. But with the Russians they tended to slaughter.
HH: Yeah.
ES: You know. And, and the Germans knew this.
IT: Wow.
ES: So they just disappeared. And my dad said his first thoughts when he saw them was should we be scared or should we be happy?
HH: Yeah.
ES: He said, because they were like wild men.
IT: Wow.
ES: He said, you know discipline was poor etcetera he said, but actually he said they were really wonderful people. He said this Russian chap, they could give them weapons but what they couldn’t give them was food and this Russian soldier actually put his hand in his pocket and brought out a bit of dried fish and gave it to him. You know. And in his logbook which he kept, although it was very sparse what he had in the logbook, in there were two pages with Russian writing in it and I’d always asked him what it was.
IT: What it was.
ES: And he said, ‘Well, I don’t know,’ he said, ‘A couple of Russians wrote in the, in the logbook. I said, ‘Have you not tried to find out?’ and he said, ‘No. No. You know. I wasn’t really interested.’ But I’ll just jump to something else now before I carry on with that story because I had his logbook and I thought, suddenly thought one day I should find out what’s there. So I took a copy of the two pages and at the time I was working with a company in London and I knew that the floor above us, in the offices were, was a Russian company. And this was in the days before, there weren’t a lot of Russians. I mean there are a lot of Russians in England now but in those days there weren’t many. So I took copies of these, these two, two sheets and I went upstairs to this company and initially I was treated with great suspicion as I walked in and said, ‘Can I speak to anyone here who might speak Russian?’ And he said, ‘Why?’ And I explained what it was and of course his attitude just changed totally and he was fascinated. He said, ‘Well I can’t translate this but if you leave it with me there is someone in the office who will be able to translate it.’ He said, ‘Come back tomorrow,’ and I did. And they were fairly simple inscriptions. One of them was just saying, “It was very nice to meet Officer Smythe.” “It was wonderful to meet someone who was fighting against the Germans,” etcetera. But the more interesting one was from a female lieutenant. Officer. Russian officer. And she said, again, “It’s lovely to meet Officer Smythe. We partied and made merry all night.” So needless to say I never gave that particular translation to my mother [laughs] but that was actually what was in this translation. And I remember, I remember coming, he was staying me in Thame at the time. And I actually remember coming back and I said, ‘Dad, I’ve got something to show you,’ and I just gave him these bits of paper and he read them and he said, ‘What’s this?’ I said, ‘Does it, does it ring any bells? Can you not think —' And he looked at it and he said, ‘No.’ And I said, ‘How about this bit?’ You know, the bit about Officer Smythe. He said, ‘What’s this from?’ I said, ‘That’s a translation from your logbook,’ and this big smile just broke on his face. And he, but he never ever knew, what, what it was.
IT: What it was.
HH: Amazing.
ES: But again that was just something else I had to know. I was very interested in. But going back to the prisoner of war camp they gave them weapons but no food. So they thought right you have to go and find food. So he took a group of men and then went into the villages. Because of course now power has shifted, you know. And again this is a story he told me. Everything he was telling me on this day I had never heard before. But he said he went, he had about four or five men with him and they knocked on this door for — just a house in the village and this German man came to the door. And he said, ‘We want food.’ You know, ‘We haven’t eaten. We need food.’ And this guy said, ‘You’re not coming in here. I’m sorry. We have got nothing for you.’ He said he just put his pistol against his leg and fired and he said, to this day he remembers the smell of burning flesh at short distance. He said but at the time he had no remorse. Didn’t think twice about it and just went in and helped themselves to food. And I didn’t ask him anymore. And he didn’t tell me anymore. You know. And perhaps there was no more to be told but it’s almost you get to the point when you think I won’t ask him. You know. It’s time to leave that particular story alone.
HH: Yeah. I mean those must have been desperate times for them though, you know.
ES: Desperate.
IT: Hungry. Yeah.
HH: I don’t think any of us who have lived through so many decades of social peace can remotely appreciate what it must have been like.
ES: No.
HH: Just coming out of a prisoner of war camp.
IT: Camp.
ES: After two years.
HH: After two years.
IT: It’s interesting though that you said that he didn’t talk about it because you’d probably hear that same story from —
HH: Yeah. It’s quite common.
IT: [unclear] dad because they told me that as well. That their dad hardly spoke about it.
HH: In fact a lot of the interviews that we do with veterans themselves they are in their mid to late nineties and their families report, if they’ve sat in on the interview, ‘This is the first time we’ve ever heard any of this.’ So yeah.
SM: I just wonder whether this has anything to do with the survival training that aircrew, not only aircrew but ground crew, were all taught that if you were caught and you became a prisoner of war the only thing you divulge is your service number. You do not say anything else at all that benefits —
ES: Right.
SM: And whether that is so embedded that even after the war when they can tell the story they still have reluctance.
HH: Still have that.
SM: To share it.
HH: It may be.
SM: Yeah. I also, another point I’d just like to pick up is this question of in todays air force that would be a demotion really. Going on from pilot to navigator. But in fact that was the introduction of the navigator because the air force has gone full circles now and you go in as a navigator and then if you are good enough you could later on train as a pilot.
ES: Right.
IT: Ok. That’s —
SM: Now, with the invention of the GPS system.
ES: Yes.
SM: Complication, we’ve abandoned navigators now. We don’t need them any more.
ES: Yeah. Correct.
SM: Yeah. So it started but it’s gone first circle.
ES: Is it? How interesting.
SM: Yes. And its intriguing for me to know how the navigator really started. You can imagine the wasteful. The waste of the ammunitions.
HH: Yeah.
SM: Not being able to pinpoint your target.
HH: Target. Yeah.
ES: Terrible.
SM: Now we’ve got technical stuff —
ES: Laser guided.
SM: Doing it now and laser guided stuff now.
ES: Yeah.
SM: There are bombs now which you can just fire and forget about it and still hit the target. And the drones.
HH: Yeah.
SM: So now we’ve abolished navigators altogether.
HH: Indeed. And pilots.
ES: Yes. And pilots.
SM: And pilots.
ES: He said —
HH: Yeah.
ES: That when they called them all out when they were, they had finished training camp and they explained the background to the necessity of a navigator. And they said, ‘We are now going to call, to read out a list of names of pilots who will be trained for navigators.’ And he said when he called out his name he just shouted out, ‘Oh damn.’ Because he wanted to fly.
HH: To fly. No.
ES: He didn’t want to navigate.
SM: And the navigators, to be quite honest, had to, were more skilful than a pilot because you were quite right they had to be good at maths because they were the people had to work out time and distance and speed. And feed information to the pilot really. So they were the key people.
IT: Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
SM: Setting targets for people like bomb aimers and the guy who was sat at the back of the aircraft.
ES: Yes.
SM: There were, they were in trouble. They were the first to be hit.
ES: The rear tail gunner.
SM: The rear tail gunner.
ES: His life span was not long.
SM: Yeah.
HH: No.
SM: No. No.
HH: That was the most dangerous position.
IT: One thing I want, I want you to explain is ‘cause I think you found out why, when you woke him up he —
ES: I did.
IT: The reason.
ES: Yes.
IT: That would be an interesting thing.
ES: Well the reason for that and I believe this to be the reason is that he was, when they were being trained they were in a camp in Hastings. That’s where they were being trained to become pilots. And of course the Germans had their, their spies and they knew where these training camps were and it was in their interests to try and kill as many trainees as possible because they were going to become the pilots who were going to bomb them.
SM: Oh yes.
ES: And they actually sent, had a bombing raid on the camp whilst they were there. And they did, they did strike the camp and they killed a number of the trainees and friends and colleagues that he had. And he said it was just devastating, you know. And they got up in the morning and they had to help clear up body parts etcetera. But he said he was woken by the scream, screaming of the planes and the bombs coming down. And I firmly believe, when he told me that story I thought to myself that is why. That is embedded in, embedded in his mind. His mindset for life.
SM: And I think, I think you’re right because that, in fact part of the officer training, that’s a scenario that’s fed into the training system. You go to camp for a week. Ground defence training they call it and part of the scenario is that the camp is being bombed. You’ve got to wake up and sort, you all had pre-determined jobs that you do but you have to react to this imaginary bombing of the camp being attacked. And I’m sure that must have come from way back and embedded as part of the training procedure.
HH: Yeah. Yeah. So he must have been transported back to the UK. Your dad.
ES: Yes.
HH: At the end of the war. Did he go straight back to Sierra Leone?
ES: No. No. In fact he was one of the very few released prisoners who signed up immediately to go back and do another stint. I mean he, you would have thought he’d have had enough by then.
HH: Enough.
ES: But he, he wanted to go. He went back in and then they were, they were being trained to bomb in Japan.
HH: Tiger Force.
SM: Right.
ES: Yeah. And of course before they actually became active the atom bombs were dropped. So he was based in London and he, he ended up, as you know he became a lawyer and a barrister and he went to, he trained as a barrister in Middle Temple in, in London. But as a, as an officer in the RAF he was called upon purely because he was fairly articulate, he was called upon to defend an airman who had committed some crime. So it was a court martial which didn’t require formal legal representation.
IT: Yeah.
ES: But you needed representation. And he was called upon to do it and he did. And he obviously did it quite successfully and he realised that he had a talent. And it was that that persuaded him to go into law because up to that stage he didn’t really know what he was going to do. And that’s one of the reasons he went back in to the RAF. Because he didn’t know what he was going to do, so he was going to stay in the RAF but he knew the war had come to an end. And that’s why he ended up going to law school and he trained and he qualified as a barrister and then he went, well he met my mum while he was in London.
HH: How did he meet your mum? Do you know?
ES: Yes. Do you know, well she was a nurse and, and they met at some sort of function. She’d come over from Grenada. But as a child I remember saying to my dad, ‘How did you meet? How did you meet my mum?’ And he said, ‘Oh I met her, I met her as a dancer in a nightclub.’ Obviously joking and he kind of laughed. But of course I thought this was true. And for years after people used to say to me, ‘How did your dad meet your mum?’ ‘Oh she was a dancer in a club.’ And my mum heard me say this one time. She said, ‘What are you talking about? I was not a dancer. I was a nurse.’ I said, ‘Well that’s what dad said,’ you know. But they met at a function.
IT: Oh my God. Yeah that was [unclear]
ES: And they got married and then he went back and he worked for the government for a while in various forms.
HH: So your mum was from Grenada.
ES: She was from Grenada.
HH: How did she take to Sierra Leone?
ES: Quite difficult initially. It was quite, quite tough, you know. Iyamide will, will know.
IT: Well that’s interesting. Well, I don’t know how it is because my dad’s brother also married a Grenadian and they met here. But that I, well that’s because I was young then so I don’t know even what happened. You know, how —
ES: Well, the thing is my mum’s a white Grenadian.
IT: Well actually Alice was. She was white.
ES: Right. And that carries all sorts of connotations when you get out there and when my —
IT: [unclear] in fact.
ES: Yeah.
IT: Yeah, because obviously two foreign wives being in Sierra Leone and from the same place, you know.
HH: They became friends.
ES: They became friends.
IT: You sort of bond.
HH: Yeah.
IT: And share your, your, you know.
SM: There would have been some cultural differences as well.
ES: There were cultural differences.
SM: Caribbean people in Africa.
ES: Yeah. Yeah. But also when my dad went back to Sierra Leone I mean he was lionised because he came back the war hero, you know.
HH: Instant celebrity.
ES: Exactly. And I think. Now, he was coming back with this woman that he’d married and we’ve kind of lost one of our own dare I say.
IT: Ok.
ES: So you, you know the Bertha Compton’s of this world.
IT: That’s right.
ES: These are, these are people from, from Sierra Leone and my mum had a little bit of difficulty with that but, you know she was a woman of God and she didn’t let things put her off too much. But she was never ever, ever really accepted into the inner sanctum. I mean it’s just how it is, you know, back there. But she had a happy time, you know she grew to love Sierra Leone and she was disappointed when they eventually left.
HH: Now where were you and your siblings born?
ES: In Sierra Leone. All were.
HH: But what was it like growing up with a celebrity father?
ES: You’re not really aware of it.
HH: Or were you not aware of it?
ES: You know. No, you’re not. You’re not really aware of it because it’s like anything else it’s, it’s if you grow up with it it’s the norm you know and it’s just how it is. And to be perfectly honest I never knew how special his life was whilst I was a child at home.
HH: When did that first, when did that first realisation first dawn?
ES: I think it first dawned when [pause] when there were the celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary of the end of, of the war. Suddenly, you know “The Times” were taking a journalist to my father’s house to talk to him. All of a sudden people were ringing up from all the world trying to contact him. And, and also I suppose I was influenced by, by him, you know. I thought his achievements was getting an MBE and an OBE and being a Queen’s Council. Those were his achievements. The war thing was just an aside. He never talked about it. He wasn’t interested in it, you know. And I guess that sort of influenced my thinking but it’s only later on when you start to develop your own thinking that you start to think well hang on a second. What’s actually more important here.
HH: Yeah.
ES: And if you look he wrote, he wrote some memoirs and the war element of it is very short and succinct. Very succinct. But if you go into the legal side of it.
HH: Of course.
ES: Oh there’s lots of information about cases he fought.
IT: [unclear] Wow.
ES: You know. And that’s how he thought and I suspect that’s how we were brought up so —
HH: Have those memoirs been published?
ES: No. No. We’ve got them there.
HH: But you have got them.
ES: Yes we have got them. So, so growing up — not really. I mean in in Sierra Leone you do tend to have a bit of the haves and the have nots. You know, that’s, that’s how it is. And we were fortunate to be in the position where we did have something, you know. But, but no I don’t, I don’t think it was a really, really big thing in shaping us.
SM: And you didn’t, you didn’t sort of get much out of him with his early training. His early RAF training. Prior to actually going on operations at all.
ES: No. No.
SM: No.
ES: And again, you know I think back now and I wish that I had talked to him about all the early days to understand how he, how his training went. I mean as it so happens —
SM: Well it was obviously very successful.
ES: Yeah. And —
SM: Especially being creamed off as a pilot.
IT: Officer. Ok.
SM: To a navigator which was going to save the air ministry or whatever then, a great deal of money not wasting ammunition. Someone spotted it and only the elites would have been given that task.
ES: Yeah.
ES: Yeah. And the other thing is there was —
HH: But he had his initial training in Sierra Leone didn’t he?
ES: Oh he was in the Sierra Leone Defence Force but —
HH: Yeah.
SM: Right. Ok.
ES: But that would have only been just basic military training.
HH: Yeah.
SM: Military stuff.
HH: Yeah.
ES: But there was, I think there was sixty five trainees in the, in the camp and he was one of six that came out as officers. So when he came out he came out as an officer. But I always wish now as I know a lot more about, particularly flying as I subsequently went on to fly myself and I’m a pilot although I fly helicopters as opposed to planes but I have a lot more interest, you know in the training and particularly the navigation which I wasn’t any good at.
SM: Yes. Yes.
ES: You know. And I would love to talk, talk to him more.
SM: Yeah
ES: About all of those details and you know I often sit down and think I wish. I wish. I wish. You know
IT: You wish. Yeah.
ES: You know.
SM: I’ve been —
ES: I only, I only knew a fraction
HH: Yeah
ES: Of the story.
IT: What there was. Yeah.
ES: And even that was hard work.
HH: But it’s wonderful that you have
SM: He would have been an officer because NCOs or airmen just couldn’t become navigators. They were all the officer branch.
HH: Ok.
SM: Yeah. They were all officer branch. So he would have been spotted and so the commission was going to be there as navigator. There could be air gunners and there could be under anything else but they weren’t pilots or navigators until much later on in the war initially.
HH: Right.
SM: So obviously they spotted his talent which was very special.
IT: Uncle [unclear], he was a navigator as well.
HH: How did you come to be in the UK having grown up in Sierra Leone?
ES: Sierra Leone. Well, basically if you, if you could afford it most parents sent their children to either the UK or America. To study.
HH: For education.
ES: For education. And I came over with the rest of my siblings really at different stages to the UK to study. With the intention of going back. It had always been the intention was to go back but of course Sierra Leone did spiral down, downwards with the war and everything etcetera. And of course, you know I came here and I studied and I met someone. And I basically put my roots down. And —
HH: As one does when one meets someone.
SM: Yes.
IT: Yes.
ES: Absolutely. So —
HH: Yeah.
ES: So my life, very much was here.
SM: Yes.
HH: Yeah.
ES: And whilst I still enjoy going back to Sierra Leone.
HH: So how long have you been living here now then, Eddy?
ES: I’m going to have to work this out now very carefully. Because I am fifty eight and I came over when I was seventeen.
HH: Wow.
ES: So, thirty one —
HH: Almost long enough to be considered British actually.
ES: Well I’ve got —
[laughter]
IT: Finally.
SM: Finally.
ES: I’m not going to be making any comment on that one [laughs] that’s going to take us in a totally different direction so [laughs]. So I won’t comment on that. But yeah, you know my wife is British and my children are British. So —
HH: Yeah. Yeah.
ES: You know.
HH: Let’s talk a little bit because I want to talk to both of you now. You and Iyamide about the importance of making some of these incredible contributions from people like your father more public. And sort of, do you [pause] making people more aware or, or encouraging people to take more interest in these kinds of stories. And perhaps, perhaps you can talk a little bit about why you were moved to, to write about this and to publicise these stories Iyamide.
IT: Well, first of all you know we have a black history month in England where they focus on various aspects of black history only in October. That’s when some of these stories or achievements by black people or their, their contribution to, to the United Kingdom comes up. But I think it should be much wider than that, you know. I mean black history month is one month. I think it’s important for our young people especially young black boys who need a lot of encouragement and mentoring and they need to know that there were war heroes and people from way back who contributed to this country. So that has always kind of been my, my aim. To get these stories out. Especially since I was privileged enough growing up to know Eddy’s dad as well as another RAF navigator who I was neighbours with. So, and I only heard these stories, I mean growing up I knew that they’d been in the army or whatever. But it was only much later that I, I, I actually knew about what Eddy’s dad had achieved. I knew more about uncle [unclear] because he actually showed me his bullet wound. You know, when I was growing up. But I’ve been corrected. It’s not a bullet. It’s shrapnel.
ES: Shrapnel.
IT: Yes.
ES: Yes.
IT: This is the only time I’m hearing that your dad was actually shot as well. I knew they shot the plane but I couldn’t remember that he was wounded as well. So you know —
ES: He was very much wounded. Yes.
IT: These are two I know. Never mind Uncle [unclear] . But it’s really important because I think it helps the young people know that they can achieve. I know somebody in the RAF whose probably, I’m talking about Ronald Carew.
ES: Yes.
IT: Who joined the RAF because he’d heard the stories about Johnny Smythe so it’s always encouraging I think to tell these, these stories because they don’t get told. You see all the commemorations they do for World War One, World War Two. All the poppies on Poppy Day and all this sort of thing and you hardly see any black people in the audience or in the congregation. Because I was looking at the church service they had. They might, they might invite the odd, you know, ambassador or high commissioner but really these stories have to go wider than that. Which is why because I have a lot of media connections we did, Eddy and I actually went on one of the TV stations and spoke about his dad and I spoke about [unclear] This was during the Japanese, was it about two years ago?
ES: Yes.
IT: There were commemorating something in Japan. I can’t even remember, you know. And we needed to get those stories out there really. And I’m so glad that the advert went into “The Voice” which is how I got in contact with you. I saw the advert in “The Voice” newspaper and thought — right.
HH: That was you.
IT: Yeah.
SM: I got that in “The Voice”.
IT: And I saw it. That’s when I phoned up.
SM: My second son is a production agent for a couple of financial magazines.
IT: Ok.
SM: And he knows the sub-editor of “The Voice”.
IT: Of “The Voice”. Yeah.
SM: And I also met Roddick at a Jamaica diaspora conference.
IT: Ok.
SM: I actually introduced myself and managed to get it. I’d love to do another story. Get somebody else in “The Voice” but we need a story around it for them to —
IT: That’s what, you know, I happened to buy by that copy of “The Voice” because I could very well have missed it, you know and I read it and thought, in fact that picture was there and I thought oh they used the same picture I used in the —
SM: Yes. Yeah.
IT: In the, you know the “Black History Month” magazine. And I thought ok let me phone, you know, let me phone up and tell them there are two RAF people I know and you should get their story. And here we are today really. So that’s really it. And I do a lot of heritage stuff as well around Sierra Leonean heritage and the history between Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom because it has a very unique history.
SM: I’m pleased you talked about that because I think the MOD in general have missed a trick in not doing what you’ve done because over the years I’ve, certainly since my retirement from the air force I’ve gone to London and Birmingham and talked to youngsters about my career, about the service and about what things were like in the early days. And how we had to sort of actually develop strategies to survive. [unclear] of National Service. Went in kicking and screaming. The rules that were then that if you were domiciled in a colony that had not yet achieved independence once you are living in the UK for two years you’re deemed to be eligible as someone born in the UK. A lot of my countrymen, ‘cause four of us came up together as single guys, kept changing addresses because National Service was due to be abolished.
IT: Oh.
SM: And I said to my wife who was my girlfriend then Gwen had been over a year before me that I’ll just go home again because the whole idea of coming to England was to work, save some money and go back.
IT: And then go back home.
SM: Not to live permanently.
IT: Just stay here.
SM: And she says, ‘Well if it’s going to be abolished let’s get married. And if you tell them you’re getting married they’ll probably forget about you.’
IT: Won’t call you.
SM: So we did this sort of trick. So I postponed, we postponed the wedding twice. And on the third occasion they said sorry, you’ve had two postponements.
[laughter]
IT: You had to marry her or ditch her [laughs]
SM: That was it. And went in kicking and screaming and signed on and on and on. But I’ve identified over the years the number of mentoring work that I did through my RAF service. When I came out there was a lot of ignorance about it. And I was part of a contingent, a tri-service trying to recruit more black and ethnic minorities into the service. And I continued that work when I came out just giving and giving motivational chats. But I’ve never looked at it about helping the MOD to recruit but in fact that’s what was happening. And the Jamaican government recognised it and they put a different spin on it and thought I was just helping the Jamaican diaspora. Which I attended conferences and I’m on a database. And in 2011 the high commissioner had written to Jamaica and I was invited by the Jamaican government and awarded a badge of honour for meritorious service for my community work with Jamaican diaspora.
HH: Ok. Wow.
SM: To the UK. So you’re doing these things sometimes, without. I didn’t fully really appreciate it until just looking back that it was helping the MOD because feedback I used to get from youngsters with email and so on saying thank you for, you know, what you did. I don’t know how far they’ve taken it but I did this quite a lot. I retired in ’87. And part of my voluntary work was to talk about various community activities.
HH: [unclear]
SM: As we were telling this morning, in 2014 which was the hundred years of the First World War I gave a series of lectures about the contributions made by Indians and Caribbeans.
IT: Yes.
SM: During the First World War to the University of the Third Age and various people. But I’ve, because once you do one people tell you about it.
IT: Anything. Yes. Yes.
SM: I just raise funds and donate it to whatever charity I fancy. And I am still involved. My focus is now more on Bomber Command internationals so I’m booked up to give two or three talks on that. Promoting that.
IT: I mean, one of the interesting things, even though you said, you know within the RAF that people were like brothers you know. Or they didn’t know about colour and all that. It’s interesting that I’ve heard stories of a lot of discrimination that happened once some of them went back, you know, in the colonies. That, you know and there was a particular case this was from the First World War where he went he was commissioned as an officer, a medical officer he was one of these ones and when he went back they wanted him to remove his, all his commissioning, you know the regalia because they didn’t want white officers to salute him, you know. But he refused. I mean this was another article I wrote in one of the oh I got a commission, I don’t know who commissioned that article. But there was still a lot of discrimination from the colonies.
SM: Oh yes.
IT: To people who had served Britain. You know. Yeah.
HH: Yeah.
IT: Yeah. You know. They, never mind you’d gone and laid your life.
HH: I think it, I mean we’ve also picked up variable stories of experiences within RAF Bomber Command at the time. You know, some, some people were accepted like your dad and just treated as, I mean crew were like family quite often. You know.
SM: Yes. Yeah.
HH: And accepted because they all depended so much on each other.
IT: On each other.
SM: On each other.
IT: Yes. Yes.
HH: And others you know did report stories of, of discrimination.
IT: Discrimination.
HH: So I think it was again, like you said earlier, there were good and bad in every context and —
ES: So you had the sort of stories in the RAF. Right. Interesting.
SM: Oh yes. And of course, even coming up to the current time. I was giving one or two examples earlier this morning of my personal experiences of what went on. And I tried to and, and right across the rank structure. There were good [unclear] you had the odd guy and some of it is a lack of education. Because part of the recruiting because I did recruiting for a while, recruiting officer.
HH: Ok.
SM: Is that two things stood out. You try to elicit from people when you’re interviewing how do they relate to the services? So, for example, when I was recruiting was at the height of the IRA troubles. And I remember interviewing someone who had been living in England for about eighteen months. Ex-northern Ireland. And I said, ‘Do you realise if you come into the Royal Air Force you can be stationed anywhere,’ you know, and the trouble spots because in peacetime we’re training for war. So you could be sent to the Falklands, you could be sent to Northern Ireland or the troubles. And this guy with a gleam in his eye saying, ‘I wouldn’t mind Northern Ireland because I’ve grown up seeing all the war and it will give me my opportunity to fight.’ Needless to say I didn’t recruit him. He was so bigoted and so set.
IT: Yeah.
SM: On taking revenge.
IT: Yeah. Yeah.
SM: You know. So it starts from there and I was, there was a story we got this Royal Marine [unclear] and I’m thinking what sort of recruitment happened? Why did they not spot that this guy still had a grievance?
IT: A grievance. Yes.
SM: He was joining the Marines just to make sure he can exploit weapons. And he did this for all this period of time and they didn’t spot it.
IT: [unclear]
SM: With all the services it starts with initial recruitment. The extent to which, how deep you wanted it go to make sure. You fail from time to time because we are all human beings. We are flawed. You are never going to get it right but it should be robust enough to weed out people who you think come at you with a completely different agenda.
ES: You know how my dad telling me in the RAF they’re quite superstitious.
IT: Are they?
ES: And they, they whenever he was assigned to this, you know the crews change. You didn’t always fly with the exact same crew. And they loved flying with him. And the reason they loved flying with him is because he always came back. Because as you know, I mean in Bomber Command in those day if you did thirty missions. If you survived thirty missions you were out.
SM: You were exempt unless you wanted to carry on.
ES: Exactly.
SM: Yes. Yeah.
ES: Because very very few people —
HH: Did.
ES: Made thirty.
SM: Survived, yeah.
ES: And of course there he was coming back every single time.
IT: Time. Fly with him.
ES: You know, got twenty seven. We’ve got to fly with this guy because he’s got some sort of, you know there’s something about him.
HH: So, in a way he became a sort of lucky mascot.
SM: Yes.
ES: He was a lucky mascot. They loved flying with him because he kept coming back. And he said —
HH: How interesting.
ES: You know he’d fly with someone today. That person would go and fly a different plane tomorrow and be shot down. And he’d started to think I’m going to get to thirty. You know, and of course he got to twenty eight.
SM: To go to thirty he would have got there very quickly.
ES: Yes. Got to twenty eight.
HH: And the amazing thing is that even though he didn’t complete that tour he still survived.
ES: Yeah. He survived.
SM: Yes. Amazing.
HH: You know, I mean he was able to parachute out.
IT: I know.
HH: Under all those terrible conditions.
ES: Yes. Well, you know —
HH: And survived.
ES: You know he said he didn’t realise he was shot. In the late eighties he had a lot of problems, bowel problems and he came over to England for some investigations and they did a lot of x-rays etcetera and they said, ‘This is very strange.’ And he said, ‘What’s the problem?’ They said, ‘You’ve got a bit of metal in the lining of your gut.’ And he had shrapnel.
SM: Shrapnel. Lodged.
ES: Still lodged in his gut.
SM: Good lord.
ES: And they fed him a barium meal with magnets and he ate this and then the magnets pulled the metal into the inside so he could pass it.
IT: Wow.
ES: So he was very much shot.
HH: Shrapnel.
SM: What a story.
HH: Gosh. What a story.
ES: And he, when he was in Sierra Leone he, his practice, his legal practice used to represent most of the embassies out there and whenever the British embassy, they used to have their cocktail parties and they’d invite all the [pause] all the diplomats he always got invited as the lawyer. And he was telling me this fantastic incident at one of the cocktail parties. He ended up talking to the German ambassador and they were chatting and he said, you know they soon established that they were both in the air force during the war. And he thought, ‘Were you really?’ And he was in fighter. He was in the Luftwaffe. He was a fighter pilot. And my Dad said, ‘Incredible,’ you know, ‘I was in the RAF.’ And they chatted and then he said I got shot down. He gave him the date he got shot down. This bloke paled. He said, ‘Tell me the date again.’ And he told him the date. He said, ‘And where exactly was it?’ And he told him where it was.
IT: I remember you saying.
ES: And he said, ‘I can’t believe this.’ He was, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘On that day I shot down a bomber and it is, it was a kill that was credited to me.’ And I said to my dad, ‘What did you do?’ He said, ‘We looked at each stunned, went and got a drink, and celebrated.’
SM: Yes.
ES: And patted each other around the back. They couldn’t believe it.
IT: I remember you saying.
ES: And they were trying to pinpoint, he was trying to establish, he said, ‘Was the bomber damaged?’ Which of course they had a smoking engine and he couldn’t remember that. He said, ‘Well, I can’t remember that. What I do know is I got a kill on that night.’ So there was a reasonable prospect that he shot him down.
SM: Yes.
IT: It could have been the same plane.
HH: Imagine. The coincidence.
IT: I remember you saying that. That is just —
ES: The coincidence. And the feeling of almost bonding. Because I said, ‘Well didn’t you, how did you feel about it?’ He said it was just a wonderful experience. So I had to think about that a bit.
HH: It kind of reminds you though that, that under those sort of wartime conditions it wasn’t anything personal.
ES: Personal.
SM: No.
ES: Yeah. Yeah. It wasn’t personal.
SM: Never is.
HH: Yeah. Eddy that was a wonderful story to end with because I think what we will do now is end the audio recording.
ES: Ok.
HH: And thank you so much because you’ve given us so many stories we haven’t heard before.
IT: I know. Even I haven’t heard them before.
HH: It was so extraordinary.
ES: You’re very welcome.
HH: And we’re just so grateful to you for, for sharing them all with us.
IT: Fantastic.
HH: And so if we, if we stop the audio recording now.
SM: Just before we go.
ES: Just, yes.
SM: Just a point before you go. Was he a religious man? Many of us from the Caribbean was such a place your faith tended to be central to your life in a way.
ES: I, I would say he wasn’t terribly religious. My mother was so he did attend church etcetera but latterly, in fairness he did become more religious which did surprise me. He did surprise me. And thank you very much for listening to the stories and thank you for getting the stories out there. That’s just wonderful thank you.
HH: Well thank you.
IT: Doing it I said to myself I know I did the checks to make sure that that thing is on because I didn’t want to, you know —
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 Eddy Smythe. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Heather Hughes
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-02
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ASmytheE170802-01, PSmythE1701
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Format
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00:54:45 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Second generation
Description
An account of the resource
Eddy Smythe’s father, Johnny Smythe was a navigator on a Lancaster. He was originally from Sierra Leonne. On one operation he was injured when anti-aircraft fire damaged the aircraft but they continued to target. One engine had been damaged and so was easy prey for the night fighter that shot them down. Johnny parachuted out of the aircraft over Germany and became a prisoner of war. After the war he did not talk about his experiences despite his son’s evident curiosity. It was only much later on in life that Johnny started to talk about what happened during his interrogation and during his time as a prisoner of war. Eddy relates the information that was told to him and how it felt to have missed the chance to talk more about these experiences.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Sierra Leone
Great Britain
Germany
African heritage
aircrew
bale out
Lancaster
navigator
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
shot down
superstition
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/545/8776/PSmytheE1701.2.jpg
742a20ab96dbb7a32a4f6a88b5935e69
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
Smythe, Eddy
Eddy Smythe
E Smythe
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. A photograph and two oral history interviews with Eddy Smythe about his father, John Henry Smythe (1915-1996, 144608 Royal Air Force) who served as a navigator in Bomber Command.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-08-02
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
Smythe, E
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
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Good afternoon. My name is Eddy Smythe. My father was John Smythe. He was a Sierra Leonian who came over from Sierra Leone to join the RAF in 1941. At that time Sierra Leone was part of the British Commonwealth and he had absolutely no hesitation in volunteering to join the war effort to fight for his country and to fight for his Queen. He saw service for two and a half years. He was shot down and was a prisoner of war for two years. When he was finally released he went back to London and he studied to become a barrister. He qualified and went back to Sierra Leone and set up a legal practice there. He went on to act for most of the embassies in Freetown at that time being as his firm was one of the largest practises at that particular time and he quite often attended cocktail parties and various other functions held by these embassies, most notably the British Embassy. And there was one particular occasion when he was at a party and ended up chatting to the German Ambassador. They both established that they were in their respective Air Forces during the war. My father was in Bomber Command and the German Ambassador was in Fighter Command. So they chatted for quite a while and they shared various stories and my father said his flying came to an end when his plane was shot down over Germany on a particular day, a particular month and a particular year. And the German Ambassador went silent and he said, ‘Can you tell me the exact date again and the exact time?’ Which my father did, and he said, ‘Can you tell me exactly where the plane was shot down? Are you able to tell me the coordinates?’ And of course, my father did. You know, he’d never forget those sort of details. And at this point there was silence and the German Ambassador paled visibly and he said, ‘You’re not going to believe this but at that exact time I was flying in that location and I shot down a British bomber and it is logged as a kill to me.’ And my dad said they both looked at each other. They were both speechless for a few seconds and they threw their arms around each other, hugged each other, went off and had a drink and celebrated the event. When he told me this story I was much younger and of course and I thought, ‘Well, how could you react like that? Surely you were cross being shot down.’ He said, ‘No. Not at all. He did what he had to do. I did what I had to do.’ He said, ‘We actually celebrated the circumstance.’ So, as I said I could have told you a few stories but that’s one which I think is quite a nice story to tell and I am really pleased to have the opportunity to tell the story. Its not very often that I can do and I think it is important that the story is told because it helps to demonstrate the significant effort that was made by people like me dad from all over the Commonwealth towards the war effort. So thank you very much.
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Title
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Interview with Eddy Smythe. Two
Description
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Eddy Smythe reminisces about his father, John Henry Smythe, who was from Sierra Leone and served in Bomber Command during the Second World War. John flew as a navigator until his aircraft was shot down in November 1943. He became a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft 1 until 1945. After his release John went to London and trained as a barrister. Upon completion of his professional training, he returned to Freetown, Sierra Leone and set up a legal practice. He rose to be Sierra Leone’s Attorney General. One evening, he met the German Ambassador at a reception. They realised they were aircrew on opposing sides, and the Ambassador shot down an aircraft on the same date and time and in the same location that John’s aircraft had been shot down. This prompted the two men to hug each other and to note that the conditions of war meant that such aggressive acts were not personal. Eddy adds final remarks on the value of remembrance and reconciliation.
<p>This content is available as embedded video:</p>
<p><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qii8uexPQXE?rel=0&showinfo=0&start=2" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>
Creator
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Heather Hughes
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Format
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00:04:04 video recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Moving image
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone--Freetown
Date
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2017-08-02
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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PSmytheE1701
Contributor
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Julie Williams
aircrew
bombing
navigator
perception of bombing war
prisoner of war
Stalag Luft 1