1
25
38
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2573/44630/BUreILUreILv1.2.pdf
33ef94d4b6b42cee0b9e403dc49f120a
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
Ure, Ivan Lochlyn
I L Ure
Description
An account of the resource
27 items. The collection concerns Ivan Lochlyn Ure (b. 1922, 1323004 Royal Air Force) and contains his memoirs, prisoner of war log, correspondence, documents, and photographs. He flew operations as an air gunner with 10 Squadron before he became a prisoner of war.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Tim and Heather Wright and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-08-15
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Ure, IL
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
... just ... Chapters in a Life .. and some History
Description
An account of the resource
A detailed autobiography by Ivan Ure.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ivan Ure
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Isle of Wight
Norway
Scotland--Argyllshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Sussex
England--Westbourne (West Sussex)
England--London
England--Hayling Island
England--Evenley
England--Somerset
England--Blackpool
Germany
Germany--Mannheim
Germany--Nuremberg
France
France--Abbeville
France--Paris
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Poland
Poland--Gdańsk
Lithuania
Lithuania--Šilutė
Lithuania--Klaipėda
Poland--Szczecin
Poland--Białogard
Poland--Pyrzyce (Powiat)
Germany--Lauenburg
Germany--Lüneburg
Germany--Rheine
England--London
Germany--Dresden
Ireland
Ireland--Dublin
Ireland--Cork
Austria
Austria--Vienna
Libya
Libya--Tripoli
Libya--Banghāzī
Egypt
Egypt--Cairo
Egypt--Jīzah
Egypt--Port Said
Kuwait
Bahrain
Iran
Iran--Tehran
Scotland--Oban
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
Polskie Siły Powietrzne
Royal Navy
Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht. Luftwaffe
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Canadian Air Force
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Format
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140 printed sheets
Identifier
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BUreILUreILv1
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
10 Squadron
4 Group
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bale out
Blenheim
bomb aimer
Botha
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
Defiant
ditching
Dominie
Dulag Luft
entertainment
flight engineer
Goldfish Club
ground personnel
Halifax
Hampden
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
Hurricane
Ju 88
Lancaster
Lysander
Me 109
Me 110
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
navigator
Operational Training Unit
perception of bombing war
physical training
pilot
prisoner of war
Proctor
radar
RAF Barrow in Furness
RAF Brize Norton
RAF Cosford
RAF Hendon
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Madley
RAF Marston Moor
RAF Melbourne
RAF Padgate
RAF Sywell
RAF Uxbridge
RAF Yatesbury
Red Cross
Spitfire
sport
Stalag Luft 1
Stalag Luft 4
Stalag Luft 6
Stirling
the long march
training
Typhoon
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1059/17858/BCuthillMSFHCuthillMSFHv1.2.pdf
d66316de5999379fe68c605357542a50
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
Cuthill, Margaret
Margaret Scott Foster Harper Cuthill
M S F H Cuthill
Description
An account of the resource
10 items. An oral history interview with Leading Aircraftswoman Margaret Cuthill (b. 1926, 2151005 Royal Air Force) (nee Logan), a written memoir, her service and release book and seven photographs. She served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force from May 1944 to October 1947 as a teleprinter operator.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Margaret Cuthill and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-12-13
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
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Cuthill, MSFH
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[blank page]
[page break]
[underlined] Oct 09 [/underlined]
[underlined] 1944/47 WAAF Life & after [/underlined]
Aged about 17yrs old I befriended a girl named Doreen at the Red Cross evening class One day she said I've volunteered for the WAAF as a Radar Operator, later on I began to feel I would like to join & train as a Nursing Orderly, but you needed to be 18yrs old & I was 17yrs & 9mths – I couldn't wait. I asked my parents if they would allow me to volunteer – they didn't mind.
[page break]
[underlined] 2. [/underlined]
So I went ahead and at the recruiting office in George St Edinburgh I was [deleted] recruited [/deleted] enrolled as a Teleprinter Operator & was off to Wilmslow training camp for 4wks on 24th May 1944.
There we were kitted out with all our uniforms, taught Service discipline, & about all ranks in the RAF, respecting your seniors, saluting officers at all times.
Our drilling & PE came rather tough for us not being use to all that exercise, but gradually
[page break]
[underlined] 3. [/underlined]
became accustomed to it. (we had to).
I soon settled down to life in a Nissen Hut. After 4wks I learned to mix in with about a dozen girls from all walks of life & many parts of the UK. I felt a little home-sick at odd times but I was accustomed to living away from home.
We were not allowed out of camp for 4wks. We were taken out on two occasions as a group & marched into Wilmslow town – to the YMCA.
[page break]
[underlined] 4 [/underlined]
Our [deleted] were [/deleted] pay parade every fortnight & you had to be well turned out – because the beady eyes of the Pay Officer [inserted] women got £3 [/inserted] Some girls went wild not having been [deleted] with [/deleted] in men's company for wks. There were two girls who broke out of camp – the disciplin [sic] was peeling potatoes & washing & cleaning ablutions (toilets) for 2 days.
After finishing Elementary Training at Wilmslow, I was posted to RAF Cranwell on a Signals Course as a Teleprinter Operator I loved the life there for 10wks. June/Jul/Aug. A very good summer
[page break]
[underlined] 5. [/underlined]
I was billetted in a married quarters house 3 girls to 1 room – not alot [sic] of space. The Sgt in charge of our house was the WAAF [deleted] Band leader [/deleted] Drum Major [deleted] on the drums [/deleted]. She was a superb person, elegant – suited her position – fair hair & tall & attractive
Our house was on the edge of the airfield – there were light aircraft trainers – we use to sit in the garden watching them. It was all very new – not having seen the flying before. (me)
[page break]
[underlined] 6 [/underlined]
The Teleprinter Operators marched to [inserted] (over TANOY) [sic] [/inserted] music [inserted] to work [/inserted] & typed to music, there [inserted] fore [/inserted] becoming touch typists The camp was not far from Sleaford – a small village/town where we would walk to the shops [inserted] and railway station [/inserted] There was plenty of entertainment on camp. On Sat evenings there was always a dance held in the Appretices [sic] Gym Hall with their own Band. Their signature tune was "You Take The 'A' Train". I loved it, – I had an Apprentice friend, but
[page break]
[underlined] 7 [/underlined]
I can't remember his name. He gave me a cap badge – it was the Apprentice Wheel – which I attached to my handbag – but that was lost. He was a very nice young fellow, several months younger than me at just 18yrs old.
Our T/Course finished mid Aug & we then had an end of Course parade in front of Cranwell College where there was a vast parade ground. Our
[page break]
8
Air Commandant of the WAAF "Lady Walsh" took the Salute while the various Apprentices Bands played and others.
Cranwell was a happy time for me in the WAAF.
From Cranwell I was posted to:- 14 MU Carlisle (Maintenance Unit). We were given 7 days leave from end of Course – so I travelled from Edinburgh to Carlisle
[page break]
[underlined] 9. [/underlined]
My train journey turned out to be a bit of a disaster. The train was rather long & mostly full of service personell [sic] – so when we arrived at Carlisle Station – I was all set to get off but being in one of the two end carriages we were not by a platform & the train pulled away I was devastated all but tears, but there were plenty of comforters – male & female around – so my journey continued to [deleted] Pre [/deleted] York.
[page break]
[underlined] 10 [/underlined]
On my return to Carlisle there are always Military Police by the gate – so I had to explain to them in order to use the transport – & [inserted] on [/inserted] arrival face the Station Warrant Officer – who starts bellowing at you about alot "bull" not a very good welcome I learned later that his nickname was "SPAM"
The Signals Section was large & accommodated many teleprinters – cable & post office machines. So we served many small units around [inserted] SE [/inserted] & Carlisle Post Office
[page break]
11.
We had civilian supervisors that is where I earned my LACW. (Leading Aircraft Woman.)
We lived in Nissen Huts about 14-16 girls. Our heating was a large coke stove in the middle of the Hut. Our beds wrought iron unsprung & 3 horse hair biscuits like large flat cushions [inserted] 2 [/inserted] white coarse sheets & 3 very rough grey blankets. 1 bolster pillow looking more like a draught excluder.
[page break]
[underlined] 12 [/underlined]
The ablutions were about – 50yds away – Baths were limited in as much as they wer [sic] always occupied [underlined] or [/underlined] there [deleted] was [/deleted] were no plugs.
The NAAFI was quite good –
We had a number of W/Indian lads there – they usually worked in the workshops – sometimes on your way into the NAAFI in the winter evenings you got [inserted] a [/inserted] scare from a few of them hanging around the entrance – black faces & white eyes piering [sic] at you.
[page break]
13
There I played netball & got my little finger (pinky) of my right hand bent.
I joined the EVT Classes Education & Vocation Training I made a leather writing case – with thonging all around the edge & a zip. My friend Mary and I use to go out to Carlisle quite a lot – to Cinema & also there was marvellous new NAAFI Club – lots of entertainment & lots boys aircrew – was the attraction. I became friendly with a fellow called Peter – he was posted into 14 MU with
[page break]
[underlined] 14 [/underlined]
many others aircrew – [deleted] he was [/deleted] they were made redundant at the end of their course – he was a navigator. I was friendly with him for a while and then he was posted away to Stafford. He came up to Edinburgh for a long weekend & met my parents, John & Renee in So Queensferry.
He had mentioned about me going over to Longtown not far from Carlisle to meet his mother however it just happened that we met by accident in Carlisle but I got the feeling I was not welcome –
[page break]
[underlined] 15. [/underlined]
There were a group of airmen & WAAF who always gathered round a table in the NAAFI – including Peter – also there was an Airman very much senior to [inserted] all of [/inserted] us & distinguished so there were lots of discussions going on. However many years later in Cirencester with Anne, Linda & a bump, I saw this man whom we named the Professor – I felt annoyed with myself for not making myself present with my family.
"that is me" –
[page break]
[underlined] 16 [/underlined]
At Carlisle we had a number of Jamacians [sic] on Camp – they all seem to fit in well & off [sic] course the girls loved to jitter bug with them (at least some of the girls).
Sometimes they wer [sic] a bit scary in the dark on our way to the NAAFI.
Our Signals Section was supervised by civilians. One of the supervisors invited Mary & me to her home in Carlisle where she lived with her mother very comfortably. She invited us to have a bath & meal & then took
[page break]
[underlined] 15 [/underlined][sic]
us to the cinema – we saw "Song of Bernadette (Jennifer Jones) I loved watching her (mainly about life in a Convent). We both thoroughly enjoyed our Sups generosity.
On 'D' Day 45' some of us WAAF stood or sat on one of those long trailer's called a Queen Mary. (a bit like one of our long car trailers we have today 2000) parading through Carlisle. (not very enjoyable).
In camp we were given a special meal served by officers
[page break]
[underlined] 16 [/underlined][sic]
& all the boys were given a cigar. Next to our camp was a small airfield 15 EFTS Kingston. They trained on "tiger moths". The Pub in Kingston was the first time I had a drink with the girls – a shandy which I disliked.
During my time in the WAAF I never went out drinking [inserted] or [/inserted] even after.
I 1946 I was posted to 90 Group Egginton Hall Derbyshire – a large country house – with a river
[page break]
[underlined] 17 [/underlined]
running through the estate. The story went that there was a ghost "A White Lady". I never saw her. – but felt nervous at times when we would have to walk by that area where she was suppose [sic] to be on our way to evening / or night shift.
Not many personnel on the station. Our Sigs Office was what would have been a servants bedroom – level with the courtyard.
There were a small number of Italian prisoners there wandering around sweeping up etc Sometimes I would push open
[page break]
[underlined] 18. [/underlined]
my [inserted] (sash) [/inserted] window level with the ground & have a chat with them.
My frind [sic] Joan was Telephonist there She liked classical music. Sometimes [inserted] we [/inserted] would [inserted] go [/inserted] into the Reading Room where you could play records. Joan liked 'Corgi [sic] & Bess' but next time we found it broken. Our nearest town was Derby for entertainment & Market Drayton was walking distance
In camp some of the girls & RAF would go moonlight bathing in the river.
I played table tennis there.
[page break]
[underlined] 19 [/underlined]
I was there for 6 months While there for a few months I was made an Acting Corporal on temp basis while they awaited a permanent one. I wasn't exactly happy – felt to [sic] conscious. However it was only a few mths. from there I was posted to 16 MU Stafford & Handforth near to Wilmslow Where I trained for the WAAF. It was a very scattered station
We lived in groups of wooden huts – isolated from our place of work
[page break]
[underlined] 20 [/underlined]
This was 1946/47 – the very bad winter where everything froze. We use to fill a pan with ice to heat [inserted] it [/inserted] up for my hot water bottle – which four of us would share the [indecipherable word] warm water to wash in a.m.
Each day a truck called a 15 tonner with seats & cover would collect us for work 800 hrs.
The ablutions were about 200yds up a slope from our huts. They were all frozen & baths
[page break]
[underlined] 21 [/underlined]
As you can imagine desperation for baths etc
Whilst living there Mary & I went to Bell [sic] Vue stadium to watch the Scramble dirt track racing. It was at this camp I had my purse stolen from my bedside locker. It upset me, mainly because the purse was a gift from an Uncle of mine & was suede in the shape of an old style lum hat. I became frindly [sic] with a Cpl there for a short time – He wanted to be serious & said we could make a go of it, but
[page break]
[underlined] 22 [/underlined]
I said no, I'm still very young & finished He was much older than me by about 8yrs. He came from Mersey. I was demobed [sic] from there Oct 1947.
Our Signals Officer – gave me a very nice report.
After WAAF life – I lived at home for a short time while I worked at Romains [sic] & Patersons in Princess St, Edinburgh for some months with their firm in Boston doing the [deleted] Ex [/deleted] Export work.
[page break]
[underlined] 23 [/underlined]
Still trying to find a job as a Teleprinter Operator. Then I found a job as a Dictaphone Opr at Bruce Peebles engineering firm, for a short time & then a job as a Teleprinter Opr MOD 'Redbrae' Prestwick. All these jobs while short term, I quite liked them – I didn't ever feel settled but I made friends, & from there I met Dad in Edinburgh & the rest is history.
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
1944/47 WAAF Life and After
Description
An account of the resource
Margaret Cuthill's account of her time in the WAAF. At the age of 17 she volunteered for the WAAF and was enrolled as a teleprinter operator. She was sent to Wilmslow for training. After four weeks of drill and physical exercise she was posted to Cranwell on a signals course. Work was interesting and there was plenty of social life. After training she was sent to a maintenance unit at Carlisle.
After the war she was posted to Eggington Hall in Derbyshire, then Handforth. She returned to Edinburgh and worked for civilian firms before becoming a teleprinter operator at Prestwick.
This item was provided, in digital form, by a third-party organisation which used technical specifications and operational protocols that may differ from those used by the IBCC Digital Archive.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Margaret Cuthill
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009-10
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
28 handwritten pages
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BCuthillMSFHCuthillMSFHv1
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Jamaica
England--Carlisle
England--Cirencester
England--Derbyshire
England--Handforth
England--Lincolnshire
England--Longtown (Cumbria)
England--Stafford
England--Wilmslow
England--York
Scotland--Edinburgh
Scotland--Prestwick
England--Cheshire
England--Cumberland
England--Gloucestershire
England--Staffordshire
England--Yorkshire
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Angela Gaffney
African heritage
aircrew
entertainment
ground personnel
military living conditions
navigator
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
Nissen hut
physical training
RAF Cranwell
sanitation
sport
Tiger Moth
training
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1252/17031/PCheshireGL1840.2.jpg
150219350b691678430f5d42ddcbcc5e
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
Cheshire, Leonard
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard
Baron Cheshire
Description
An account of the resource
374 items concerning Group Captain Leonard Cheshire VC, OM, DSO & Two Bars, DFC. Collection consists of photographs of people, vehicles, places, aircraft, weapons and targets; documents including, private and service letters, signals, telegrams, intelligence reports, crew lists and official documents. Cheshire served on 102 and 35 Squadrons and commanded 76 and 617 Squadrons. The collection includes details of 617 Squadron's precision bombing operations. Also included are two sub-collections: one containing 21 photographs of Tinian and Saipan, the other consisting of 37 audio tapes of speeches given by Cheshire after the war.
The collection has been licenced to the IBCC Digital Archive by The Leonard Cheshire Archive and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is property of the Leonard Cheshire Archive which has kindly granted the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive a royalty-free permission to publish it. Please note that it was digitised by a third-party which used technical specifications that may differ from those used by International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. It has been published here ‘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.
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
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
Boys physical training
Description
An account of the resource
Four lines of boys doing physical jerks. To the right and instructor standing on his own. Image is double exposed with faint image of buildings. Reported as Stowe school.
Format
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One b/w photograph
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
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PCheshireGL1840
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Buckinghamshire
England--Stowe (Buckinghamshire)
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
License
A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource.
Royalty-free permission to publish
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is property of the Leonard Cheshire Archive which has kindly granted the International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive a royalty-free permission to publish it. Please note that it was digitised by a third-party which used technical specifications that may differ from those used by International Bomber Command Centre Digital Archive. It has been published here ‘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.
physical training
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/630/30868/BPotterPLPotterPLv20001.2.jpg
66d52e487127fe74a8f8b501bbc82ab2
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
Potter, Peter
P Potter
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Potter, P
Description
An account of the resource
39 items. Collection concerns Peter Potter, (1925 - 2019, 1876961 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a rear gunner with 626 Squadron. Collection contains an oral history interview, his logbook, memoirs and photographs
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Peter Potter and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-14
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[Bridlington, Lindholme and Sandtoft]
The next move was to Bridlington for training in navigation, morse code, wireless
and radio, bomb aiming, basic piloting and gunnery, intensive physical training (10
mile run before breakfast, shuttle runs, obstacle courses, dinghy drill, swimming in
full flying gear), an hour in the gym etc. I also sparred in the boxing ring and
sprinted. Somehow, I found time for girls, dances, pubs and visiting local farms
where I bought eggs, bacon, etc. we continued Physical Training at every station
but by self-discipline.
Next came Lindholme and Sandtoft for more of the same but more intense. A few
of us were lucky enough to get on some of the training flights. By this time the
squads were thinning out as we lost those unable to keep up.
Another move saw us at Bridgnorth, where, in addition to all other training, we
had square bashing. The final SB I had to endure for the rest of my service thank
goodness. From Bridgnorth we moved to Pembrey where we started to train in the
aircraft, moving targets, wireless, radio, radar etc. On this station I was beaten for
the first and only time at clay pigeon shooting by John Moore who later became my
mid upper gunner. He was quite hopeless at hitting a moving target and asked me
how I did it. We went out to the range and I showed him how I targeted. He did
the same and beat me at the next competition. He also became very good with
targets in the air and this was the reason I asked for him for the crew. He didn't
beat me again and remained the only one ever to do so.
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
Bridlington, Lindholme and Sandtoft
Description
An account of the resource
Describes training at Bridlington, Lindholme and Sandtoft including navigation, Morse code, wireless and radio, basic piloting and gunnery as well as physical training. Mentions move to Bridgnorth. Finally to Pembrey for training on aircraft, moving targets, wireless, radio and radar. Also did clay pigeon shooting. Numbered '2-2'.
Format
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One page printed document
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Identifier
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BPotterPLPotterPLv20001
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Yorkshire
England--Shropshire
England--Lincolnshire
Wales--Carmarthenshire
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
P Potter
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
David Bloomfield
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
Initial Training Wing
navigator
physical training
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bridlington
RAF Lindholme
RAF Pembrey
RAF Sandtoft
sport
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/759/17826/MCruickshankG629128-150428-31.2.jpg
ad3fbb1866c959e09ed9f7331c9e095f
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
Cruickshank, Gordon
G Cruickshank
Description
An account of the resource
76 items. Concerns the life and wartime career of Flight Lieutenant Gordon Cruickshank DFM who joined the Royal Air Force in 1938. After training as an air gunner he flew 52 operations on Manchester and Lancaster with 50, 560 and 44 Squadrons. Collection consists of a 1956 memoir with original photographs donated separately, a memoir of his life on squadron from December 1941, his logbooks. a further notebook with memoir, playing cards annotated with his operations, official documents, lucky mascots, medals and badges, dog tags, memorabilia, crew procedures, as well as photographs of aircraft, targets and people.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Linda Hinman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-04-28
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
Cruickshank, G
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
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
Certificate for physical training instructors' course
Description
An account of the resource
Awarded to G Cruickshank
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1952-01-07
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One page printed and typewritten document
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MCruickshankG629128-150428-31
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1952-01
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
physical training
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/167/2212/MAllenDJ1880966-150702-010001.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/167/2212/MAllenDJ1880966-150702-010002.1.jpg
eae7307705bed9f538fd480c44d7a870
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Allen, Derrick
Derrick Allen
D J Allen
Description
An account of the resource
75 items. The collection covers the career of Flight Sergeant Derrick John Allen (1880966 Royal Air Force) who was a mid-upper gunner on 467 Royal Australian Air Force Squadron at RAF Waddington in 1944-45. Collection contains his logbook, Royal Air Force documentation, notes on air gunners course and photographs of various aircrew. Collection also contains maps and photographs covering the loss of his Lancaster near Spa in Belgium from which he successfully bailed out on 2 November 1944. There is also an oral history interview with his family.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Judy Hodgson and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-30
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Allen, DJ
Access Rights
Information about who can access the resource or an indication of its security status. Access Rights may include information regarding access or restrictions based on privacy, security, or other policies.
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
Derrick Allen physical fitness test record card
Royal Air Force Form 1835A
Description
An account of the resource
States physical fitness rating and swimming test for Derrick Allen.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two page document
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MAllenDJ1880966-150702-01
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
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.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
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Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
physical training
training
-
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Haigh, George
G Haigh
Description
An account of the resource
12 items. The collections covers the career of Sergeant George Haigh (1915 - 2019) in the Royal Air Force. It consists of 11 group photographs including two official ones taken at the School of Physical Training in March 1942 and September 1944, and one oral history interview. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by George Haigh and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-09-02
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending transcription
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Haig, G
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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
Football team
Description
An account of the resource
Formal group arranged in two rows, the first row sitting, the second standing. Four airmen are in uniform and are standing beside the football team. George Haigh is second footballer in white from right, back row. In the background is a goal with net and a group of civilian spectators.
In accordance with the conditions stipulated by the donor, this item is available only at the University of Lincoln.
Additional information about this item has been kindly provided by the donor.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
One b/w photograph
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Photograph
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PHaighG1511
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
Civilian
physical training
sport
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/995/28912/MMossH3041799-181105-010001.2.jpg
916131cd634d7f30a0a56b288491be26
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/995/28912/MMossH3041799-181105-010002.2.jpg
2505fd8659d743c8a157d9dfcb7f1e35
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Moss, Henry
H Moss
Harry Moss
Description
An account of the resource
Twenty items. Collection concerns Henry Moss (1925 - 2020, 3041799, Royal Air Force). He served as an air gunner with 138 Squadron at RAF Tuddenham. Collection consists of an oral history interview, his flying logbook, documents and photographs.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Henry Moss and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
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
2018-10-30
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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Moss, H
Requires
A related resource that is required by the described resource to support its function, delivery, or coherence.
Henry Moss, Flight Sergeant, served in the RAF between 22 October 1943 to 10 April 1946. He trained as an Air Gunner and was involved in bombing Kiel, Potsdam, Heligoland, and Bremen before taking part in Operations Exodus, Manna and Revue with 138 Squadron. Henry was demobilised in 1946.
Henry left school in Bradford aged 17½ just before the outbreak of war with no qualifications . He worked in a variety of jobs including a garment fitter where he made waterproof clothing for dispatch riders. Henry passed his National Service medical board and joined the Air Transport Corps which led him to choose to join the Royal Air Force.
Henry was ordered to go to Viceroy House in London to be fitted with his unforms and receive his inoculations before moving on with his next stage of his training. He was then posted to RAF Usworth in February 1944 for his primary training. This was made up of marching and learning to salute, and basic tests on arithmetic and writing to place recruits on their trade path. There were people from many different places around the globe. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/28928
Henry learned how to strip down and re-assemble a Browning gun blindfolded but found this a pointless exercise as at altitude, it impossible to manipulate the small parts of the weapon with gloves on.
After RAF Usworth, he was posted to RAF Pembrey to the Introductory Gunnery Course at 1 Air Gunnery School flying Ansons. He did not experience air sickness and enjoyed flying. While here Henry learned about ‘offsetting’ the release of the bombs and how to aim accurately. He was surprised to learn that from his own records that he had scored 98.5% in the exam. Over his time at RAF Pembrey, he fired a total of 300 rounds. Henry was finally selected as an air gunner/wireless operator.
Henry’s next posting was to (26 OTU) RAF Wing on the Vickers Wellington, where he crewed up. His first pilot made a mistake during a landing and while the landing was safe, the pilot was sent home. His second pilot was Sergeant Crawford who he felt safe with for the rest of the war. From here Henry went to the 1669 Heavy Conversion Unit RAF Langer on Lancasters, and 138 Squadron RAF Tempsford. Henry flew to Kiel twice; both flights were at night and while he was involved in the sinking of the German ship Admiral Sheer, he did not see anything. Henry flew operations to Potsdam and a daytime operation to the Naval base on the island of Heligoland. He can remember being able to see the other aircraft and watching the torpedo boats below; he thought the operation was a bit of a ‘dead duck’. Henry’s final operation was to Bremen when they were hit by flak but ‘nothing vital was hit’. Henry referred to Operation Manna as ‘Spam Runs’
After the war ended Henry was involved, as a camera operator, in Operation Revue which was the creation of a digital map on mainland Britain as an aid to town and country. Henry was demobilised from Personnel Dispersal Centre 100 having achieved the rank of Flight Sergeant. In total he completed 436 hours 20 minutes flying. He went straight back to his previous job as a garment cutter in Bradford, but he did not stay in contact with any of ‘his’ crew.
Claire Campbell
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
Henry Moss physical fitness test record card
Description
An account of the resource
Two entries for 1944.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-04-29
1944-11-11
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two sided printed card
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MMossH3041799-181105-01
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
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-04-29
1944-11-11
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
physical training
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1661/26931/PJonesWC18020012.1.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1661/26931/PJonesWC18020013.2.jpg
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1661/26931/PJonesWC18020014.2.jpg
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Jones, William. Album
Description
An account of the resource
35 items. An album of photographs, cuttings and cartoons from William Jones's service.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-07-04
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Jones, WC
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
In my Younger Years
Description
An account of the resource
Two RAF forms issued to William Jones.
Form 1835A Physical Fitness Record.
Included is 'Achievement Scales' with annotations in the Good range.
Form 667B Flying clothing card.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two printed cards on an album page
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Service material
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PJonesWC18020012, PJonesWC18020013, PJonesWC18020014
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
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Great Britain. Royal Air Force
aircrew
physical training
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/588/8857/AHubermanA160329.1.mp3
b5727226db7314e09558768a459abf06
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Huberman, Alfred
A Huberman
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Huberman, A
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Alfred Huberman DFC (1923 - 2023, 1671008 Royal Air Force) and a photograph. He completed 31 operations as a rear gunner on 576 Squadron. He subsequently completed other operations on a second tour with the Pathfinder force at the end of the war.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Alfred Huberman and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-29
2016-04-11
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AS: Ok. So I think we’re ready to start. If I could put the recording machine there and that on there. So this is Andrew Sadler interviewing Alfred Huberman at his home in Hampstead in London on the 29th of March 2016 for the Bomber Command Digital Archive. Thank you, Alfred, for allowing me to come to your home to interview you.
AH: It’s a pleasure.
AS: Can I start by asking you how you came to be in the Royal Air Force?
AH: Well, my father was in the army in the First World War and he didn’t want me to go in the army and we had friends who felt the same way. They, they could only think of the war as trench warfare and bayonet fighting and he thought, he didn’t mind me at all going in the RAF actually. He was quite pleased ‘cause they could only think of the army you know as trench warfare and bayonets you know. That’s how the old timers used to talk. So I volunteered to go in the air force.
AS: And how were you selected?
AH: We went before a committee. People who, you know, examined you and why you wanted to go in and explain your reasons why you wanted to volunteer for Bomber Command.
AS: Before this time can you tell me about your background? Where did you live?
AH: Lived in Forest Gate. You know that’s not far from Mile End, you know. A bit further down near Upton Park and Forest Gate and I wanted to get in the war and get into action and I thought [unclear] because my mum and dad said I won’t go in the army. I wanted to go in the air force anyway and I volunteered in the air force when I was eighteen.
AS: So you started when you were eighteen.
AH: I went in. Yes.
AS: Can you tell me about your training?
AH: Yes. I first started training as a wireless operator air gunner. Started off in Blackpool and towards the end of ‘41 and I really, coming towards the end of it I really didn’t like being a wireless operator and I thought I’m not going to go through this, I don’t like this. I deliberately failed and re-mustered to go straight AG which they did, you know. The sent me for training as an air gunner.
[pause]
AH: Training was really tough. All kinds of things. You had to go on route marches. They made the training deliberately tough because it was tough being an air gunner and you’ve got to be tough mentally and physically to take it. That’s what the trainers all thought and the air force knew that and the quick, it quickly got sorted out, the good and the bad. You know, you could tell the guys who couldn’t make it. You know you felt a great deal of pride in being able to pass through ‘cause it was tough, physically and mentally, the training.
AS: Were there many who didn’t pass?
AH: Yeah. Yes.
AS: Where did you do the -?
AH: I’ll tell you this one thing that does seem funny. We thought it was funny at the time but quite a few rejected were those chaps who came from the Highlands of Scotland. No one could understand what they were talking, the way they spoke. So they couldn’t be correct, you know to serve on a plane. You couldn’t hear what they were talking about and there was quite a number of them who got knocked out for that but the course was so tough the weak ones were soon sorted out who weren’t, weren’t the right type for it.
AS: Where did you do your gunner training?
AH: In Bridgnorth. But you know being keen on being an air gunner I enjoyed it. The training was tough but it was, it was good.
AS: What did you do as part of your training?
AH: Well it does seem strange. We did quite a few fifteen mile, fifteen mile route marches which sorts out the weak from the strong and the weak ones did drop out and couldn’t take the fifteen miles. It got sorted out because it was a tough procedure to get through it because the corporals in charge were real tough guys and made you go, took you through the hard parts of the woods on the training.
AS: Did you join the RAF straight from school or did you work in between?
AH: I wasn’t, yeah I worked in between. I went to art school for a while in the fashion industry and I was also training at St Martin’s Art School. That’s why all these paintings that you see around are all mine.
AS: Yeah.
AH: And how can I follow on that one? I was keen to get in, to go on operations. The war was on and I wanted to get in the action.
AS: Presumably you were in East London and the bombing had started of East London.
AH: Yeah. I was in there during the bombing. We got bombed out. That’s what made me, oh that’s, I’m glad you reminded me. That’s, that’s what made me really keen to get at the Germans. We got bombed out in 1940. We went up, I had to go out and live with relatives in Leeds quite a number of months as well.
AS: How long did your training last?
AH: Well total training as air gunner? [pause] You don’t include being at OTU with that. Just solely training as air gunner. Oh God I think it was, I can’t think correctly but I think it was about six months.
AS: And then where were you posted?
AH: We passed out at the number 1 Air Gunnery Training School was at Bridgend. I passed out from there. You know, we had to do flying training there, you know, as an air gunner, you had, we trained on Ansons at gunnery school. Flying at Bridgend and it was, the training was really tough but it was nevertheless enjoyable. The comradeship was great. It all started from there. Air crew comradeship. Flying in Ansons. Shooting at drogues. We had to do, there was plenty of physical training as well. They made sure you were fit. A lot of physical training. Tough physical training every day. They kept us at it in air gunnery training. Training, you know. ‘Cause you really had to be fit. Their attitude was absolutely correct. One hundred percent correct. You had to be fit because you know, they knew you were going on trips from six to ten, eleven hours and at the time it was strenuous and you had to be really strong and fit especially sitting in the back where it was cold.
AS: What about after you’d finished your training?
AH: We then went to Operational Training Unit and to get sorted out into crews and you mixed and you talked with pilots, navigators and everything and in the mess all mixing together and you got sorted out. The first crew we got sorted out with we didn’t get on with one another. Broken up and then got sorted, got re-sorted again with another, six other chaps who found one another, talking together and we crewed up and they were a great crew, my crew were, every one of them. Super guy, the pilot especially. He was, he was a marvellous pilot and all the rest of my crew were. Each one of us. We were like brothers and he kept, the pilot, Ron Ireland he really kept his eye on us that we didn’t drink too much and one outstanding thing when we went to our first operational station, we went into the mess and of course you meet other guys that you knew during training and they came up to you and the first words they said to you, ‘Alf, whatever you do I’ll give you one bit of advice. Don’t worry or look about losses. Dismiss it from your mind because if you start worrying about losses,’ he said, ‘You can’t do a good job.’ And that was outstanding that. How they all told, told the newcomers at that point. I think it’s worth mentioning that.
AS: Where were you stationed to start with?
AH: What, operationally? Elsham Wold. Near Scunthorpe. And it was a great station. The comradeship was fantastic. The CO.
[pause]
AH: I’ll show you this.
[pause]
AH: It was Wing Commander Gareth Clayton. Later Air Marshall Sir Gareth Clayton and he unveiled a painting I gave to the, presented to the, and accepted by the Royal Air Force Museum. This is after the war.
AS: Oh gosh.
AH: The CO was a marvellous chap. He was very authoritative.
AS: And how many sorties did you do from there?
AH: Thirty one.
AS: Can you tell me, tell me about, about how you were organised and how the, each mission happened?
AH: The tour, you had to do thirty operations and then you were stood down for at least six months. After you’d done thirty operations you were automatically stood down. And the comradeship between the rest of the crew was really great. It had to be. The pilot was a strict disciplinarian. He’d make sure that we all behaved. Didn’t get drunk at nights, kept fit, which we did. And we all kept together and we became close, close friends. You know, every one of us knew each one’s life depended on the other one. Every one played their part. The pilot, the navigator, the bomb aimer, the flight engineer and the two air gunners, and the WOp/AG.
AS: Can you tell me about a typical mission? What it was like?
AH: Well you did have some kind of fear of certain operations because some operations were more dangerous than, than others and you had this fear and trepidation. Particularly of the Ruhr or Happy Valley as we used to call it and which was really tough because it was so heavily defended, the Ruhr. You couldn’t help flying over other targets, other cities which was heavily defended. Every, every one in the Ruhr, every city in the Ruhr was heavily heavily defended and they were all close to one another and when you went to bomb you passed over other cities and you were fired upon from beginning to end. I remember one operation dramatically we were going to bomb Gelsenkirchen which is just outside Stettin, next door, and very very heavily defended and I looked out the turret and I saw another aircraft was gliding slowly towards us and I said to the pilot, ‘Quick, dive. There’s another plane gliding towards us to crash. Dive quickly,’ and he dived and the aircraft passed over us and the pilot said, ‘Alf,’ he said, ‘You’ve saved the lives of all the crew.’ He said, ‘If there’d have been a hole in the hatch and I put, and I could have put my arm through,’ he said, ‘I would have touched the other plane that we just missed.’ Because a lot of aircraft were lost through crashes at night you know. Not always, not easy to see. Very dark and cloudy. Many losses were caused by other planes, our planes crashing into our, into our own planes.
AS: What, what was it like being a gunner? I understood it was one of the most dangerous positions.
AH: Well it was a dangerous position but one felt really proud of being a gunner and wherever you went in England you were admired as you walked along the street. If you went into a pub, I don’t think I ever bought a pint of beer for myself. I walked into a pub, someone came running up to me and said, ‘Hey, let me buy you a drink,’ and this was like that with all air gunners. Treated like this when they went, even walking down the road. Being nodded at and smiled at. Admired. Yeah, you felt very proud to be an air gunner. We did have the toughest job because it was cold. I mean one of my worst experiences, I was going to tell you at the beginning was we were at OTU and they started worrying now about German fighters coming over England and shooting down planes at night who were in training. So this particular night they gave us a plan to go up past, straight past the Orkneys and up towards Iceland to keep away from German night fighters and what happened this particular day they said, ‘It’s going to be very very cold there and we have to take out, for the first time, the back panel of glass on the rear turret to give the air gunner clearer vision,’ on the Wellingtons and the Lancasters that were coming along but the electronic suit had just been invented which was God’s gift to air gunners. It was a fantastic thing. You had an electric suit. Wires right into the gloves on your hand and it really kept you warm but at this moment there wasn’t enough electric suits to go around. They gave it to the operational ones first. They didn’t have enough to go in Training Command yet. They took out the panel of the rear turret and they told us that night, ‘Double your socks, pullovers, get yourself really warm because it’s going to be cold.’ So I did that and as we were going over past the Orkneys it’s now getting really cold and I’m starting to freeze and one thing we were taught as air gunners if you get too cold and you start freezing you must tell the pilot and I was becoming so cold the water on my eyes was turning to ice. I said, ‘Skipper,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry to report this,’ I said, ‘But I must tell you I’m freezing to death.’ I said, ‘The water on my eyes, I’m losing my sight, it’s turning to ice and I’m just freezing.’ So the pilot said, ‘Oh my God,’ he said, ‘It’s a hundred and six degrees below zero.’ And then the navigator pipes up, he said, ‘Oh my God,’ he said, ‘I’ve made a mistake. We’ve gone fifty miles north. We’re over Iceland.’ And just to try a sidetrack at that moment I saw the aurora borealis. We all did. The pilot said, ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’m going to turn round, go back and dive.’ He turned the aircraft out, around and dived thirteen thousand feet and the force of inertia went right through my body. It brought me round and in no time I would have been frozen to death. And when we got back to base we all reported in. Three other crews had gone on the same trip as us and three air gunners had had their big toe operated, amputated. It was so cold that night. So they didn’t send anyone up that north again. So far up. That was one of my worst experiences. I was going to tell you beforehand, you know, on operations. Before I went on operation I nearly lost my life.
AS: What planes did you fly in?
AH: That was a Wellington. Trained in a Wellington initially and then we changed over to Lancasters and then I did all my operations on Lancasters then.
AS: You didn’t do any operations in Wellingtons.
AH: No. They were being phased out. You know, the Halifax and the, the Halifax and the Lancaster took over.
AS: Did you fly in any Halifaxes?
HB: Just once. I can’t remember where or when but just once but much preferred the Lancaster. The Lancaster was definitely a more superior plane.
AS: In what way?
AH: Technically it was faster, it was more manoeuvrable than the Halifax. I did go in a Halifax, did a trip, did training on it and didn’t like it that much. Felt much more comfortable in a Lancaster. Everyone on the crew did. Well, it was proved anyway you know. The Lancaster was the [emphasis] bomber. Successful.
AS: So you did, did you do all of your missions from Scunthorpe?
AH: On my first tour yes.
AS: Oh.
AH: Yes. We got our our toughest mission was Mimoyecques. Have you heard of that? Well this was the site on the English, on the French coast and the English Channel. The CA, we weren’t given technically what the, they said it’s a very very important German base in France. They got, they wouldn’t describe exactly what it was there. He said ‘but it’s very secretive’. He spoke in words going around the operation. Being indiscreet about it and we had to go in at ten thousand feet which is pretty low you know. We’d never gone in before at that height to bomb. He said ‘because the bombing’, he said, ‘must be very very accurate’ and as it turned out it was one of the most successful, important raids of the whole war. It was the site of, it was going to be the secret site of the V3 which was never used because we destroyed it and forty five were lost on that night and Leonard Cheshire was the master bomber on that raid and it was going to be the V3. It was sixty, it was going to fire sixty rounds. Each one was. Hitler apparently had ordered this to be built and be done. It would fire in one go sixty missiles to London, that would land in London in one go. They would fire sixty missiles from the base at Mimoyecques and we had to go in at ten thousand feet because the bombing had to be very accurate for it, apparently and forty five were lost on that raid which was horrendous and because we had to go in at ten thousand feet we were an easy target. We were hit badly by flak and one of the engines caught fire. The pilot doused the fire and flying back once, he said, the flight engineer said all the brakes had gone. The pilot, the turret wouldn’t turn and we had no brakes so the pilot asked each one of us in turn should we land on the sea just on the, by the coast and get out of the plane that way and we all said, each one said, ‘No. Let’s try and get back to base.’ Well we got back to the base but we had no brakes on landing so what happened, the pilot landed the plane, he couldn’t brake, he now cut the other engine in the starboard port engine, the starboard engine had been shot, he cut the engine on the same side, on the starboard side and the, we spun round and round and round and came to a stop and just hit a tree and we all got out but the aircraft could never be used again. We were all lucky to get out. The pilot had done a miraculous job to land a plane with no, to get us all out with no brakes. Yeah, you couldn’t do an operation without something going wrong and tough.
AS: So you did thirty one trips.
HB: Yes.
AS: For your tour.
HB: Yes. You were supposed to do two. You’re supposed to do thirty and then you’re stood down, then whilst I was there on the station earlier on when we were a rookie crew you had to stand by. You didn’t go on the operations. If any personnel on one of the planes couldn’t go that night you’d take his, you’d take his place and after we’d done about six operations we stood by that night and then the pilot said, we had, he said, ‘ Alf,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry to tell you this,’ he said, ‘But you’ll have to go. The air gunner’s been taken ill. He can’t go. You’ll have to take his place.’ So ok I went in his place. It was a French target. The longest one, French target I’d ever been on, it was down almost on the, to the coast and as we got over the coast the fog was something terrible. There was fog from over twenty thousand feet high to the ground and we got nearer so we were all tuned in, could hear what the master bomber was saying and he said, ‘Well chaps,’ he said, ‘We’ll get, try and get to the target, see, maybe the fog will clear.’ Well when we nearly got there the fog hadn’t cleared and the Pathfinders were going around and around, down to three thousand feet and it hadn’t cleared and he said we’d have to cancel the raid and return home. ‘Go back. Make your way back. Drop your bombs in the sea,’ because you can’t land with bombs in your aircraft, which we did. It was a nightmare of an operation. And when I got back all my crew were all waiting for me on the briefing. I said, ‘What are you all doing there? Why are you here?’ They said, ‘We couldn’t go to sleep in our beds while you were out there. We had to wait for you to see you come back,’ and they all patted me on the shoulders you know, shook hands and what a night that was. Never saw anything of the ground. Nightmare flying through the bloody fog. Fog nearly choked us. And then the pilot come to do the thirtieth operation and the pilot said to me, ‘Alf,’ he said, ‘You don’t have to come on this, this one ‘cause it’s your thirty operations. The CO’s told me that if you don’t want to come you can stand down.’ I said, ‘Oh no. All for one, one for all.’ I said, ‘I’ve been through all the lot together I’m still going to go with you with this one, so this will be my thirty first. So the pilot said, ‘Ok. Fine.’ We went and the target was one of the worst in Germany. It’s called Braunschweig, better known to us as Brunswick. Thirty miles just south of Berlin and when we got there, as we nearly got there, I saw an unidentified aircraft. I reported to the pilot an unidentified aircraft. We’d just bombed the target. An unidentified aircraft on the port side. I said, ‘I’m not sure what it is. Whether it’s enemy or ours.’ I said, ‘Well take no chances then. Prepare to corkscrew port.’ So I said, ‘I’m not sure about it. Let’s corkscrew port,’ and he did and we did a dive, went into a dive thirteen thousand feet or more. Just past the target and we flew back over Germany at five thousand feet all the way back to England. We got through. So it was quite a last night. Horrendous target.
AS: So when you, once you’d done your thirty one, what would, what did you do when you stood down for six months?
HB: They sent me to, you could have, they gave you a load of choices and I thought well I’d like to go, maybe go on a radar station on the coast and they did. They sent me to a radar station and they said you know you’ll see action in the planes there. Just sit and you know, just take it easy there. Have a, have a good rest. Myself and the flight engineer both volunteered to go and do the same thing so we both went together to the station and we were treated like lords on this radar station on the south coast. And then I missed, I certainly missed the operational, I certainly missed not being with air crew and I wanted, war was still on and it was, it was ok but we wanted to get back in to the action. We sadly missed all the air crew and the life on the squadron so I volunteered to go back which I did in February 1945 and I volunteered to go in the Pathfinder force. On 83 squadron at Wyton. And although I was operational again I was glad to be with all the air crew again and the operations weren’t as tough. Just did seven but what was really nasty the last couple were on the operation called Manna which was dropping food supplies to the Dutch. The Dutch were starving. I don’t know if you knew about that. They really hadn’t got enough food. We started dropping food at three thousand feet to the Dutch people who were starving who were tremendously, we found after how grateful they were and the German bastards even though the war had just finished but by a few days were still firing at us and shooting us down at three thousand feet dropping food to the Dutch. And a few days after the German gunners you know were still firing and shooting down our bombers. The bastards.
AS: Can you tell, tell me a bit about being in the Pathfinders?
HB: Yeah it was, you know you went in first but it was towards the end of the war. It wasn’t as bad as the early part like my first tour but I was proud to be with them because they did do a tough job and after the war I knew Bennett, knew Bennett very well. They were wonderful people. He was the commander in chief of the Pathfinder force and he was a super chap and a few years after the war I started up, I was instrumental with some others in forming the Air Gunner’s Association. It started about seven sort of years after the war because no association had been formed. We started out and we became very very active and I and others were instrumental in bringing Bomber Harris out of the cold. I had, and went to meet him and he was a most wonderful chap and he really loved his air gunners. He was at the reunions and he was always the chief guest of honour. And I’ll recall for you the story I never tire of telling. This story after the war had finished I’ll recall for you a name that by and large is forgotten now but his name was Albert Speer. Does that name mean anything to you?
AS: Oh yes. I’ve read his, I read his, his book, “Inside the Third Reich.”
HB: Yeah.
AS: And, and several books about him.
HB: Oh that’s interesting. Well he was the only German Nazi, leading Nazi who repented and he was the only one who wasn’t executed and after the war was over he got in touch with Bomber Harris and they told stories to one another about, you know the war efforts and became very friendly. During one of our reunions when Harris was there I had to stand up I’ll stand up, ‘I’d like to recall for you chaps Albert Speer as you all know, who you knew was the head of ammunitions, factories and armaments from the beginning of the war to the end’ and I had to say in front of Bomber Harris here that you will recall, I told all the audience that when Albert Speer spoke to him, Albert Speer said to Harris, ‘if it hadn’t have been for Bomber Command Germany would have won the war.’ And Harris stood up and said, ‘Ha.’ he said, ‘Right,’ he says, ‘Who knew better than him? He was our best customer.’ He’s right.
[pause]
HB: Where would you like me to continue?
AS: Please. When you were in the Pathfinders where were you stationed then?
HB: Wyton. RAF Wyton.
AS: What planes were you going up in at that point?
HB: Lancasters.
AS: Still in Lancasters.
HB: Yeah. No, I wasn’t a fighter pilot.
AS: No. And you were still working as a gunner.
HB: Oh yeah. Once a gunner always a gunner. Yes. And I’m proud to say that I also was instrumental with others, particularly Sir Michael Beetham, Marshall of the Royal Air Force in founding the air gunners, also going to get the Bomber Command Association started. I’ve been on the committee of the Bomber Command Association since day one and been vice chairman for a while.
AS: When, when the end of the war came, can you tell me about that? How did you greet the news that the war had come to an end?
HB: We were delighted, you know, we were happy to be victorious. The war, we all cheered it in the mess and clapped hands, you know, when it was announced and –
[pause]
HB: There was one incident, one nasty incident that I will recall. Just before Christmas 1945, after the end of the war, six months after the war, they thought it was a good idea instead of bringing such a long dragging trip flying the troops home from, it would be better to fly the, quicker to fly the troops home from Germany than, sort of quicker to fly the troops home that were coming back from Singapore or in Italy flying the troops home from Italy quicker than sending them back by boat. So that Christmas week they said you’ll go to, fly to Naples, fill it up with air crew from Italy and fly them back to England. It will save all that drag. So we did, we started, we flew from London to Naples which was a long trip. An eleven hour trip. When we got there, went into the mess, I meet the best friend I ever knew training as an air gunner. He, when I’d gone to Bomber Command, when I was posted he was posted to the Italian campaign and we were so pleased to see one other I can’t tell you. We clutched one another fantastically and he said, ‘Alf,’ he said, ‘And your crew. I’ll tell you what you must do while you’re here in Naples. The thing you mustn’t miss’ He said, ‘You must you must go and see the ruins of Pompeii.’ He says, ‘It’s easy to get there. It’s only five miles away and all day long there’s RAF transport and vans passing from the base here past the entrance to the ruins of Pompeii and,’ I told that, he said, ‘You must get all your crew to go there with you. Yeah. Just get a guard, pay one of the guards of the, who will take you all around Pompeii. Give him a good price and he’ll show you everything that’s there.’ And the rest of the crew said oh that would be marvellous. Pulled, stick on an RAF plane, on an RAF van. We all got in it. He dropped us at Pompeii and we got out and one of the guides, not a guard, a guide I meant and we paid the guy to take us around and we followed him and he pointed out, he spoke perfect English, all the interesting things in Pompeii and then we go downstairs in to the basement and there’s an artist working with his easel there copying all the paintings, the masterpieces on the wall and naturally being artistic I started talking to him and he spoke perfect English and he was explaining everything, what this meant and what he was doing and when I got out and went upstairs I couldn’t see any of the crew, I couldn’t see a person. So I started walking around and now I’m a bit lost and it’s a big place the ruins, in the ruins. I can’t see one person and I started walking along looking and suddenly two little boys about between fourteen and sixteen came up to me and said, ‘Hey Joe, you gotta the money.’ I said, ‘Get away.’ And they said, ‘Hey Joe you gotta the money. Give us the money.’ I said, ‘No. Get away.’ And I can’t find the crew and suddenly from out of nowhere another fifteen, twenty kids started all coming up to me and started tugging at me, pulling at me, ‘Hey Joe you gotta the money.’ I said, ‘No. Get away,’ and I started running to try and get away from them and they started running after me and still there was no one around. And I’m now getting worried. They started tugging me. Pulling me. Then suddenly they started screaming out [parapachi?]. That’s like the Italian word for police and suddenly they all left and ran away into the woods there and suddenly two men with, fully armed with machine guns across their shoulders come up to me and said, ‘ah’, they spoke English, they told me, ‘We’ve saved you,’ he said, ‘They would have killed you for the money. They would have taken every bit of your clothing off.’ Because they were short of money, you know in Naples and all bloody gangsters and God knows, and the mafia there. He said, ‘They would have killed you for the money and have taken a knife to you.’ Although they were only kids, he said ‘they’re really tough ones. ‘We’ll get you back to your crew, the rest of your men, you’ll be safe. Don’t worry anymore.’ And I was, I was nearly assassinated there.
AS: Gosh.
HB: After the war.
AS: When were you demobbed?
HB: 1946. Early ’46.
AS: What did you do in the RAF between the end of the war and when you were demobbed? Obviously fetching troops back was one of them.
HB: Yeah. One of them. They had all kinds of jobs for us. I mean one of the first things we did was to fly the POWs home from Belgium and that was quite a, quite something to talk to the chaps who were POWs and we were all naturally asking them how they were treated and they all said, terribly. And they were all asking me about what it was like for us afterwards and explained to them and one was a squadron leader. I’ll never forget. He had a DFC. When we landed in England he got out. He was the first one to get out, oh and he wanted to sit in the turret during the flight back because he, he said he was shot down in 1940. You know he wasn’t used to, he didn’t know what a Lancaster was. So I let him sit in the Lancaster all, sit in the turret all the way back to England. He got out, started kissing the ground and they all kissed the ground. They all followed him. The, all the prisoners thanking, you know that they were back in England. I wonder what it was for them. It was quite an experience watching them do that, you know. It’s so emotional.
AS: After you were demobbed what did you do then? How did you settle back in to civilian life?
HB: Well the first few months were very very difficult. Incidentally, I do say this. I never told my mum and dad that I was on operations. I told them I was in training all the time and I told all the family, you know I was operations, brothers and sisters, not to mention a word to them because you know they were reading every night, every day forty, fifty, thirty, sixty lost and my father said to me, he says, ‘You must be the lousiest air gunner in the air force,’ he says, ‘You’re always in training.’ So I said, ‘Well it takes a long time,’ and then of course when I finished and I told them and you know he shook his head at me, ‘Oh yeah,’ see, ‘You weren’t a lousy air gunner.’ No. I thought, save them. Why let them go through the agony of reading about the losses every night and knowing it could have been me, me on it and you know parents did have a tough time with their children on ops.
AS: So what did you do when you came home?
HB: I went to St Martin’s Art School to study art and fashion and then [pause] after about five years, six years I got married and then formed my own fashion company designing women’s clothes, coats.
AS: You said you found it difficult when you came home. In what way?
HB: The first six months. It was very difficult to reconcile. You missed the comradeship of your friends and you know rationing was still going on and things were still tough after the war being a civilian. The government I must say was helpful. They did support me in training in the six months I studied at St Martins.
AS: So you, so you studied for six months and then, and then did you start your fashion business then or did you -?
HB: Oh no. No. I went to work.
AS: You went to work.
HB: Someone else had [unclear] it didn’t take me long to be successful. It was strange, the first six months, it really was. To settle down with mum and dad again and my two brothers.
[pause]
HB: Is there anything else you’d like?
AS: Yes.
HB: Question?
AS: When you were, when you were on the base and you were doing operations, how long was it between the different operations? Was there a long time or were they in quick succession?
HB: Sometimes you’d go two nights running which I reckoned, off the record, that that was Harris’ big, one big mistake he made. We should never have been allowed to do, to go on two consecutive, two night’s trips, come back because you, when you came back three or 4 o’clock in the morning you didn’t get a good night’s sleep. They’d wake you up the next day at 8 o’clock to tell you you’d be on operations that night. And you weren’t exactly fit. You were a bit tired. It was a struggle to force yourself but you had to do it. You know, it was an order. You had to go and I think that’s the biggest mistake that Harris made. It’s never been mentioned, that. Going two nights’ consecutive trips was a real struggle. The second one.
AS: When you were, when you were between operations how did you, what did you do? Did you have any social life?
HB: What? Do you mean when I wasn’t on operations? What? Do you mean being on leave?
AS: Well or at the station but waiting for the next one.
HB: Yeah there was the comradeship was very, very strong between the crews and the other crews. You, it was, you know you made it part of your life and there was a pleasant side of it, pleasant side of it in sitting together and chatting with one another.
AS: Did you go out at all?
HB: Yeah. We used to go into the pub at Scunthorpe. Never allowed, he warned us not to drink more than a pint maximum. He was right. You shouldn’t get your head and drink too much.
AS: This was your pilot.
HB: Yes. Or even in the mess when you weren’t on ops not to drink. He was very strict. He made sure we didn’t.
AS: And were they all like that?
HB: Yes. Well he was very strongly. My pilot.
AS: What was your accommodation like in the mess?
HB: Very communal. We always all used to chat about the operations. What they were like and coming back, how tough. Did you see this and that? Talk about the target. And the comradeship was really strong. Really strong. That’s what I missed when I went to the rest for six months you know and that was cushy. I missed the, I missed the life. It got into your blood. The comradeship of your friends. You’d be with them.
AS: You were telling me, you told me earlier about going to the Saracen’s Head in Lincoln.
HB: Yeah.
AS: Can you tell me about, about that?
HB: It was, it was a pleasure to go in to the Saracen’s Head because you met comrades you’d been in training with, now they were on different stations to you now. You met old friends and the comradeship. It was all full of air crew, the Saracen’s Head. Every, so many air crew in there, in there, all chatting and talking to one another. It was, the atmosphere was fantastic. Never before and after was there a place to go into like that. The atmosphere was Bomber Command, you know. Have you heard from so and so and seen so and so. Talk about the different raids.
AS: Did you go there very often?
HB: Did we go there?
AS: Very often?
HB: When we had a stand by, a stand down. Where? At the Saracen’s Head? You always went in there a lot. Up in Scunthorpe it wasn’t, we went in the Saracen’s Head but I look back with a great deal of pride I served in Bomber Command. I mean it was really tough at times, you know, the losses were fifty five thousand killed out of a hundred thousand. We took the biggest loss pro rata of any other force during the war and we still have that. All my best friends are ex bomber chaps. We all stuck to one another closely. You can’t find it with other people like you can with a, with a comrade. Mind you, in the army you know they had the same thing. My dad, he used to stand on street corners with others from the First World War all talking and chatting to one another in groups of three or four.
AS: Well thank you very much. It’s been, it’s been fascinating listening to your story.
HB: I hope you have. Oh what about a cup of tea?
AS: I’d love a cup of tea. Thank you very much.
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Interview with Alfred Huberman
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Andrew Sadler
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2016-03-29
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AHubermanA160329
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Format
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01:10:46 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Alfred Huberman volunteered for the RAF when he was eighteen and trained as an air gunner. He describes the training and emphasises how physically hard it was. He flew 31 operations from RAF Elsham Wolds in Lancasters. These included operations over the Ruhr and the bombing of the V-3 weapon site at Mimoyecques. After he completed his tour he was stationed at a radar station but missed the camaraderie of his crew so volunteered for further active operational duties and served with the Pathfinder force at RAF Wyton. He completed a further 7 flights for Operations Manna and Exodus. After the war he was very active in forming the Air Gunner's Association and also served on the committee of the Bomber Command Association.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1944
1945
Spatial Coverage
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France
Germany
Great Britain
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Lincolnshire
France--Mimoyecques
Wales--Bridgend
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Carolyn Emery
576 Squadron
83 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
bombing of the Mimoyecques V-3 site (6 July 1944)
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
crewing up
fear
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Lancaster
Master Bomber
military ethos
military service conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Pathfinders
physical training
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Elsham Wolds
RAF Wyton
training
V-3
V-weapon
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1024/11396/PMcNallyC1701.1.jpg
6310003475cf7e95c88b2684552d9a48
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1024/11396/AMcNallyC171005.2.mp3
84d65a83800162abf7e90dc460624074
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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McNally, Charles
C McNally
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Charles McNally (1922 - 2021, 1566660 Royal Air Force). He flew operations with 101 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-10-05
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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McNally, C
Transcribed audio recording
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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 Charles McNally. The interview is taking place at Mr McNally’s home in Broughty Ferry on the 5th of October 2017. Charles, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. Could you tell me a little about your life before you joined the RAF?
CM: I was a boy who was born in Dundee but at two year old went to Airdrie because my father was an Airdrionian. My mother was a Dundonian. At eleven we came, I came back to Dundee and went to school in Dundee. And at fourteen, having left the school with six day school Highers which was quite unusual at that time I then joined the Post Office as a telegram boy. That was in August 1933. In June 1936 I applied to become a telephone engineer and was accepted for, in, as a youth in training apprentice with the Post Office Engineering Department in June 1936 as I’ve said. I spent the next three years up to the, up to the start of the war working on Post Office engineering work which at that time was Reserved Occupation and more likely required as a civilian than as a member of the armed forces. I was the only son of Thomas and Margaret McNally and we lived at that time Perrie Street in Dundee. My father who wore glasses and was a grade four [pause] grade four soldier was in the RAMC in the First War but no more than a private. So we had, we’d no real history of of wartime activity. And it was only when the war started and things got a bit difficult in Britain that the thoughts turned to well, why don’t I join the forces and see if I can do my bit for Britain. And that’s exactly where we are up ‘til 1941. And in 1941, at the age of nineteen I applied to be enlisted in, in one of His Majesty’s Forces. Preferably the Navy because I enjoyed, I enjoyed living beside the sea and I enjoyed the sea. But as at that time, as at that time being in a Reserved Occupation I have documentary proof that they refused to allow me to go into the Armed Forces and that’s the way it stood for some time until in 1941 they came out with the [pause] what would be the word? Came out, came out with an instruction that people in Reserved Occupations could apply to be in the Air Force but only as pilot or navigator and in the event of not being able to succeed in any of these two posts would be returned to their, to their job. And I have all the documentation to prove that. So eventually I was, in 1941 allowed to join the Air Force and in September 1941 I had my original exams and medication in Dundee and then following that with a further examination in Edinburgh. The, again I passed a grade one and I also passed to be fairly high marks I think because I was passed as an observer radio/pilot. Observer radio being the number one choice because of the, partly apparently because of the interview that I had it was more acceptable for me to go in to that particular post which was very difficult. A very difficult one. A very, a very what would be the word? A very prestigious post because I think navigator observer radios were navigators. They were also wireless operators and in some cases they were bomb aimers as well. And eventually I think that the observer radio eventually became navigator bomber wireless. However, I was put on, put on deferred service then and I was enlisted as 15660 Charles McNally in the [pause] Friday the 30th of January 1942, and given an RAF VR badge 69510 which, to put in your jacket to let people know that you were then a member of the Royal Air Force but on deferred service. And that’s how it stood until I was eventually recruited in nineteen, later in 1942 and joined up the 19th of October 1942 as, for training as, as a pilot. Clearly, they didn’t require any more observer radios. Now, do you want me to go on from there?
JS: Yeah. So, so what happened then?
CM: Well, I was recruited in to the Air Force and joined the RAF as RAF VR as it was. You wore a VR badge even though you were in the RAF. And I was enlisted at Number 1 Royal Air Crew Centre at Lords Cricket Ground in London, 19th of October 1942. From there, after three weeks initial training, all the various jabs and inoculations, boots and all the rest of it I went to Number 1 ITW in Babbacombe. Number 1 ITW was the special place as I understood it and I was posted to A flight. And I think we were the only flight in the whole of the Training Services in the Royal Air Force that wore a white belt rather than a traditional Air Force blue belt and kind of stood out. But at the same time our drill instructor was such a hard man that he made sure we as well as having the white belt we had to be the best soldiers as well as it were and it was pretty hard going. But halfway through the course at Babbacombe there was a flight, a test coming up. It was into, immediate halfway through the course and I thought well I’m not going as I usually did for a couple of pints of scrumpy but I went to another hotel for supper. We were living in small hotels in Babbacombe. I saw a light at the, what I thought was the door and I walked towards and it wasn’t. It was a light from a window in a gunny and I fell down it. That would be in December. And I finished up with, in RAF Wroughton with two cracked transverse processes of my spine. So I spent my first Christmas lying on boards in RAF Wroughton, Swindon until I, until I recovered. And going back to, it was a bit frustrating because it hindered me a bit. It was frustrating trying to get in the Air Force and it was frustrating again to have this. So I went back and I think it was C flight I went back in to and eventually finished up ok with the exams and so on and the, was then posted to Heaton. To Manchester. And we were in digs in Manchester and went to Heaton Park for, to see how everything was going and I can remember everybody sitting in this big hotel, this big hall at Heaton Park and your names came out as Joe Smith, bomb aimer, Charlie Young, navigator and then when your name came out Charles McNally, pilot it was [laughs] hurray. You didn’t shout out but internally it was. It was hurray. And that’s how from there we were taken to Gourock, just outside Glasgow and went on the original Queen Elizabeth to Canada for training. We arrived at the transit station at Moncton in New Brunswick and from there moved on to number 535 EFTS at a place called Neepawa. N E E P A W A. About fifty miles or so outside Winnipeg in Manitoba. Successfully passed. Oh, before that I should have said, I should have said while, before going to Canada after coming out of ITW being on pilot training then I went to number 3 EFTS for a Grading School to see how I could perform as a pilot and I soloed in under nine hours there so all was well. And that was why when I got to Heaton Park I was told I was going for pilot training I was really, thought I would get it anyway. So having got that far from EFTS where we flew Tiger Moths I went to 35 SFTS at North Battleford where we flew Oxfords. Oxford 5s. Very nice aircraft. Easy to fly. No problem. You did the usual training. Daytime. Night time. And it went quite successfully. So, back to Moncton again waiting for a ship. I came back to Britain on the Nieuw Amsterdam. That was the Nieuw Amsterdam which is no longer. More or less the old Amsterdam I think has been dead for years. But it was, it was very [pause] going out on the Queen Elizabeth it was only four days to the other, it was doing over thirty knots and zigzagging so no, no escort. But coming back with the Nieuw Amsterdam it took six days in horrible weather with a Corvette escort. And the Corvette escort you could hardly see it. It was under the waves most of the time. It was shocking. It was March weather and we came back to Britain and again ran into frustrations. I was posted to Harrogate which was a transit. A transit camp. One of the hotels, the Imperial Hotel I think it was in Harrogate. And, we from there we stood around again. We were sent out on courses to, I remember one course we did was more like a commando course at a place just outside Whitley Bay. And I’ve got a picture of it with myself with a tin helmet on and a rifle with another friend of mine Jimmy Jackson, another Dundonian who was on the course with me. Again, the only help, the only positive that came out of that was apart from the work during the day was having a few beers at night. So, and then I was posted to Brough in, near Hull and I was flying Tiger Moths there with, it’s in the book, was flying Tiger Moths there taking people, sergeants, navigators on training flights. I was getting nowhere. And eventually in Autumn of 1944 I was offered my Class B release because as a volunteer it was quite easy for them to just to let me go. Well, that didn’t suit me one little bit so I thought how am I going to get into Bomber Command? Having trained in two, two engines I was quite capable of flying even four engines because it’s the same procedure. Just a couple of more engines. But you know I was getting nowhere with that so I said to them, ‘Well, I’ll retrain as a flight engineer if you wish. So they said, ‘Yes. If you want.’ So I went and did a flight engineer’s course and then was posted to the squadron as flight engineer second pilot. So although I wasn’t at the controls I, from time to time I had the feel of them and in an emergency it would have been easy for me to, to take over. But on the second flight [pause] from, the first flight was to Chemnitz as I recall it. That was the same night, February the 14th, I think that was the same night of the second raid on Dresden. Chemnitz was about forty or fifty miles south of Dresden as I recall it and the bomber force split in two. The, we went down through France and rather than straight over through Germany [pause] And the flight, the flight was a circuitous route.
[pause – pages turning]
It took eight hours fifty five minutes. All on a bar of chocolate and a flask of coffee. So it was, it was quite a long haul and, but it went without, without incident. And then on our second operation to Dortmund that was a shorter flight but regrettably coming back one of the engines packed in and we couldn’t make out what was wrong with it so decided to feather the engine and fly back on three. Which any pilot would be capable of doing in a normal circumstances. In fact, they were trained to do. To fly on three. However, coming back and almost, on on the circuit to the airfield for some unaccountable reason I recall saying to the pilot, at that time I was sitting beside him, the pilot was, sorry, Pilot Officer Kerr and he came from Arbroath. He, I said to him, I can recall at the last minute saying, ‘Jim,’ we were more or less on equal terms although he was the skipper, I said, ‘There’s nothing on the clock.’ And suddenly we hit ground. Fortunately, it was a ploughed field. I’ve got pictures of it. So on the whole we were all relatively free from accident other than the bomb aimer who was at the front got the most of the impact and he broke, he broke an ankle or leg or something. But we lost him anyway. So we got seven days leave. That was the February the 20th. We got, we got some seven days leave and I believe at that time that was about the time of the crossing of the Rhine. It was about March. March. Somewhere in March. But when we come back on March the 3rd we did three engine landings. Obviously we should have done that before. And then went on back to Chemnitz again. And then Kasel from there. That was in March. Early March. So after that it was really plain sailing. Nordhausen. Kiel. By the way the Admiral Scheer was sunk on that raid. The German battleship. And then there was [pause] near the end April the 14th I, they were short of a [pause] a the flight engineer and I volunteered to go with a Flying Officer [unclear] to Potsdam. This was eventful. Fortunately, it was near the end of the war but we were caught in searchlights. And again fortunately there was a bit of ack ack but there was no, there was no fighters in the air. So it was just a question of releasing the bombs and diving down via Leipzig to get, to get away. And as we dived down the searchlights began to just dim and forget, switched off. Following that we did Heligoland. That was the, the operation to the German I think where their submarines were under concrete hiding, you know. And that was, that was a fairly easy trip. Four hours twenty minutes. And then we went to Bremen. Now, I remember Bremen. The mission was abandoned. There was as I said cloud over the, the point of dropping but as we were told later we were too early. We were going to be bombing Bremen to make it easy for the troops to, to get in. And by the time we got there the troops had arrived. So, as we couldn’t see them —
JS: Yeah.
CM: Just decided let’s not. That was some of the, some of the raids. And then after that we started dropping food to the Dutch. I’ve got, I’ve got a nice letter and a little badge. A little medal from them. And the first one of that was April the 30th. A week or two before the war finished. That was the Hague. And then we did Rotterdam twice on May the 3rd and May the 7th. And then on May the 11th we went to Brussels and brought, repatriated some ex-POWs. And that concluded that part of the operation. Well, at that time the thought was that we would have to go to Japan so there was a lot of training done. There was a lot of training done in anticipation of that. And I think, although it’s not shown here, I’m not sure I think they were going to put the Lancaster in to larger wings with bigger tanks and it was going to be called the Lincoln. But I don’t recall much about that. However, on July the 9th we went to Hamburg, Heligoland, Kasel, Dusseldorf the Möhne Dam etcetera with, with ground crew. And this was to let them see the damage that had been done. I can recall the Hamburg especially. There was nothing standing. So, I don’t know whether, there’s one here — Operation Ramrod. I can’t think what that was. So, then we went in September. In September we went to Pomigliano In Naples bringing troops back from, from Italy. We did that on one, two, three, four occasions. So that was fine. 7th 10th 21st 27th and after that, just after that I was offered my, my release because 101 Squadron disbanded on the 1st of October. And I was offered my release again. But having had, this is the important part, having had my spinal injury I thought something I should do just to make sure I’m ok before I leave the RAF. So I volunteered to become a PTI, Physical Training Instructor. So I did three weeks at Cosford and eight weeks at St Athan, and in January ’46 I was posted to RAF Hospital Northallerton as the PTI for the staff. Not so much the patients. Mainly the staff. And I was in charge of the cricket team, the football team and also cross country and so on. So it proved to me that although I’d been through all this and had the problem with my back which again, it did, it was with me for some time after the war. And my right leg. I felt the right leg wasn’t as good as the left but it did prove to me that I was capable of going back to work. And I went back to work in September to the Post Office Engineering Department and within two weeks was at the local Tech doing my night classes for promotion which came along in time. That was virtually the story of the war.
JS: Good. You mentioned when we spoke before we started the interview that, that 101 Squadron was involved in the electronic counter measures.
CM: That’s correct.
JS: Is that something that your plane did?
CM: Yes. I can recall it vividly. The thing, I think we had him twice. One of the times, the one time that stands out in my mind is we were all crewed up and suddenly this car arrives with a gentleman in it. We didn’t see who he was. It was dark. He got into the plane. Sat behind his curtain with his equipment. We never saw him. Never spoke to him. Never said a word. Did the, did the, he wasn’t with us when we crashed. It was, must have been later. He left the plane first before us before we de-crewed and went away in a car. We never ever saw him. But he had a, he sat behind a curtain underneath the mid-upper gunner with his equipment. And it was pretty cold in there. I think he must have had a flying suit on like the gunners. But we never ever saw him and, but we were pleased that when he was with us we had no incidents. No.
JS: You — how was your crew? I’ve heard stories about crews being formed by everybody just being put in a big bunch and sort of saying go sort your crew out yourself.
CM: No. We went to, after I’d finished my course at St Athan as a flight engineer we went to a place at Huntingdon [pause] Hang on [pause – pages turning ] Get it in the back here. Babbacome, Heaton Park, Ludlow, Manchester, Moncton, Harrogate. Of course was Harrogate. Harrogate. Harrogate. Tempsford. Huntingdon. AMU. A 10. No. That must have been later. Sturgate, Lindholme. Heavy Conversion Unit. Yeah. We went to a place. RAF Sturgate in Lincolnshire. Never heard of it. Now, looking back but that’s where we were all put together and we chose. We chose who we would fly with. And the pilot then was Jim Kerr from Arbroath. I think he stayed on the Air Force. Did very well. But I thought, well he’s a Scotsman. He’s just down the road from where I live. Perfect combination and that’s how I got to fly with him. And he was very good because I had the odd chance of flying the Lancaster. In any emergency I could have. I could have performed. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. That was it. And then we went to a Heavy Conversion Unit at Lindholme in January 1945. And I joined 101 Squadron, Ludford Magna on the 29th of January 1945 when I left Lindholme. And I was there on, I was there until 30th of September 1945. That’s when I went to St Athan. And then Northallerton. And I was demobbed on the 3rd of September 1946, the [pause] I remember I’ve got the, I’ve got the information here. I got a train ticket to Uxbridge. And I remember getting a lovely suit and hat and jacket and coat and so on. All very well. But that was, that was my career. It was a bit stuttered because I was frustrated from the beginning trying to get in. And then I was frustrated because I wasn’t taken up as an observer radio. And then I was frustrated having passed as a pilot that I couldn’t fly as a pilot and, although fortunately I did get the opportunity but not officially.
JS: Yeah.
CM: But in the event of an emergency I would have quite easily flown the aircraft. There’s no difference between two and four. Just two engines. The procedure and everything else was the same. So there we are. That was it. And the Lancasters I flew were a Lancaster 1, the Lancaster 3 and the Lancaster 10. I think of the Lancaster 10 as I remember it had the number five, .5 bullets in and had they had, they had the bigger turret. Aye. So there we are. I do have, funny enough I do have [pause] Where is it? That was a, that’s an interesting picture.
[pause]
JS: And who drew that?
CM: Sorry?
JS: Who? Who drew the picture of you?
CM: Now, the person that drew that was a, I was sitting in class and his name was Dougal Garden and he was an illustrator with the Courier in Dundee and he handed it to me later and said, ‘There you are.’ That was me. Yeah. I could show you a lot of other pictures if you’re keen to see them.
JS: Once we’ve finished chatting that would be really useful.
CM: Ok. Now, I also during the time, I can’t find it —
JS: Well, let’s, let’s have a look when we’ve finished chatting. You mentioned your pilot from Arbroath. You’ve mentioned your pilot from Arbroath.
CM: Ah huh.
JS: So, how, how was the rest of your crew made up?
CM: Norman Gill was the navigator. Charlie Williams was the wireless op. The two gunners were, Albert Edwardson was one of the them. The rear gunner, he was an old boy. An older boy with two children of which at the time I thought, what are you thinking about, you know, becoming an air gunner when you’ve a family, about thirty years of age. We were all in our early twenties. The bomb aimer was the fellow that got injured. His name was Francis. I can’t remember his first name now. And he was a Canadian. That was the first of it.
JS: And, and how did you get on as a crew?
CM: Oh, had no problem. Very well. Yeah. Ah huh. Och aye. Even after the incident with the flap pancaking in a ploughed field. We just went back to business again. Yeah.
JS: That’s great. You mentioned when we were chatting earlier that the base you were at was, was equipped with FIDO.
CM: Ah huh.
JS: So, how often was that used and was it in use any time that you were there?
CM: It was. It was used quite a lot actually. What it was was that two strips, two strips along the main runway with holes in them and there was petrol and they set it alight and immediately the heat from the petrol cleared, cleared the air quite considerably. It was no problem. In fact it was a dream for some aircraft that couldn’t land on their own, on their own ‘drome. Even I recall Americans come again. I can remember one of the American, an American gunner and he, he was quite adamant. He said, ‘I don’t care what was behind me,’ he said, ‘Whether it was a Lancaster, a Stirling, or whatever. If anybody got close to me they got the guns.’ They were, they were still gun happy [laughs] But it was, it was a boon. Although we were four hundred feet above sea level in the Lincolnshire Wolds the fact that these petrol jets cleared the air was, and it was quite easy to land in between them. No problem.
JS: That’s great. So after you demobbed you went back to —
CM: Yes.
JS: The Post Office. Telecoms. And there was some retraining after that. Is that right?
CM: Yes. Well, not a lot but there was a bit but I went on courses of course with the Post Office Engineering Department to a place called Stoke. No. Stone near Stoke. That’s where we spent in some cases seven or eight weeks and you never got home at weekends in those days, you know.
JS: That’s great. So coming out from Bomber Command after the war how do you think as a Bomber Command veteran you were treated after the war?
CM: I think I was treated fairly well. I was never ever, never ever approached to say I’d done anything wrong. Oh, no. No. Oh, no. The, the feeling that I, the feeling was, and it was although some folk thought it was a bit immoral to go and bomb towns the feeling was for people who were in this country and had suffered with the German bombs, the V-1s, the V-2s it was a delight every time they put the news on and found there had been a thousand bomber raid the night before. It gave them heart that we were taking the war to Germany and we were getting somewhere. And that was the feeling. And it was a feeling. It was the correct feeling because Bomber Command at that time was the only force that could make any real impact in the war. Although maybe it didn’t impact tremendously on the production and all that sort of thing. Mentally. Mentally it had a tremendous achievement. Tremendous. Yeah. In fact, even now coming back at this late stage in my life if anybody you meet who knows you’ve been in the war as a pilot and as a flight engineer they’re always delighted to know you’ve done this for us. Well, in a way there’s a funny incident about that. Anyway, you’re putting your life on the life for Britain at night while other people are lying in their beds sleeping. But there was one occasion. You see in the 21st of March 1945 the lady I was due to marry was going to be posted abroad so we decided to get married. And we got married on the 21st. She was in the ATS and she was a corporal going to be promoted to sergeant and sent to Italy. So at short notice we decided we would get married when she was billeted in Carlisle. We got married and had, I got seven days notice from the Air Force for a, for a [pause] what’s the word? [pause] Seven days notice for the, for the wedding and thereafter the honeymoon and so on.
JS: Leave.
CM: Leave. That’s the word I’m looking for. But my wife, she got fourteen days. Now, for seven days she came to Ludford and I got permission to live off base and we lived in a, with a woman in a bungalow. I don’t recall it very because it was one these old fashioned ones you had to pump the water up at night to get water and so on but being off base I wasn’t too involved in anything. And I was walking in the village with my wife at that time of seven days, eight days. And suddenly the station wagon pulled up, ‘Charlie, you’re flying tonight.’ Now, I had to leave my wife in the street. At that time, in the middle of a little village and say, ‘Cheerio darling. All being well I’ll be back tomorrow.’ At the same time being a widow, being a wife one week she could quite easily have been a widow the next. But that was life as it was and that was, that’s a personal thing. Yeah. Yeah. You know. You’re leaving this lady you’ve just married. I cannot remember what the raid was but, no. Looking back it must have been hard on her.
JS: Absolutely.
CM: Sorry?
JS: Absolutely. Yeah. That’s great. Thank you very much.
CM: And when you come back really, just at the end when you come back you’re like a coal miner because you’ve had a mask on for eight hours and you’re like nothing on earth and you think as if you look terrible. To go back to my wife looking like that was [laughs] after debriefing and so on, you know. But that was, that was the story of my life really. Quite, quite eventful really. A bit stuttery and a bit frustrating because I wanted, I’ve got the documentation here from the office telling me I couldn’t join in the forces. And then the offer of getting in as a pilot or navigator. Passing as an observer radio which was a very high class pass. Finished and they didn’t need observer radios so they trained me as a pilot. Got my pilot’s and got back to Britain as a pilot and then found I wasn’t needed as a, for further training as a pilot and offered my release. Now, that was the last thing I wanted because inside in me at twenty one the only thing I wanted to do was hit the Germans. So the one way I could do it was to rebrand as a flight engineer. So I was trained in both capacities. And I suppose in a way there’s not many like that in the Air Force today. Or was at that time. I don’t recall in the class at St Athan when we did the engine, the course on engines any other pilot. I think they were all just recruits.
JS: Great.
CM: But that was it. Thank you.
JS: Thank you very much. That was magic. I really enjoyed that. That was really really good. So, I will stop this.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Charles McNally
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
2017-10-05
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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AMcNallyC171005, PMcNallyC1701
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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00:41:43 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Description
An account of the resource
Charles McNally spent his childhood in Dundee and Airdrie, Scotland. He began work at the Post Office as a Telegram Boy before joining the engineering department. This meant he now worked in a Reserved Occupation and he struggled to get permission to volunteer for the RAF. He eventually secured his release but had an unusual route to securing his posting. He began training as an observer radio. He then went on to train as a pilot. He eventually became a flight engineer and was posted to 101 Squadron at RAF Ludford Magna dealing with electronic counter measures. Charles married while he was still on operational flying. On honeymoon he was walking through the village with his new wife when he was collected for an operation that night and effectively left his wife at the roadside not knowing if she would soon be a widow.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942-10-19
1945-01
1945-03-21
101 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
bombing of Helgoland (18 April 1945)
Cook’s tour
FIDO
flight engineer
forced landing
Heavy Conversion Unit
love and romance
Operation Dodge (1945)
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Oxford
physical training
RAF Heaton Park
RAF Lindholme
RAF Ludford Magna
RAF St Athan
RAF Sturgate
RAF Wroughton
sport
Tiger Moth
training
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/128/1278/AAbbottsC151015.2.mp3
cc3222384b5959170d324f9b72e8d83f
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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Abbotts, Cyril
C Abbotts
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. The collection consists of one oral history interview and one service and release book related to Warrant Officer Cyril Abbots (b. 1924, 1583753 Royal Air Force). Cyril Abbotts volunteered for the Royal Air Force and trained as a pilot in Canada. On his return to Great Britain he flew operations as a flight engineer with 57 Squadron from RAF East Kirkby in 1945 and later converted from Lancasters to Lincolns. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Cyril Abbot and catalogued by IBCC staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Date
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2015-10-15
Identifier
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Abbots, C
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: So today I’m with Cyril Abbott and we are at Malvern in Worcestershire and it is the 15th of October 2015 and we’re just going to talk about his time in the RAF. Cyril, could you start off by talking please about your, family early, your earliest times you recollect?
CA: I was born in 1924 in a place called Princes’ End, Tipton. I lived with father and mother, with my grandparents. My mother was one of a large family, unfortunately she died when I was six and for the next two years we were looked after by my Grandma until Dad remarried. My mother and father were, had a house built in a village Coseley, which was about two miles away but we never moved there because of my Mum’s death. But having remarried we moved as a family, mother, or I should say step-mother, and father and my sister Doris who was four years older than myself. And we moved to a house in Bradleys Lane Coseley. I went to junior schools in Princes End, Tipton and at the age of eleven I passed scholarship and entered Dudley Grammar School where I was educated for the next five, six years. I left school in ‘39 and went out to work with W and T Avery at Smethwick as a engineering apprentice. I didn’t like work so at the first opportunity I volunteered for the Air Force, for aircrew, and having had all the two days of tests at Digbeth, Birmingham, I was accepted as a recruit and sent home and told to wait until I heard from the RAF. I was a bit of a nuisance to my father and mother because every day I used to come home from work and say ‘Has the letter arrived?’ and nothing had appeared and I really caused a bit of grief. But eventually the letter arrived ordering me to report to ACRC at Lords’ Cricket Ground, London. I travelled to, down to London with a fellow from the village who was also joining up, I think it was the first time we’d ever been away from home by ourselves in the whole of our lives but we arrived at Lords’ and the cricket ground was full of recruits, you couldn’t see a blade of grass basically. But they formed us up in groups of about forty and marched us off to Seymour Hall baths where they told us to strip off and swim a hundred yards. This rather shook us I believe ‘cause having to swim without a costume, but we did this and those who could swim the hundred yards were pushed to one side of the bath, and those who couldn’t swim went to the other side. We found out later that the non-swimmers were sent off to RAF Cosford to learn to swim, if I’d have known that I would have done the same [laughs] because Cosford was within about twenty miles of home. But still, we, we were billeted in flats around St John’s Wood, waiting for postings to ITW. Eventually I was posted to 8 Wing ITW at Newquay, Cornwall where I spent the next three to four months school work. In actual fact I can remember the flight commander was a Flight Lieutenant Paine, he was an ex solicitor and the Squadron Leader I think was a man named Fabian, who was a English international footballer amateur. But, and the two PTIs was Corporal White and Corporal Beasley, one was a Londoner, a real Cockney, and they used to take us out on cross country runs. Because one day I, I decided I didn’t want to go, so we had to get changed and set off and I drifted to the back and at the nearest public toilets I disappeared into it, little realising that Corporal White was running right at the back and he caught me [laughs] and I was taken in front of the squadron commander and given three days CB, confined to barracks, but at the end of the, I think it was about twelve weeks of school work were finished and we were waiting then to, for postings and I eventually was posted to RAF Sywell for familiarisation, twelve hours in a Tiger Moth. Again, I remember the instructor was a Flight Lieutenant Bush, I think he could have owned the flying school which had been taken over by the RAF, but we did, we did about ten to twelve hours flying around in Tiger Moths to see if whether we were compatible with flying and then at the end we were posted to Heaton Park, Manchester which was a receiving centre for people waiting basically to go overseas. I mean there were literally hundreds of UT aircrew there and we used to have to attend in the morning when they would read out lists of people with the postings and you had to answer in a certain manner to signify that you’d understood the shouted instructions. Initially I’d received a posting to South Africa, Rhodesia for flying training and we went up to Blackpool to receive the inoculations required, and having received these inoculations we were sent back to Heaton Park where we found out that we weren’t going to South Africa after all. I was sent to Canada and we, we sailed from the River Clyde, Greenock, or something similar on the Queen Elizabeth, the original Queen Elizabeth one, and I think it was about three days and four nights journey which I didn’t like, I don’t, I’m not a, I don’t like sailing, I don’t like water and it was a welcome sight to go through the harbour bar at New York to get inside the docks because as we went through the bar and they closed it the ship lit up because we’d sailed in darkness over, through the Atlantic, and as soon as we entered the, the New York dock area all the lights came on the ship. I mean New York was lit up as you see it on the films, I mean we hadn’t seen lights for three years. Eventually we, we docked in Pier 91 next to the burnt-out Normandy which had been, it had gone on fire and had capsized in the dock next to us, and it was still there. But eventually we were taken off the boat and we went under the river to New Jersey to get a train to go up to Monkton, RAF Monkton in Canada. We had to pass through the customs between America and Canada, and we stopped on the American side and one or two of us shot off because we were near to a small town and got a glass of beer, and we’d got to drink this very quickly and we didn’t realise the American beer was practically frosty, it was very, very cold. But we, eventually we arrived in Monkton, and we were there for maybe a week or so before we were sent west to the flying schools and I finished up at 32 EFTS, RAF Bowden in Alberta, I mean we could see the Rockies on the horizon, as we drove from the station, Innisfail was the station, why I know that is because I was reading a book by an ex Worcestershire cricketer, Cheston, who had trained there as well, and I picked up the name Innisfail I’d forgotten, but as we drove up from the station to the aerodrome all the training planes were lined up with their tails towards us and we all thought God, we’re all going to be fighter pilots, they looked like fighter ‘planes ‘cause they were all Fairchild Cornell which was a low wing plane. We were there for a period of time, I think we got in about seventy or eighty hours, and I soloed quite quickly after about five hours and during the training I realised that I would never become a fighter pilot because I didn’t like aerobatics. I always remember being sent up to practice spins and to do this you climbed to about three or four thousand feet and then spun down, and pulled out and climbed back and did it again. But every time I went to do it I’d get practically to the point of stall, at which point I was supposed to kick in rudder to go right or left and my nerve went so I pushed the nose down and climbed another thousand feet until I finished up at about ten thousand feet before I forced myself to spin. But having done it the first time and realised I could get out of trouble it wasn’t so bad, but aerobatics I just did not like. So I made my mind up then that I would never become a fighter pilot, I’d go for twins or multi engines. Having completed the elementary training we were posted to service flying training and I was posted to a place called RAF Estevan in Saskatchewan it was right on the American border just a few miles on the Canadian side but it was more or less in the middle of the dustpan, everything was covered with dust, there was a wind at all times and it was just blowing this dust and coating everything. The dormitories had got double-glazing with a mesh screen to try to keep this dust out, but they were flying Ansons there for training and we had to have a check to see whether our leg length was sufficient to be able to apply full rudder in the event of an engine failure. Well I didn’t like the station I thought I’m going to do my best to get away from here, so when I came to do my test I put, extending my to get full rudder and I gradually slipped down in the pilots’ seat so that I couldn’t see over the top of the board, dashboard, so that I failed the test. I didn’t realise that I could have been washed out of pilot training but I was posted away from Estevan to RAF Moose Jaw at Saskatchewan to fly Tiger Moths. The Anson hadn’t got a moveable rudder pedal whereas the Oxford had, you could wind them in to suit your leg length. The Oxford had got a bad reputation for killing people. It was a very difficult aeroplane to fly and they said that if you could fly an Oxford you could fly anything. And I took to the Oxford, I soloed after about five hours again and from then on it was just train, train, train until we eventually finished, I think we did something like about a hundred and fifty hours flying, and it came, the wings, the graduation ceremony, and I believe we were presented with our wings by Air Vice-Marshal Billy Bishop who was a Canadian fighter pilot in the First World War. I believe that it was him but we had already sewn wings on our uniforms and stripes on our arms if we were becoming sergeants, but we had to parade without, without wings or stripes on. But then having graduated, we had, we were given a posting back to Halifax, to get the boat back to England. We were allowed, I think, forty eight hours to have a leave in either Quebec or Montreal on the way back. I can’t remember now whether we were in Quebec or Montreal, but we eventually got back to Halifax and boarded the French liner, Louis Pasteur, to come back and it was a terrible journey. Since we were now supposed sergeants capable of looking after ourselves on the ship some of us were posted as assistant gunners on the anti-aircraft guns which were put about ten feet above the boat deck on a little platform with a rail around it to stop you falling off. And we had an Oerlikon cannon to look after. I mean we’d never seen a firearm but we’d got a naval man as the gunner and we were just there to help, But we always said the Louis Pasteur was a flat bottomed boat because it rolled and rocked like nobody’s business and there were literally thousands on the boat, the conditions were terrible, but every morning at about twelve o’clock if I remember rightly, we had a rendezvous with a Coastal Command aircraft so that when it came time we had to close up the guns in case it wasn’t an RAF plane, but bang on the dot it would appear out of the clouds, circle round for about half an hour, and then off it would go and we’d plough on. I mean we were not escorted it was just a, a quick dash across and I must admit I saw more U boats in the sea, that on that journey, than the German’s had got, every wave was a U boat. [laugh] But eventually we arrived at Liverpool, and we disembarked and were shipped to RAF Harrogate, the Majestic Hotel we were billeted in, and there were literally thousands of pilots, bomb aimers and navigators there. We just, we just didn’t know what was going to happen to us. I mean they came round I think twice, once asking for volunteers to change to glider pilot training. I mean those that did, that accepted it, I think most probably went in at Arnhem. But I being frightened, I decided I would stay and get an aeroplane with engines. So I was there for quite some time and eventually I was sent, we had um, because we’d been in Canada, living the life of luxury, they sent us up to Whitley Bay, Newcastle under the Army to have a month toughening up, and everything was done at the double. I was given a rifle and a band to cover my sergeant’s stripes, we used to have to wear these because the instructors were corporals and privates of the commandos and they gave us a real tough time. Route marches of about twelve miles, my feet were sore, but that was completed and we came back to Harrogate. They just didn’t know what to do with us. So we, eventually I ended up at RAF Bridgenorth, under canvas, and we always said we were draining an air commodore’s farm because we were digging ditches all the time and there were, there were Australians, and other Commonwealth aircrew with us and they used to, to show how tough they were, they’d sleep out in the open without a tent, until they got wet once or twice, [laugh] but we were there most probably two or three weeks and back again to Harrogate. And then I went on airfield control at RAF Gamston, just outside Worksop, acting as traffic control watching the Wellingtons, it was an OTU unit, and we were there [indistinct] at night on flare path duty and the control hut flashing greens or reds as required with an Aldis lamp. While I was there, I became friends with one or two of the screened pilots so I managed to get a few hours in on a Wellington. At the end of the, at the end of the time Gamston was closed down and the ‘planes moved to other OTUs so I got a few hours flying with the screen people taking these aeroplanes to the stations. The funniest part was we landed at one, we had a plane which went round all the aerodromes picking up the screened crews to take them back to Gamston, a Wellington, and it was very funny we landed one control, or pulled up at the control tower and shut the engines down waiting for the people to be picked up and out trooped from the Wellington, about eighteen people and the control officer’s jaw dropped when he saw all these people coming out [laugh] but it was quite, we stood, down the Wellington hanging onto the geo, geodetic structure, it was quite funny. From Gamston, I eventually was posted, oh yeah, I think I went back to Harrogate again and there I was volunteered to do an engineers’ course at St Athan down in South Wales. There was no chance of becoming an official pilot because they hadn’t got enough aeroplanes and there was too many people. So we were volunteered to do an engineers’ course at St Athan on the Lancaster systems, which we did about six weeks just to get the fundamentals of the system. And having completed that I was posted to sixteen 54 HCU at RAF Wigsley in Lincolnshire, where I was going to get crewed up with an ex OTU pilot and crew who wanted an Engineer, so we walked in, as engineers we walked into an office where there were pilots sitting around and the first person I saw was a man who’d been on the course immediately in front of me at Moose Jaw, a flying officer, he was a Pilot Officer Coates and we made contact and starting talking, he said ‘Well I’m looking for an engineer’ I said, ‘Well I’m an engineer but I’m also a pilot’ he said ‘Do you want to come and fly with me?’ ‘Yep’, and that’s how I joined Pilot Officer Coates’ crew because we knew each other. We completed a number of hours on the, at the heavy con unit, the conversion unit, and we were posted as a crew to 57 Squadron at East Kirkby.
CB: So when was this exactly?
CA: Well I think it was in either February ’45, because I wasn’t on the squadron long enough to be able to be awarded the Bomber Command Clasp which I thought was a bit em, bit naughty of them, I can come to that later. Well we were introduced to Wing Commander Tomes who was the Squadron Commander and I think Squadron Leader Astall although I’m not sure about that name. And we were more or less sent off to go and do some practice flying which we thought we’d done enough with the heavy con unit but it wasn’t good enough for the squadron. So we did quite a few cross countries and bombing practice at Wainfleet. And one day I was, I think most likely the last one in the engineer’s office and I was about to go for tea, and as I was walking out the engineer officer shouts, ‘Cyril, what are you doing tonight?’ I said ‘I’m going to have a beer why?’ he said ‘No you’re not, you’re flying.’ He said so and so has called in, his engineer’s gone sick, so they want an engineer so you’re flying as a spare bod on Flying Officer Jack Curran, who was an Australian pilot, he was short of an engineer so I was going with him and that night we went to Luetzkendorf which was the first operation, our rear gunner had also been made a spare bod and he went as a rear gunner with another crew. But Jack, Jack Curran had been shot down about two months previously and had got back so he was, he was a bit nervous as a pilot, he gave me a bit of jitters, because once we crossed, if I remember rightly, once we crossed over the Channel and got to the other side he proceeded to weave all the time and it made a heck of a mess of my petrol consumptions. But the thing that I always remember, was having got to the target, was the different colours or shades of red that there are, or were, I’d never seen so many different shades. Of course I mean I didn’t realise what was happening I mean I was, I’d got bags and bags of window which I was pushing [unclear] down the chute like nobody’s business thinking they were saving me but they weren’t they were saving the people coming behind me. But I pushed packets of it down, I even jammed the ‘chute once I had to get a big file from out of my kit, my tool kit and try and clear it and the file went down the ‘chute as well so that if that hit anybody downstairs they would have had a headache. But eventually we got, we came back and as we neared East Kirkby, Jack had called in to ask for landing instructions and we were told to vamoose, scatter, it was either an intruder in the circuit or something but we scattered like nobody’s business heading towards Wales, and on the way, we were told to make for RAF Bruntingthorpe which we eventually reached and Jack landed the Lanc’ alright, we parked it and were taken into a room for a bit of a debrief, given something to eat and then we were taken to beds in the dorms, in the Nissen huts. And I was, I was lying there on the bed, I couldn’t get to sleep, I suppose it was the adrenalin still coursing through the veins, but I was smoking away like nobody’s business, and I woke up the man in the bed next to where I was and he sat up and he saw I was a flight sergeant, he saw my tunic on the bed, so he said ‘What’s happened?’ so I just explained that we’d been diverted there and we were talking, he was a corporal engine fitter and he looked at me and I looked at him quite intently as if we knew each other. So eventually one or other said ‘Were you ever in Canada?’ and I said ‘Yes, you were at Moose Jaw, were you at Moose Jaw?’ ‘Yes’, he’d been an Engine Fitter out on the flights at Moose Jaw and had been posted back to, from Canada and he was working, was working at Bruntingthorpe on the Wellingtons. Well eventually we were given the all clear to go back to East Kirkby and, although it was forbidden, the squadron pilots always shot up the aerodrome having taken off. So we, we took off and joined a queue of people waiting to go down the runway and ignored it which we did. The station commander went mad and by the time we got back to East Kirkby the squadron commander was waiting for us and he proceeded to tear us off a strip. ‘They were OTU pilots being taught to fly safely and you people go down and show them what not to do’ [laugh] still it was Lancaster below zero feet going at about two hundred miles an hour is something, it’s really exhilarating, but still. Um, oh yeah, a few days later we went to Pilsen as a crew, Fred Coates the pilot and the rest of the crew, I mean he’d already done two spare bods as a pilot getting the idea of what happened, and Johnny the rear gunner had been, but the, I’d been but the others hadn’t so it was all new to them, but us old hands [laugh]. Well we went to Pilsen and our navigator was a graduate and he was a very meticulous navigator, very good, but very meticulous. I mean when we were flying you’d hear his voice come over the, the intercom, ‘What speed are we supposed to be flying at?’ ‘About two hundred and twenty, why?’ he said ‘I want two hundred and twenty five, nothing else, two twenty five is the airspeed.’ So I spent minutes trying to get the, the right speed. And he’d come through, ‘What course are you steering?’ ‘Why?’ He said ‘You’re two degrees out’, oh he was a, he was a menace [laugh]. But on the way, it’s only in latter life that I’ve realised this, but it was his first trip, it was most of us second or third and he was navigating and he said ‘We’re too early, we’re going to get to target too early’ so Fred said ‘Well what do you want to do?’ So Marsh says ‘We’ll do a dog leg, turn, and he gave us a course to turn to the left, to port, and flew out for a few minutes and then to come back into the, into the stream and go, head toward the target again, we’d lose the required minutes. And like fools Fred and I did this, but during the flight we were getting, we were getting, bumped about a bit and we couldn’t understand this because there was no flak to blow us around but we’d get jumped up and down, it would last a minute and then die down and then about a few minutes later again. We couldn’t fathom out what it was, but it’s only in latter life that I’ve realised what it was, because we got to Pilsen and back okay, and then we were put on a daylight to go to Flensburg, and I mean the RAF didn’t flew, didn’t fly in formation, they just got into a gaggle and went. So we joined the bunch and the idea was to get into the middle of the stream, so you kept lifting yourself up a bit, move over and then gradually drop down and force the man underneath to move out of the way so that you were doing this all the time. And occasionally we’d get this bump and it’s only as I say in latter life that I realised that at night when we got these bumps it was the slipstream of planes in front of us, that I never, I never saw a plane during flying at night but we must have been very, very close because it showed up during this daylight. But we went to Flensburg and it was aborted we couldn’t bomb, why we were never told but I did see a Messerschmitt 262 I think was the jet fighter, something came, went through the formation like nobody’s business but we’d got Mustang fighter escort they were most probably about ten thousand feet above us, but we did see them come down and go through the formation, on the way down to the deck whether they’d, they went down to er, hit some of these two five twos taking off, two six twos, but that was quite a sight to see these little, little bits going through the, through the formation. But my war ended with that aborted raid on Flensburg. We were thinking we should be going to Berchtesgaden but all the, the higher ups of the squadron did that, they didn’t let the lower lads do it. Then after the , after the war I flew on Lincolns, 57 Squadron were given three Lincolns initially to carry out service trials on them and by this time our pilot, Fred Coates, had departed. He’d been a police constable before the war and since they wanted the police in peace time to build up again they got Class B releases, or they were allowed to take Class B release. So Fred had just married his Canadian girlfriend who’d come over here to marry and 57 Squadron was one of the squadrons that were going out on Tiger Force to the Far East but Fred said no he wasn’t going to go, he’d get his Class B which he did. And we had another pilot, a Flight Lieutenant Strickland, who was posted into us to take over the crew. He came up I think from Mildenhall, I can’t remember which group they were, but he’d been an instructor in Canada for a number of years and he was very meticulous with his flying, everything was perfect and he kept the rest of us on top line. We flew the Lincolns, we’d got three and I think Mildenhall station they’d got three, we had lots of trouble with engine failures where as Mildenhall had airframe failures, rivets popping and things like that so it was quite, it was quite stressful flying these Lincolns. I’ve got a write up.
CB: We’ll stop there just for a moment.
CA: Yeah, I’ve got a write up actually,
CB: So we’ve stopped for a comfort break, and you were talking about Lincolns, you took on Lincolns?
CA: Oh yeah.
CB: You took on Lincolns. What happened then?
CA: Well, with the Lincolns, we as I say we’d got three and I since found that there was a Flight Lieutenant, Flight Lieutenant Jones who was one of the leading lights in the flight, I can’t recall him really, but erm.
CB: This is still war time before the Japanese surrender isn’t it?
CA: It was, yeah, but it was after the European war –
CB: Yep.
CA: And it was in the time between May and August -
CB: Right.
’45. The Lincoln was, was being produced to go overseas with the Tiger Force because the Lanc’ hadn’t got the range that was required and the Lincoln was supposed to have. But it wasn’t, in our eyes, it wasn’t as good as the Lancaster, I mean we were in love with the Lanc’ whereas the Lincoln was, was something different. I fully remember on one flight, I was sitting down on the right hand side and Pete was flying and I looked out of the starboard side and looked at the wing and I could see the skin rippling and I nearly collapsed with fear because I could see the wing moving up and down, and when it lifted up, so it rippled the skin at the join between the mid-section and the wing section, and for the rest of the flight my eyes never left that section [laugh] that part, but I found out when we got down that the wings moved five feet between the bottom and top and this was due to the weight of them and the, the fuel. And it was only after then that I noticed that when the Lincoln sat on the ground the wings appeared to be drooped and they moved up during the take off period to obtain the flying attitude. But it was a frightening sight I will admit.
CB: So it was a bigger aeroplane?
CA: It was a bigger aeroplane, it was heavier, I don’t know about the bomb load. I don’t think it was any different.
CB: But they were bigger engines and could fly higher and the span was a hundred and twenty four feet?
CA: A hundred and twenty.
CB: Hundred and twenty.
CA: About a hundred and twenty feet, yeah.
CB: Now when did you get promoted to warrant officer?
CA: Two years after I graduated. You were made, when you got your wings, you were a sergeant for about nine to twelve months and then flight sergeant for a year and then you became warrant officer. I mean a lot of the ground crew, senior NCO’s didn’t like this, I mean there were us youngsters who were up to sergeants after about eighteen months and they’d been in the Air Force for years and had just made corporal. So there was a bit of resentment between the ground crew NCO’s and the aircrews. But of course I mean we were only as aircrew given stripes, or officers in case you were ever shot down and taken prisoner, you got better treatment as a NCO, but that was the only reason.
CB: OK, so fast forward again to the Lincolns, your time in the RAF finished when, 1946?
CA: 1946 November.
CB: Right, so what did you do?
CA: What did I do afterwards?
CB: After the war, after the war finished?
CA: Well, I came back and as I said previously, I’d been an apprentice with Avery’s, and my apprenticeship had been cancelled when I joined up. So I went back to Avery’s and recommenced my apprenticeship but due to my service, instead of having to do a further length of time, because I was apprenticed for about five years and I had only done about twelve months, they reduced the remaining time by about twelve months and they concluded my apprenticeship about twelve months, having served and I’d done a four year apprenticeship instead of five, and that would have been somewhere around about 1947, ‘48 when I, they transferred me into the drawing office at Avery’s and I became a draughtsman.
CB: How long did you work as a draughtsman?
CA: Well I left Avery’s in 1951 and I was employed by the Cannon Iron Foundries for a year and then I, I went to Thompson Brothers in Bilsden for about three years and finally finished at ICI Marston Excelsior in ’56.
CB: What did you do there?
CA: I was a design draughtsman there and I, I did design, design work on, I always remember my first job was designing a heat exchanger for the Folland Gnat , just a small one, I can’t remember what it was for, I believe it was for the pilot cooling system to keep him cool. But this was on heat exchange. I finished up actually on heavy fabrication work, in aluminium work, and I became a section leader. I did various jobs, I engineered a liquid ethylene storage plant for ICI organic, organic section I think, or one of the sections at Billingham where we stored surplus liquid ethylene. And we stored it in a big container like a gasometer and I, I was given a piece of ground on the side of the river and put a storage plant there. I must admit that my initial estimate of costs was way down, [laugh] I made a hell of a bloomer, I think I estimated about a hundred and fifty thousand and it finished up at about, eight hundred thousand [laugh] we had quite a, an argument, not argument, discussion why [laugh]. But then I went onto production, onto the production side of the factory, as chief planning officer on fabrications which I, I did until the work started to peter out so I went onto development work on cold rolling of noble alloys for jet engines.
CB: This is all for ICI?
CA: All, yes, it’s all under ICI’s name, we bought in a cold rolling machine from Holland and we used to roll to very, very close tolerances. Rolls Royce were trying to reduce their costs by getting in components where they didn’t really have to do any work on, and I mean the jet engines required diameters to a thou’ in tolerance and we were supposed to try to do this by rolling them, which we did eventually, I mean we bought this machine. I went out to G, GE the American counterpart of Rolls Royce. GEC?
CB: GE yeah, General Electric.
CA: And I spent a fortnight out there getting some idea of how they tackled it but I mean they’d got a different idea I mean where here we had to justify spending sixpence, there the engineer, development engineer said ‘I want a machine it costs two hundred thousand pounds’ and he was given the money and they got the machine. Whereas we were trying to do it on one machine they’d got a battery of them, about ten. I mean this is the reason why they are the world beaters. Money is no object.
CB: When did you finally retire?
CA: I retired in March ’86 having completed thirty years.
CB: OK, thank you, I’ll stop there. So we’re restarting, we’re restarting just on a flashback. So you’re back from Canada as a qualified pilot.
CA: Yeah. I should have said then that I went up to, we were asked where we wanted postings to go to for flying. I never realised that there was a flying school at Wolverhampton otherwise I would have asked, instead I got posted up to RAF Carlisle on Tiger Moths where we did about a month flying a Tiger Moth around getting used to flying in English conditions. We used to take a navigator or a bomb aimer as a passenger for them to practice map reading while we flew it. We did a lot of flying around the Lake District, we were flying over Maryport and Workington I think is the other port, on the coast there. And we, we used to go down and count the number of ships that were in the harbour and things like this, and then having to fly back over the Lake District which was very, which could be quite treacherous with the down draughts and the winds whistling over the hills. It used to bounce the Tiger Moths around like nobody’s business. But we did that for about a month and then we were posted again hoping we were going to get posted to OTUs but it never, never, I was, you asked how I felt. I felt disappointed having made my mind up I was never going to fly single engine fighters I put down for twin engines or multis. The onus was on providing crews for four engine planes. So to get there I’d got to go to an OTU and that was never going to happen. So when I was posted to the engineers’ course I accepted it and it, I was still flying, that was what I wanted to do, I wanted to fly. So that, I made the best of a bad job. I thoroughly enjoyed it I mean, I enjoyed the, being on a squadron, being a crew, being a member of a crew and we’d got a good crew. I mean our mid upper gunner was the only one who could shoot through the aerial leading to the rudders which he did time and time again, it used to cost him half a crown a time when he pierced them, I mean this was when we were doing air to air gunnery and he was firing at a drogue and he’d traverse and ‘ping’ and Andy the wireless operator would say ‘You’ve done it again’ [laugh], but um.
CB: So, how long did you keep your pilots brevet?
CA: All the time.
CB: Oh did you, throughout the war?
CA: Yes, yes we were never forced to change them. That is why I always say I was a PFE rather than a flight engineer, I was a pilot flight engineer. And the pilots that I flew with gave me the opportunity to fly, to pilot. I mean Peter who was the ex-instructor, he was always within reach of pulling me out of the seat if necessary, but Fred he used to go and wander down to the Elsan at the back and leave me in charge. I mean I was playing about one day above the clouds and I was following the, the shape of the clouds up and down and Johnny who was sitting with his turret doors open, fore and aft, and it, it started to get a bit robust, the movement of the up and down movement and the Elsan lid which was tied down with a bungee rubber broke and the contents of the Elsan came up, [laugh], oh dear, and it covered him [laugh], he didn’t speak to me for days [laugh] because he knew it was me and not Fred [laugh].
CB: How did the crew get on together socially?
CA: Very good, very good we never went anywhere unless we went as a six. I mean, we bought our beer in the mess, we bought it by the bucket and helped ourselves with dipping the glass into the bucket rather than separate. No, it was a very good crew, very good.
CB: So in those days you could buy beer in a bucket could you?
CA: In the mess.
CB: In the mess, right.
CA: In the mess yeah.
CB: OK, and as a crew you worked well together?
CA: Oh yes, yes.
CB: And er.
CA: Well Marsh, he was working, he wanted to get onto pathfinders.
CB: Marsh being?
CA: The navigator. He was a very good navigator but, Mac, the bomb aimer, he was more of, an easy come, easy go.
CB: So.
CA: That second or the first raid as a crew to Pilsen we went through the target twice because Mac he wouldn’t drop because he couldn’t line it up properly so he said ‘I’ll send you round again’ and the rest of us shouted ‘What the hell, will you pull them’ and Fred said ‘If you don’t I shall jettison’. So he says ‘Go round again!’ So we had to make our way round and come back and get it back in the stream and fly it through but on the second time he let them go.
CB: This is a daylight raid?
CA: No, this was a night raid —
CB: This was in the night. So the reason I said that is because that sounds a particularly dangerous thing to do when you can’t see anything —
CA: It was a, well this is it, I mean what with trying to get in, slip into the stream, I mean you, I never saw another Lancaster in the stream. And I mean we went through the target we were only given somewhere maybe half an hour from the start to the end of the squadron’s time over the target so I mean God knows how close we were, but we were very close when we were getting buffeted by slipstream. But I mean a, when Marsh sent us on a dog leg when we turned out of the stream and then had to come back and join it again. We didn’t realise the stupidity of it, but Marsh being Marsh he’d got to have it down on his chart.
CB: Why would it have mattered if you had arrived early?
CA: Well a, the target may not have been indicated, or they were down below marking it, so you, I mean er.
CB: You could have bombed your own people —
CA: You could have bombed them, yeah —
CB: Right OK.
CA: And since the Lancaster was always the top flight, I mean it was Lancasters, Halifaxes, Stirlings.
CB: Right, there’s a ranking.
CA: So.
CB: And how did the crew feel, and you feel, about what you were doing as bombers?
CA: I don’t think we thought about it.
CB: OK.
CA: I don’t think we thought about it. I mean the first one — we had been bombed at home in 1940. We’d had a landmine dropped within about a hundred yards of home and our house is most probably still standing with the back, back wall bulged where the roof lifted and the walls started to move and it dropped down and it held. So I wanted to do something back but having that I don’t think you, we never talked about whether there was a right or wrong, it was a job.
CB: My wife was born in a bombing raid in Birmingham.
CA: Eh hum.
CB: What about LMF, did you know anything about that, or experience.
CA: We knew of it.
CB: Yes.
CA: We knew of it but we never met anyone who was accused of it or anything like that. But we didn’t like the idea because it wasn’t nice when you were over there. A funny tale, we had a man on the squadron, he was a dark, a Negro, and he was as black as the ace of spades, colour. And he’d got perfectly white teeth and he was known as twenty three fifty nine, that was his nickname, because twenty three fifty nine is the darkest part of the night, or supposed to be, a minute before midnight. And he was a rear gunner and when he was in his turret at night and you walked past it all you could see was these white teeth. It was really funny, but he was a good lad.
CB: What about other aspects of the work? When you boarded the aircraft what did you have with you to eat or drink?
CA: I think the only thing I can remember is boiled sweets. I mean I can’t ever remember fruit, or anything like that. I don’t think we ever took, I never took a drink at all. I mean I can tell the tale where, I mean, we used, sometimes to remember to take a bottle to use and one day Fred had forgotten his, the pilot, and he was in, he was in dire trouble. So he said ‘I’ve got to have something, I’ve got to have something’ so I was scooting round trying to, what the hell can he have? And I went and took the cover off the G George instrument, gyro, which was a pan of about eight or nine inch diameter and about three or four inches deep held on with four screws. So I took this off and gave him this to use, which he used. So he used it and said ‘Here get rid of it’ so I said ‘How?’ he says ‘Throw it out the window’ so I pulled my sliding window back —
CB: [laugh] —
CA: and threw it out, threw the contents. Of course, I mean as soon as the contents went out the slipstream took it all the way down the canopy, the Perspex, and we, I couldn’t see out of that side all the way back, and I also lost the G cover [laugh] which cost me five shillings and a telling off from the engineer officer. How, why was the G cover uncovered. ‘I can’t remember’ [laugh].
CB: Now what about the ground crew because you relied on them so, what was the relationship with them?
CA: Very good, other than the first time I went, we joined the squadron, and I don’t know whether I ought to say this, can I, can I not get up?
CB: Um.
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Title
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Interview with Cyril Abbotts
Description
An account of the resource
Cyril Abbotts volunteered for the Royal Air Force while he was an engineering apprentice with W T Avery at Smethwick. After his reception at Lord’s Cricket Ground and initial training,he trained as a pilot at RAF Bowden and Moose Jaw in Canada. On his return to Great Britain, he spent some time in holding units, before being posted to retrain as a flight engineer at RAF St Athan. He flew operations with 57 Squadron from RAF East Kirkby in 1945 and later converted from Lancasters to Lincolns. Post-war he completed his apprenticeship, becoming a draughtsman for various companies including ICI. He retired after 30 years of service with them.
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Chris Brockbank
Date
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2015-10-15
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Dawn Studd
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01:18:53 audio recording
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eng
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AAbbottsC151015
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Canada
Saskatchewan--Moose Jaw
England--London
England--Lincolnshire
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Great Britain
Germany
Wales
Saskatchewan
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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
1654 HCU
57 Squadron
African heritage
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
bomb aimer
bombing
Cornell
crewing up
demobilisation
fear
flight engineer
Flying Training School
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
Lancaster
Lincoln
Me 262
military discipline
military living conditions
navigator
Operational Training Unit
Oxford
P-51
physical training
pilot
promotion
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Bruntingthorpe
RAF Carlisle
RAF East Kirkby
RAF Gamston
RAF Heaton Park
RAF St Athan
RAF Sywell
RAF Wigsley
RCAF Bowden
RCAF Estevan
recruitment
sanitation
Tiger force
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
Window
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/148/1576/AHaighG150902.1.mp3
4279994cd0836781eab4bc56fe8c1e90
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Title
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Haigh, George
G Haigh
Description
An account of the resource
12 items. The collections covers the career of Sergeant George Haigh (1915 - 2019) in the Royal Air Force. It consists of 11 group photographs including two official ones taken at the School of Physical Training in March 1942 and September 1944, and one oral history interview. The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by George Haigh and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2015-09-02
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Pending transcription
Identifier
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Haig, G
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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.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: I’m here today, my name is Chris Brockbank and I’m here today with George Haigh accompanied by his daughter Rosemary Herrine and also his grandson Josh and we’re going to talk about his life on the ground in the RAF because he trained people many of whom worked on the ground but many worked in the air, flew in the air and we’re in Middleton Cheney and it Is the 2nd of September 2015. So George could you start please by telling me how you started as a youth, a bit about your family and then what you’ve done in your life, please.
GH: Yeah. Well I was born in Reddish in what is now Greater Manchester and I was there, I lived there until I was about eight years old and then from there my father got a job in Stockport and I went to Stockport and lived in Stockport for quite a number of years. Went to school there, a church school and, and then at fourteen had to get out and do, do some work as you had to do in those days and at fourteen I went to a dyeing and bleaching firm and then lived in, in Stockport at a, at a Working Men’s Club and, from eight years old until I was twenty, twenty three and during that time I went into professional football and signed for Stockport County which I did for three seasons prior to the war and then when war broke out all contracts were cancelled for professional footballers so I was back on the streets. The football wages in those days was ten pound a week and two pound for a draw, two pound for a win rather and a pound for a draw and that was your lot as far as, as far as that was concerned and then the first thing I thought of, being physically fit at that period I decided to join the air force and join up as a physical training instructor. Get into physical training instructing. What now?
CB: Ok. We can stop there for a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: Right. We’re restarting now and just recapping on those early days. So what happened to the family when you were young?
GH: Well, at, at thirteen I, my mother died and the, the Working Men’s Club had to have a steward and a stewardess so when I, when I was growing up I found myself doing all the work when my mother died that she used to do in the club so I was, I was more or less the stewardess until I was about twenty to twenty two. Something like that. So even when I was a professional footballer I was still working in the, in the club. So that was what was happening early on, you know.
CB: Right. Ok.
GH: Yeah.
CB: So after your father retired then you had to move out of the club.
GH: Yeah. Well, when, when I moved out of the club and went to move in with my in-laws, future in-laws and then I got married and managed to get a house, a rented house and then came the time when I was due to go in the forces and I went –
[Phone ringing. Recording paused]
CB: We can go on now. It’s disrupting isn’t it? Do you want to wait a mo?
GH: Yeah. Wait a minute. Yeah.
[Recording paused]
GH: He went out and went into the police force.
CB: That was [Stanley?]. Yeah.
GH: Yeah and he was still in the reserve so that when war broke out they whipped him in to the Grenadiers again.
CB: Oh right.
GH: And he was, yeah, he had a, he was quite intelligent and they whipped him into India and he became a captain in the Indian army and was training Sikhs and Ghurkhas for the remainder of the war
CB: Oh right.
GH: And then they wanted him to stay to, to look after the police in India.
CB: Yeah.
GH: And he asked, he asked me actually what he should do kind of style you know. I said, there was so much trouble going on in India at the time that I told him, I said, ‘Get out.’
CB: Yeah.
GH: ‘And get back in the police.’
CB: Yeah.
GH: And that’s what he did.
CB: Yeah. So when you joined the RAF what happened? So you joined at Warrington. What, could you just take us through –
GH: That’s right.
CB: The process of what happened.
GH: At Warrington and then I went to –
CB: Bridgnorth.
GH: Bridgnorth. Yes. And then from Bridgenorth I was posted to this place in London for, on a PT course. The PT courses was all done at this headquarters of the RAF training in London. As I say I can’t remember the name of the place but we was, we was there during the actual, the actual bombing of London and we, we was training during the day and at night it was down in the shelters and that made it very difficult but I I joined up with a, with a football international, Scottish International, Jock Dodds, and we, we went through the training situation you know. But there was a centre staircase in the barracks there and there were the barrack rooms on either side of this, the staircase and we got a bed right at the very end of this barrack room, halfway up the building. And when we went in the air raid shelter Jock said to me, he said, ‘We’re not having any more of this. I can’t stand it.’ Getting no sleep at all and yet doing the PT course during the day so he said, ‘You stay with me when the, when the thing goes off, if there’s a raid on,’ so he said, ‘We’ll get under the bed.’ So the orderly sergeant that come up the steps would look in the barrack room and see all the beds were empty and just leave it at that. So we never went in the, in the shelters from then on so but it was, it was very difficult to have these air raids over London you know, all the time, you know while we were doing our training. So, and there was, there was only one bomb dropped on the, on the camp and that was a, a landmine. They were dropping land mines at that time and they dropped it on the, on the WAAF course in the, within the camp, you know but being as it was at the time, you know that we weren’t allowed to speak even to one another about what was happening around us you know. So what happened, whether any WAAFs were killed because of that I don’t know. But er –
CB: The landmine came down by parachute and then when it exploded there was a big blast. What was the –
GH: And that was –
CB: Devastation. How bad was the devastation?
GH: Well it was just the WAAF depot.
CB: Oh just that.
GH: We never saw anything.
CB: Oh right.
GH: It was a big camp.
CB: Yeah.
GH: A great big camp
CB: Right.
GH: So it must be well known. I can’t, I don’t know why I can’t remember the name of the place.
CB: Well we’ll pick it up later George.
GH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
GH: Yeah.
CB: Ok.
GH: That’s fine.
CB: So how long were you there?
GH: I don’t know whether it was four or five weeks. I can’t remember. But the, the training went on there and I remember we went, we had to pair, the pair of us had to go in, in to a trench on the perimeter of the camp and obviously there was other pairs all around the camp during that period and we, it was like four hours on and two hours off or something like that and the two hours off we were right at the side of the, of the PT gymnasium and the, our barracks was right at the other end of the camp so we decided to go into the gymnasium and and sleep there rather than go to the other end of the camp and I remember it, I don’t know, that was when the land mine was dropped but we was on top of the training mats and we, we took all our gear off and helmet and everything and went, went to sleep there and when this bomb dropped the pair of us jumped up and put our helmets on and then fell back, back to sleep again [laughs]. The next day, ‘Why did we do that?’ You know? Absolutely ridiculous but that’s that was one of the incidents during the, during that period in the physical training and then Jock Dobbs was posted to Blackpool and played for Blackpool for the remainder of the war and I was posted to Morecambe. And then the first game I had with Morecambe was a friendly game against Blackpool. So Jock Dodds were playing at centre half, centre forward for Blackpool and I was playing at centre half for Morecambe so we were up against each other like, you know. It was, it was, that was great fun. It was great fun.
CB: So you were sent from London to Morecambe.
GH: Sent from London to Morecambe. Yes.
CB: And what was your job there?
GH: Well when I got to Morecambe I didn’t realised that we’d got to do the foot training and the rifle training and do everything. All the training that had to be done and I hadn’t had the training for any of this but eventually I read up about everything, you know and eventually got into it and did the job for two and a half years. So it was quite, quite an experience really.
CB: What sort of people were coming in as recruits at that time?
GH: Well they were very mixed. Very mixed. And being in Morecambe they were in, in billets like hotels and boarding houses and that sort of thing. That’s where they were billeted.
CB: Yeah.
GH: And they had a billeting officer. A warrant officer. Warrant Officer Smith. Yeah. And they used to come in on the train. A train load of them you know and he used to split them up into, into thirties and send them off with their instructor and, and, and give them the information as to where they were going to be billeted within Morecambe and sometimes you got, they were able to get into a hotel or a boarding house that was big enough to take the whole thirty. Other than that they used to split them up into, into different billets but you had to have a system of parading outside these billets every morning at a certain time and, and then to take them off to, to the syllabus that was going on. The only thing was as far as PT was concerned I had an hour PT every day to the recruits but other than that it was for other purposes you know. Foot drill first and then later on it got to rifle drill and then to being able to deal with, with your gun. Being able to strip it down and put it back together and all that business and we went, they did five weeks training before they were sent off, posted to wherever they were supposed to be going. And then when the, it was a five weeks course and then later the, it went down to, when they needed more men it went down to four weeks and it finished up three weeks. We’d got to fit the whole training of three weeks, of five weeks training into three weeks and that was a terrible time but it only went on for a couple of courses, you know. A couple of three weeks and then it went back to four and then back to five again and then eventually back to when they don’t want any more.
CB: But how well did the recruits handle the shorter course at three weeks?
GH: Oh it was, it was very difficult for them you know because the, the timing you know. I mean, say you hadn’t got time to do anything. You’d no time to go and have a cup of coffee and a, a coffee and a bun kind of style you know which we was able to do in the five week system you know. We had to just keep working all the time. It was very difficult. Difficult for the instructor. Very difficult for the recruit.
CB: Yeah.
GH: And there was one, I remember the first lot of recruits that came in. I’ve got a picture of them now and they, they’d run out of forage caps [laughs]. They had no forage caps so they had to put their scarf inside out on, on the head you know and that was how they was being trained. The first lot, you know. But that was only one incident that that happened during the, during the training.
CB: And how was everybody fed? Did they have big mess halls?
GH: No. No. They were fed. The people where they were staying fed them. They had the, they had their breakfast in the morning and, and the meal, meal at night and I think they, they were allowed to go in a café or something like that and buy the, the lunch. It was a real, real mixed, mixed effort but it, it worked quite well really.
CB: So your specialty really was physical education.
GH: That’s right. Yeah.
CB: How, physical training, how well did they stand up to that?
GH: Well it was, some of them were, it was very hard. Occasionally you’d have a crew of thirty men to train and they were very difficult but then again you’d get occasional cases where you’d get one that was in the squad that belonged to a military family and you was able to pick, pick one out and make them the senior man kind of style for the, for the squad. That made it a lot easier but generally speaking you know you’ve got to, you’ve got to work very hard in the early stages and you could tell, the recruits, in the early stages, they hated your guts. They hated the instructor you know but towards the end they used to be coming up to you and thanking, thanking me you know for, for what I’d done for them you know. So, yes, it was a very, very good system really.
CB: So what was it that made the PT so difficult for them?
GH: Well, I don’t think they’d had, they’d, some of them hadn’t had any training at all. They were just raw as far as physical training was concerned. Biggest majority of them was absolutely raw.
CB: Yeah. So they were, they’d come straight from school to you.
GH: Well some –
CB: Well not necessarily.
GH: Some of them had come straight from school you know.
CB: Yeah.
GH: But a lot of them had come from working and working families.
CB: Yeah.
GH: You know.
CB: Because the school leaving age in those day was fourteen.
GH: Fourteen. That’s right.
CB: So they’d, most of them would have had jobs unless they’d gone to further education. Is that right?
GH: That’s right. They’d have, they’d have a job for a short while and then and then they’d be whipped into the, into the forces you know.
CB: Yeah. So when they’d finished with you did they know what they were going to do as a trade in the RAF?
GH: They knew what they were going in to and they knew that when the training had finished that that’s where they’d go. They’d go to different camps around the country doing different things to –
CB: Right.
GH: Mechanics. Mechanics were –
CB: How many were air crew that you trained?
GH: Oh I can’t remember.
CB: But there were people who became, were becoming –
GH: There were, there were quite a number that became aircrew you know.
CB: Yeah.
GH: And I look, look back at some of the photographs that I’ve got of the recruits you know and wonder where, where, where they got to you know and –
CB: Yeah.
GH: And whether they survived really because I reckoned a lot of them went as rear gunners and that sort of thing you know.
CB: And did the air crew people stand out in the training any more from the others?
GH: No. No. They were all more or less the same and they all mucked in really you know and, and most of them you know especially towards the end of the training they were very much together in, in the thirty, thirty men kind of style. They were a team and helped each other you know.
CB: Yeah.
GH: They were very very good.
CB: Yeah. So you did that for how long?
GH: Well for the two and a half a years I was at Morecambe. Or the two years I was at Morecambe and then the half year that I was there was when they’d had enough RAF recruits and they went to change over to the WAAF and they asked me to go over to stay with the WAAF you know and train the WAAF and I wasn’t liking it at all. I I fought against it quite a lot but there were two other professional footballers at Morecambe with me who, who had moved over to the WAAF depot and it was then them that decided me to, to have a go at it you know and then I found out when I started training then that they were far easier to train than the men were.
CB: Why was that?
GH: I don’t know.
CB: What was, what was it that made it difficult for you to start training them?
GH: Well they trained.
CB: In the first place.
GH: They weren’t, they weren’t fit for one thing. They’d had no, the biggest majority of them never had any physical training.
CB: Not even at school.
GH: And, and then the, I found that the WAAF, when I was training the WAAF, they were, they were more supple than the men were and that made it far easier to train them and I got on well with the, with the WAAF after a time when I got, got over the shock.
CB: What was your wife’s reaction to that?
GH: No. She wasn’t very happy I can tell you although she did, she did come and we lived out for quite a while in Morecambe. My wife got herself a job with some insurance people who had moved out of London in to, in to Morecambe and she was working as a secretary there for quite a while.
CB: And what was the syllabus for the WAAFs? Was it the same as for the ground, the men?
GH: Very similar. Very similar yeah.
CB: Even with the rifles?
GH: Actually, no rifle. No. It was just the, and we didn’t bother with the foot drill. They had their own instructors. The WAAF, the WAAF had their own PT instructors but they needed a man when the, was training in bulk. They hadn’t got the voice to do the training in bulk so they always, they always called on the RAF PTI to do the training in bulk.
CB: So when, here you as a PTI as a specialty.
GH: Yeah.
CB: What were, was the process you went through in training them? What exercises effectively did they do?
GH: Well there was only the exercises. I don’t, I don’t realise really what they were really you know it was just a matter of running on the spot, arm movements, body movements and that sort of thing.
CB: Circuit training? Did you do circuit training with them? So you go around the gym doing different tasks.
GH: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, they had quite a, quite a system and they had a series of games and they topped up the score of each team in each section. It was quite a difficult system, you know.
CB: And did you use wall bars and dumbbells?
GH: That’s right. Yeah.
CB: Press ups.
GH: Dumbbells. Yeah.
CB: All those things.
GH: Wall bars, dumbbells, the horse.
CB: Oh yeah. So jumping the horse.
GH: Jumping the horse.
CB: Yeah.
GH: And that sort of thing within the gym you know. Morecambe we took over a cinema actually to, as a gymnasium. The Alhambra Cinema. [laughs] Took all the seats out and we used it as a gymnasium.
CB: Yeah. So in the winter what was the temperature like?
GH: Terrible. Terrible. At Morecambe especially you know. It was, it was very bleak there you know and there was one, one or two incidents you know when the sea was so rough and coming over on to the Promenade that we couldn’t do any training. You look along the Promenade at Morecambe during the training and you wouldn’t see anything but blue uniforms, you know. Training somewhere or other. Marching. It was, it looked to an outsider a complete mess but it was very very well controlled. Very well.
CB: So after they’d finished their five week course what did they get for PT? Did they get some kind of certificate to show –?
GH: No. No. No. No. They just, they’d been trained and that was that. Just sent off to the next stage of their training. They went, they went on to the, on to the station and on to the train and was taken wherever they were needed to go.
CB: So you trained men mainly but six months were women. The WAAFs.
GH: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Where did you go from Morecambe?
GH: To Wilmslow.
CB: And what did you do there?
GH: RAF Wilmslow. I was training recruits, WAAF recruits, in the same way that I’d been training them at Morecambe.
CB: Right. So that was -
GH: Just, just for mass purposes you know.
CB: Yeah.
GH: They had their own NCO’s you know to deal with them as a squad at a time you know.
CB: Did you also do drill when they were all together?
GH: When they were all together we did drill.
CB: Yeah.
GH: Passing out, passing out parades and that sort of thing.
CB: Right.
GH: Yeah.
CB: So how long were you at Wilmslow?
GH: I was at Wilmslow about two and a half years there.
CB: Ok. And –
GH: And we were right at the side of Ringway at the time and Ringway was one of the main parachute instructor where the parachute, the army was, was being trained there and they had RAF instructors there then at that time.
CB: So when did you get into training parachutists?
GH: Well it was only a short period when, while I was at Wilmslow. I had the opportunity to go across to Ringway and do this training.
CB: So you did the parachute instructor’s course did you?
GH: That’s right. Yeah.
CB: And then what?
GH: Well I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t continue with it you know. I went back to the WAAF depot and –
CB: Right.
GH: Training the WAAF.
CB: Yes. Any incidents in the parachute training that are –?
GH: Yeah. There was, there was one incident there where Molotov was, came over from Russia to see what, what was happening with the, with the parachutists, you know, to take back to Russia. To find out, you know, to deal with the parachute training in Russia. I remember Molotov being there and it was a, the wind was far too fast for, for real flying for the training so there was a half a dozen instructors went up and the, I remember that the pilots weren’t, weren’t going to take them up. They said it’s you know, the wind’s too, too strong for it and anyway the CO said Molotov was there and this had got to be done. But I remember what, what happened to Bert Wooding, I think, was the first one out and they were extending at Ringway, expanding the runway and he was, he was the first one out. We didn’t do the drops at Ringway. We did them at Tatton Park but because Molotov was there it all had got to be done at, at Ringway. So I remember Bert Wooding was the first one out with the drop and he landed on the edge of this where they were building the runway and he broke both his ankles. And then there was another one. There was a warrant officer. An Irish, an Irish guy. I forget his name now but he broke his back during that fall. So it was, it was a dangerous thing to have happened, you know.
CB: Yeah.
GH: Just because Molotov was there.
CB: Yeah.
GH: That was the only incident I remember.
CB: So for the parachute training some of it was from flying aeroplanes. Some of it was from balloons was it?
GH: Yes. You went, you did the training in the gym first, you know. Jumping off the horses and that sort of thing, you know and then you went on, eventually went up on the balloon you know and did the jumps from the balloon. And then, and then they went, and the early ones was in the old Whitley.
CB: Bomber.
GH: Bomber with the hole, hole in the bottom and that’s how they did the jumps first and then of course they get the, managed to get the Dakotas then you know and that was entirely different situation you know.
CB: So in the aircraft they had a static line that was attached –
GH: That’s right.
CB: To a rail.
GH: Used to just stick the ring on the rail you know and they’d all be in a line ready you know and the RAF instructor, you know was at the entrance, and, and the, when it came to the actual jump at Tatton Park they used to get them moving you know. And I remember one of them said to me, you know, that he, he’d had one that chickened out you know and he had to send him to the back of the plane you know to take his ring off and take him to the back of the plane while, while he finished the jump, you know.
CB: And then clipped him on again.
GH: And then clipped him on and pushed him out [laughs]. Yeah. It was very interesting for some of them you know.
CB: What experience or knowledge did you have ‘cause this is early in training so it’s less likely, people with LMF which was the people who were a bit worried about what was going on. Lacking moral fibre.
GH: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Did you experience any of that?
GH: No. No.
CB: See any I mean?
GH: No. The only, the only bad do that I had of that was at Wilmslow. At Morecambe rather when they were in the gas chambers training them with the gas masks training and he, there was one in during my instance there and he came running out on to the main road and was off down the main road. I was a sergeant at the time and I got the corporal to go and fetch him back you know but he had claustrophobia of course. Couldn’t stand the, it was only like a hut, probably about as big as this room and you packed probably about a whole thirty into this, you know and put the masks on and got the smell of the stuff you know and, and then take the masks off and then and then bring in another, another thirty kind of style, you know. But there was only that one incident that I ever knew, you know that –
CB: Ok. Just clarifying that. So they start off with the mask on.
GH: Yeah.
CB: With oxygen.
GH: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Then the mask is taken off.
GH: That’s right. To get –
CB: But there’s smoke –
GH: That was to get –
CB: In the shed.
GH: Yeah.
CB: Ok. And it’s just smoke is it?
GH: Yeah. That’s right. It’s when, when it, the whole thing had settled like you know. There was no danger, no danger to them at all.
CB: No.
GH: But they just, they just got the smell of it before –
CB: Yeah.
GH: Before it was –
CB: Yeah. And how long did they have to have the mask off?
GH: Oh I can’t remember.
CB: Before they put it on again.
GH: I can’t remember [laughs].
CB: Right. Ok.
GH: I can’t remember.
GH: Good.
CB: They had, they had an instructor within the hut, you know.
GH: Yes.
CB: We weren’t. We just took them there and pushed them in the hut kind of style and told them what was going to happen you know and there was an instructor inside there you know to, to deal with all that business.
GH: And throughout the war did everybody carry a gas mask?
CB: Yes. They always had to have their gas mask with them.
GH: Yeah. Ok. We’ll pause there for a mo.
CB: Yeah.
[Recording paused]
GH: The welterweight champion of the world.
CB: So if you could just, I gather that you -
GH: He was the one who –
CB: Met some important people.
GH: That was coming in.
CB: Yeah. Ok. And Peter Kane.
GH: Jack. Jack London.
CB: These are boxers.
GH: Jack London, the heavyweight champion.
CB: Yeah.
GH: And quite a number more but I can’t remember the name of them but -
CB: Ok.
GH: As I say I’d got to get, I managed to get one to get against, against Peter Kane and that was Teddy O’Neill, Scottish bantamweight champion. I got, I got him to fight –
CB: This was a boxing match.
GH: Peter Kane.
CB: Yes.
GH: Yeah and he eventually beat him too. It was only like a three, three round effort like of course to have.
CB: Right.
GH: You know.
CB: These are people from another camp you’re talking about.
GH: From another camp yeah.
CB: Yeah. So there was competition between the camps.
GH: And the top brass for instance were in the front seats around the ring you know and, and I remember Teddy O’Neill knocked Peter Kane out in, in the second round and he finished up in the CO’s lap. [laughs] Oh dear me. Yeah. All good fun.
CB: So the CO was a bit surprised.
GH: He was a bit surprised. Yeah. [laughs]
CB: Yeah. And what about other famous people? In the, when you were doing square bashing.
GH: No. I don’t.
CB: Churchill’s daughter.
GH: Churchill’s daughter. That was the only one that I remember but I often, I often wonder you see whether, I’ve got recruit’s photographs of nearly all the squads that I trained in that, in that box you know and I I will look at them from time to time and think, you know, what happened to him? You know. What happened to him? You know.
CB: Did you ever follow up with anybody?
GH: No. No I didn’t. No.
CB: Right. So you’ve idea what happened to them?
GH: I’ve no idea what happened to any of them but –
CB: Ok. We’ll stop there again.
GH: Yes.
[recording paused]
GH: And I it turned out that there was a goal keeper playing for the prisoner of war. It turned out to be Bert Trautmann and he turned out to be the goal keeper for Manchester City after the war and he played for Manchester City for more or less all his life, you know. All his footballing life.
CB: This was the prisoner of war camp. Where was that?
GH: That was outside Wilmslow somewhere. I don’t know. Altrincham or somewhere very close. I can’t remember exactly where but it was in that area and as I say, you know the, the mostly there was the wardens were playing but, but they had one or two of the prisoners that were any good like, you know would play in the team and Bert Trautmann was one of them. I always remember him very well.
CB: Right.
GH: Because I met him later in the football, in the football when he was at Manchester City and we had chat about it, you know when he, while he was there, a prisoner of war.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
GH: Yeah.
CB: Good. Thank you.
[Recording paused]
CB: So we’re talking about Jack Brymer.
GH: He was at Morecambe actually.
CB: Jack Brymer was.
GH: Jack Brymer was. Yeah.
CB: And what was he?
GH: He was a clarionetist with the London Philharmonic or something like that, I think. And yeah, he –
CB: He was on one of your courses.
GH: No. He was, he was stationed in Morecambe with me, you know and I I started the Morecambe and Heysham Rhythm Club and we used to meet in the, on Central Pier every Sunday morning and there was always a lot of musicians coming into Morecambe playing and they always used to come there and Jack Brymer was one of the leaders of, for me anyway, you know of running things in the Morecambe and Heysham Rhythm Club. I don’t know whether it’s still going or not. [laughs]
CB: So how did they keep or you keep the recruits entertained outside training hours?
GH: Well that was one thing you know but there was always somebody doing something or other you know. You know. Running, running a dance, dance something like that you know. A ball, running a ball or something you know and yeah there was always something going on at Morecambe you know because there was, I think there was two or three theatres there.
CB: Yeah.
GH: Where these entertainers used to come to entertain the troops.
CB: But at Altrincham that was all WAAFs and it wasn’t a seaside place. So –
GH: No. No. That was –
CB: What did they do for entertainment there?
GH: No idea really. I left, I didn’t interfere with, with the WAAF after, after training. My wife was living out as well you know.
CB: Right.
GH: I had my own things to deal with you know.
CB: I was thinking -
GH: In the evenings.
CB: I was thinking of some band or orchestra or whatever.
CB: Yeah. Well –
GB: You talked about to entertain them.
GH: There was, there was one that was stationed at Wilmslow for a time and that was a couple of RAF who played the piano. They both played the same piano. I can’t remember who the name was though but they were very well known and they were playing all over the country really, were those two.
CB: Right. Thank you. We’ll stop for a mo.
[Recording paused]
GH: Morecambe and Wilmslow. When we went on courses and one course we went on to was at Cosford and one of the things that we trained there, or learned to train was the dinghies for aircraft. The fighter, the fighter dinghy, the small one and the large Q-Type big one for the aircrews and we had to learn how, how to deal with them for the, those pilots and crew and the worst one was the Q-Type. The big one.
CB: That took seven.
GH: Yeah. And that was automatically inflamed when they were ditched but quite often it was upside down and we had to train, train the crews to, how to right these dinghies. They’d a loop right in the centre underneath and the, the rope that ran around the outside. You used to get your hand in that rope and the loop and you used to bring it upright and get it to a certain level and then you used to have to twist it and throw it.
CB: Yeah. I remember doing that.
GH: Do you?
CB: Yeah.
GH: Well that’s how we were trained to train the aircrews you know whenever we came across the situation you know. Yeah. I remember that well.
CB: We’re now stopping for coffee.
GH: Right.
[recording paused]
CB: And tea.
GH: Yeah. There was -
JH: Do you take milk and sugar yeah.
CB: Just one.
GH: They used to train you how to get them out of the water and how to be able to push them under and then lift them out to get them back into the dinghies and we were doing this in the swimming pool at Cosford and there was one of the officers there in, in, full, full dress. He was going out somewhere and he thought he’d have a bit of a laugh with me like, you know. Get me to the side like, you know and dip me under and keep me under longer that he should have done kind of style, you know. Laughing all the time with the instructors as well like, you know. The instructor’s didn’t like it of course ‘cause I was an instructor of course and I came, came out you know and I, I was so bloody blazing mad like you know that I skimmed the water you know right at him on the side of the pool and in full regalia like, he was absolutely soaked from that. The, the officer couldn’t do anything about it. He’d asked for it and got it kind of style so anyway he had to go back to the billet and change. He was going to meet the CO or something. [laughs] Oh yes that’s one of the funny incidents that happened. When they’d finished the training and we –
CB: In Morecambe?
GH: In Morecambe yeah and we got the squad there to take them to the station to, to away, to take them away to where ever they were going to go and whatever courses they were going to go on and there was one, one lad there. He was a bit, he was an only, an only boy and he was, he was a money man I think you know, of the, of the family.
[Telephone ringtone in background]
GH: You carry on. He was the, the mother came with him to the, to the training and she used to be there at the side like, you know with a fur coat on like you know and seeing how her boy, boy, her only boy was doing kind of style and this, this went on for five weeks like, you know and I couldn’t do very much about it you know. She was staying in a hotel in Morecambe looking after and seeing that her boy was alright and fortunately the lads took to him and looked after him kind of style you know and he, he was and he got, he was a damned sight fitter when I’d finished with him of course and when they were marching away and along the Promenade towards the station I noticed that he’d got something on, on his pack. They were in full pack like, you know. Ready, ready to go away and there was a chamber pot on his, on his gear. I said, ‘What the bloody hell have you got there?’ He said, ‘The landlady charged me for it because it was cracked.’ And he said, ‘I wasn’t going to leave it there and get somebody else caught with this trick like, you know, of having to pay for the chamber pot.’ I said, ‘Well bloody well get it rid of it quick.’ He said, ‘What do I do?’ I said, ‘Get over to the sea,’ where the sea was in there. I said, ‘Sling it over the top and into the sea.’ I said, ‘Get back in to, in to line quick.’ I always remember that.
CB: The significance, I think that’s interesting because the significance of that is that we didn’t have the accommodation that you know nowadays.
GH: No. No. That’s right. Yeah.
CB: So what was the accommodation like? How was it set out?
GH: Well the, it was, it was quite good. Most of it was good but occasionally you found a landlady like, you know that was looking after them who was a bit wrong you know but we used to get in touch with Warrant Officer Smith and he used to deal with it. He used to say, ‘Well you either mend your ways, you know or we’ll take you off the list and you don’t get any more recruits.’
CB: So under each bed there was a chamber pot.
GH: There was a chamber pot. Yeah. [laughs] And that, that was in the local billets you know that –
CB: In the hotels.
GH: The landlady -
CB: Yeah.
GH: In the hotels and that –
CB: Yeah.
GH: Sort of thing.
GH: So in the morning people went and emptied their chamber pots.
CB: Yeah.
GH: And washed them out.
CB: That’s right. Yeah. But this, this was cracked you see and the, and this landlady had charged him for it you know so he said, ‘I’m, I’m taking it with me,’ he said, ‘I’m not, nobody else is going to be caught with this.’ Oh aye, I got, I made him chuck the chamber pot over the wall into the sea [laughs].
RH: Killed a few whales.
CB: In Reddish.
GH: When I lived in Reddish, I lived there ‘till I was eight years old and there was no electricity. It was all gas. There was a little gas mantle and we had to be very careful because they were very fragile you know to get them to work and when I was eight years old we went to this club in Stockport and it was electric lights all over the place and of course at eight years old like I was switching them off all over the place. Yeah. [laughs] Having a real good time with them but and also it had been a well-known house. It was a four, four storey property and it would, it were owned by a well-known doctor, surgeon and he had two daughters, I remember and they had, at the side of the fireplaces there was like a lever that went down into the servant’s quarters like, you know, and when they wanted the servants they just rang this damned bell thing you know. It was all hooked up to that you know.
CB: Yeah. Mod cons of the day.
GH: And the, and the electricity, you know that was, that was something else. At eight years old I thought oh dear me.
CB: So in Reddish -
GH: No gas lights to bother about like. Switch the light on and off.
CB: Yeah. In Reddish what were the heating arrangements?
GH: The heating. Nil. Absolutely nil.
CB: Open fires.
GH: You had a fire, an open fire. Yeah. That was the only heating you had.
CB: And the toilet and washing?
GH: Well the toilet was outside in the, in the shed outside.
CB: Was it a flush toilet or a thunder box?
GH: No. It was a thunder box. [laughs] And er –
CB: Which meant that a horse and cart came around regularly and –
GH: That’s right. Yeah.
CB: And then they –
GH: Dealt with it. You know.
CB: Then the thing was tipped in -
GH: Yeah.
CB: To the cart and put back again.
GH: That’s right. And I remember the doctors for instance you know. I remember my mother paying a penny a week. Hospital fund as she called it. A penny a week you paid. But we had, we had a family doctor that used to come around and deal with things and I suppose he got paid with this penny a week thing you know.
CB: Yeah. Well the NHS didn’t start until 1948.
GH: No, that’s right. Yeah. This was from 1915 to when I was eight. It would be thirteen, 1913 when I left Reddish.
[Recording paused]
CB: Just tell us a bit about “walls have ears” George.
GH: Well you weren’t, you weren’t allowed to talk about anything appertaining to the, to the war. Like where I was you know, in London. These bombs that dropped on the camp where I was. We weren’t allowed to talk about it at all so I never found out what happened to these people that were bombed on the camp. I know it wasn’t me that was bombed but it was on the WAAF depot but there must have been some casualties within that WAAF camp you know to, to have happened to them. Fatal happenings.
CB: Yeah.
GH: And you just, you just weren’t allowed to talk about these things.
CB: Yeah.
GH: And that stuck a lot after the war and that’s why the serviceman didn’t talk to their children or their wife about what happened because that’s how they’d been brought up. Just keep your mouth shut. Walls have ears. [laughs]
CB: Now bearing in mind that aircrew went on operations, normally thirty and then did something else did you get any people who were effectively being rested coming to help out on your training?
GH: No. No. No. I never came across anybody but I remember taking, the recruits sometimes had to be taken in batches to wherever they were going and I remember I had to take about twelve recruits and that meant that a sergeant had to go with them as well as a corporal and we went to a, a big air force place on the east coast of Scotland. Can you think of anywhere there?
CB: Montrose there was one.
GH: No. No.
CB: No.
GH: No. It wasn’t there. And there was a single track railway there and I remember we got –
CB: Leuchars. Leuchars was it?
GH: No.
CB: Ok.
GH: It’s still going. The air force -
CB: Oh Kinloss.
GH: Kinloss.
CB: Yeah.
GH: That’s the one. And they had a single line railway there and we’re off the train and we handed them over to one of these guys with a truck like to take them to the camp and I managed to get him to sign the docket that I had for, for these recruits. Otherwise I would have to wait for the next day to catch a train back. It was a train due to go back and unless we got rid of these recruits to this driver and get him to sign, sign the docket for them you know I’d have to stay the night. And what they used to do when you were taking recruits like that it was when your leave was starting so it was part of your leave that, you know, as far as I was concerned.
CB: Yeah.
GH: So I thought no I’m getting rid of this lot, so anyway I got, I got him to sign the docket for them you know. He said, ‘I’ll get, I’ll get, I’ll get in trouble when I get back,’ he said. In my mind I said, ‘I’ve got to get back to, back home.’ I said, ‘I’m on leave now.’
CB: What rank was he?
GH: He was an LAC.
CB: Right. And that was quite a long journey then.
GH: LAC driver.
CB: Yeah. Leading Air Craft man.
GH: Oh yeah. It was, it was a long way that you know and -
CB: What provisions –
GH: And I’d got to get back to Stockport.
CB: Yeah.
GH: To start my leave.
CB: Yeah. So what provisions did they give you on the, like, the recruits for that journey?
GH: Did you say it was Lossiemouth?
CB: No. Well it could be Lossiemouth. Yeah.
GH: Lossiemouth.
CB: Ok. Well it’s close.
GH: Lossiemouth. It was. Yeah.
CB: Is not far from Kinloss.
GH: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
GH: Lossiemouth.
CB: Right.
GH: That was where we were.
CB: Yeah.
GH: They’re still active aren’t they?
CB: They are. Yeah.
GH: Yeah.
CB: So what provisions were they given for the journey because it was a long trip?
GH: Well, they had, they had a pack, a food pack made up for them you know but on the camp you know.
CB: Yeah.
GH: And you always –
CB: What would that be?
GH: You always got something enroute you know at a station. You know, where they could get a cup of tea and a bun.
CB: Because you had to change trains.
GH: You changed trains yeah. Yeah.
CB: How long did that journey take, roughly?
GH: I don’t know. About I think it was about six hours or something like that I think.
CB: And when they got to Lossiemouth what were they going to do? Was that where they were to be stationed?
GH: That’s where they were going to be stationed but what they was going to be doing there I just don’t know. I don’t know what the individual was going to do. Whether they were going to be pilots or gunners or whatever I don’t know. Flight mechanics or whatever.
CB: Because at that point -
GH: I don’t know.
CB: They wouldn’t have any trade would they?
GH: No. No. No.
CB: Right.
GH: No they would be just fit [laughs]. As best I could get them anyway.
CB: Amazing. And they were all be good at football after you were doing it.
GH: Oh yeah football was, yeah, I loved that. You see Morecambe had a, we had a team of professional footballers from somewhere or other. Arthur Chester, the goal keeper, he came from Queen’s Palace. He played for Queen’s Palace and QPR and Bill [Byrom?] he played for Blackburn. Arthur Lancaster He was another goalkeeper. He played for Huddersfield. Oh we had, goalkeepers we were alright. We had three, three professional goalkeepers. [laughs]
CB: Completely blocked the goal.
GH: That’s right. Yeah. But we were only, only playing one of course but yes we, and we won quite a lot of trophies during that period with Morecambe, you know. Yeah.
CB: So just going then to Wilmslow. When you finished there was that because of the end of the war or you were posted somewhere different.
GH: No. I was, I left the air force in, it would be ‘45 I think.
CB: What time of the year?
GH: I can’t remember.
CB: And where did you go from there?
GH: I went to Lancaster. I, that was when I had to get myself a job. Being about twenty nine, thirty at the time. I had to get myself a trade. Lancaster City came and wanted to sign me for their team and I said, ‘Well I’ll sign for you if you get, give me a trade,’ so that’s when I went in to engineering and I finished up in engineering all my life.
CB: What type of engineering?
GH: Well it was a craft really. It was metal spinning. We used to spin parts for aircraft and all that sort of thing, you know. Spin, spin on a lathe, you know, Used to give you a block of wood and, and a drawing for what, what you were going to shape it to and then you’d put it on, on the lathe, get it drilled and on the lathe, turn it to the shape that was necessary and then spin it. Spin metal on to that to give you a shape and that’s, that’s what I did for the rest of my life but when I finished when I was sixty five they were starting, they were starting to finish with the spinning and they were doing nearly everything by press. By pressing. They increased the method of dealing with these things. They used to make a press and they used to press it. Everything was pressed and did away with the metal spinning then so I got out at the right time you know when I retired.
CB: So you went to Lancaster City.
GH: That’s right.
CB: And you played with them for how long?
GH: I played for them just for one season and then there was another team of, that came to me you know to play for them and I became an FA coach. I went on an FA coaching course and I became a coach and I became a coach and manager of this team, non-league team. In the same league as what Lancaster City was. So –
CB: Which one was that?
GH: I was with them for three years.
RH: Rossendale
GH: Rossendale. Rossendale United.
[paused
GH: And they –
CB: And you –
GH: Had quite a good team but I got out of it for one reason and that was because money was beginning to talk in the game and I was getting players that I knew to come to play for Rossendale and the directors said, ‘Oh we can’t afford him. Too much. He needs too much money,’ and I wasn’t able to get the players that I needed at the time because they hadn’t got sufficient money so that was that.
CB: So how long did you actually continue as a coach and manager?
GH: About three years. That was, I think I was thirty three -
CB: Because you were juggling -
GH: By that time.
CB: Two things weren’t you? You were -
GH: Oh yeah.
CB: Juggling the sport.
GH: That’s right.
CB: And the trade.
GH: That’s right. And I found that I could, I could make a living, a better living by playing part time football and and working as an engineer so that I got two wages coming in then you know and that, that was well worthwhile then because the amount of money that was being, you see Rochdale when I was playing for them at the end of the, the war they wanted me to play for them but they, they offered me absolute rubbish as a wage you know and that’s where I realised that I’d got to do something about this after, after playing finished.
CB: When did the children come along? During the war?
GH: No. After the war. My son, my son was born just at the end when I, when I finished in the air force. He was born right at the end.
RH: ‘47/48 I think.
GH: Was it?
RH: Yeah. And I’m –
GH: 1947/48 yeah.
RH: I was ’54.
GH: Yeah
GH: 1954.
GH: Yeah.
RH: Tell them about when you were at the conflict you were telling me the other day about when you were playing for Lancaster and doing your metal spinning at the same time and you had an accident.
GH: Yeah. Oh that’s right. Yeah. The, it was a bit, the engineering was a bit on the dangerous side you know. The metal spinning. You get cuts very very easily you know and there was one, it was, we were working Saturday mornings then and I cut the end of my finger off and I went across this room towards the nurses place, you know, at the other end of this room. I was halfway across and I fainted and that’s the only time I’ve ever fainted in my life and I’d lost so much blood that it must have affected me you know. I was only out for a minute or so like you know and then they, they managed to get me up and take me to the hospital in, in Lancaster to get it seen to and we were playing in a Cup tie that day and I said, ‘Well I can’t, can’t play today.’ ‘Oh we can’t do without you. It’s a Cup tie. You’ll have to. You’ll have to play today.’ And we was, we had to go to a team called Bacup in Lancashire to, to play this Cup tie and and they’d strapped it all up you know and bandaged and everything and I played this Cup tie. I had to go off before half time because the ball had hit this. I tried to keep it out of the way and it all started to bleed again so I was covered in blood and the trainer, trainer took me off like, you know and bandaged it all up again you know. The second half I was pushed out again. [laughs]
CB: Never looked back then.
GH: That was my experience.
RH: I mean the –
[Recording paused]
CB: So we’re just going to get a question from grandson Josh
GH: Yeah.
CB: And see what the reaction is. So Josh what’s the question?
JH: So I want to know if you resent the war at all?
GH: No. I don’t, don’t resent it at all. I think what was, what was done had to be done and I hate to think what would have happened if we didn’t win the war. What would have happened then?
JH: But asides from, you know, the war happened, yeah and you had, you did your bit and that’s very honourable the, the politics involved in it. I mean does that, does that make you angry or –
GH: Well the politics –
JH: I mean just the very, the fact of war and the nature of it.
GH: I never went in to politics at all, you know. I just did what I thought was right and and I thought that the war was right. It needed, it needed to be done and that’s what we did and did it successfully.
CB: What do you say was the general public attitude?
GH: The general public attitude didn’t, the, I don’t think they liked the war. I mean to say you get the Londoners who had been in these raids on London all through the war you can’t expect them to say, ‘Well I enjoyed it.’ They, they, they wouldn’t enjoy it. No way. But I think that it was something that had to be done and the forces, whatever they were, navy, army, air force they’ve all done their job and done a good job and the people today should be very thankful for what happened.
CB: Any more? Ok. Thank you. So we’re now winding up at five to one and many thanks to George, to Josh and to Rosemary. We are in Middleton Cheney having been talking with George Haigh.
[Recording paused]
GH: It was two –
CB: Arriving in Morecambe. Yeah.
GH: Two, two physical training instructors like that posted to Morecambe. There was two of us and I was given the travel warrant so I was in charge kind of style and we went through Stockport. The train pulled up at Stockport on its way to Manchester and then on to Morecambe and I I said to this bloke with me, I said, ‘I’ve got the warrant.’ I said, ‘I’m, I’m going home to see my wife.’ So I got off the train there and went and saw and saw my wife. Got back to the station at midnight kind of style you know and we were going off to Morecambe. We eventually arrived in Morecambe at midnight and they didn’t expect us at that time of course and the, one of the police, SP, he, he took me into the headquarters and it was a hotel that they’d taken over in Morecambe and they’d got cells in the basement for any wrong doers and they said, ‘The only thing we can give you is one of these cells.’ I said, ‘Well how do, how do you go on about when you have an air raid like?’ You know. Because coming from London like you know we thought everybody had the air raids. They said, ‘We never have an air raid here at Morecambe. Never.’ Anyway, we got, got to bed in this, in this, in one of the cells and they were going to billet us next morning and the air raid warning went and it was the only time that Morecambe ever had an air raid warning and I went outside and it were like the illuminations. Everybody put their lights on, you know [laughs]. Morecambe was flooded with lights and we found out like, you know, that this, this plane had obviously got lost and was in its way to [Barrow] and -
CB: Across Morecambe Bay.
GH: Across Morecambe Bay.
CB: Right.
GH: And that was the only raid that Morecambe ever had in their, in their life. [laughs]
Dublin Core
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Interview with George Haig
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eng
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AHaighG150902
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01:20:27 audio recording
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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
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Chris Brockbank
Description
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George Haigh was already a keen footballer when he volunteered for the Royal Air Force and became a physical training instructor. He was posted to RAF Morecambe where he provided basic training to new recruits. He discusses the mixed level of fitness amongst the recruits and how a five week course was sometimes shortened. He also undertook parachute training. After the war, he continued with his love of football while also working in engineering.
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Royal Air Force
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Pending review
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Great Britain
England--Cheshire
England--Lancashire
Date
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2015-09-02
Contributor
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Julie Williams
ground personnel
physical training
RAF Morecambe
RAF Ringway
RAF Wilmslow
sanitation
sport
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/621/8890/PParryHP1609.2.jpg
b7df933b79f45737f7c38a9f7b59ea8c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/621/8890/AParryHP161011.1.mp3
2d504a390d6a64c19871b79350c9f428
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Title
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Parry, Hugh
Hugh Pryce Parry
H P Parry
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Parry, HP
Description
An account of the resource
20 items. Two oral history interviews with Hugh Parry (b. 1925, 2220054 Royal Air Force), his log book, photographs and newspaper cuttings. Hugh Parry flew operations as an air gunner with 75 Squadron and then as a photographer and air gunner with 90 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Hugh Parry and catalogued by Stuart Bennett.
Date
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2016-10-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Transcription
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HP: And then, you want me then to carry on through my life story?
CB: Yeah.
HP: But I can’t, wouldn’t be able to give you the end.
CB: That’s all right.
Other: Haven’t got there yet.
JB: I think we’re quite pleased about that Hugh.
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today we’re with Hugh Parry in Abingdon and the date is the 11th of October 2016 and Hugh’s going to talk about his life and times with the RAF. But what are your earliest recollections of life, Hugh?
HP: Well, I was born in Oswestry on the 22nd May 1925 to Sam and Nora. Sam was the manager of the local furniture shop. A branch of Astins. He had the, a travel gene and he had spent some time in Canada and America. His father before him had spent some time in Australia. And that gene persists in the family to date. I had a sister who was older than me. At the age of five — no — four, I went to Bellan House Preparatory School. Left there at nine, ten and went to Oswestry School which was then Oswestry Grammar School which is the second oldest school in the country founded in 1407. Got my, I was a bit precociously young. Did my school certificate at the age of fifteen and by the contact with my mother’s brother who was the manager of the local Midland Bank got a job with a firm of accountants there. And at the age of sixteen was articled to a chartered accountant. Joined the Air Training Corps and the National Fire Service was part time. In the Air Training Corps I was the youngest of a group of friends who were all going to volunteer and be on a squadron as soon as they possibly could. When they all went and volunteered they all went for PNB. Consequently they all got long deferred service. They were still taking air gunners. Well, being the youngest I went and, initially to Shrewsbury which was a joint recruiting centre for the three services. Moved from there to Birmingham which was for the aircrew medical and volunteered for air gunner. There was a height limit of six feet for air gunners. I made sure, knowing this I made sure I wore baggy trousers because I was slightly over six feet. And I joined the RAF on the twenty fifth anniversary of its formation on the 1st of April 1943 and for call-up at the age of eighteen and a half which duly came in December 1943. And I had to report to the ACRC at St John’s Wood. Well, the usual thing of queuing up for injections and blood tests and the usual introduction to that which baffles brains, and in January got posted to ITW at Bridlington where my principal memory is of PT on the sands without getting the sands wet because the rain came across the North Sea horizontally. But it was not the most comfortable of places. From there moved on to ITW at Bridgnorth in Shropshire and all just totally routine. From there to, [pause] No. We’d been to Bridlington. From there to Bridgnorth. Yes. Bridgnorth we’re at. Elementary Air Gunnery School. And from there to Pembrey on the South Wales coast. Not too far from Llanelli. Then passed out from there on the 1st of July 1944 which was unfortunate because automatic promotions came annually and if I had been told of passing out on the 30th of June I would have got an extra promotion. Sods law. Can’t say. Moved then to Woolfox Lodge. No. I tell a lie. To Westcott. In Buckinghamshire. Not too, not too far from Aylesbury where we were crewed up. There for approximately three months and it was Paddy Goode and his crew. We were an all NCO crew. And on the 7th of October we were posted to aircrew school at Stradishall which was just to keep us out of, out of people’s way until the 28th of October. From there go to 1651 Heavy Conversion Unit at Woolfox Lodge. On the 11th of February 1945 got posted to 75 Squadron at Mepal in Cambridgeshire. 3 Group. Not 5 Group. Repeat. Not 5 Group. On the first operation it was normal for the pilot, skipper, to go as a second dickie with an experienced crew on the first trip. Our CO’s crew were on holiday so he took us on our first trip. His name was Wing Commander Baigent. He was an old man of twenty three at the time. I think he got his DSO when he was with us and he died in 1953. I think that’s what my memory said. It was —
[Loud bells from chiming clock!]
HP: 75 New Zealand Squadron which doesn’t appear on a lot of Bomber Command memorials because it was New Zealand Air Force. We were posted there because there was a shortage of replacement crews coming forward and there was several, not too many, UK crews there. They were a wonderful, friendly people. They had comforts sent to them from New Zealand which were, was not in such an austere state as this country and they shared. Shared them always with us. Leave, of course, was compulsory on a squadron every six weeks. Things got easier. We had five leaves in four months which didn’t do us any harm. When you went on leave you get, got an extra five shillings from the Nuffield Fund which, added to the eight shillings which you got there, was a welcome addition. Looking back forty pence a day to be an air gunner does not seem an overpayment. Anyway, we stayed there until the 16th of June ‘45 and did half a tour there. The last one being the first air drop under the Operation Manna which was very different to the others because we had to go over there on a specified route at three hundred feet which was, we were told, it had been agreed with the Red Cross. We were not told it had been agreed with the Germans because on that date it hadn’t and we were followed by flak guns who were lining this route. That part of Holland was, at that stage, still occupied by the, by the Germans. The reason for Operation Manna was that twenty thousand Dutch people had died from starvation. So the affect, you can well imagine, was very great on all the rest. Despite their German occupation they were out in the streets. Out on the rooftops waving their flags and generally cheering and waving us and that was quite remarkable. Because we were on the first one we didn’t have packs to put the sacks of food on. They were just loaded on the bomb bay doors and they were dried egg, dried milk, flour. Really basic things. And you did it at three hundred feet. You just opened the bomb doors and there they went. And of course coming back it was so wonderful to have been giving life instead of taking life. An earlier but totally different memory results from the publication in the newspapers of the Belsen camp being liberated. With piles of corpses and piles, and people walking. Well walking or sitting. Skeletons. Slowly starving. We seldom but very occasionally would wonder where our bombs had dropped because there was an inevitable meeting between the bombs and hospitals and children and so forth and so on. And this was at the back of your mind wondering where they had been because I mean you couldn’t possibly see where they’d been. But once we saw the pictures of Belsen it had two effects on us. One was horror. And the other one was it removed any feeling of guilt. So on the 17th of June we were posted to 90 Squadron because 75 Squadron was going to be repatriated or go out to the Pacific or somewhere. And that was at Tuddenham and we were there on operational review which was photographic survey of the whole of Europe. We were, we believed that we were going out with Tiger Force to Okinawa in September ‘45. We were never officially told that but when the bombs dropped in August ’85 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki a tremendous cheer went up because we knew that we were not going to be done again. There were one or two crews who hadn’t been on any ops who were a bit disappointed perhaps.
[Recording paused]
CB: Right. We’re restarting now.
HP: We left 90 Squadron and the crew was dispersed on the 30th October 1945 and we were sent to Catterick. Some of us. So I think the pilot and the navigator were posted to Transport Command and the rest of us were spare. And there was a holding unit at Catterick where, it was there until it was decided what we’d do with us and we were there for a month until the 28th of November ’45 when we were posted to Silloth for work at a, at a Maintenance Unit. And I found myself in the guard room in charge of a guard dog and walking around. And since I was of an equal or higher rank than all the rest of the policemen that was quite a pleasant occupation. Just walking around the camp. And I made sure I had the dog with me. On the 3rd of January, possibly because of my background in accountancy, I was sent to the School Of Accountancy Training at Kirkham which is not too far from Blackpool and finished there on the 31st of January. Moving from there to an Equipment Disposal Depot, 276 Maintenance Unit at Burton Wood. From there on the 27th of February at my last posting to 268 MU which was an Equipment Disposal Depot at Marston Moor in Yorkshire. People have heard of Marston Moor. And if I had obeyed orders I would still be there now because I was told to report to the demob centre on the 31st of April 1947. So I didn’t. I went there on the 1st of May and therefore left the RAF. Now, from a family point of view in March, no, May, 1945 I met the girl who was going to become my wife and we got married in October 1946 and managed to get a flat together on our demob. And in May 1948 the first child was born who was described by the local Scottish GP as, ‘A wee demob present.’ I returned to the firm where I was articled because it was a five year article. I had just done two. About two years before going in the RAF. Concessions due to people who’d been in the forces. The five years was reduced to three so I had a year to do then and I had the exams to do. You got exemption from the intermediate or consideration on two subjects in the final. I decided to opt for the consideration of the two. This was done by correspondence course. There was no tuition other than the occasional Saturday morning lecture in Liverpool. Took the final exams in November ‘48 and got the results in January ‘49. It was easy to find out what your result was. We were on the second floor of this block of flats and you knew what time the post came and it came down and just went through on to the floor down there. You had a careful look and if it was a thin envelope you had failed. If it was a thick envelope it had the application for membership and you knew you’d got through. So from there having moved from a very small practice in Oswestry. You know, which was local firms, farms and nothing. Small. Needed to go for some experience on bigger stuff so we moved to London. Lived in Raynes Park and I got a job with Price Waterhouse. No. I beg your pardon. [Pitt Mark and Mitchell?] which was audits on a big scale including, I can say, Fairey Aviation at Hayes, which was interesting. Having done that for a year I decided I would rather make my own mistakes than find other people’s so got a job with United Dominions Trust which, at that time was the main hire purchase business and their premises were in Thames Street. They were just by London Bridge in London. I stayed there for two years and it was, it was a boring job and then the travel gene came out so I got a job with the India General Navigation and Railway Company Limited founded in 1847 which provided river steamers up and down the Ganges and the Brahmaputra with a head office in Calcutta. So went there. Obviously in the accounts department. The scale of it was rather surprising. There isn’t a bridge on the Brahmaputra for the first seven hundred miles because there isn’t enough stable bank. One of the principal activities was bringing tea down from Assam. There were a lot of general cargo but that was a bulk one. And in the month of October which was the busy month we would bring down from Assam to Calcutta for loading up from the port six hundred thousand eighty pound chests of tea which is a lot of cups full. The passenger vessels were licensed to carry more passengers than the Queen Mary. Two and a half thousand. Perhaps not quite in the same standard of comfort but it was an important link in the travel of East and West Bengal which were now separated. East Bengal at that stage was East Pakistan. Later changed its name to Bangladesh when it separated from what was then West Pakistan. In the December of that that year we moved from Calcutta to Dakar where an office was being set up because of the split of all the various companies following the devolution in 1947 and had to set up, from scratch, an accounts department there. Fortunately, twelve Hindu clerks were content to come with me even though they were moving to a Mohammedan country which had been a lot of unpleasantness in the recent past and I was very appreciative of that. They stayed for about four or five months whilst I got the furniture for the office and recruited seventy local people with a minimum qualification of a B-Comm and generally speaking an M-Comm. That meant that they were able to express a third as a percentage or the other way around. There, until the [pause] sorry. In Calcutta we were in partnership with the River Steam Navigation Company which was the same company that ran the British India Steamship Company and they were, ran joint services but they had separate marine engineering accounts and all the other departments and it was decided it would be better to set up the joint ones. At that time I was posted to Chittagong and there to sit in an office for six months drawing up the procedure and the layout of the books and all the things for the joint accounts department in Calcutta. Having done which, posted back to Calcutta to make the bloody thing work and stayed doing that until 1957 when, by that stage having had another child out there and where the expat community was tending to diminish. It was, when I went there in 1952 there were ten thousand British expats in Calcutta. All with, all in management jobs. Decided it was better to come back to the UK. Decided then not to work north of a line from the Mersey to the Wash. Not London. And the Black Country. Got a job just outside Abingdon which was in Berkshire with Ameys which was a building material company using sand and gravel quarried stone, concrete, concrete products. I stayed there from 1958 until retirement in 1985 at the age of sixty.
[Recording paused]
CB: Just doing a recap on a number of things now, Hugh. In your earliest stages you talked about your friends volunteering for PNB — Pilot, Navigator, Bomb aimer. What happened to them?
HP: They were called up, sort of, eighteen and a half, nineteen. Sometimes just a bit over nineteen because they initially were put on deferred service but when they were called up they were given ground jobs as aircraft and general duties. And none of them completed any flying training or ever got to a squadron. So my decision to go for air gunner although it was thought a much lower and lower class occupation than the rest of the aircrew I was fortunate enough to get all the way through and became their envy. I got paid slightly more which was a bit expensive when they were on leave and I was at the same time.
CB: To what extent did you keep up with them during the war?
HP: Very little.
CB: You didn’t know where they were I presume.
HP: If you were on leave at the same time you did but I mean your life was very full.
CB: Yes. Ok.
HP: And you, you were meeting new people all the time.
CB: Yeah.
HP: And you didn’t make too many intimate friends as such because you were aware that their, of their life expectancy and that there was this distance. Certainly between crews and to an extent within a crew.
CB: Ok so —
HP: You were very close together. If one chap had any money you all had money. But as far as mixing with families goes — no. The bare minimum.
CB: Now you mentioned crews. So this is moving ahead a little but you crewed up at number 11 OTU at Westcott and what happened there? You arrived at Westcott. Then what happened?
HP: The day after arrival all the various un-crewed up members were assembled in a hangar. The pilots then sort of cruised around accumulating a crew. And there didn’t — there was no logic about it. There was no question of people being placed with one or another. It just happened. In the American Air Force I think they were posted together by order of their superiors but with us we just accumulated and that started off as a period of trust.
CB: And what was your pilot like?
HP: Paddy Goody was basically of Irish descent. He was, I think he was a flight sergeant there. He got a commission in the end of March I think it was. ‘45. We were all from very much the same background. You know. Sort of Grammar School or equivalent.
CB: Ok. And was he a good leader? [pause] Or you just followed what he —
HP: Well we worked together as a crew. There wasn’t conscious leadership as such. We moved as a unit. Not as six people commanded by the pilot
CB: Right. And then what about the other members of the crew? Should we? What about the bomb aimer?
HP: The bomb aimer. Taffy Williams. We knew him as grandad because he had his twenty third birthday when he was with us and he came from not too far from Rhosllanerchrugog. Try and spell that.
CB: That’s an easy one. Yes. [laughs]
HP: The navigator, Roy Wootton came from Nottingham. The Gilly, the other air gunner, he was a Londoner. The flight engineer, he joined us when we were at Heavy Conversion Unit and he was a Geordie. The wireless operator, Gilly — no. Harper. Gilly was the other gunner. Harper. Harper he was. He came from Grantham. Now he was a bit of an oddity. After an operation he would sit on his own in the mess not talking to anyone and he ended up by more or less excluding himself from a crew. So he left us and we were joined by another wireless operator who was a spare on the squadron. I can’t remember his name. We weren’t together all that time. Otherwise, as a crew if one had a pound you all had. You all had a drink, you know. And it was very much a crew spirit.
CB: So the crew spirit at the OTU.
HP: That’s where it generated.
CB: Was pretty good was it? It’s just that when you got to the HCU that you had this difficulty with Harper.
HP: No. That was on the squadron.
CB: On the squadron. Right.
HP: Yes.
CB: Ok.
HP: Because after an operation he would sit separately.
CB: Ok.
HP: Not after a flight.
CB: So why did he move? Was he — did somebody say, ‘Right. That’s it.’ and say, ‘We’ll have somebody else,’ or, how did that happen?
HP: Well as because he was part of the crew the rest of us said, agreed with the pilot, that he would go and see the chap in charge of the wireless operators, you know. Which was a sort of separate wireless operators section. There was a gunnery section, a bomb aimers section and say, ‘Look we think it is better from his point of view as much as from ours if he doesn’t stay with us.’ Now, he was eventually posted but we made sure that he didn’t carry with him the horrible initials of LMF with which I’m sure you’re familiar.
CB: I was going to ask you about that. Keep going. Yes.
HP: Yeah. Yeah. We made sure that he was just posted and not, not labelled.
CB: Ok. So what we’ve talked about is going back a little now. You joined at Shrewsbury. Was that a recruiting office?
HP: Yeah. Shrewsbury was the combined recruiting office for all three services.
CB: Right. And what did they do there? You knew you wanted to be RAF but —
HP: Oh yes. Yeah. So you went, you went to the RAF section. You said what you wanted to do. You had the normal medical which everyone went through and you had an interview and if you were considered reasonable at that level you then went to Birmingham for the aircrew medical and aptitude tests and recruitment and where you got your shilling.
CB: Now. The shilling’s important. We’ll come back to that. But you said aircrew tests. You’d already indicated you wanted to be an air gunner.
HP: Yeah.
CB: Were you on that stream?
HP: Yes.
CB: And what were the —
HP: No. No. You were on an aircrew stream.
CB: Aircrew stream.
HP: At that stage.
CB: Right. Ok. So what tests did they give you there?
HP: Oh. Extra medicals. Extra sight tests. Hand and eye coordination with which you’re familiar. The test.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. Ok.
HP: And aircraft recognition. All sorts.
CB: Then when you went to ACRC, the Aircrew Reception Centre in —
HP: St John’s.
CB: St Johns Wood was there any repetition of what you’d done or was it a different? What did you do there?
HP: You went there to be kitted out and punctured.
CB: Yeah. Inoculations.
HP: Yes. And if you were in one particular requisitioned block of flats you actually went to eat in Regents Park Zoo.
CB: But not eating the animals. The —
HP: Not. You didn’t know.
CB: [laughs] So then you went to ITW at Bridlington. That was an ITW was it? Bridlington.
HP: It was.
CB: Pardon?
HP: Yes.
CB: It was. Right. So that was when you were on the beach and you’ve got the driving rain.
HP: Yes.
CB: What was the main activity there?
HP: Aircraft recognition. The guns with which you had to be familiar. Both from the point of view of their components and their stripping and very limited amount of firing. Law, discipline and just general background to assimilate you in to the air force with a view to moving on to air gunner training.
CB: So what were the guns you were using? Were they ones that were used on the ground like Bren guns and rifles? Or —
HP: Yes. They tended to be. But that was a minor point. I mean using live ammunition was not that very serious.
CB: Ok. Then you went to Bridgnorth. Now this is the, [pause] a gunnery school is it?
HP: Number 1, Elementary Air Gunnery School. Number 1 EAGS.
CB: Ok.
HP: No flying there at all but just taking this, taking the ITW disciplines a stage further.
CB: So how were they teaching you air gunnery there? For instance to what extent did they use clay pigeon shooting?
HP: I don’t think we had clay pigeon shooting there. We might have done but it was just more intense of stripping and reassembling and, say, aircraft recognition and you did a limited amount of astronomy so that, you know, you could do that and a limited amount of what might happen on an escape and evasion. I don’t remember much more.
CB: Ok. And the guns there. Were they the type that would be in the aircraft? In other words Brownings. 303.
HP: I think it was there we were first introduced to the Browning 303.
CB: In a turret? Or in an open deck?
HP: I think we had possibly a very limited amount of turret manipulation but very limited. And yeah and following a dot which was put around a darkened chamber through the gun sight.
CB: Right.
HP: To get the turret manipulation.
CB: So your next move was Pembrey on the, on the [Caernarvon?] Coast.
HP: South Wales Coast.
CB: Cardigan Coast is it? Anyway. The edge of Cardigan Bay.
HP: Yeah.
CB: So that’s —
HP: No. No. No. South Wales.
CB: South Wales. Right. So where —
HP: Yeah. Overlooking the Bristol Channel.
CB: Oh. Over the Bristol Channel. Right.
HP: Yes. Yeah.
CB: So what was the activity there? What did they teach you there?
HP: Well again just a development but at that stage you would have four trainee air gunners going off in an Anson firing live ammunition at a drogue towed by a Miles Magister or a Master. I can’t remember. I can’t remember which. And when the tow was over the drogue would be dropped on the runway and it would be picked up by the four trainee air gunners from the Anson. Having landed before they got, they got to it and that would be taken into a hut with a long bench and you would then identify the bullet holes which you had made. Not that anybody else had made. Now the, I think the firing was two hundred and fifty rounds for each. It was made up in a belt of four lots of two fifty. Three had their gun, their round tips dipped in a colour and the fourth one didn’t have any colour at all. So you had traces of the colour in the drogue and you counted the number of holes and divided them by two. One for the bullet to go in. The other one for the bullet to go out. And that gave you a score. You also had fighter liaison with the camera gun where you were practising deflection and bullet trail and all the other various parts. And with the target aircraft diving, moving, doing mock attacks. And those, the film from those camera guns was then assessed as to your ability to be able to fire directly.
[Recording paused]
CB: We’ve talked about your training there in the Anson and you mentioned deflection shooting. Could you just describe what that means?
HP: The only point blank shooting which was shooting direct at an aircraft would be one which was immediately behind you and travelling at the same speed and not changing direction. From there you could aim straight at it. If it were in any position other than that you had to put the bullet where the aircraft would be when the bullet got there and this would involve both speed and direction. It might be climbing — losing speed. It might be diving and gaining speed. So you had to rapidly assess which you thought it would be and in your gun sight there was a point and a circle. Within the circle you would draw a line in your mind from the point to the edge of the circle that the plane would be coming in to and you then had to assess how many of those radiuses you needed to move according to the speed of the aircraft relative to the speed of the one you were in. Apart from that there was one other complication that your own aircraft could well be manoeuvring violently as well.
CB: Yes. So in practical terms then the amount of deflection, the amount you aim ahead would depend, to some extent, on the relative position of the other plane.
HP: Yes. And what it was doing and what your own plane was doing.
CB: Right. So what might your own plane be doing?
HP: Might be diving, climbing, turning.
CB: What about corkscrew?
HP: Well if if you went into a corkscrew it was most unlikely that the attacking aircraft would follow you because it wouldn’t be able to. That was the point of the corkscrew. If he could follow you through into a corkscrew well there was no point in corkscrewing.
CB: Right. So could you just describe how you’d get into the corkscrew and what was the corkscrew?
HP: The cork.
CB: Who would call the corkscrew?
HP: The gunners would usually call the corkscrew because they would be the ones seeing the attacking aircraft who were aft. And you could corkscrew to the port or to starboard. A corkscrew to port would be when the pilot would dive port and having done that for a matter of some seconds. Ten, fifteen perhaps. He would then turn the aircraft and dive starboard. He would then climb starboard and then climb port and then he would dive port. And that would repeat a circular movement which can adequately be described by going along and describing a pass, a corkscrew in the air.
CB: And the fighter would normally be closing at a higher speed or the same speed?
HP: He would, if you were corkscrewing the fighter would probably stand off because his chance of being able to hit you when you were corkscrewing were the same as your chance of hitting him when you were corkscrewing.
CB: Right.
HP: That was the point of doing a corkscrew.
CB: Right. So we are at Pembrey and you’ve been getting all this training. What happened then? How long was that? Relatively short period?
[Recording paused]
HP: The Air Gunnery School was from the 25th of March 1944 to the 30th of June so that was three months which was the longest period there.
CB: Ok. And from there you went to the OTU.
HP: Yes.
CB: We talked about crewing up. What did — because there were all the disciplines except flight engineer at the OTU what were the tasks you did as a crew?
HP: Well we were flying in Wellingtons so we had to become familiar with the Wellington. When walking down the gang plank from forward to aft or aft to forward you had to make sure you didn’t, you didn’t let your foot slip on either side because it would go through the fabric of the fuselage and that would cost you five shillings to the ground crew to mend when you got back. And since your pay was four shillings a day you were very careful walking. It was familiarity with cross country flying with the wireless operator then. It was everybody becoming more familiar with their trade and doing, for the first time, practice bombing runs with practice bombs on bombing ranges which might be on the ground or they might be just just on the coach.
CB: And were you — as far as the gunners were concerned that wasn’t a task you were directly involved in but were you doing fighter affiliation?
HP: Oh yes.
CB: As well?
HP: Yes.
CB: And how would that normally take place?
HP: Generally more. Generally with, not with drogues but with cameras. And not — and with fighter aircraft because it was part of their training. So you were helping a fighter, our own air force fighter aircraft to do the same thing so they would have their camera guns on you.
CB: Now the number of airfields was very high so what area would you be doing fighter affiliation work? It was?
HP: Well you could fly out over the sea or you could, or you could go west because if you went west say from [pause] oh a line drawn up north south through Birmingham there was plenty of air space there and there was, or went beyond Yorkshire there was plenty.
CB: Right.
HP: Or over the sea.
CB: So you were at Westcott for three months and at the Number 11 OTU. And then you go to the HCU. At Westcott did you know where you were going to be posted or did that only emerge —
HP: No.
CB: At the last minute?
HP: Well it only, in fact it only, when you got your orders through the post because you were probably on leave. You just reported.
CB: Right. So you’d finish your OTU training and go on leave and then find out. In this case that you were going to Woolfox.
HP: Yeah.
CB: So what happened there? What was the aircraft?
HP: From there to the Lancaster which was of course a lot bigger aircraft. You had your flight engineer.
CB: He joined you then.
HP: He joined you there and it was just more cross country. More. Just more of the same but I think we went on one diversion raid to Calais. We would. You did that to sort of draw off the German Air Force from the intended target. They would have a force going there and we got, I think we got shot at over Calais which was a bit unfair we thought because we were only training.
CB: Yeah. Not fair at all. [laughs] So those sorties. Would they, what sort of flight time would you have there? Would they be fairly short because you went to Calais and back? Or would you then go on somewhere different to make up the time?
HP: Excuse me while I look up.
CB: That’s fine.
HP: Woolfox Lodge. We did a lot of circuits and landings, rated climbs, fighter affiliation, a run on H2S, cross country’s or practice bombing and general fighter affiliation. Yeah.
CB: Ok. We’ll stop there just for a mo.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ok. So you finished at Woolfox Lodge and you were then posted to Mepal in Cambridgeshire. What, what were you impressions when you arrived there? The squadron and the station.
HP: Well we were made very very welcome.
CB: This is a New Zealand squadron.
HP: Yes. And we were still at that stage an all NCO crew. We didn’t have any problem. You had the traditional two crews to a Nissen hut and everybody had a bike so that they could get to the mess and they could eat. Everything was relatively informal but the discipline all through the training became more and more your own discipline and the crew discipline. You weren’t ordered to do many, to do things in detail. You knew you had to report at a certain time every day to the gunnery section or what, if you weren’t doing anything else and you just did it. As you would any job in Civvy Street. There was a high degree of discipline but it was self-imposed of necessity.
CB: And tell us about the crew. So they had a motto and the squadron was supposedly New Zealand but what was the composition?
HP: I don’t follow the —
CB: Right. So what was the motto of the New Zealand Squadron? 75.
HP: That was, that was the motto of the New Zealand squadron Ake Ake Kia Kaha.
CB: Right. Which meant?
HP: “For ever and ever be strong.”
CB: Right. So why were there, why were there British crews as well?
HP: Because there weren’t enough New Zealand crews coming forward to replace the casualties.
CB: Right. And what about the ground crew?
HP: All British.
CB: And what association did your crew have with the ground crew?
HP: Well, we had the same aircraft all the time and it was friendly without being really familiar. They wouldn’t want to become over familiar with the crew because they didn’t want to lose their crews. But they tended to, if you were on an op, they would wait to see if you came back before they went off on leave.
CB: And what was the chief, the chief of the ground crew, the chief — the crew chief. Who did he liaise with in terms of the aircraft?
HP: Well he would liaise according to the trade which was involved. I mean you had air frame, you had wireless, you had gunnery. You know. Engines. They had, the ground crew were a team of specialists who tended to reflect the trades of the aircrew. On return from a flight of any sort whether it be training or operational a report would be made to the ground crew of any problems or anticipated problem.
CB: And who would do that in your crew?
HP: Depends on the speciality. There’s no point in anyone trying to inform the problems of another one’s trade because he wouldn’t know.
CB: Right. So in the crew there are people at the front, people at the back and people in the middle. As the mid-upper gunner who had the best perspective?
HP: When you say perspective you mean the greatest all-around view?
CB: When you’re flying.
HP: Oh yes. No doubt about it. The mid upper gunner because you could turn through three hundred and sixty degrees and you could look upwards and downwards.
CB: And in your position how many guns did you have?
HP: Two.
CB: And how often did you fire them on operations?
HP: Seldom.
CB: Was there a reason for that?
HP: Yes. Nothing to fire at as we were mainly on daylights to synthetic oil plants.
CB: Ah.
HP: Bombing on GH which you are aware of.
CB: Yeah. On —
HP: And we had close escort of Mustangs and high escorts of Spitfires. So we didn’t have a lot of trouble with fighters. We had the odd rocket one would come through. Go up and, you know, firing as it went up and firing again as it came down.
CB: ME262 er 163.
HP: 163.
CB: 163. Yes.
HP: Yes. The 262 was the first —
CB: Jet.
HP: Jet. And the target areas were heavily supported by flak. The reason we were going there was to — obviously so that there was no oil available. No fuel available. And it became apparent from the shortage of fuel for tanks and aircraft that we were achieving what we set out to do.
[Recording paused]
HP: That is shortly going to go twelve.
[Recording paused]
CB: Ask the question.
JB: I was just wondering how it was that you met your wife and what she was doing.
HP: I was, I was on leave and I was friendly with a family called the Morgans. Morgan family. And we used to tend to go to the same places. This was the Queen’s Hotel. She was friendly with a female member of that family. I was familiar with one of the boys. I went in there. Met for the first time in April ‘45 and it just moved on very naturally from there.
JB: Oh right. And so was she working?
HP: Yes. She was working in a chemist’s.
JB: In the hotel?
HP: In a chemist’s shop.
JB: Oh right.
HP: She wasn’t a qualified pharmacist.
JB: No.
HP: But she did a lot of dispensing from the prescriptions.
JB: Right. Right. Did she develop that after the war? Did she carry on? Did she?
HP: No. We were. No. We were married. She was the mother of the children.
JB: Yes. That was a time when you did. You did. Your job was to be mother of the children wasn’t it?
HP: Yes.
JB: So that’s something that I don’t think people these days quite cotton on to. Apparently.
CB: We’re going to stop because we’re coming to the 12th hour.
HP: Yes.
[Recording paused]
CB: We’ve restarted now just to pick up on an item which was to do with the wireless operator and we didn’t really go in to it but LMF, lack of moral fibre was a particular stigma. So how did you see it and how did it affect your crew?
HP: You were aware that this was a sanction. You couldn’t be put on a charge for refusing to fly because you were all volunteers. There had to be a sanction for those who deliberately avoided it or demonstrated any signs of cowardice. It would, a lot depended on the squadron commander and the medical officer as to the sanction which would be applied and to the history of the individual and what he actually did to possibly justify an assessment. If somebody was — appeared to refuse to fly out of sheer cowardice he could be classified as LMF. That was put on a rubber stamp on all his documents. He would be posted to an aircrew disciplinary school at Sheffield and the same thing could apply to a total crew if a total crew went, as a unit, LMF and those initials would follow them as a matter of disgrace all the way through. So because you couldn’t be disciplined for refusing to fly you had this as the alternative which was shame. And it was shame that would accompany you for the rest of your time. So to what extent this stopped people taking actions which would possibly declare them LMF of course can never be known.
CB: And in the case of your crew — what happened there?
HP: Nothing.
CB: But you had a man, a wireless operator —
HP: We had a man who we could no longer get on with and he was isolating himself. He carried out, he carried out his job reasonably well but became incompatible with us and for that reason we made sure that although we made arrangements with him to be replaced that there was no stigma attached to him.
CB: Yeah. He was posted elsewhere was he?
HP: Yes. I think so. But no —
CB: But nobody. Nobody knew.
HP: Yes. He left but we don’t know where he went or what or how.
CB: And the new man? How did he react to joining the crew in these circumstances?
HP: He was glad to be back in with a crew. He was no longer a spare man.
CB: And why would people be spares?
HP: Well he was on either his second or his third tour.
CB: Oh.
HP: And I think the rest of the crew had finished, finished a tour and he had a few more ops to do to become tour expired. So spares.
CB: Yeah. Now in your case 75 gave way to 90. What were the circumstances of that?
HP: Well 75 Squadron, as far as we understood it, was going to be returning to New Zealand.
CB: So the war has ended in Europe.
HP: Yes.
CB: 8th of May.
HP: Yes.
CB: 1945. How soon after that did they —
HP: Well beginning of June we were posted to 90. I don’t know when 75 actually moved back to New Zealand.
CB: And there was the Maori motto but were there Maori members of the crew?
HP: There were.
CB: And what did they do in the aircraft as a task? Do you know?
HP: Well, any. Any job.
CB: So they were pilots.
HP: Yes.
CB: Yeah. The whole span.
HP: Probably fewer pilots because of the length of training but there was.
CB: Yeah.
HP: Yeah. And they were a wonderful friendly people.
CB: And they had a boost to their rations. How did that work?
HP: Who said they had a boost to their rations?
CB: Well because they, they received parcels from New Zealand.
HP: Oh all. The whole of the New Zealand squadron.
CB: That’s what I meant.
HP: Got home comforts.
CB: Yes.
HP: Yeah.
CB: What did they get mainly?
HP: Oh you got cigarettes fully packed in tissue paper, silver paper and cellophane covered cardboard boxes and I think there were chocolate and so forth. Nothing very major but sufficient to make the non-New Zealand crews feel that they were welcome. That they, it wasn’t that a whole group of people got something that you didn’t get and that there was a gap between you.
CB: Yeah.
HP: There was every attempt to keep it as a unit.
CB: Yes. So they were supplied by New Zealand but everybody, regardless of origin on the squadron —
HP: Yeah.
CB: Took. Was able to benefit.
HP: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Your final operation before the war ended was Operation Manna which was supplying food to people in Holland.
HP: Yes.
CB: You talked about your, the first op. What other operations did you do there? Was that the only one or did you do several other Manna drops?
HP: No. We did the first one on, it was a Sunday. The 29th of April and then it got other squadrons. It was a privilege to actually be able to do it and other squadrons and other crews were involved. There was a limited number to start with.
CB: What was the significance of flying at three hundred feet rather than a different level?
HP: If you’re dropping stuff in sacks you want to drop it from not too high otherwise the sacks would burst.
CB: No. I meant, I meant rather than two hundred or one hundred because the impact is so high.
HP: I wouldn’t know.
CB: No.
HP: You might have had pylons going up to two hundred and fifty. Who knows? But I mean that — somebody had to fix that.
CB: Yeah.
HP: You couldn’t do it, fly at ground level even though Holland is pretty flat.
CB: Because you never knew which windmill was coming up next.
HP: Yes.
CB: Right. So how many sorties did you do? Operations did you do on Manna?
HP: As far as I know, oh only one on Manna. And I think we did fourteen bombing operations I think it was.
CB: Yeah.
HP: And then one on Manna.
CB: Ok. And —
HP: And we only did one night operation. That was to Kiel.
CB: Ok.
HP: That was the night the Scharnhorst sunk. We of course sank it.
CB: Yeah. Of course you did. Yeah. Everybody did.
HP: The other nine hundred aircraft on the operation missed.
CB: Everybody did. Yeah. That’s it. So 90 Squadron now. So you’re in 90 Squadron what’s the brief there?
HP: Well. Carry on with operation review which was the —
CB: This is the mapping. The film mapping.
HP: This is the mapping of Europe. Yeah. Generally long distance flying. Anything up to eight hours.
CB: And at what height would you be flying there?
HP: I think the, it was because of the cameras I think we were at twenty thousand feet above ground level.
CB: Oh.
HP: So the height varied.
CB: And it’s a big place. Continent of Europe. So what was the focus that you had geographically?
HP: Well, not a particular focus. You just went. Went where you were told the following day.
CB: Yeah. But did it tend to be any consistency like —
HP: No.
CB: Going over —
HP: No.
CB: France or whatever.
HP: No. I mean over France. We went once to Norway and there you were supposed to get there at first light before the clouds formed. Norway at first light. The fjords, the fjords, the bottom of the fjords were in darkness so we had to wait until that was light. As soon as that was light the cloud started up and down so we went and had a look up the fjords and we were flying up one and turned around to the left and stopped. S we just managed stopped so we just manage to scrape over the top.
CB: Crikey. Yeah.
JB: Nasty moment.
[Recording paused]
HP: That was on the 5th of September.
CB: So your mapping work took some time. How long did that continue until?
HP: Well I’ve no idea how long other people carried on.
CB: No.
HP: We did our last mapping trip on the 5th. On the 5th of September.
CB: Right. And then after that did you stand down?
HP: We were made redundant.
CB: Pardon?
HP: We were made redundant.
CB: Oh you were. Right. Ok. So that’s when you went to the —
HP: Yeah.
CB: Other places. Catterick.
HP: You had, you had a lot of newly trained crews you see. Moving forward.
CB: Right. And they wanted to use them.
HP: Well they were just replaced those who became redundant.
CB: Yeah. Right. Ok. Good.
HP: And of course squadrons were disbanded.
CB: Yes. [pause] But 90 carried on.
[Recording paused]
HP: On Bomber —
CB: Just going on to equipment. We touched briefly — you mentioned H2S the scanning radar. So what was it, how did it work and how did you use it?
HP: We didn’t use H2S. We were bombing on GH.
CB: Oh. On GH. Right.
HP: And
CB: Why didn’t you use H2S?
HP: Because it wasn’t as accurate as GH. We were daylight bombing on synthetic oil plants which were not vast areas and the, you had special training to familiarise yourself with, with this and specially equipped aircraft and on, on a squadron going one in three aircraft would be equipped with —
CB: GH.
HP: With GH only. And two aircraft would formate on that. So you went out like that because I think the question of the strength of signals. I don’t know much about GH but we went on a course where the navigator/bomb aimer were familiarised with this method of accurate bombing through cloud or through anything else like that and you had to maintain a steady course to go over this which was helpful for the flak.
CB: Absolutely, because this is running on a lattice system and, right — so talking about flak to what extent did you get damage from flak?
HP: You usually came back with holes of some sort. We came back once with two engines gone on one side which was not particularly healthy. Another occasion I knew I was dead. I was doing a search there. I’m fairly tall. If I was looking up the back of my head would be pressed against the Perspex of the turret at the back and there was a loud bang where my head was touching this. I turned around and there was a hole about the, about the size of a penny. So I felt the back of my head. Nothing. Looked around at the hole. It was definitely there and if I wasn’t bleeding and didn’t feel any pain therefore I was dead. Now, this lasted for perhaps a half a minute, a minute before you realised that it was a large piece of, large piece of flak had ricocheted off. But bearing in mind you’ve been on oxygen and heated, you’re cold, you’ve got temperatures of minus thirty, minus forty and there was stress. So for that short period of time I knew I was dead. But you came back with holes almost practically anywhere.
CB: And in your turret which way would you normally be facing? Was it —were you rotating it?
HP: Aft.
CB: All the time? Or mainly aft.
HP: Yeah. Yeah. The normal position of a turret was facing aft because you didn’t have to rotate the turret to see.
CB: Yeah. So when those engines went out you would be looking backwards so you wouldn’t see them being hit.
HP: Well you wouldn’t necessarily see them being hit because they would be from underneath and since the engines were underneath the wing.
CB: No. I’m just wondering whether you happened to see as both went out. Whether you happened to experience that.
HP: I can’t remember. I can’t remember.
CB: Right.
HP: You soon knew it had happened.
CB: Yes.
HP: There was a change in sound immediately.
CB: We talked about GH is was the navigation system also used for bombing but from earlier in the war the H2S with the bulge underneath was introduced. My question there was why wouldn’t you use it?
HP: Because the fighters could, 1 — because the fighters could home in on it. 2 — it wasn’t as accurate for the targets which we were detailed to bomb and there weren’t too many squadrons on daylight bombing.
CB: Right.
HP: In Bomber Command.
CB: Right.
HP: We were.
CB: Good. Thank you.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Hugh Parry. One
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-10-11
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Sound
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AParryHP161011
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Pending review
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Description
An account of the resource
Hugh Parry was born in Oswestry and joined the Air Force in April 1943 and volunteered to be an air gunner. Knowing that there was a height restriction on air gunners of six feet he hid his height by wearing baggy trousers. After training, he was posted to 75 NZ Squadron and then to 90 Squadron at RAF Tuddenham where his crew carried out photographic reconnaissance over Europe. Among his operations Hugh’s crew were also one of the first to take part in Operation Manna. After the war Hugh returned to accountancy. For a while he lived and worked in Bangladesh before returning to the UK.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
India
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Rutland
England--Suffolk
India--Kolkata
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943
1944
1945
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:09:30 audio recording
11 OTU
1651 HCU
3 Group
75 Squadron
90 Squadron
aerial photograph
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
animal
Anson
bombing
crewing up
Gee
ground crew
ground personnel
guard room
H2S
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
Me 163
military ethos
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
P-51
perception of bombing war
physical training
RAF Bridlington
RAF Mepal
RAF Pembrey
RAF Silloth
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Westcott
RAF Woolfox Lodge
reconnaissance photograph
Spitfire
training
Wellington
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Title
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Taylor, John
J Taylor
Description
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An oral history interview with Flight Lieutenant John Taylor DFC (1923 -2021). He flew operations as a navigator with 50 Squadron.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-09-16
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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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Taylor, J
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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MY: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Malcolm Young and the interviewee is John Taylor. The interview is taking place at Mr Taylor’s house in Sale in Cheshire and the date is the 16th of September 2015. John, if we could start. How did you come to join the Royal Air Force?
JT: Well, at the, when I was young I’d got two sisters closest to me. I was the eldest of seven. And I’d got a, I had a scholarship to the Grammar School and reached the fifth year in 1939 and so I was about to go into the sixth form when the school was evacuated into Lincolnshire. No. Gainsborough. North Nottinghamshire. I didn’t want to go. They were doing half time, you in somebody else’s house. So, I left and went to work.
MY: Yes.
JT: And I went to work as an assistant analytical chemist at Boot’s factory on Island Street in Nottingham. And I was sixteen at the time. I joined the air raid, ARP — the Air Raid Precaution people as a first aid party. I had training and days when we — mock incidents and things. Every time the sirens went I had to put my overall on, put my tin hat on and cycle to the warden’s post. And, and I got sick of this. But I found out that working as an analytical chemist — it was a reserved occupation and one day, cycling home I saw a poster “Reserved men. You can volunteer for flying duties with the RAF.” So, I thought, that’s for me. I was seventeen then and I went around to the recruiting office and they seemed delighted to see me [laughs] and signed up. And then I went home and told my parents who were not overly pleased. Proud perhaps. But not overly pleased. Then of course, I had to go through all the medicals and especially the eyesight things. It was rather funny when it came to the eyesight thing because you know, they closed one eye and you had to read the letters. And when I’d finished the examiner said, ‘Now let’s see what a mess you make of your other eye.’ The other eye 6/6. Perfect. So, right, both eyes 6/6 [laughs] Obviously, they wanted people. And then of course I was sent home to wait. And it was, nineteen four — all this happened in 1941. And in 1942 just six days, three days after my nineteenth birthday I was called up. They’d sent me a list. Razor, shaving brush. I’d never shaved at that time because I was very fair and smooth. And all the rest of the clobber. And I got it all together in the suitcase and off I went to report to St John’s, London. No. Lord’s Cricket Ground. Cricket ground. And on the train down there was a chappie sitting opposite me. Dark, a rather big nose, suitcase and he said, ‘Are you going to Lord’s Cricket Ground?’ ‘Yes.’ And so, I met Vic Page who became quite a friend. So, it wasn’t too bad. The two of us together. We got to Lord’s Cricket Ground. They formed us into uneven lines and then, to my horror told us to strip naked. We were under the stands. Where the stands go up there’s a space underneath. Of course I was brought up with two sisters and so, a virgin of course, anyway.
[that’s my son in law to collect the — ]
[pause]
JT: That was my first FFI.
MY: Yes.
JT: Free from infection. After that we shambled around somewhere else. They were decking out uniforms. And then we went to a block of flats in St Johns Wood. They were very posh apartments but of course, everything had been stripped out. But we were in a, a room for three. And although we got the iron beds and the biscuits — those were square [pause] I don’t know what they were filled with. Horsehair or something. And, to my surprise — sheets. I didn’t expect to have sheets with I joined the forces. And we also had our own ensuite. But we were told by the corporal that we’d got to keep that clean and we weren’t given any cleaning materials. It was up to us to keep the bath and basin and everything clean. And we spent three weeks there at the Initial Receiving Centre or whatever they called it. My first time in London but it wasn’t Vic’s first time.
Other: Sorry to just interrupt. I can’t see —
[recording paused]
JT: Yes. In London. We were allowed, after the first week when we’d had drill every morning and been shouted at more than I’d ever been shouted at in my life. And the corporal in charge of our flight of thirty of us and it was the, I think they must have all been taught from the same script, ‘If you play ball with me, I’ll play ball with you.’ But they weren’t bad. They weren’t bad. And everywhere in London they marched us around and we saw other flights being marched around. All to the different places. And every morning stopped for break at some sort of café and we could get a scone with butter and a cup of tea for about a penny ha’penny. And you could see the corporal sitting at a table at the side. They got theirs free I think [laughs] for the perks of taking us to this café. And [pause] but quite early in the afternoon we were let off, especially in the evenings and weekends and so we went to the Opera House. And they’d taken all the seats out and boarded over at a level with the boxes that went around. Covent Garden Opera House. And there were dances.
MY: Oh.
JT: So, we went to dances there. And another time we went to travel by tube because it was convenient and cheap. Went to Max Miller to see Max Miller perform. And I thought it isn’t all bad being [laughs] in the forces. Because you feel, you know you’ve got such anticipation. Another time they took us to the Rudolph Steiner Hall by coach and showed us some training films. Horrendous things that can happen to you if you don’t take protection [laughs] when you have sex. I’d never had sex anyway. And then [pause] that must be a difference from today’s nineteen year olds. And then they put on a lot of little filler films. So, I was sitting in the warmth of the cinema, in the upper circle there and I think there were orchestral rites, “The Rustle of Spring.” And I thought [laughs] I didn’t think being in the air force was like this. But of course, the other side of it was parade every morning. Inspection. And the sergeant would come down and the old script, as I say, I think they were all taught, ‘Am I standing on your hair?’ ‘Am I,’ no, ‘Am I hurting you?’ ‘No sir.’ ‘I should be. I’m standing on your hair. Get it cut.’ You had to go off to the station barber, pay sixpence and they took nothing more than an inch. No hair on your head more than an inch. Two days later, on parade again, ‘Haircut.’ ‘But sergeant I had it cut.’ ‘Never mind. Get your hair cut.’ You’re really being taught that you don’t question orders. You just do what you’re told without thinking. Totally opposite from Bomber Command. But we went through this initial training but at the same time we had classes on Morse. We had to reach twelve words a minute in Morse which I found fairly easy because you got the rhythms of it. As long as you didn’t concentrate and just let it flow you could, because it was all blocks of letters or numbers. And they taught the Aldis lamp. Now, that was difficult. When we saw that light flashing from the Aldis lamp I found it very hard to distinguish between the long and the short flashes. But I struggled and reached the five words a minute which was the minimum to pass. And then having had three weeks of being knocked into shape and beginning to look like airmen although we were AC2s [laughs] and we were allowed a weeks’ leave. Made a big fuss of at home. And then we were posted down to Torquay for the Initial Training Wing. I think it was Number 1 Initial Training Wing, Torquay. And there again we were in a hotel. The Hotel Regina which overlooked the inner harbour at Torquay. Very nice big room, stripped bare. With just four beds in it, I think. Or five. And a very nice crowd. Very nice crowd. And you know, talk about the rude and licentious soldiering. We got an Irish guy there from Southern Ireland. Got a beautiful lilting voice and he could sing. And we used to ask him to sing for us and he’d sing all these Irish songs like “Mother Machree” and all. And again, not what you’d, not how you see soldiers or — [pause] Our regime there was to run in PE kit up to the top of Rockend which is at one end of Tor Bay. Do an hour’s PE, run down again and then do an hours drill. Change and do an hours drill and then go to lessons. And at the end of that time I was as fit as I’ve ever been before or since because I wasn’t a games player at school. I lived, you know, over a furniture shop. My father was a furniture dealer. With sisters. So, games were not my forte. But that was probably why I wasn’t commissioned until much later. Because I didn’t fit their idea of an officer. Any rate, we quite enjoyed, I quite enjoyed it but I mean one weekend we invited my sister and her friend down. I was very popular then with the boys wanting, and they stayed in a boarding house near and so that was rather nice. I had a girlfriend I later married. Much later. Now, at the end of ITW we had a riotous party at a hotel where I was drunk for the first time in my life and felt awful the next day because I’d only just started drinking beer. The next stage was then off to [pause] Eastbourne. The Grand Hotel. And there we were again in a room with a ensuite but the usual beds and you had to put the sheets, the blankets just exactly three inches and then the sheets exactly one inch and then — so you’d got a sandwich of blanket, sheet, blanket, sheet, blanket. And the corporals would come around and look at them. Throw them all on the floor and say, ‘Do it again,’ if they weren’t exactly right. And you’re, we all had gas capes. The only time we ever used them was when they were testing us by going into a gas filled room. But you had to hang them up exactly where the seams were flat and the bit where your back went you had to pull it out so it was standing out straight. All that sort of thing. Looking back, I realise the whole idea is to take away your civilian identity and make you service. But of course, among the lectures not only did we get lectures on navigation but lectures on the history of the Royal Air Force. And we went on route marches. The discipline at Eastbourne was not as harsh as before because our sergeant was a ex-flyer, an air gunner who’d done his tour of ops so, we were a bit in awe of him and he was very easy going. We’d march out of camp and a bit down the road he’d say, ‘All right. Fall out for a smoke.’ Which I didn’t. I didn’t smoke. But we’d rest and then he’d say, ‘Alright, we’re marching back. Bags of swank as you go in,’ [laughs] We’ll do our route tomorrow. Although as route marches sometimes they got quite, quite pleasant. The rhythm of swinging along and somebody would start singing and then others would pick it up and they were the most raucous and rude songs I’d ever heard. But we were all singing with gusto when we were out of sight of the camp. So, I think they [pause] after we went overseas. That’s right. Because they’d started the Empire Air Training where they were training aircrew in Canada, South Africa and America. Although at that time in America they just wore grey suits. Everybody knew who they were of course. They were all in grey. Identical grey suits. Because America wasn’t in the war at that time. And I was posted to New Zealand err to South Africa. Yes. I was just looking to see where it started.
[pause]
JT: Looking in my logbook at the moment.
[pause]
JT: About November 1942. 41 Air School, South Africa. But before that, of course we’d been, had a horrendous sea journey from Liverpool on a converted cargo ship where they’d put extra decks in and three thousand troops on the ship. And it was a big convoy with an aircraft carrier and two cruisers and about four destroyers and there were several troop ships like ours. Some of them were going to Singapore. You know, we were going to South Africa. And you were sleeping — some slept under the tables, the mess tables. Some slept on the mess tables. And some slept in hammocks above the mess tables. They were advantages and disadvantages in all because if you slept on, in the hammock you would either have cockroaches falling on your face if it’s something over the ceiling and you had to stow it up ship shape every morning. And of course, if you slept on the bottom tiers you were liable to have people being sick on you because of all the seasickness. Terrible. But after the first three days I felt ok. I got my sea legs and, but the ship was crowded. You were allowed one pint of beer a day and you had to queue right around the ship deck to get it and it was warm. And you had to sit with your back against the, I don’t know what you call it, some rails at the side of the ship, to drink it. They asked for volunteers to serve in the sergeant’s mess. Now, I know they tell you never volunteer for anything but I thought this might be alright. So, my pal and I, we volunteered and enjoyed it very much. Our job was to collect the food from the galley, carry it. Two plates on each arm to the sergeant’s mess and then we’d wait on the sergeants if there was anything else they wanted and everything. And then when they went back to duty, we produced the food. The food we kept to one side.
[recording paused. Phone ringing]
JT: Aircrew people.
MY: Oh.
JT: He calls himself Ivor the Engine and he does all the research and I put it in the air newsletter I produce every month that goes — send these out to all the people who are in the Aircrew Association but can’t get to meetings.
MY: Yes.
JT: So that keeps them in touch. So, oh have we started again?
MY: Yes.
JT: Oh, I didn’t realise [laughs] I was saying about after the sergeant’s had gone to duties I and my friend, we produced the food we’d put on one side. Which was the food for the sergeants. Much better quality than what we were getting in our mess and we sat down in the sergeant’s mess and had it. And then we were free until lunchtime and of course we’d missed all the drills and parades that they had so, we thought it was a good number. And this went on for two weeks. Perhaps three weeks. And suddenly we were called before the colonel in charge who said, ‘I’m afraid you can’t do this.’ ‘Why sir? Why sir?’ ‘It’s because you’re potential officers and you can’t wait on the NCOs.’ And so that skive finished and they got squaddies from the army to do the job we’d been doing. I was sorry about that because the trip took twelve weeks because we had to go right down into the South Atlantic to be out of the reach of the U-boats. Almost to the coast of Brazil before we swung around, came down below Cape Good Hope. Landed at Durban. And on the way, I think, I don’t know whether we’d got dysentery on board and we were queuing up for the toilets and they’d got no doors on. Just cubicles. And as the ship rolled all the water on the floor rolled towards us and we lifted our feet up as it rolled back. Oh dear. Oh dear.
[telephone ringing recording paused]
JT: I’ll talk about, we’d got this dysentery and so you queued because you knew that you had to go to the back of the queue because by the time you got to the front you’d need to go again. But we survived all that and landed in Durban and it was paradise. Lights were on. No blackout. You could go into the Red Shield Club or the NAAFI but the Red Shield Club was very good. The Salvation Army ran it and you could get egg and chips and things like that and plenty of it. And the attitude towards us was very good from the English that lived in Durban. Cars would pull up with a couple of girls in the back and the father in the front. He’d say, ‘Boys. Are you going anywhere? Would you like to come for lunch?’ And we’d hop in and go for lunch. We were entertained. And then after an initial time in Durban where we were in tents for the first time in my life we moved to [pause] I’m lost for words sometimes. East London. We were stationed at East London which was the, oh like I said that was 41 Air School. From there we did dead reckoning theory, dead reckoning plotting, compasses, meteorology, maps and charts, instruments, reconnaissance photography, ship recognition, aircraft recognition, signals, astro navigation and it was interesting. I was very interested. We were flown. It was the first time we’d flown because this was the first time we’d actually come in contact with an aeroplane. And they were the Avro Anson. They called them, “The flying classroom.” And three navigators came up with a South African pilot. We had the first navigator who actually did the navigating. The second one, I forget quite what he did. And the third one, there was no seat for him so he sat on the parachutes at the back and it was his job to wind the undercarriage down. It was quite an arduous task. And then we rotated. And I quite enjoyed that. I remember we did a square search. And that’s where you, if you’re searching for something. Let’s say a ship that’s been reported in distress. So that you don’t go over the same ground twice or miss it there’s a pattern of going out there and then turning at certain ways and making squares. Ever increasing. So, you covered the whole thing. And then at the end of that time and you were over the sea with nothing in sight you have to plot a course back to base. And so, it was all dead reckoning. But you, you could look at the waves and turn an instrument around until it was aligned with the wave caps and then you got the wind which was at right angles. And of course, it was important to find the correct wind because otherwise your calculations didn’t amount to much. At any rate, as we set off for base we passed right over the town and the South African pilot said, ‘Well done. You’re spot on.’ And I felt very chuffed about that. And East London was equally fascinating. It got dark at 8 o’clock but that didn’t matter because it was warm. Although we wore khaki during the day, we wore our blues in the evening. And quite early on somebody had come to the camp and offered to put us up — two servicemen for the weekend. So, I volunteered for this. And it was Mrs Butler. Her husband had a farm at a little village called Berlin [laughs] About twenty miles from East London. And she’d got three daughters and a son and I was quite fascinated. And in fact, I was so fascinated I went back every weekend. Caught the train from there and became one of the family as it were. And she was like a mother to me. And then in the evening we’d sit on the stoop, as they called the veranda. Drank pink gin. And sometimes they’d have, the native workers on the farm would have a bonfire, sit round drinking kaffir beer and we would join in and sit around on the outside drinking pink gins and it was very enjoyable. But one weekend we got a shock because they said we were going to have a church parade. Of course, that would kibosh your chances of going to Berlin for the weekend. So, Jimmy Elliot and I who were pals, both trainee navigators, we set off for a walk after lunch on the Saturday and after a little while we had a terrific thunderstorm. The rain poured down and we thumbed a lift from a passing lorry. The only lorry we’d seen in ages. And he gave us a lift and we travelled through the rain until it stopped and we said we’ll have to get off there because we’d got to get back. So, we got off and he left us. We said, well we seem to have come around in a semi-circle in a way. There was a bend. If we cut across it would be the shortest distance back to camp. So, we set off marching across the veld. Quite an experience because the grasses were above our heads almost and you got queer insect noises buzzing at you and a bit of trepidation there. And it was getting dark and we came to a river. And we thought well what do we do now? Do we go all the way back to the road? It’s taken us all this time. Or do we try and get across it? We decided to try and cross it. So, shoes and socks off, tied around our necks. Shorts pulled up as high as they could go and we started off wading across this river. The river came up to our thighs but luckily no further. And we managed to get to the other side of the river but we were confronted with a quora. A village of beehive huts and the women sitting outside pounding maze and things. And there were natives standing there on one leg, the other leg against it. Holding spears. What do we do? Well, we’ve got no choice. Just go straight ahead up that track and don’t look at them. So, we set off up this track. The women picked up their babies and hurried inside the huts. And then another black girl came down the track, a blanket wrapped around her. ‘Oh, master John.’ ‘Oh,; I said, [unclear] Missy farm?’ I didn’t know what to say. And Missy Butler, ah. And she pointed back up the track. It was the house girl at, who had looked after us while we were — so we went up there, and of course Mrs Butler was very pleased and surprised to see us because we’d said we couldn’t go. But we were made very welcome. And of course, Jimmy Elliot, he’d never been in so we introduced him to the Butler household. And nobody to this day ever believes it wasn’t deliberate. And yet it was pure coincidence. Pure accident. Some of the things I remember about going to Berlin is that you could go down into the village, which was about two miles away and you could buy sherry. And the best sherry cost a half a crown a bottle. So, we could make a contribution to the parties. Mrs Butler used to play the piano. Used to roll the carpet up, invite neighbours in and they’d have parties and dance and sing. I learned the Afrikaans songs of course. The family next door, well when I say next door, next farm, were Afrikaans and so and they were living amicably together. And then they used to have auctions for — to raise money for warships and warplanes and the boys up north. Fighting in North Africa. And it was a Dutch auction they used to have where they started high and came down until somebody bid. And they asked me to be the auctioneer. Mrs Butler said afterwards that when I left they still asked where the little auctioneer had got to. When we left, when we finished our course, done all our flying and had the exams we were posted to Cape Town. Ready to go home. We went by train and we were very touched because Mrs Butler and the two, two of the three girls walked the two miles down and stood at the railway track. As we passed the farm — waving like made to us. Further on there were black girls that waved like mad too. Pulled their jackets up to show their breasts which met with whoops from the troops. Now, Cape Town of course we were just waiting. And on the way out on the boat I told you the sergeants had their own mess and the officers had the upper deck to themselves and the nurses. And so we saw how the other half lived. Every gangway was out of bounds to other ranks. So, we thought well we’re sergeants now. We’ve had a passing out parade. We’ll go home in style. Not a bit of it. We went home on an American ship where they didn’t recognise ranks as such. You ate at long tables and they gave you tin, metal plates with indentations for the bacon and the eggs and porridge. All slopped in. And you ate it standing up at these tables. They were standing up height. The Americans mixed everything up and then took a fork and they did a rotary movement with the fork to shoot the food in to their mouths. And the whole meal was over in five minutes, and we were given guard duties. We were given to guard the Poles who were also on this ship. And we had to stand guard to stop them going. Leaving their quarters. Never knew why because they were supposed to be on our side. And so, we came back to England.
[pause]
JT: What’s the time? Crikey. You’ve got me talking.
MY: If you move forward to when you were being streamed into Bomber Command. How did, what, how did that selection process work?
JT: Well, we went through OTU, which was. I can’t think of what it stands for now.
MY: Operational Training Unit.
JT: Operational Training Unit. Yes. And the first thing they did was to put us all in a big hangar and say, ‘Find yourself a crew.’ Pilot, navigator, wireless operator, engineer. We didn’t know anything about any of the others. It was pure luck. But a little Australian air gunner came up to me with a New Zealand pilot officer in tow and said, ‘This is Jack. Would you like to be our navigator?’ And I thought Jack looks a pretty dependable guy so I said yes. So, he said, ‘This is John but John said to me, ‘Well we can’t have two Johns in the crew. You’d better call me Jack.’ I thought that was very magnanimous of him [laughs] because he’s the skipper. And then Butch had made friends with an Irish wireless operator. And so we assembled the crew like that. And it was amazing how well we got on with each other. And of course, the [pause] I was driving a car by that time because in 1942 we’d had a mid-upper gunner who’d been a car, used car dealer and the pilot didn’t like him and got rid of him. But before that happened, he’d sold me a car. A 1938 Hillman Minx. Black with red seats. And so, I was very popular because I could take people into town and that sort of thing. I remember when I, I lived in Nottingham. I was born and bred in Nottingham. When I went to record everything and do my insurance and I said I only want fire and theft, ‘What happens if it catches fire next week? What do I get?’ And they said, ‘About two years in jail,’ [laughs] But the beauty of these airfields in Lincolnshire was that they were all within about forty miles of Nottingham where I lived and where my girlfriend lived. And so, every chance I got I went down the Fosseway to Nottingham. And of course, they got used to seeing me. But then I took members of the crew with me because coming from New Zealand and Canada and Ireland they couldn’t get home.
MY: No.
JT: So, they came home with me. Mother put mattresses on the floor. And I don’t know how she made the rations stretch. We helped because Butch and Paddy always made friends with the ugliest girl in the cookhouse and flattered her and everything. And they’d go around to the back door and get extra supplies of butter and stuff, bacon which we’d take with us to help my mother feed the crew. And we all went down to the local where my father used to, where my father and mother used to go. So, we became their crew.
MY: Which OTU were you at?
JT: I’ll tell you in a minute.
[pause]
JT: You forget the numbers and things.
[pause]
JT: That’s AFU. AFU came after OTU didn’t it? Because that’s Advanced Flying Unit.
[pause]
JT: And then EFTS — Elementary Flying Training School.
[pause]
JT: Well, do you know, I can’t remember.
MY: Which airfield was it on?
[pause]
JT: Names escape me. Names escape me.
MY: Well it’s not that important. We can look at that later. How long was it before you actually got on your first squadron?
JT: Do you know, nearly two years. Two years of training.
MY: Right.
JT: Because after we came back from South Africa we were posted to Harrogate. And they didn’t know what to do with us, you know. Whatever. Just holding while another course moved out. Put us on flying Tiger Moths around the Lake District which was very good. Anyway, get back to ops. We, you finish, we went on to Stirlings. We went on to Stirlings for the final stage of our training. Four-engined. We did Wellingtons at OTU and they were very comfortable. Very good aircraft, the Wellingtons. And then the pilot of course wanted to go on to, had to go on to four engines so we went on Stirlings which were the height of luxury with all the controls, beautifully coloured enamels, everything. But they couldn’t get above twelve thousand feet which was their downfall. And then we finished up at Advanced Flying Unit at Syerston which is near Nottingham and that was where you were introduced to the Lancaster. We lost a Lancaster there on training because he flew into a cumulonimbus cloud. You got whirled right up and broke to pieces which gave us a very stern lesson on not to fly into cumulonimbus clouds. And then because at the end of my training some people were selected to be commissioned. I wasn’t, although I was a good navigator because my background didn’t fit. Son of a furniture dealer. Went to Grammar School. Didn’t play games. Not officer type at all. So, we were posted to Skellingthorpe which is two miles from Lincoln. Waddington, I think was the base station. We were satellite. Although at one time in our training we had been to Scampton for a few weeks. I remember that because we missed the last bus one night and had to walk all the way back from Lincoln to Scampton. Now, Skellingthorpe. We shared an airfield with 61 Squadron. We were one side. They were the other. We had the record of dropping the most bombs and they had the record for flying the most sorties. It was sort of friendly rivalry across the airfield. Now, one or two things. The first trip we went on was to a target right in the south of France and we had to fly right down through the coast. Avoid, and then fly inland and find, find the target. And our bombs hung up. We had to return and we’d already fused the J type canisters. Do you know about those there?
MY: Yeah.
JT: Incendiaries set to go off at a thousand feet. So, our dilemma was if we landed, tried to land, with these on they’d go off when we got down to a thousand feet. So, we tried every manoeuvre. The wireless op and the mid-upper gunner had come down and were trying to open the floor and get at the bombs and dislodge them. And then the pilot was doing a lot of jinking about. Anyway, we managed to drop them in the sea and we saw this big flame as they went down and think thank goodness. But as it happened that operation was a failure anyway because what they thought was a German troop camp was a refugee camp which they’d bombed by mistake. So, we all had to go back the next night. This time we got, they weren’t expecting us I think the second night. So, we were [pause] I can’t go through all the ops and things but one or two stand out. First of all, there’s the people say, ‘Were you frightened?’ I say, I don’t think so. You grew with this knowledge that you might be living on borrowed time so you made the most of every moment. The girls and the beer and everything. And me being an imaginative type, as I walked across the fields in the June evening every blade of grass, every leaf on the tree seemed bright and vivid.
MY: Yes.
JT: Because it might be the last time you saw it. But you didn’t show any fear even if you felt it because you’d be letting down the other members of the crew. And you were worried about what they might think. They were the ones. Your crew were like your family and we worked very well together and played very well together. About the fourth trip we went to, I think it was that one, we went to Mailly-le-Camp where they’d German troops or something. And something went wrong with the communication between the master bomber and us. So, the first wave that went in bombed successfully. Came home. But we were in the second wave and we couldn’t hear any instructions from the master bomber. So, we had to circle and as we circled it gave time for the fighters from the Ruhr to arrive. Oh, and a massacre. You could see Lancaster, fighter, Lancaster, fighter, Lancaster, fighter. And we lost forty three aircraft and seven people in each aircraft. And the rear gunner Butch who’d been a plantation manager in New Guinea, he was yelling and yelling because he’d got a grandstand seat. I wasn’t so bad because I was in a cabin with a curtain I could draw. I could see out by standing up and putting my head in to the astrodome.
MY: Yes.
JT: And you could see from there. What I saw I didn’t like so I went back in again. Now, Butch didn’t fly with us on the next trip because of the experience he’d had. But the next trip was to Brest where the battleship in the harbour or something and we were coned over the target. Now, that means that the master searchlight has caught you and then all the other searchlights that are automatically linked to it all latch on to you at once. Can you imagine what it’s like to have seven or eight searchlights all focused on you? It was brighter than daylight inside the cabin. In fact, it was so bright you could hardly think. And you knew that the next thing to happen were the guns that were automatically aligned to these searchlights.
MY: Yes.
JT: Would open up. Sitting target. So, Jack just dived. Pushed everything forward. Dived almost vertically. Screaming down. I sat in my cabin watching the altimeter go around and around, down and down. Then I saw we’d dodged the searchlights and then the pilot and the engineer who sat next to him they were pulling back on the stick for all their worth. And we thought this is it. And we levelled out at two hundred feet and came back at two hundred feet over the Channel. And Butch never flew again. He [pause] was determined. He had a mental breakdown. If he’d been in the RAF they’d have said lack of moral fibre and they would have stripped him of his stripes, put him down to AC2 and put him to clean the latrines. Because he was in the Australian Air Force he was invalided home. He was sick, you know. Which is, you know, a much kinder way of dealing with this. On the other hand, I can see the reasoning behind the RAF because if people had been able to say I don’t like this after they’d done twelve ops they wouldn’t have an air force.
MY: No.
JT: So, they had to have something very worse than this to make you keep flying. I was thinking we went on, D-day was the next, next thing. We didn’t know it was D-day because — we went to briefing. They hadn’t said this is the invasion but they said you must keep from that part of the Channel because there are American warships and they will shoot at anything. We knew that from experience. Now, keep away from this area because there’ll be gliders being towed. And after he’d gone through all this list of dos and don’ts we realised that it was something big. And our job was to fly at dawn and bomb the naval guns at Cherbourg on the Cherbourg peninsula. And they’d given us a cine camera as well. But we flew and there wasn’t all that much flak although there was a lot of things going on all around us. So, it was a fairly easy trip until we got there and of course the coastal guns and everything go up at you. But we bombed. We couldn’t take a picture because it wasn’t light enough. You took your usual picture with your own flash. But as we turned around dawn had broken, the sky was getting lighter and there was scattered cloud and I looked down onto the sea and I saw all these little boats. All coming up to the beach. And that’s when I realised there was an invasion going on. We got home. Because we’d been flying two nights consecutively, we were given the night off and went to Nottingham. In the pub, in the pub they got the radio, ‘Tonight our troops landed in Normandy.’ And they said, ‘What about you lot?’ ‘We were there this morning,’ [laughs] Which got us a lot of beer.
MY: I bet.
JT: Now, after, after we’d finished our ops which were more or less the same. Those were some of the highlights. None of us got scratched. Although our most exciting trip perhaps was, we were going to the, is it the Saint Cyr Military Academy near Paris? Where they’d got troops, German troops being trained there. Officers. And we were going on daylight because it was so near to Paris. We were not used to going daylight. And so, as we set off some fighters, German fighters got among the stream and you saw them breaking, sliding all over the place. Dodging. They should have kept a light on the gunners. And I saw one aircraft, one Lancaster just slide down, slantingly and take the tail off another one. Which was quite awful to see. We passed the zone like that. I was navigating and trying to keep midway between the two zones that told us where the ack-ack was worst. And the fighters went away of course. You know, they only had about a twelve minutes and had to go back to refuel. Beautiful June evening. The sun was out still and all of a sudden I stood up in the astrodome to have a look. A stream of white smoke coming out of the starboard outer engine. And as I looked suddenly that smoke turned to flame and the whole engine went up in flames because we had been hit several times by flak on the way in.
MY: Yes.
JT: And of course, the engineer and pilot pushed the fire extinguisher button and the fire went out. But it meant we were only on three engines. The port inner engine, the engineer reported was running rough so we were losing power. Anyway, we went on and bombed. All, as I say on the run into the bombing run as we were swinging around I saw the Eiffel tower and realised that was Paris under there. I’d never been but there it was. And [pause] am I taking too long?
MY: No. I’m at your service, sir.
JT: So, we’ve got to [pause] yes when we’d finished our ops. Now, I’d been called up to the group captain at Waddington some weeks before for —recommended for a commission.
MY: Yes.
JT: And asked a few question. He said, ‘Well, these people say quite nice things about you. Who am I to disagree,’ [laughs] Right? And that was it? But it didn’t come through until the actual end of the tour, it coincided. I’d already gone to the training as a lecturer when it came through. It would have been nicer if it had come through while I was still back at the squadron. 50 Squadron. And of course, nobody really knew me there. They just took it for granted. But of course, I was moved because they move you straightaway.
MY: Yeah.
JT: So, I was moved to Chipping Warden as a course shepherd. That’s where they put you in charge of a course and men to make sure of their welfare and everything. No training. No training at all for an officer. No teaching how to use your knife and fork or anything like that. But they must have thought I was [pause] and, and then to my surprise they announced that I’d been awarded the DFC.
MY: Oh no.
JT: And that came as a great surprise to me. And so had my pilot and the bomb aimer. In those days you only had the one ribbon. So they made a great fuss of me at home and in the local newspaper. But then I went home [pause] but after a while of course you were between tours. Just because you’d done the tour of ops doesn’t mean that’s it. So, they posted me to Transport Command for my second tour. We were on Dakotas and we were going to bomb the Burma Railway in Burma. Not to bomb them. To push out supplies. So, I was posted to Baroda in India and that again was a culture shock. But looking back, to think that a nineteen, twenty year old bloke had all these experiences. We’d, the Maharajah of Baroda. They’d taken over, or he’d given us his cricket ground and so we were stationed — myself, my pilot and the other crews in what were the dressing rooms. All around veranda in front and then the open space of the cricket ground. And we didn’t have Indian food. We had a caterer and we had an officer’s mess and we could have anything as long as it was eggs. You could have scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, eggs on toast. Then some funny vegetables. And there was no drink. It was a dry state. The high point of my time really was when we were picked to go to Lahore to collect beer. Supplies of beer for the mess because you could drink it in the mess if you could get it. So it was put down as a training flight. And that was about the only time I’d really been treated as a proper officer. Because we flew to Lahore. Put up at the Faletti’s Hotel in Lahore and my pilot and I were waited on by six waiters with big turbans and cummerbunds. White everything. Before you could think of anything, they’d thought of it for you. We had a meal there and the next morning while we were waiting for news that our plane had been loaded up, sitting on the terrace and there were a lot of civilian ladies and gentlemen all doing the Times of India crossword puzzle – ‘What did you get for number eighty across?’ ‘Number eight across?’ ‘Oh, good show.’ I thought this is the life. We could stay here [laughs] We could stay here. But unfortunately, we couldn’t. And you know we went back to the mess. Took it back. And it was all gone in two days. But in Baroda we did flying from the Maharajah’s own airfield. We did trips around. My pilot, who was a Scotsman from Kirkaldy, he’d been a slaughterman in a slaughterhouse. He had been an officer before but he’d flown under a bridge and been broken down to PE. Corporal PE. And then he’d come back when the shortage of pilots — come back and worked his way up to flying officer again. And he’d got the DFC. Which is probably why he picked me when we were crewing. He was a mad so and so. You know, if he saw somebody with a flock of cows below, he’d swoop down and then laughed like mad when they all scattered. I thought, I’m going on ops with him. Heaven help me. But we never got to that stage because the Japanese war finished.
MY: Right. What to ask?
JT: Yes. You know [pause] we were getting to the stage where they were demobbing.
MY: Yes.
JT: Because VE day had passed so we weren’t fighting the Germans anymore. And my pilot’s demob number came up because he’d been in before me and so they brought the whole crew, a crew of three on a Dakota, back to England. And I’d still got six months to go before my number came up.
MY: Right.
JT: So, they sent me to Wheaton Aston. In Shropshire as well isn’t it?
MY: Yes.
JT: And I know it’s near Stoke [pause] as a flying control officer. Now, a flying control officer needs six month training course which seems a pretty waste to me if you are going to leave in six months’ time. So, I used to say to the flying control office, ‘You don’t need me, do you?’ ‘No.’ ‘Ok.’ Hitchhiked to Nottingham. And when it came to be demobbed you had to last of all go to the CO to get him to sign after you’d been to all the departments. He didn’t even know me and I’d been on his station six months. Oh dear. You couldn’t get away with it now. Or perhaps you could. Perhaps you could. But then of course I got demobbed and I got married in 1945 at the end of my tour of ops. So, I was married all the time I’d been in India.
MY: Yes.
JT: And then I got home and we started the house. At my mother in law’s I had a room at my mother in law’s house. And Boots had promised me the job back so, I went back to Boots. Yes, they gave me my job back — at the same rate of pay I’d left it at. Four pound fifteen a week. I’d been spending six pound a week in the mess alone on drinks and stuff. So, I thought this is not going to be right for me. And people I’d trained to use the instruments in the lab were now seniors and I’d still gone back as an assistant analytical chemist. So again, I saw an advert for teacher training. Emergency teacher training. And I thought that’s for me. So, I applied. Went to a centre and given maths tests. Wrote an essay. And was accepted for training at Danesthorp College, Ranskill. Near Ranskill and it was like being back in the service. All these people were ex-service. They still talked about their [unclear] and things and the cutlery. And the teachers were very good I thought. And we did a whole course sandwiched into thirteen months. Of course, you didn’t have the long holidays.
MY: No.
JT: In thirteen months, three teaching practices and they let us loose. And my, my job, I applied to Nottingham and to Nottingham County because they were separate. Nottingham City offered me a job. And their practice was to have a pool of teachers and then they sent them to the appropriate schools.
MY: Yes.
JT: So, I didn’t know what school I was going to until I was told to report to this Secondary School. The name’s gone for a moment. Now, in my education I’d done all the sciences as separate subjects so I’d done biology, physics, chemistry. I’d been interested in science. I’d done navigation which is a lot to do with science. Theory of triangles and things. So, I thought I’d be a science teacher but no. Headmaster said, ‘We’ve got a science teacher. I’d like you to take over the history.’ I dropped history at third year. At any rate I said I was always one for thinking things from first principles. And I think I must have done quite well because [pause] searching for the name of the school it was originally built as a primary school. At a time when everything was [affluent?] and the classrooms were built in a semi-circle with the windows that went right back to expose it to the open air, facing south and a terrace outside. And then there was a woodwork room and a music room. There was no staff room so the staff used to meet in what was a storeroom that they’d emptied and put a table and chairs in for the staff. I don’t know what the designers were thinking of but it was very nice. I got interested in theatre and especially marionettes. I’d made marionettes at college and we’d gone around giving marionette shows. So, I started a marionette club. And the very sympathetic woodwork master made us a beautiful stage with a bar that about four children could lean on and we’d put shows on. I wrote the script and then got the teachers to read the parts. Had great fun reading different parts and then the children manipulated the marionettes and of course they recognised the teacher’s voices in these marionette characters and it was quite a hoot. I enjoyed that. And from that I was given Head of English post. And I had been up for Deputy Head at another school but when the Headmaster wanted me in, I’d had a good recommendation he discussed all he wanted to do but the Director of Education said, ‘Mr Taylor can’t be appointed as Deputy Head. He has no degree.’ So, I settled for Head of English at another school. A bit resentful. And I found it also involved being head of the library. In charge of the library and in charge of drama.
MY: Yeah.
JT: And expected to put on a production every year. I borrowed costumes from the playhouse theatre that had just opened in Nottingham. They were for the two little cats that were the centre piece of this play, “The Magic Tinder Box.” And we put that on for three nights and that was a great success. And all the time of course I was applying for Deputy Headships at this time. Time I moved on. And I applied to Cheshire. There was a job came up. And so I drove up there. No. I went on the train, that’s right. And walked. I was interviewed and apparently the post had been earmarked by the Head for his Head of English department so it had been careful. It had been written for him. English. They wanted English. They wanted knowledge of using recorders. Tape recorders. Because he had a tape recorder. School hadn’t got one but he had. And after the interviews apparently, I found this afterwards, they were tied. So, it was a dead heat and it was left to the casting vote of the chairman. Now, the chairman had taken a dislike to the Head because he was, old man Cunliffe was a true blue Tory. And the head had stood as a Liberal candidate in the autumn. And so, when it came to the casting vote, I got it. I was called back in. And the chairman said, ‘And by the way Mr Taylor, congratulations on your DFC.’ I thought perhaps that might have been a little bit of a weight.
MY: Possibly.
JT: So, I came up here in 1964 and was the Deputy at the school down the road which was Sale Moors Secondary Modern. The head was a very dynamic bloke, John Hartley. And he said, ‘John,’ he said, ‘Usually I keep my people several years before I give them promotion but in your case, you know, you’re a bit older. I’ll have to do it more quickly.’ At any rate I was rung up one weekend to say Mr Hartley had died. This was within a year of joining. He’d had a stroke in his car over the weekend. I went to see his widow and she asked me to arrange the funeral and everything. And I did this, went to school the next morning, called a staff meeting. Told them. We made arrangements for certain sections of the pupils to attend. And order of service and everything. And then I found myself sitting in front of this big polished desk and the feeling that struck you [laughs] I’m in charge. There’s nobody to tell me what to do. I’ve got to tell them. And I wasn’t altogether pleased with the way things were arranged because there were, at that time it was six form entry. Sixth forms came in every year and they tried to bluff by calling them A upper, A lower, B upper, B lower, C upper, C lower. Everybody knew that C lowers were really ABCDEF.
MY: Yes.
JT: It didn’t fool anybody. And I was given four C lower as a penalty. Probably by that Head for because he wanted [delete] to be head. Although [delete] was a very nice man and we got on well. And I made some changes. I divided the school into two halves so there were only three tiers in each half. A bit of timetabling of course you could put one half against another. But the staff accepted this. And then I decided that the important maths and English — you might be good at maths and poor at English. Or vice versa. So, let’s have them set so you could be in a top set for maths and a bottom set for English.
MY: Yes.
JT: Or vice versa. So, I introduced that. And we had a governors meeting three times a year at the end of every term. And they still hadn’t advertised the job. And so, I got to know the governors very well. When they arrived for governors meetings I offered them sherry all around. My secretary was very good and made them feel very much at home. And my wife was very good at supporting me and getting to know the governors and telling me, ask him about — he keeps rabbits. He’s very interested, ‘Oh hello [delete] I hear you’re interested in rabbits.’ Anyway, it was two years before, before they advertised the job and they’d got six candidates. Three were existing heads. And three were deputies like myself. And the existing heads of smaller schools because of course this was a big school with sixth form entry. And at the end of the interview, now let’s, I’ve gone back a bit. At the same day as my interview I’d got an interview as Head of Sale West which was a new school recently opened. But it was group six. This was a group 8. And it was in the morning. So had the interviews, it went very well but they appointed somebody else. I drove home for lunch and said to my wife it’s no good if I can’t get a group C school, no hope of getting group A. In the afternoon they had interviews again. Same governors. Same people. And I got the job. And the chairman of governors said to me afterwards, ‘We wanted you to be head,’ because they’d known me for two years.
MY: Yeah.
JT: But we were a bit worried in the morning about giving you the headship of Sale West because somebody might have come along in the afternoon so blinded us with science. We had to take the risk of not appointing you to Sale West. And that’s how I got the job as Head of the school I’d been deputy at. In fact, it was a school I stayed at as Head because it grew under me. It grew to eight form entry and had new buildings. A very good drama studio. Good music studio. I was very happy there and I’d got a very happy staff. And we had parties after school in the evening. And the cook was very co-operative. Chintz tablecloths on the tables in the hall that we sat around. Brought our own drinks. I always said staff that drinks together stays together. You know they’re not allowed to have drink in school now.
MY: No.
JT: Not allowed.
MY: No.
JT: Lots of things are not allowed. So, I was at that school for about twenty three years because there was no point in applying anywhere else because a Group 8, six, twelve hundred pupils was in the top five percent of headships. And so short of going to Eton College or somewhere I couldn’t see, but it must have got a good reputation.
MY: Yeah.
JT: Because when the High Master of Manchester Grammar — he was made a governor of a Secondary Modern school and he asked the Director of Education, he said, ‘I know nothing about Secondary Moderns. What shall I do?’ And the Director of Education said, ‘Go to John Taylor’s and have a look at his school.’ So, he spent the day with me and no doubt learned something about running a school. Anyways, I’ve talked long enough haven’t I?
MY: Well we’ve actually managed to —
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ATaylorJ150916
Title
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Interview with John Taylor
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
Language
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eng
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01:52:13 audio recording
Creator
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Malcom Young
Date
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2015-09-16
Description
An account of the resource
John Taylor grew up in Nottingham and was evacuated before he went into sixth form. He left school and started working as an analytical chemist at Boots and although this was a reserved occupation he volunteered for aircrew. After his initial training he went to South Africa to complete his training as a navigator. On his returned to the UK he flew operations as a navigator with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe. On one operation the incendiaries had not dropped and they feared carrying them back to base but it took several attempts before they dislodge them before finally succeeding. On an operation to Mailly-le-Camp the rear gunner was devastated at the losses he was seeing around him and it was his last operation. He suffered a breakdown and was invalided home to Australia. On another operation the aircraft was coned and in order to escape the pilot went into a steep dive. The pilot and engineer fought to bring the aircraft back under control a matter of a hundred feet from the ground. After the war he became a teacher.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
France--Mailly-le-Camp
France
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
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1939
1941
1942
1945
50 Squadron
aircrew
bombing
Bombing of Mailly-le-Camp (3/4 May 1944)
C-47
crewing up
demobilisation
entertainment
incendiary device
Initial Training Wing
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Operational Training Unit
physical training
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Syerston
RAF Torquay
recruitment
rivalry
searchlight
Stirling
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/848/10844/AHabberfieldM180111.2.mp3
fa5e71c1067db31d3b958cdcb17ee814
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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Habberfield, Margaret
M Habberfield
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history with Margaret Habberfield (b. 1923) and a group photograph. She served as a Women's Auxiliary Air Force telephonist at RAF Upwood and RAF Stormy Down.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Margaret Habberfield 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
2018-01-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Habberfield, M
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
MH: I'll try and tell you.
AM: Right. So today is Thursday they 11th of January I had to think about that. Thursday the 11th of January. It’s 2018 and this is Annie Moody for International Bomber Command and today I'm with Margaret Habberfield in Melton Mowbray where Margaret lives and Margaret is going to tell me all about Bomber Command in the war. But before we start on that Margaret you were born in 1923 so tell me a little bit about your childhood. Where you were born and what your parents did.
MH: I didn't know my parents. I don't want to go into that part of it.
AM: Alright. No problem.
MH: It’s not nice.
AM: Ok.
MH: I don’t have, my parents died years and years ago.
AM: Ok. As a child though where did you live?
MH: I don’t want to say. Tell you that.
AM: Oh ok.
MH: Its rather personal. I haven’t mentioned that to anybody.
AM: Not, absolutely not a problem then. Where shall we start then? Shall we start with you going in the RAF?
MH: Yes. I went in when I was sixteen.
AM: Ok.
MH: I put my age up to eighteen but I was only sixteen.
AM: You told fibs.
MH: At the time.
AM: Right. So how did that come about? Why did you want to join the RAF?
MH: This is where I don’t want to be.
AM: Tell me about joining. So how did you —
MH: I joined up when I was sixteen.
AM: Right.
MH: And I said I was eighteen but I wasn’t but I just wanted to get away and get —
AM: Right. So that’s, that’s what —
MH: Yes.
AM: What made you join.
MH: Yes.
AM: So where did you join? Where did you start off?
MH: I think it was at Gloucester. The first training. Or, no, Harrogate.
AM: So if you were sixteen that would be 1939. So was it just before the war had started?
MH: Yeah. I was from 1941. 1941 to 1945.
AM: Right. Ok.
MH: I was in.
AM: Right. So, so what was it like then actually joining up?
MH: I thoroughly enjoyed every day.
AM: Yeah.
MH: I really did.
AM: What was the initial bit like? What, you know you’d be in digs with other girls and training.
MH: Oh, I was in a billet. It was massive, big billets until I got a rank. Then I had my own room.
AM: Right.
MH: You see. But I thoroughly enjoyed my life in the RAF.
AM: So, when you, tell me about the early days in the RAF. What was the training like?
MH: Well, it was, you had to go training every day in the first instance to get to know what the training was all about. What to do, what not to do and how to get on with it. And in your billet how to make your bed and this sort of thing which was inspected every day, every week. Things like that.
AM: How many —
MH: I got on with everybody.
AM: Yeah. How many of you were there?
MH: In the, in the one billet?
AM: Yeah.
MH: There was about forty. Twenty. Forty.
AM: So quite big.
MH: Yes, it was. Very very big.
AM: Yeah. What was it like living with all girls?
MH: Well, they were all different weren’t they? Everybody was different but I got on with every one of them. Great. We had the ablutions at the other end of the billet.
AM: So what was that like?
MH: It was fine.
AM: The ablutions.
MH: Well, you know.
AM: Describe them to me.
MH: We were all very young and you had to take your turn to get to a shower or a bath whichever you wanted and get yourself sorted, cleaned and so on and so forth. And then the next one took her turn and that’s how it went on. Then we went then to the mess to have breakfast and your meals of course which was rather nice. Meals were lovely. No faults at all there.
AM: Right.
MH: They were nice. Everything was fine. And you had PT. That sort of thing. Which was in a hangar with all the other WAAFs. That was great because you had a good laugh over that.
AM: Who was, what were the instructors like? Were they men or women?
MH: Oh, very nice. No. They were, they were, they were ranked obviously.
AM: Yes.
MH: Sergeants most of them but PT probably. But they were fine. They were really fine. No problems. I had no problems with any of them.
AM: So, you really enjoyed it.
MH: I did. I think it’s a lovely life for them to join, for girls to join up now.
AM: Yeah. So how long was the training for? How long did that last for?
MH: About six weeks training and for me that was—
AM: And that was your general training.
MH: General.
AM: So —
MH: Ordinary training.
AM: Yeah.
MH: Yes.
AM: Marching and all the rest of it.
MH: Yes. Oh yes. You had that every day.
AM: And where were you? Did you say, Harrogate did you say?
MH: Harrogate and Gloucester. I think that was the first. It’s going back such a long time I can’t remember it all.
AM: So then once you’d done your six weeks training.
MH: Then you were posted to a station.
AM: Ok.
MH: A permanent. Which was RAF Upwood.
AM: Upwood.
MH: And I was there for a long long time.
AM: Right. So how did they decide where they were going to post you and what you were going to do?
MH: Well, it was up to you what you, what —
AM: Right.
MH: What trade you wanted to do. You were given an option as to which trade you wanted to do, what you wanted to be in and I wanted to be in signals and I stayed in signals.
AM: Right.
MH: Telephone. Telephonist.
AM: So what, why did you want to be in signals?
MH: I thought it was interesting. I found it, I didn’t want to go in the cookhouse or places like that.
AM: No.
MH: I wanted to get on and be different and I did.
AM: And you did.
MH: I did.
AM: So what was that? The training for that like then? No. Tell me about getting to RAF Upwood first of all then.
MH: We went straight to Upwood.
AM: So —
MH: And there I stayed. Back in to the billet with the rest of the WAAFs.
AM: Ok.
MH: Made friends with other WAAFs.
AM: What, what were the gradings? So, for the men it was LAC2 and then LAC1 and then corporal.
MH: Corporal. Sergeant.
AM: So what were the gradings for the for the girls?
MH: Well, they were the same.
AM: Were they?
MH: Exactly the same.
AM: So at this point what would you have been then when you —
MH: Well, an ordinary AC.
AM: Right.
MH: I was just an ordinary AC at the beginning because the others —
AM: So that was ordinary AC.
MH: That’s when we all joined up together and that’s when you were an AC. So Aircraft Woman.
AM: Aircraft Woman. Right.
MH: ACW.
AM: So as an Aircraft Woman now you’re off to RAF Upwood then. So whereabouts was that? [pause] I can look it up. It doesn’t matter.
MH: Isn’t it in Towcester?
AM: I don’t know. Gary will know.
MH: I think it is. Yeah. I think so. But it was a lovely camp. Everything was fine. No problems at all.
AM: So what, what was there? What was at RAF Upwood? Was it, was that a base? Were you all WAAFs or were you mixed? Was it a —
MH: Oh, no. Mixed.
AM: So it was a proper —
MH: Oh yes. Mixed.
AM: Ok.
MH: Aircraft.
AM: So, it was a bomber base.
MH: Yes.
AM: Right. And what year are we now in the war?
MH: ’41. ’42.
AM: About.
MH: I started at ’41 and I came out at ’45.
AM: Right. Ok. So in, so in 1941 you’ve done your basic training, you’re there in Upwood and you’re going to go in signals. So, what was that like? What was the training like and —
MH: Oh yes. We had to go through training obviously to get trained to use a switchboard. A massive switchboard. Not like they are today. Just plugging in.
AM: The ones that you see.
MH: Yeah. Yeah.
AM: Where there’s plugs all over the place.
MH: And I worked my way up. In the end I was in charge of eight WAAFs.
AM: Right.
MH: And I got on with everybody.
AM: When you started how long did the training last? Can you remember?
MH: About three, oh a month at least.
AM: A month.
MH: A month to five weeks.
AM: And that was —
MH: Training.
AM: So that was you’ve learned the switchboard.
MH: We learned the switchboard. Then you were posted to this switchboard and there you stayed.
AM: Right. And that was the switchboard for the whole camp.
MH: That was the whole camp.
AM: Right.
MH: Outside calls. Incoming calls.
AM: So at first you were one of many girls on the —
MH: Oh yes. Yes.
AM: How many of you would there have been in the —
MH: Well, in my section it was, there was eight of us.
AM: Right. Because how big was the camp then?
MH: Oh, it was a big camp.
AM: How many —
MH: Upwood. Very big.
AM: So how, how many switchboards? One.
MH: Three in the one that I was in. There was three.
AM: Right. So three switchboards.
MH: Yeah.
AM: In and out.
MH: They had to be manned day and night.
AM: Right. So it was twenty four hours.
MH: Twenty four hours.
AM: Were you doing shift work or —
MH: Yes.
AM: Yeah. What was that like then? Working shifts.
MH: It was fine.
AM: Yeah.
MH: No problem.
AM: You enjoyed it.
MH: Yeah. Back to our beds and get up in the mornings and get on to your job.
AM: How long were the shifts? How many hours were the shifts?
MH: Eight hours.
AM: Eight. So eight. Eight hour shifts. And what did you do the rest of the time? What was the, what was the social life like?
MH: There was plenty to do. No. There was plenty to do, you know. Dances in the sergeant’s camp rooms. PT. Walking. Going into town. Things like that.
AM: Yeah.
MH: You know.
AM: And did you, did you meet and mix with the chaps?
MH: Yes. Yes. Yes.
AM: Yeah. So were the dances on the base?
MH: On the base. Oh yes.
AM: Right.
MH: Always on the base.
AM: Yeah.
MH: They were very nice too. We thoroughly enjoyed those.
AM: Did you get dressed up or were you all still in uniform?
MH: No. Still stayed in uniform.
AM: You were all in uniform. Right. And then you said you got made up. You worked your way up.
MH: I did. I worked my way up.
AM: So what were the different, what different grades did you work your way through? You started, you were Aircraft Woman.
MH: Yeah.
AM: Ordinary.
MH: Then corporal.
AM: Then a corporal.
MH: Then sergeant.
AM: Then a sergeant. So you ended up in charge of the girls on the switchboard.
MH: I did. Yes.
AM: Right. Did you enjoy, what was that like? Managing a load of girls.
MH: Great. They were fine.
AM: Yeah.
MH: I had no problems with any of them.
AM: And what about the chaps? Did they —
MH: They were, yeah, they were fine. I mean they’ve got them on here on the band.
AM: I’m going to ask you about the band in a minute.
MH: They were, they were, everybody was fine. The officers were fine. No problems at all. My signals officer he was next door to the telephone exchange. He was next door. Any problems I had to go to him to sort things out.
AM: Yeah. With regards to the, the chaps obviously flying off did you see, I don’t quite know how to ask the question. What involvement, if any did you have with the bombers going off on operations?
MH: Well, lots of phone calls obviously. And we’d see them going off. We got to know them. We were allowed to go and see but so far obviously. We weren’t allowed to go to near the aircraft. But they were there. We heard them going and coming back.
AM: Right.
MH: That sort of thing.
AM: Yeah.
MH: Get to speak to them. Get friendly with them. Meet them if we wanted to. Get to the NAAFI. Always in the NAAFI. Plenty to see and do in the NAAFI. That was fine.
AM: I bet there are a lot of stories isn’t there?
MH: Yeah.
AM: About fraternisation.
MH: Well, there was that. There was that.
AM: Yeah.
MH: You got friendly obviously.
AM: When you say lots of phone calls is this, what type of phone calls were they?
MH: All to do with the RAF.
AM: Right. But with regards so would family be phoning in.
MH: No family.
AM: No.
MH: No. No. No. No. No.
AM: No. So it was all operational stuff.
MH: ‘Put me through to sergeant — ’so and so or, ‘Put me through to —'
AM: Right.
MH: Officer so and so. That sort of thing.
AM: So, tell me, I’m looking at a picture on your wall of the band. Tell me again about the band.
MH: Well, we had that was once a week we had that band.
AM: Ok.
MH: That was at Stormy Down. That’s in, near Bridgend, in South Wales.
AM: Right. So you moved.
MH: Moved from —
AM: You moved bases.
MH: That’s the base I moved from to there.
AM: Right. Ok.
MH: And that’s where we got a band up. It was just sort of automatically got up. Who wanted to join joined. And I joined.
AM: So what did you do in the band?
MH: The bugle I had.
AM: Right. Could you already play it or did you —
MH: Sorry?
AM: Could you already play a bugle?
MH: No.
AM: Right.
MH: I was taught to play it.
AM: Who taught you to play it then?
MH: A sergeant on the camp. There he is down there. He taught us.
AM: And what did, where did you play? Just on the base?
MH: On the base.
AM: Yeah.
MH: Yes. On the base. Or if they had any dos on the camp we would play.
AM: Right.
MH: Perhaps you’d march through the camp playing. But mostly in a, in a hangar. Once a week we had that and it was really, really there’s officers there. WAAF officers and RAF officers. It was really really lovely.
AM: I’m looking at the photo.
MH: Yes.
AM: It’s a complete mix isn’t it?
MH: Yes.
AM: Which one are you?
MH: You try and find me. At the back.
AM: Oh Margaret.
[pause]
MH: I’ll give you an idea.
AM: Right. Let me have a look.
MH: At the back.
AM: Oh, that’s quite hard.
MH: The fourth one in.
AM: Do you know what, that one?
MH: Yeah.
AM: I was just going to say.
MH: Yeah.
AM: I’m looking at the shape of your face.
MH: Yes. That’s me. Of course, we’re standing obviously on a bench to get the right photograph.
AM: Yeah. Well yeah. Either that or you’re very tall. So in the band there’s quite, there’s a lot of you.
MH: There was a lot of us. They were lovely. We had a grand time.
AM: There’s twenty odd of you.
MH: Great time.
AM: Yeah. Who’s the dog? Who did the dog belong to?
MH: The corporal down at the bottom. He looked, he looked after her. Yeah. She was a beautiful dog.
AM: How come you had to changes bases? Was that —
MH: Well, they just posted you.
AM: Yeah. So how long were you on the second. What was the second base that you were on? You said.
MH: Stormy Down.
AM: Stormy Down. That’s right. And that was another bomber.
MH: Oh yes. Yeah.
AM: Another bomber base.
MH: We used to hear them going off and we used to worry about them coming back and, you know that was natural wasn’t it?
AM: Yeah.
MH: We got to know some of the navigators or pilots or whatever wondering had they all come back safe and sound. That sort of thing.
AM: What was it like when they didn’t?
MH: Well, it was not nice when you knew that they weren’t coming back or they didn’t coming back. It wasn’t. You know. You naturally worry don’t you if you know them that we’re talking about.
AM: Yeah. So any stories to tell me about fun things that you got up to?
MH: No. I got to know one or two of them and got friendly with them. Went out with them but that was it. You know, you had to be very very careful.
AM: Yes. As girls.
MH: It was taught to us, pumped in to us what to do, what not to do. What was so and so like. What was that meant to be. What’s that sort of thing. What you do. What you don’t do. Take care. Be careful.
AM: Yeah.
MH: Which we did.
AM: Be a good girl.
MH: Oh yes. Yeah.
AM: Well, yeah. I can’t imagine what it would be like on a huge base like that with, because there would be far less of you then there were of the boys.
MH: Oh yes.
AM: So I would imagine you were all in great demand for dances.
MH: Yeah.
AM: And things like that.
MH: Yes. Well, we had a nice time at the dances and used to go out with them and meet them and [pause] but that was it.
AM: Yeah. It does sound, I mean you sound as if you just enjoyed the whole experience.
MH: I did. Yes. I did. I liked it very much. I liked every minute of it.
AM: And you were in there for the whole of the war.
MH: I did.
AM: So you came out as a sergeant. You ended up as a sergeant.
MH: I did. Yes.
AM: Yeah. Which is quite high up for a WAAF isn’t it? That’s good. And when did you come out Margaret, of the —?
MH: Well, at —
AM: At the end of the war.
MH: Yes.
AM: So what did you do then?
MH: My demob number came up so I just came out.
AM: Right. So what, what —
MH: But I stayed in Wales.
AM: Right.
MH: And I met my husband.
AM: Where did you meet him?
MH: In Neath.
AM: Right.
MH: This, that side of Swansea.
AM: Yes. I can, I can visualise where that is. And he was in the Navy I think you said.
MH: He was Navy.
AM: Where did you meet him? At a dance?
MH: The pub.
AM: In a pub.
MH: Yeah.
AM: So what —
MH: He used to come back and forth. We used to meet up and that was the end of that. Got married and had her.
AM: And had your daughter. The, in the between bit from being demobbed and meeting your husband and getting married did you, what work did you do?
MH: I started nursing.
AM: Oh, you did. You were a nurse.
MH: I went into nursing.
AM: Right.
MH: That was what I took up.
AM: And did you do the full training?
MH: I did.
AM: And become a nurse. Because that’s, how long was the training for that? That’s about three years?
MH: It was very very hard. Very hard. But I enjoyed that too. I got on with everybody.
AM: Yeah.
MH: I liked it.
AM: So how long did you work as a nurse for?
MH: Oh gosh. Up until I had Stephanie.
AM: Right —
MH: And then —
AM: And that —
MH: I had to see to her then.
AM: And you lived in Wales. Did your husband stay in the Navy?
MH: No. He came out as well. So we got married, set up house. We had a house.
AM: Right. And what did he do?
MH: He was in the South Wales Electricity Board. He ended —
AM: Oh right.
MH: He ended up a manager.
AM: Right. So you lived up happily ever after.
MH: We did.
AM: But you obviously think back fondly.
MH: Oh, I do.
AM: To your time as a WAAF.
MH: Yes, I do. I do.
AM: Yeah. And here you are in an RAF home.
MH: Here I am. My husband died of cancer and my daughter kept on saying, ‘You can’t stay in the bungalow,’ Which was my own bungalow, ‘On your own.’ Because they were over, she was over here. She wanted me to get nearer so that she could —
AM: And you were still in Wales at this time.
MH: I was in Wales at the time. To keep an eye on me.
AM: Right.
MH: So I came over here. In Oakham then, of course.
AM: Right.
MH: Went straight to where they are. And I stayed in Oakham and they wanted to make sure that I was taken care of, looked after and here I am.
AM: And here you are.
MH: And I applied here.
AM: I’m looking at a picture of your daughter and son in law. Both in the RAF.
MH: They are both.
AM: So what rank is your daughter in the RAF?
MH: She’s also a sergeant.
AM: She’s a sergeant.
MH: Yes.
AM: As well.
MH: She’s in, she’s in air traffic control.
AM: Is she? Right.
MH: And he’s a chief technician.
AM: And you said that they’re both based at Wittering.
MH: Yes. But they travel every day from Oakham to Wittering.
AM: Yeah. Well, it sounds like you’ve had a really interesting life.
MH: I did. Yes. I did. I’ve had some nice WAAF friends. I used to go to their homes on leave or we’d go up to London. Have a weekend up in London on leave. That sort of thing.
AM: Yeah. So that, so this was in the middle of the war. So, what did you do in London?
MH: Well, we used to go to a show or walk around. Go to the shops. Have a look around and that sort of thing.
AM: Just for the day or the —
MH: For the day.
AM: Oh, you went just for the day.
MH: Or a forty eight hour pass we had.
AM: So, stay in digs or —?
MH: Oh yes. We had to stay in digs.
AM: Yeah.
MH: B&B mostly.
AM: Right.
MH: We couldn’t afford these expensive hotels.
AM: It sounds brilliant. There’s a war going on all around you but you are enjoying every minute of it.
MH: Yes.
AM: Why would you not? I’ll switch off.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Margaret Habberfield
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-11
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHabberfieldM180111
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
Format
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00:20:49 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Margaret Habberfield was born in 1923. At sixteen she joined the Royal Air Force after giving her age as eighteen. She began her six-week general training at Harrogate and was billeted with around 20 other girls. Margaret was then posted to RAF Upwood and RAF Stormy Down. She was a telephonist in signals and worked eight-hour shifts. Margaret was in charge of eight Women’s Auxiliary Air Force members; became corporal and eventually sergeant. Her social life included darts, physical training and attending dances in the town. She learned to play the bugle and joined a band when transferred to RAF Stormy Down in South Wales. After the war Margaret stayed in Wales and became a nurse.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Yorkshire
England--Harrogate
Wales--Bridgend
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sue Smith
Julie Williams
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
entertainment
ground personnel
military living conditions
physical training
RAF Stormy Down
RAF Upwood
training
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/622/8891/PPayneR1706.2.jpg
159404936ab96ee8ba4b3699b7729414
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/622/8891/APayneR150703.1.mp3
54749e1037180c8d268a7353bd91c58f
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
Payne, Reg
R Payne
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Payne, R
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. Two oral history interviews with Reg Payne (1923 - 2022, 1435510 Royal Air Force), his memoirs and photographs. Reg Payne completed a tour of operations as a wireless operator with 50 Squadron from RAF Skellingthorpe. His pilot on operations was Michael Beetham. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Reg Payne and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br />
<p>This collection also contains items concerning Fred Ball. Additional information on Fred Ball is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/100970/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.<a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/ball-fc/"></a></p>
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-03
2017-08-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TJ: My name’s Tina James I’m here with Reg Payne at his home in Kettering Northants today is 3rd July 2015. So Reg you were with Bomber Command but let’s go back to the beginning and er where were you born and when?
RP: I was born in Kettering on on the 11th March 1923 which.
TJ: So you’re back to where your home town then aren’t you.
RP: Well um.
TJ: Your back in your home town now?
RP: Oh yes where I was born yes yes I was born probably only a couple of hundred yards from here really.
TJ: Really.
RP: The other side of the town.
TJ: And your parents um was your father in the First World War?
RP: Father yes he was in the army of course in in France.
TJ: Yes
RP: In the First World War yes.
TJ: Did he have a bad time?
RP: He I don’t think he had such a bad time because I think he was a cook he did a lot of cooking and I think because of that he wasn’t in the front line quite so much as he as he would have been.
TJ: So good yeah and then you went to school in Kettering?
RP: Pardon.
TJ: You went to school in Kettering?
RP: I went to school in Kettering yeah I went to school when I was fourteen when I left school sorry sorry.
TJ: You left school you left school at fourteen.
RP: Sorry I’m getting confused with when I went to work.
TJ: Yes.
RP: I went to school until I was fourteen.
TJ: Yes.
RP: I went to the er St. Mary’s both church schools St. Mary’s Church and then the Parish Church School.
TJ: And what were you good at at school?
RP: Er if anything art I think yeah.
TJ: Okay and you’re still doing art and we’ll come to that later. So what was your first job then when you left school?
RP: Well when I left school er oddly enough er I worked for the British Legion the er the British Legion Midland Region Department they they just moved into a huge house in Kettering and er and so far they had another British Legion they didn’t have an office in Kettering at the time but they took over this big building and er and members of the staff moved from er Bristol to come to here to work and it was the British Legion Midland Region Office in in Kettering and.
TJ: And what was your job with them what did you do?
RP: I was I was in the registry office looking after all the files all the all the people writing in to the British Legion for advice and help I had to I had to once they got involved with the er British Legion we had to make a file out for them they had a file with a reference number and from them on when they wrote again they had to quote their quote their name and address and also their reference number and er and er all their files were like a big library and I used to climb up to these racks and and get the er file connected to this person that was claiming benefit.
TJ: And how long did you work for them?
RP: I worked there until I until I was called up you see by eighteen you see you had to you had to go into the forces when you were eighteen the wars on you see you you had.
TJ: And were you called up straight away for the RAF?
RP: No the er I volunteered for the RAF when I was about seventeen and a half because if you waited at the age of the eighteen if you waited until you were eighteen and you were called up during the war you could be sent down the mines if you waited until you were called up the the authorities they did what they wanted with you they they could do anything with you so if you if you wanted to join the RAF especially to fly you had to go volunteer when you were seventeen and a half.
TJ: And that’s what you did?
RP: And that’s what I did yeah.
TJ: And then you went in at eighteen then?
RP: That’s right I went in just before I was eighteen yeah they called for me yeah.
TJ: So what was your first first experience of the RAF what were you doing?
RP: Er I was training as a wireless operator wireless operator and air gunner yes.
TJ: Where where was the training?
RP: The training was in Blackpool.
TJ: How long?
RP: Er I was in Blackpool I should think for er six months six months in Blackpool most most of that was er learning Morse Code we had two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon Morse Code and that was in the and that was in the tram sheds in the winter.
TJ: Not a lot of fun then?
RP: Mmm.
TJ: Not much fun?
RP: Well it Blackpool near near the coast in bitterly cold winds and every so often a tram used to come into the tram sheds and the doors had to be opened absolutely wide to allow it to come in or to go out and we used to get the horrible cold winds coming in from the sea and we were sitting at tables there lllistening to Morse Code all the time the instructors were ex Naval er Fleet Air Arm wireless operators naval people and they all sat there with great big overcoats on and helmets [laughs] sending Morse out to us but they used to send out articles from the newspaper stories of course as we were writing it down we used to read at the same time so it made it a little bit more interesting but that but that we used to have as I say we used to have about three hours in the morning or three hours in the afternoon and then in the afternoon we had to go to Stanley Park for gymnasium lessons and running PT and that sort of thing and also we used to have to go into er the Tower Ballroom and learn how to march we had we had to wear slippers we had to wear plimsolls for that and we were taught to march about turn, right turn you know about turn saluting to the front saluting to the left we had all that you see at Blackpool.
TJ: So at the end of that time you could do Morse and you could march and you could salute so where did they send you next?
RP: Well that that only took us until probably about ten or eleven words a minute in Morse we we had to in increase our speed quite a bit after but after that after that we er went we went down into oh gosh it’s it’s in that list somewhere in it er Yatesbury Yatesbury and that was a radio school.
TJ: Where’s Yatesbury?
RP: Yatesbury is in Wiltshire it was a big school that taught you all about radio about the the valves the different grids and elements you know the different er the way a valve worked and and how radio worked and and we were taught there to assemble our own radio sets and er and then get in touch with people in the next room once you got your radio all connected and working in working condition you could then call up you know to er the call sign and and people would hear you perhaps two or three rooms away and they were sending messages back again just to just to the valves there’s there’s tetrodes, pentodes, diodes you know all all different grids on valves and so forth we had to learn all about chokes and resistances and and er and er electricity and er.
TJ: Did it come easy to you?
RP: It was it wasn’t it was complicated really you know but the thing is we used to study at night school a bit you know ‘cos in the in the base itself there was no entertainment much there at all so er so at nights you’d probably go through what you were taught in the day time but I was lucky really because er er er one of the men one of the men who he did my training with he was a Kettering man and he worked for the he worked for the Evening Telegraph and he knew shorthand he was very good at shorthand and he could he could when the instructor was explaining things to us he could he could jot a lot of stuff down with shorthand so at nights when we got back into the billet at night we would get together in the bedroom and go through what we’d been taught in the day and I perhaps explain that I couldn’t understand what they were saying about the chokes and the different grids and things and the anodes the tetrodes and pentodes and er and er what he would do he would he would explain it all to me again you know he was quite quite good.
TJ: Great, so how long did that last?
RP: That that would be about four months about four months.
TJ: And then take us through what happened next after that?
RP: Well after that after that I went to Northcotes and and actually I think this was mainly this was mainly a break I think to get away from school room work and I actually started doing some er listening out there was a coastal command aerodrome in in use on the on the on the er on the er it be on the Lincolnshire coast up near Grimsby and and it was the coastal command aircraft going out and I used to have to sit and er listen out on frequencies and pick up any messages that came through I had to I had to write them down and take them into the flying control tower like I was like a contact between the aeroplanes that were flying over the North Sea and the base at Northcotes and and so being able to read the Morse I could I could take messages down and put them through to the operations room and they could er and they could go through with that but then later I had to go back to London then and and to the Albert Hall and I and we had er by that time the RAF had im improved all their radio equipment being used in the aircraft and and the stuff I was taught on was all obsolete so I had to go down to London to the Albert Hall there the Albert Hall was a training centre during the war for RAF and and we had to go through it all again all the different up to date radio it was.
TJ: How long were you in London?
RP: I was there for about four months.
TJ: So what so about when was that then?
RP: It was from September probably till till after Christmas.
TJ: Of Thirty Nine?
RP: Er no er you know it could be Forty I think.
TJ: Probably yes.
RP: Yes yes.
TJ: So while you were in London what was going on there in London?
RP: Well it we were lucky really because there there was there were one or two alerts but we never had any bombs never had any bombs at all there we were we were quite lucky that way.
TJ: Indeed in fact when you think what went on in London you were very lucky weren’t you?
RP: Yes yes it was all it was all it was all training you know we did a lot of PT, square bashing and er PT and er in er er is it Stanley not Stanley Park that’s Blackpool isn’t it well where are the big parks in London?
TJ: Regents Park.
RP: Regents Park yes and
TJ: Hyde Park?
RP: Hyde Park yeah that’s it yeah used to play football in there quite a lot as well in there.
TJ: Did you ever venture out in the evenings on the town in London?
RP: We we were we were living we were living in in Albert Court they were luxury luxurious flats just next to the Albert Hall when when at nights when we were in our bedrooms about five storeys high and there was queues waiting to go into the Albert Hall for concerts at night and we used to make little aeroplanes and fly them through the windows and the people down below used to watch them gliding down and that that we used to but we had to be in we had to be in every night at ten o’clock we weren’t allowed out after ten o’clock at night that was the same at Blackpool and when we were at Blackpool if er if your landlady she’d lock the doors at ten o’clock and if if and the RAF Police you see used to be patrolling the streets and if you were caught out there after ten o’clock you were on a charge you were punished on there yeah it was very strict.
TJ: So you finished in London you’ve got you were up to date with the new machinery new wirelesses um what was next?
RP: Next was gunnery we had to go to a gunnery course down on the South Coast to learn about Browning machine guns and er and we had to start flying then and shoot shooting at air at aircraft towing drones we had to learn how to strip a Browning machine gun and er put it together again and fire it and we had er we had a firing range on the sea on the seashore and it was where a lot of sand dunes were on the seashore and they had er an aeroplane they had an aeroplane on a little trolley a little electric trolley and this this er trolley used to go in and and out in and out these sand dunes and you were you were in a gun turret and RAF gun turret aircraft gun turret you’d be watching and all of sudden you’d see this aeroplane it come from behind as it come from behind a a sand dune and go across a short distance you had to get in there quick and fire a burst of machine gun fire and then it would go behind another sand dune and you wouldn’t see it so you’d be scanning round with with your turret like this all the time and then all of sudden you’d see it again and fire another burst at it it gave you a good idea of what it was like to be shooting in an aircraft yes that was part of the gunnery course.
TJ: Did you enjoy that bit?
RP: It was well it was much better [laughs] than just listening learning Morse Code all the time yeah.
TJ: So take us on to what happened next?
RP: Mmm?
TJ: Take us on to what happened after that?
RP: Well the next after that after that I had to go up to er er well [shuffling through papers] log book.
TJ: Good idea get out the log book.
RP: [Looking through log book] I think the first part the first part of my flying it was with we didn’t had it recorded we hadn’t got log books at the time er.
TJ: So can you remember where the airfield was your first experiences?
RP: Yeah its even that’s not in here no.
TJ: Well never mind just go from your memory then. Which planes were you on first?
RP: Mmm?
TJ: Which aircraft were you on first?
RP: We were on on Proctors Proctors they were really tiny little tiny aircraft er.
TJ: How many.
RP: Oh here we are yes I was I was flying in Dominies Dominies and Proctors and and er and all it was is learning how to transfer messages you know back to base and also DF routes using direction finding routes there’s a whole page of it there look on there [pointing out in log book].
TJ: Oh yes.
RP: On there on there I mean even even they put on they filled this in for us and they’ve put one hour, one hour, one hour ten, one hour ten, one hour, one hour, one hour, one hour, one twenty, one ten, I mean they’re not the correct times I mean obviously there’d be odd minutes wouldn’t they yes this is er the using the direction finding aerials loop aerials they were circular aerials and you by turning them round you can get you can get the direction of that of that er transmission that they sent to you so you could plot a position from that you see using the direction finder aerial ‘cos that was all very handy when we were flying in Germany there er yes checheering [?] codes, frequenty changes, calibration codes its all to do with direction finding you know with er using your aerials and that was that was flying in er in Proctors you had just like a little two seater aircraft and it wasn’t very and the Dominies that was like a classroom with about with an instructor in it and about five pupils in it and so that he used to he used to let you have ten minutes at a time on the radio and then another one he’d have ten minutes and then somebody else but when we went in the Proctors we went for about an hour with just the pilot and one wireless operator and then everything we did then you had to do on your own you see and we even had to he used to er fly somewhere over in Wales over the hills you know and er and and he you you had to bring him back to the aerodrome again using your your direction finding experiences that that was all part of the training er you’d two signals there back tuning er frequency changes and bearings it’s all look you see look one hour, one hour, one hour, one hour, one hour, one hour but I mean obviously they filled that in you see but I mean with your flights it could be one hour twenty five minutes or one hour thirty minutes the real times.
TJ: So when was it that you things started to get serious and you went out on actual missions?
RP: Well to start with you see we had to um I had to go where was the place here [looking through papers] this is this this an operational training unit here I was here there and this is where I started flying on Ansoms Ansoms they were twin engine aircraft you know bigger aircraft and er and and I I flew with different different pilots I mean I was with Sergeant Hamilton, PO Bess, Flight Lieutenant Mugridge, Flight Sergeant Gray, Sergeant Parker, Sergeant mm nn Carrow or something, Sergeant Briggs, Sergeant Hollingworth, Sergeant Farrow, they were all and and er I was doing QVM’s, loops, and frequency changes, loops, fixes, QVM’s, MTB’s that’s messages to base you see, yeah, ten loops, two QVM’s the QVM is a course to steer you know so if they pilot if the pilot in an aircraft and er and er and the pilot wanted to go to Lincoln he say to me ‘Reg get me a QVM get me a QVM yeah to Lincoln’ and I would call them up you see and ask for a QVM ‘da da di da da da da da da’ you see QVM [laughs] and er and they would give me a K you know K carry on and I would simply press my key then keep pressing my key then press me key there pressing it and the go ‘ddddddddddd’ that’s enough and I’d say QVM ‘da di da la la da la da dd da’ you know that’s one two five you know and I’d give that to the pilot you know course one two five and then and then er after a while he’d say ‘get me another QVM Reg just in case’ so I’d call them up again and ask for another QVM ‘da da di da da da da’ [laughs] and er and then perhaps this time perhaps be one two eight something like that.
TJ: So when was your first encounter with the enemy?
RP: Well that’s when you see that er that was er this was when I was flying on Ansoms and then and then I got to er to operational training unit OTU that is and that’s where that’s where I joined up with a pilot then you see on there not this one this is er this is an OTU but but I wasn’t actually crewed up I wasn’t actually crewed up ooh I was I was crewed up here with my pilot PO Beetham yeah PO Beetham yeah.
TJ: Oh yes.
RP: When we got to an OTU an operational training unit er er the pilots the pilots and the navigators they all had to go in a hangar there’d perhaps be twenty pilots and twenty navigators and they all had to go in a hangar and then got to sort themselves out into pairs they used to go round looking at each other and say ‘oh excuse me you know I’m a navigator are you a pilot? Have you got a navigator yet?’ you know and the pilot would say ‘no I haven’t got one’ and he said ‘would you like to fly with me’ you see and they’d say ‘yes yes I would you know I’d like to fly with you’ fair enough and as I say that’s the pilot and navigator and in another hangar they’d have wireless operators, and and air gunners and bomb aimers and the and the pilot the pilot and navigator they’d perhaps say look at the wireless operators they’d come up to you and say ‘excuse me but but your’e a wireless operator? Have you been are you in anyone’s crew yet?’ you see and you’d say ‘no not yet’’ so ‘would you like to fly with us?’ and you’d look at them you know two officers and you’d think er well they looked all right you know and I’d say ‘oh yes I’d love to’ and that’s how fair enough and that’s you with them then they’d be looking for a bomb aimer then you see and and that’s that’s how the crews got together they never they never sort of er er wrote them all down on paper like you know pilot so so Tom Jones, Alfred Smith and all that sort of thing you know it’s er it was all so I mean you went more or less by the looks of people whether you fancied you know when these two pilots came to me two officers came to me you know they looked they looked two smart friendly sort of smiles on their faces while they talked to you and er I was pleased to join them like and that’s er operational training unit er see I mean we only did er twelve hours fifty five minutes flying in the daytime here but once we got to er once we got to operational training unit there we er we were on Wellington bombers then you see and that’s when the crew the pilot and navigator and the bomb aimer and the wireless operator and the rear gunner that’s a crew of five then that’s when we really started training then you know doing two and three hour flights and.
TJ: And how long was it then before you went onto a unit where you were actually.
RP: What what?
TJ: You were actually dropping bombs?
RP: Oh yeah well that was er that Saltby Saltby that was one OTU we were at then there’s another one the big one er the big one was at Cottesmore at Cottesmore and and Market Harborough, Market Harborough is quite close to here you see look all this flying look here you can see on here look that’s all flights er er one here Beetham a cross country flight you see in Nineteen Forty Three cross cross country er on frequent change base, three QVM’s base, a fix from M group [?] a fix a fix is er is er what they call a group you call you call this group up and you request a fix and er and er you call a central station up and ask for a fix but there’s two more stations and they they can here you as well and when they when they tell you to press your key down you press your key down and this person he takes a he takes a er er bearing on you there that one takes a bearing on you and that one takes a bearing on you and where the three of you join in the map that’s that’s nine degrees forty five something east and so many degrees so and so west and they’d send that to me lllatitude and longitude so I can give that I can give that to the navigator so he can plot it so he can plot it and he gets his position exactly where he is that’s that’s what a fix.
TJ: So when did you go operational then about what?
RP: Operational?
TJ: Yes when was that then?
RP: Yeah see there was loads of training about two years of training you see.
TJ: Yes.
RP: Yes yes. You see even at heavy conversion unit at Wigsley that’s when we trained to go from a two engine aircraft to four engine aircraft you see and that’s that’s all flying you see learning to fly the four engine aircraft the bombers the big bombers you see yeah [showing picture] that was they were all Lancasters look there you see Lancasters.
TJ: Bearing in mind the people who are going to listen to this Reg can’t see you book.
RP: Yes but er but here we are look 50 Squadron at Skellingthorpe now now these were the operations look in red.
TJ: In the red yes.
RP: Now look at the flying we had to do look before even we were on operations.
TJ: Lots of.
RP: Yes.
TJ: Lots of outings?
RP: Yes yes cross country, base, Thetford, return, cross country, base, Deb Deb Denham, return, and then cross country as briefed, air sea flying, cross country as briefed, formation bombing, yeah, cross country, base, Thetford, return, cross country, base, Debden return wherever that is, cross country as briefed.
TJ: Yes but it’s the one’s in red we are interested in so when you actually flew?
RP: On the first raid?
TJ: Yes.
RP: Well it surprised me because the very first the very first raid we did we expected something a bit simple but there’s the first raid look on the twenty.
TJ: What’s the date?
RP: On the Twenty Second of November Forty Three Flying Officer Beetham, wireless op, operations Berlin the first raid we did Berlin yeah, also as well look the second the second raid we did look there that was the next night.
TJ: The very next day?
RP: Twenty Third yeah Beetham twenty seven missing ops Berlin again landed at Wittering flaps US the flaps they wouldn’t let us land because the flaps were frozen and they were afraid if we crashed if we crashed on the runway there would be another twenty odd aircraft that wouldn’t be able to land you see so they divert us then you see divert us to Wittering you see then that’s on the Twenty Third on the Twenty Six again you see there operation Berlin again that’s three Berlin raids diverted to Melbourne Melbourne there’s fifty five missing on that raid fifty five aircraft missing on that that third raid we went on you see there’s thirty two missing on the first raid there’s twenty seven missing on the second raid so fifty five on that so that’s fifty five and thirty two that’s seventy seven that’s seventy seven in it seventy seven that’s ninety seven ninety seven that’s hundred and four aircraft lost in the first three raids we went on.
TJ: How many planes would go out at one time?
RP: Um well about five hundred six hundred yeah [laughs] oh yeah yeah yeah six hundred, seven hundred even eight hundred.
TJ: So were most of your missions over Berlin?
RP: I did ten.
TJ: Ten over Berlin?
RP: Ten ten altogether yes yes.
TJ: Anywhere else?
RP: Er
TJ: Any missions anywhere else?
RP: Oh yeah er [looking through log book]I did er I did er Frankfurt, Leipzig, Berlin incendiary through starboard outboard tank that’s with another bomb dropped from another aircraft that went straight through our wing coming back.
TJ: That must have been a hairy moment?
RP: Mmm?
TJ: It must have been frightening?
RP: Well it was in a way because because er if it had gone through it went through it went through the wing and but it also went through the petrol tank but the petrol tank was empty if it gone if it there’s three tanks I one wing and there’s three tanks in the other if it had gone through the one next to it that was full of petrol well even if even if it didn’t burn we wouldn’t get home ‘cos it that was the petrol and that we were going to use to fly us back to England you see yeah so.
TJ: Did you get back okay with that hole in the wing?
RP: Not not we got back alright with it yeah because because it just tore a whole straight through the wing.
TJ: It was still flyable?
RP: It was still flyable yeah on there yeah it it yeah incendiary through starboard outboard tank there and then it was Berlin, Berlin, that was on the First January we went to Stettin, Brunswick, went to Berlin again and then Berlin we did a spoof attack on Berlin that was er just a few aircraft there you know to let them think it was a Berlin raid then I suppose the main force went somewhere else, then Berlin, Berlin again we did ten Berlin raids altogether and they were all about eight hours you see the yeah you see take off here take off here look on the Twenty Eighth is was 00.21 so that’s twenty minutes after midnight take off and we didn’t er [unclear] yeah and we didn’t land until five minutes to eight the next morning so we were flying we were flying from midnight to five minutes to eight on that raid you see and and the Berlin raid before that er we took off at er 17.17 that’s round about five o’clock in it?
TJ: Yes.
RP: Five o’clock there and er and that we were flying for eight hours fifty five minutes so that’s nine hours in it pretty well eight hours fifty five minutes and er vyou see some of them Stettin you see that was a long journey Brunswick.
TJ: And all this time you were based at Skellingthorpe right?
RP: We were based at Skellingthorpe all the time yeah yeah we did a lot of operations at Skellingthorpe yeah you see this month look February look we only did two operations in February it must have been terrible weather I’ve got the er on the on the Eighth February here we we did a searchlight searchlight cooperation and fighter affiliation exercises all training all the time er and this was here of course er on the Twelfth of February it was a fighter affiliation exercise it’s got aircraft aircraft caught fire baled out at six thousand feet that’s when I had that’s when I had to bale out yeah and er.
TJ: What about the rest of the crew?
RP: Well there was ten of us in the aircraft there was six of us managed to bale out alright but four were killed four went down with the aircraft yeah they were all killed.
TJ: Where did you come down on your parachute where did you land?
RP: We we landed we landed we landed luckily er er we were we er we were going to fly up to up to Yorkshire fly up the Humber Estuary and and go up into Yorkshire and we were going to pick a Spitfire a Spitfire was waiting for us up there and the Spitfire the Spitfire was going to er attack us it it was going to dive on us and attack us you see but we but our full crew of seven Norman[?] Beetham and his full crew then we had another pilot he was an Australian pilot and we had his two gunners with us as well so there was ten of us ten of us in the aircraft altogether and er.
TJ: So that was nothing to do with enemy fire?
RP: Oh no no.
TJ: A misadventure.
RP: No no no and er we had er we had er we flew up into Yorkshire and we saw this Spitfire the pilots could talk to each other you see they called the Spitfire up and said you know ‘were already for you you can start attacking us anytime’ and my pilot you see he was flying the aircraft and my two gunners they were in the turrets you see they were in the turrets and er and the Spitfire as it came in they had cine camera guns as well they had cameras in there so so while they were while the guns were supposedly firing they were turning a film over so they were filming they were filiming the Spitfire so when they got back oh sorry yeah yeah yeah when they got back when they got back they could show the films they could show the films and they could say to the to the gunners you know your not not allowing enough deflection ‘cos when a planes coming on like that it’s no good firing at it because by the time the bullets get there the the planes gone you got to aim in front of you all the time that’s the way that’s the way it was and er our two gunners they did they did their operation first with my pilot and then after about after about quart fifteen minutes twenty minutes something like that we called the Spitfire up and told him to hold on we told him to hold on we were changing pilots and changing the gunners and er and then of course when er when er you know that’s right its when this other pilot he went in next you see and his two gunners and they called the Spitfire up and they told the Spitfire that he could come in and commence the er the attacking like but the thing is while we were flying while we were flying er we’d been up to Yorkshire and we were coming back again and er it was lovely sunny weather but the cloud was solid solid three thousand feet below us we were at six thousand feet and all you could see was cloud all the way over there at six at three thousand feet and you see we didn’t know whether we were still over the North Sea or not because you couldn’t see it you see there so when so when er you know when this other pilot was ready he called the Spitfire okay you can carry on now commence attacking and er and the Spitfire came in to attack us and the gunner shouted out a warning you know that’s what they do they have to say ‘fighter fighter port er port stream port stream go [unclear] ‘ and the pilot put the plane in such a dive such a steep dive I’ve I’ve never been in a Lancaster that dived as steep as that and I think the strain on the wings there it must have severed one of the coolant pipes for the Rolls Royce Engines and it must have spewed like spewed petrol all over the wing and the whole wing caught fire and the wing was a mass of flames and they the levelled plane out you see and Mike Beetham like he was the senior he was the senior officer like on board and he said ‘the whole wings on fire’ he said ‘right everybody out everybody bale out’ you see well I knew my flight engineer he hadn’t even got a parachute he hadn’t brought his parachute I said ‘Don where’s your chute?’ he said ‘oh he said it’s only a training flight I’m not bothered it’s only a training flight’ he said ‘I’m not gonna I’m not bothered’ you see he was a married man as well with a little little lad as well yeah and of course we er all started baling out well when I when I got in the rear door you had to sit on the side like that and the doors only a little thing you had you had to get your head down and you had to get your head right down otherwise you’d hit the tale and I crouched down and and I I when out and the wind pushed me back in I was trying to get but I think somebody just went just went like that.
TJ: Booted you out.
RP: Booted me out I’m sure they did ‘cos it was either that or once I got outside the slipstream you know a two hundred mile an hour wind hitting you you know it’s like a but the I went out I went out slipping out all I could see all I coul see was cloud that’s all and I didn’t know I didn’t know whether the sea was there or not it was February and we hadn’t got Mae West’s we hadn’t got Mae West’s on so it meant that if I went through the clouds and came down in the in the North Sea and I was even a mile from the coast with the sea would be bitterly cold wouldn’t it in February and er I doubt I doubt that I would have survived but I went I went I was [laughs] I was pulling I was pulling the wrong handle I was pulling one of the carry handles there’s four parachute handles on the parachute one, two, three, four then there’s the that metal one that’s in the middle and I didn’t get hold of that metal one I got one of the canvas ones and I was pulling that course my chute my chute wouldn’t open and I went through the clouds and my chute still hadn’t opened and I certainly thought good god Reg and I got this metal one and gave it a pull and it’s in there isn’t it.
TJ: It’s hanging outside in the hallway yes.
RP: And of course me chute opened me chute opened and I and I looked and I thought ooh good gracious and I and I looked about a mile away from me I could see the coast I could see the coast and I was quite a height you know still and er the wing from the aircraft that came down like a big leaf and I thought I thought it was going to hit my parachute as it came down but it was coming down like a big scythe like a big leaf but that went that went by me and I and I drifted luck luckily I drifted towards the coast and I landed about three or four miles inside the coast there.
TJ: In open countryside where you?
RP: Yeah in in a lovely big field yeah and I no sooner I no sooner landed like you know and sort of picked meself up and I looked and I saw another parachute coming down but he was going a little bit farther than me and there was a spinney with trees and I saw him go through these trees and all these branches going crickle crackle crickle crackle like as he went through these branches and that was that was the other pilot [laughs] but he his memory was er he lost his memory because ‘cos when I picked myself up er an airforce van was coming across the fields towards and and they said to me ‘are you alright?’ I said ‘yes officer I’m quite alright’ I said but I said ‘but another chap here he’s just come down in that spinney down there’ and they said ‘yes we saw him come down we’re going to see how he is’ well when they brought him out his mind had gone he was saying ‘Where are we? What happened? Where’s everybody? you know ‘Where have they all gone to?’ you know and he was talking like that and we realised that it had played his memory up and er so they but luckily we landed quite near to East Kirkby Airfield I’ll show you it East Kirkby Airfield [looking through book] yeah.
TJ: So you baled out so when did you next did you have a few days off to recover?
RP: Er well I don’t think so with a thing like that I I they never sent you on leave or anything like that you didn’t you didn’t get a leave no because I think the next night the next night ooh you know what messed us up as well you see I should have been seeing Ena er.
TJ: This is your wife?
RP: Yeah.
TJ: Were you married at the time?
RP: Oh no we we hadn’t known one another that long these two ATS girls they had to be in by ten o’clock at night you see every night so when we there’s no hanky panky like by the time we came out the er pub we used to walk them back to their billets.
TJ: In Skellingthorpe?
RP: Yes then we used to get on our bikes luckily luckily their quarters were in the er were in the Lincoln City Council they they took the Lincoln City Council Offices over the RAF took those over.
TJ: What in Lincoln?
RP: In Lincoln yeah and they had they had these rooms there you know where they used to supply all the food in the Royal Army Service Corps and they used to supply all the food to the aerodrome you know Scampton, Waddington, Bardney, Fiskerton you know all the all different places there.
TJ: Yes and you went on to marry Ena what year did you get married?
RP: Er it it was it was whilst I was still in the air force yeah.
TJ: Was it after the war?
RP: No no yeah the war had finished yeah ’cos I said I said we wouldn’t get married whilst he war was on yeah yeah and I was due to come off flying and take a ground job and I went oh that’s right they when I was at er er when I was at er Silverstone I was instructor there at Silverstone and when the war was more or less coming to an end we had a chance er the people that had done tour of operations and a tour of instructional duties ‘cos I’d had a year at Silverstone training wireless operators you know flying with them there and the one’s that had done a tour of operations and a tour of instructional duties could come off flying altogether and take a ground job they they advertised it to say that er you know if you take a ground job and they said and you’d be given you’d be given a choice of posting to where you would go and when you chosen the job you wanted to do you know a ground service job you could er er er you were given a posting and I put I put Desborough the first choice that’s that’s only about four miles from Kettering, Market Harborough which is about eleven miles from Kettering and I put that second choice and I think I put Cottesmore I think as the third choice so that’s like three choices of er posting if I if I was If I came off flying and took a ground job and I I chose I chose this job er er well it was a stores job it’s to do with er to do with RAF equipment that you know that a surplus of RAF equipment as the aerodromes started to close down the re was all of the equipment left behind and it was disposing of it and and er ascertaining whether it’s whether it’s in serviceable condition or whether it can be repaired or whether whether it got to be scrapped like what to do with it it’s all the paperwork you know attached to like vans and things and tractors you know aircraft and so forth it was all the official paperwork because in the RAF er if a thing if a thing is going to be repaired there’s always a form goes in an official form to allow it you know to allow it to take place you know everything had to be done with a form official notification like you know and er this was the course this was the course that I did I chose to do because as they said ere r you know I was given a choice of posting either three miles from home or seven miles from home or perhaps twelve miles from home and I did this course it was up near Blackpool the course I had to do and er and after that after that we got married we got married you see in fact we spent our honeymoon in Blackpool because I’d spent so much time in Blackpool and I knew one or two people up in Blackpool and we spent our honeymoon in there and so when I went back there again after you know you know after that er we were told we were going to go on the North Pier at night on that particular night and we would be told we would be told where our postings were going to be where we going to be posted to you see and I thought oh crickey you know let’s hope its somewhere close near to Kettering like you know now I’ve married Freda, Ena.
TJ: Ena.
RP: Ena [laughs] Ena yeah.
TJ: For the record Freda was wife number two.
RP: Anyhow on the pier they started reading these names out it was getting dark actually as well at the time about October time and they called my name out warrant officer Payne and they looked at the list and said warrant officer Payne posted to 56 FRU FRU and I thought to myself FRU and I thought to myself that’s nothing like they said I In fully expected them to say you know one of these aerodromes so I went up after they finished I went up to the people there calling them out I said ‘this 56 FRU’ I said ‘that’s not where they said they were going to post’ I said ‘where’s that?’ they said ‘we’ve got no idea’ they’d got no idea they’d got no idea where it is you see and er so I asked they said ‘somebody one officer there when he comes he’ll know’ so I went up to him and said ‘been posted to 56 FRU’ and they said ‘FRU that’s the forward repair unit’ and I said ‘where will that be then forward repair unit?’ he said he had a look he said ‘well it’s in SEAC SEAC’ I said I said ‘what do you mean by SEAC?’ he said ‘South East Asia Command’ so I said ‘well where are they?’ he said ‘well we don’t really know we’ll send you to Karachi’ he said ‘and they’ll know when you get to Karachi’ you can’t understand it can you terrible in it.
TJ: So what happened?
RP: Mmm?
TJ: What happened?
RP: Well when I got to Karachi they said well they said it’s near Rangoon in Burma and they said ‘they’ll tell you when you get to Rangoon they’ll they’ll take you there’.
TJ: And what was your role there what job did you do?
RP: I was I was investigating all of the equipment left behind in these aerodromes you know vans, tractors, aeroplanes, typewriters, and er you know radio sets and things and and ascertaining whether they whether there fit for reply or whether they’re going to be struck off charge because with the with the RAF every piece of equipment was on paper and you couldn’t and it was and it was er like in an office work they’d perhaps have seventeen typewriters or thirteen machine guns like and they’d all have numbers and er if if one was er and they were all located in filing cabinets like you see and if you wanted to er if say one was a motorbike and it got smashed in a in a crash er the paperwork a form had to be filled in stating that it had been destroyed and that form would go into the office where there was a filing cabinet and there’d be a card in the filing cabinet connected to that to that motorbike or whatever it was and and then that form that form would be responsible for deleting that item like you know nothing could be thrown away until a form was made out and filled in you know authorising you to throw it away.
TJ: Very different weather in Burma to Skellingthorpe?
RP: Oh good gracious yes.
TJ: Was it hot and steamy?
RP: It used to be a hundred hundred degrees yeah yeah.
TJ: How long were you out there?
RP: I was out there from er before Christmas until August yes I was there for about ten months altogether yeah er they flew me to start with er I flew from Tempsford that’s in Bedfordshire somewhere there and we flew to Cairo to start with we flew to Cairo and then from Cairo we flew then to Tripoli that was lovely there I slept in a tent in the desert that night in Tripoli and I was only there for about three nights but there was a lovely big harbour there and there was no end of Italian warships you know in the harbour but all they were all sunk and all you could see was their masts sticking out the water you know there, there, there, all these warships Italian warships that had been sunk but anyhow from there they flew us then to Cairo and we stayed in the Heliopolis Palace Hotel lovely place there and er and er the next morning I got up and I looked out on the on the balcony and I could see The Pyramids.
TJ: Wow.
RP: Yeah the Heliopolis Palace Hotel yeah and and er I hadn’t had a bath for ages and there was a lovely bath there and I was just enjoying this bath and a lady came in she started cleaning the taps [laughs] when I was in the bath she didn’t take a bit of notice of me [laughs] it’s terrible in it [laughs] yeah amazing isn’t it and then of course we went out then to see Cairo and er I didn’t fancy that at all I’d never ever want to go there the kids the kids because we were in RAF uniform and the kids had got a a jam jar a pound jam jar and it was half full of er black black shoe polish liquid shoe polish black and they’d and they’d come on you saying ‘shoeshine pal shoeshine boy’ you know and in other words if they didn’t give them something they’d throw this pot of black shoe polish over you over your uniform yeah but luckily we were armed we had revolvers yeah and we just we just fetched the revolver out and just cocked it and said ‘you throw that and your dead we’ll shoot you’ we said that to them and I think we would have done [laughs] yeah for you to get a revolver out and point it revolvr ‘we’ll shoot you if you throw it’ yeah yeah amazing [laughs].
TJ: So at the end of your time in Burma you came back to where?
RP: Er well I came back to er a place near near Blackpool a demob centre and er and er I was I was issued with a demob suit and paid you know owed me a lot of money ‘cos I was a month on the boat coming back I was thirty days on the boat coming back from Rangoon and that’s a month’s pay you see there yeah and I think I was still paid for about another month or two months.
TJ: Did you choose to come out or would you have liked to have stayed in?
RP: If if er if I hadn’t have been married I think I wouldn’t have minded staying in ‘cos Mike Beetham you see he stayed in.
TJ: Yes he’s still in.
RP: Yeah yeah he wanted me he wanted me to stay with him because er er after after the end of the war he took a squadron of Lancasters to America on a goodwill tour and er and I’ve seen I’ve seen some of the film that er I can’t think where I’ve seen it I’ve seen some of the film that was shown that was taken like when they were in there they even went to places like Hollywood and he sent me a photograph of himself in I think in Hollywood and he’d got his arm round I think Bette Davis I think [laughs] something like that you know I saw this photograph of him with his arm round her so he I mean you know he did well that way he er but he’s er at the squadron reunions we used to see him regularly you know and also at the Bomber Command reunions we used to see him there.
TJ: How did you feel after the war about the way that the Bomber Command wasn’t recognised?
RP: Er
TJ: Did it were you upset about it were you really aware of it?
RP: What leaving it do you mean leaving?
TJ: No the way that the Bomber Command wasn’t recognised in any speeches.
RP: Oh that yeah.
TJ: And Bomber Harris wasn’t knighted with everybody else did that really strike a chord with you.
RP: Well I we all thought it was a disgust you know and not allowing us this not allowing us that you know we thought you know but the thing is you know you see in the forces your under strict your under strict rules all the time and I think you got so used to er not being able to do this not being able to do that you know I mean you weren’t allowed on an RAF aerodrome to walk about without a hat on you know and I mean if you if you walked across at an airfield where there was huts and things and you hadn’t got a hat on an RAF policeman would put you on a charge straight away you’d be improperly dressed you see.
TJ: So this centre they hope to build just outside Lincoln I mean it’s been a long time coming hasn’t it and it seems a shame it wasn’t done a long time ago why do you feel have you got any theories about why Bomber Command wasn’t recognised as Fighter Command was and all the other services have you got any thoughts on why?
RP: Well not really because because for about for about ten years I was I was saddled with the fifty and sixty one squadron memorial at Birchwood at Skellingthorpe I mean for about two or three years we were collecting money for that you see and we were having to go having to go to Lincoln about ooh at least once a month and er and meet up with the Lincoln City Council people because they helped us a lot with it you know with the er we we used to have a meeting ourselves in the morning just the about four us but mostly the people responsible for raising the money for it we had to raise twenty seven thousand pound for that you see.
TJ: So what was your first job were you out of work for very long after you had demobbed?
RP: Er well after the no no not I I er er when I got when I got demobbed and came home you see I I had about two months leave due to me you see because being in Burma being in Burma we didn’t get any leave at all there I mean I I think I spent six months there without any leave so I think when when I got when I actually got demobbed and you know and given a demob suit and all that sort of thing I was given you know about a month’s backpay and then probably then probably another month’s you perhaps wasn’t going to be demobbed for another month so therefore I was given another month’s backpay.
TJ: So you had time to look around for some work?
RP: Oh yeah when I when I came back home yeah.
TJ: What did you do?
RP: I went I went in er engineering engineering factory and took up engineering.
TJ: Did you stay in that field for the rest of your working life?
RP: Pretty well yeah because er er I it was my my brother he worked he got to work in this engineering factory it was called Timpsons and they made er they made swings and roundabouts and things for parks and so forth and jazzes[?] and all that sort of thing there but er but er I went I went to work there for a short while and learning a bit about engineering learning to work on drilling machines and lathes but er then the pair of us we were offered a better job at a firm only about two streets away from it and they made shoe shoe machinery you know er stitching machine and er sewing machines you know and presses and all that for boot and shoe manufacture and we both went to work there because they said they would pay us more money than what we were given at this other place you see.
TJ: Did you find it easy to readjust to civilian life did you have any dark days after the war you know where you know thought a lot about things?
RP: Yeah er well not really I suppose I mean in the forces you had such a variation of different jobs to do you know that er.
TJ: So you settled back down quite well?
RP: Oh yeah.
TJ: And you got married after you were demobbed did you?
RP: No I I got I got married because they because they said you know er
TJ: So you got married before you went to Burma?
RP: Oh yeah because you see they said that er you get you get you’ll be given a ground job that you wanted to do and you’d be given a posting as near home as you require and they gave you a choice of three different choices.
TJ: So there’s poor Ena married and you were off in Burma?
RP: That’s right yes she was still in the ATS.
TJ: Yeah so you had you went on how many children did you have?
RP: Mmm?
TJ: How many children children?
RP: Me I only had David David one son that’s all.
TJ: When was he born?
RP: Well about Eighty Eight no wait a minute no wait a minute.
TJ: How old is he?
RP: Do you know he’s he’s about seventy now he was born he was born about Forty Four about Forty Six only about two years you see after we were married yes.
TJ: Yes.
RP: Yes but that’s just only one son that’s all yes.
TJ: Okay so.
RP: Oh he he he’s never been never been really interested in my RAF flying days till this last two or three years but now now he loves to come up to our reunions with us you know at Skellingthorpe yeah he loves to come up there.
TJ: You’re a great artist Reg you’ve shown me a lot of pictures here today that you’ve done some of them are buildings or landscapes and quite a few of them are of planes and such like is this something you have been doing all your adult life or something fairly recent?
RP: I was I was I did quite well at school with art I never had any trouble with passing exams and things at school with art I did a lot of artwork at school yeah.
TJ: Yes and have you when did the painting start?
RP: When?
TJ: When did you start painting these wonderful pictures?
RP: Oh right it it it must be twenty years ago.
TJ: Oh so that’s fairly recent actually in the scheme of things.
RP: I did a lot of watercolours.
TJ: So well look you’ve just handed me a great lot of watercolours well I’ll certainly have a look at those but I’d just like to say thank you very much for sharing your memories.
RP: Yes.
TJ: With us today and it’s been an honour and privilege to meet you thank you very much.
RP: Yes.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Reg Payne. One
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Tina James
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-03
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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APayneR150703
Conforms To
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Pending review
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
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Jackie Simpson
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
England--Wiltshire
Description
An account of the resource
Reg Payne was born in Kettering, he left school at fourteen and worked for the British Legion. He volunteered for the RAF when he was seventeen and a half and trained as a wireless operator and air gunner. He describes his training learning Morse Code, gunnery practice, and how the crew were chosen, before taking part in operations over Germany where on one occasion a bomb dropped from another aircraft straight through his aircraft's wing. On another occasion whilst on a training exercise his aircraft caught fire and the crew had to bale out sadly four crew were killed. He met his first wife Ena whilst at RAF Skellingthorpe and they married shortly before the end of the war prior to him being posted to 56 Forward Repair Unit in South East Asia Command and sent to Burma. After the war he worked in an engineering factory and still resides in Kettering where he enjoys painting watercolours.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:15:18 audio recording
50 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
bale out
bomb struck
bombing
crewing up
demobilisation
Dominie
Lancaster
love and romance
memorial
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
physical training
Proctor
RAF North Coates
RAF Silverstone
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Yatesbury
training
Wellington
wireless operator / air gunner
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1894/34889/MColeFIG1817994-170709-010002.2.jpg
82a1867b7ff41111a9270269be0b8a98
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1894/34889/MColeFIG1817994-170709-010001.2.jpg
b44d0a2c168efec8680873de749aa251
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1894/34889/OColeFIG1817994-180214-020001.2.jpg
1a47daa574b9c0895a04e1f76fff8467
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1894/34889/OColeFIG1817994-180214-020002.2.jpg
a9c0bb2123301c29ca49d656fe5c1ec4
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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Cole, Ivor
Frederick Ivor Geoffrey Cole
F I G Cole
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-09
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Cole, FIG
Description
An account of the resource
42 items.
The collection concerns Sergeant Frederick Ivor Geoffrey "Ivor" Cole (1817994 Royal Air Force) his log book, documents and photographs, and a photograph album of his post war service in Singapore. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 103 Squadron.
The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Frederick Cole and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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
Ivor Cole's Physical Fitness Test Record Card
Description
An account of the resource
RAF Form 1835A recording Ivor's fitness records.
Creator
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Great Britain. Royal Air Force
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1943-10
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Service material
Format
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Two double sided printed sheets with handwritten annotations
Identifier
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MColeFIG1817994-170709-010002, MColeFIG1817994-170709-010001, OColeFIG1817994-180214-020001, OColeFIG1817994-180214-020002
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-10
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Operational Training Unit
physical training
RAF Millom
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1497/28940/PLeadbetterJ16040004.2.jpg
dde72acd7bc850880a3fabdf283014b1
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
Leadbetter, John
J Leadbetter
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
2016-04-21
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Leadbetter, J
Description
An account of the resource
166 items. The collection concerns John Leadbetter (1549105, 163970 Royal Air Force) and contains his log books, photographs and documents. <br /><br />There are four sub-collections:<br /><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1725">Leadbetter, John. Aerial Photographs</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1721">Leadbetter, John. Aircraft Recognition</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1723">Leadbetter, John. Canada</a><br /><a href="https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/show/1718">Leadbetter, John. Maps and Charts</a> <br /><br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by Keith Henry Leadbetter and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
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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John Leadbetter and Two Colleagues
Description
An account of the resource
The three men are sitting on the beach at Torquay. They are dressed for physical training.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1942
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Torquay
England--Devon
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PLeadbetterJ16040004
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
aircrew
physical training
sport
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/247/7274/EDorricottLWVarious41-42.2.pdf
d201580e6e4068cc2fc47fb041c3d9d0
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
Dorricott, Leonard William
Leonard Dorricott
Len Dorricott
L W Dorricott
Description
An account of the resource
72 items. An oral history interview with Rosemary Dorricott about her husband Flying Officer Leonard William Dorricott DFM (1923-2014, 1230753, 1230708 Royal Air Force). Leonard Dorricott was a navigator with 460 and 576 Squadrons. He flew 34 operations including Operation Manna, Dodge and Exodus. He was one of the crew who flew in Lancaster AR-G -George, now preserved in the Australian War Memorial. He was a keen amateur photographer and the collection contains his photographs, logbook and papers. It also contains A Dorricott’s First World War Diary, and photographs of Leonard Dorricott’s log book being reunited with the Lancaster at the Australian War Memorial.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Rosemary Dorricott and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-07
2015-11-05
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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Dorricott, LW
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Regents Park. Page 1
Torquay Page 12.
Eastbourne. Page 59.
Canada Page 70
Miami U.S.A. Page 74
[Page break]
LEAVES
Nov 14th to Nov 21st 1941
from Torquay
Feb 28th to March 2nd 1942
from Eastbourne
March 8th to March 14th
from Eastbourne
March 18th to March 21st
from Eastbourne.
[Page break]
1
Sept: 1, 1941.
1230753 A.C2 Dorricott,
No1 ACRC 16/10 Flight,
Stockleigh Hall,
Abbey Lodge, Park Rd
London.
Dear Ma, Pa, and Nibs,
I arrived at Lord’s at 12.45, had to fill up at least half a day on forms, and then watched a cricket match, Then we were marched up to our billets. Doesn’t it sound posh?, but its only a block of modern flats. We had dinner at 3 o’clock – the cabbage was not too good, but we enjoyed the pud (plenty of sugar). We can go out within a 5 mile radius from 6 – 10-30 pm any night, but about once a fortnight, two of us have to look after the billet. I forgot to say we had dinner in a cafe in Regents Park which is just outside. We shall be issued with uniforms tomorrow, should have been today, only there were too many of us. Everyone is [sic] our flight is going to be an Observer. They re not a bad lot of chaps, and weve got a [inserted] negro [/inserted] with us. He talks good English, & has come
[Page break]
2
from Canada. We shall probably be here from 2 weeks to a month.
Cheerioh for now,
Len.
Sept 4th.
Dear Mum, Dad, & Nibs,
I have not put the address this time, as it takes up too much room. I have just finished helping scrub the floor of our room, quite a mucky business. We had our uniform issued to us on Tuesday, but the tailor has had to alter our coats, etc, so we shall not wear them till tomorrow. We had a night vision test today, we had to wear very dark glasses, for 1/2 an hour, without taking them off and then went into a blacked-out room for a 1/4 hour, and then had to describe dimly illuminated objects on a screen in front of us, hardly anyone could name them. Soon we shall have umpteen innoculations [sic] and vaccinations, and am I
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delighted? We have had to get tons of brushes, marking ink, and cleaning tackle today, and all the fellows are busy cleaning their buttons and marking their kit. Two kitbags full, 3 shirts 5 pairs socks, (very hairy and all standard size) 2 vests, 2 pants, 2 towels and yards of other stuff. I don’t know what we’re gonna do about laundry. Most of the other chaps send theirs home, as you don’t get your own back, if you send them to the laundry. The Church Army van comes round at 7.30 pm to sell cakes and tea, our last meal is 5.15 pm. That cake came in very handy for us. Blow this writing pad its just like blotting paper. I shall be sending a case with my clothes in, as soon as I get my uniform,
Cheerioh for now
Len.
8.9.41
Stockleigh Hall.
Dear Mum, Dad and Herbs,
Im still having a pretty good time here. Yesterday we attended a
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Church Parade at Mount Zion Presbyterian Church, St Johns Wood, it was quite a nice service, started at 9.25 A.M. Later in the morning and in the afternoon I went with Gilbert Fairhead, one of the lads in my room, to the Zoo, we watched the keepers feed the lions, penguins, sealions etc, and had quite a good time, it is open free to Service men on Sundays. In the evening both of us went to the Allied Services Club in Marylebone Rd, and read and played cards, till 8.30. P.M. We’ve had a very slack day today, the only thing we did wad attend a lecture for 1/2 an hour this morning. Tomorrow morning we have two innoculations, one for typhoid, and the other for tetanus, one vaccination, and a blood group test. The M.O said we would not feel the effects till 10 days later. We don’t get paid till next Friday, single blokes get 30/- a fortnight, and married ones only 20/. By the way, that is not Acne in my address, but A. C. R. C (Air Crew Receiving Centre), ever been had I. Ive just had a letter from Grandma Dorricott
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I have not got Grandma Comptons address, so I could write them. All of us are sending our “civvies” home tomorrow, but I think I will keep my case as it is handy to keep my cleaning tackle, pygamas [sic], and writing pad in, its such a mess having to hunt in a kit bag every time you want a thing. Several of the chaps in our Flight live in, or have relations near London, so they went home, we are free after Church Parade, so Gilbert and I were about the only two left. I don’t think I told you, but next door we have half a dozen Ex-Met. Policemen, and theyre the best pals you could have. The Corporals in charge of us are very decent, we are supposed to do so many hours drill, but so far we have not done one hour. They tell us to go to our rooms, and do what we like, as long as we co keep [sic] from the windows, in case the Squadron leader sees us. We are having our photos taken in a group, I’ve ordered one and will send it when I get it. There are about 5,000 cadet pilots, and observers here now, and another 1,000 are coming today, we in uniform
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feel like veterans when we see them in civvi [rest of word missing] We might be posted to I.T.W. [Initial Training Wing] this week, but I doubt it, some chaps have been here 8 weeks. Tell ‘Gay Gay, that the A. T. [missing word] kids guard some of the blocks of flats on Sundays. There are about 6 great blocks of flats along Prince Albert Rd, and all are occupied by the Air Force, I bet Gay-Gay wishes he was here. Well I must toodle on now.
Cheerioh,
Len
Tuesday,
I did not have time to post my letter, so I m adding some more to it. About 11 AM I had to go to the Dentist, all he did was fill one tooth, the other two he will probably do tomorrow, up to now I have had no toothache but when he got the drill on, he nearly murdered me. Immediately after I went for
Inoc, etc. it made about 5 fellows faint. There was one right behind me, and I had to hold him up because he was swaying. The whole thing was
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well organised, we had to walk round several tables, while the doctors jabbed us. I think Dr Brynne Quinne must be here because there was a notice on one of the doors signed, B Quinne H.P. We shall have two more Inocs in 6 weeks time. We get one weeks leave every 3 months while training, but when we get on operational duties we get much more. Also there are 48 hours a month, but it is usually kept till your weeks leave. We’ve got nothing to do all day now but read or sleep, I feel as fit as a fiddle, but two of the policemen have taken it badly, and are in bed sweating it off.
Thursday.
I didn’t half have a rotten time of it yesterday. I kept going hot and cold, and felt so bad, I didn’t have tea, but went to bed at 5.30 pm & slept till 6 AM next morning. I don’t feel too grand today, so am staying in tonight. We got paid today30/-, we might get posted to I.T.W. this weekend, if not we shall go to posting wing here. I’m going to bed now, so Cheerioh, Love, Len.
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P.s. Don’t write to this address again, as I might be moved, I’ll send the next address
Len
“P” Squadron.
Avenue Close, Avenue Rd
London N.W. 8
15.9.41
Dear Mum, Pop, Gay-Gay, Janet and the little Shrimp,
Ow be thee a-g-ettin on, Oi be foine
We have been moved to Posting Wing, and are in another block of flats, about 50 yards from the others. Its like moving from a Mansion to a Corporation house. We are crowded, there are two other chaps in my room, and yesterday afternoon we had to mess about with the wash basin in our room, as it was stopped up. Many Happy Returns of the Day Mum, Ive just remembered its your birthday tomorrow. On Friday night Gilbert and I went to the “State” Cinema, Kilburn, it is at least twice as large as any Cinema I’ve been in. We saw “Great American Braodcast” a Dr Kildare picture, second portion of that captured Nazi terror film, also a film of Air Sea Rescue. We had had a lecture on this
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subject a few days previous, at the Odeon Cinema, by a Wing Commander. On Saturday night, Gilbert, Allen and I went rowing on the Lake in Regents Park, and had a fine time On Sunday, Gilbert and I went to the Zoo again, while Allen went to his relations at Luton. This morning we’ve had a medical lecture at the Odeon, and this afternoon a kit inspection, its bedtime now so I ll close with Love
Cheerioh,
Len.
Avenue Close
Friday
Dear Mum Pop & Niblets
Ta, muchly for the parcel, which I received tonight, the other letter which which [sic] you sent previously with the 5/- has not reached me yet. Thanks so much for the cake, I thought your birthday was the 16th, but we’ll celebrate tomorrow. We leave for Torquay sometime after breakfast, it’s a bit farther from home, but it’ll be a nicer place than London. I’ll be glad to leave here,
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as you can’t go anywhere without spending. From 9. AM Thursday till 3 P.M. this afternoon, we did 30 hours guard, 2 hours on and 4 off, We have to patrol up and down the main Rd, in real “sentry go” manner, so we can’t do much slacking. It wasn’t so bad at night, because providing no-one was coming, you could sit down on a low wall outside the flats. I don’t know our exact address yet, but will write as soon as I get to know it. We’re darn lucky to leave here so soon, usually you have to wait 3-6 weeks. There are 1,700 civvies coming here on Monday, so they have had to clear us all out. On Tuesday night 3 of us went to the Rudolf Steiner Hall, run by the Church Army, for a quiet evening. Then on Wednesday we went to the Odeon to see Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour in “Caught in the Draft” you ought to see it if it comes to W. hampton. Most days this week we have had P.T, and o are the backs of my legs aching! I have not seen anyone from W. hampton here yet. It seems as if I have known the chaps here ages
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We’re C.B. tonight, normally since we were the guard yesterday, we should have had all today off, from 9. AM., so you see it’s a bit of bad luck for us. We have an excellent way of pressing trousers, we damp the creases, and put our ‘biscuits on top of them, and sleep on them, and hey presto! you have a knife edge crease that will last. We’ve got a small Naafi here, buy [sic] you can only buy cleaning stuff, cigs and slab cake. I’m sending a Zoo book for Sylvie, those news-paper cutting [sic]were interesting, send me as many as you like, we only get the London papers here. Most of the shops in London close at 6 pm, except cafes, so we can’t do any shopping. At Avenue Close weve been having brekker at 6.15 AM. , then a break at 10.30 AM. So we could go to a Cafe for something to eat, you begin to get hungry then. The quality of the food is not bad, but the cooking is. Today, for instance, 3 out of 4 of my spuds were bad. They’ve started dishing out suppers now, you get a helping twice what you get for dinner, it’s the left-overs from dinner
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warmed up, sometimes its not too bad, but its mostly the other way round. Anyway when we get to Torquay, the grub’ll probably be much better. Some chaps have come back from Torquay to here for eye training, and they say this is a lousy hole. It will be much stricter at I.T.W. but we’ll get used to it. I can’t understand why the post is held up, I have had your first letter and this parcel, however all the rest should be sent on to us. Well I’m very tired now, and am gonna go to bye byes,
Cheerioh,
Len
Sept 23rd 1941
1230753 A.C 2. DORRICOTT
“A” Flight
No 4 Squadron
Beacon House
No 3 I.T.W.
Torquay,
Dear Mum, Dad, Gay-Gay Janet & Baby Sylvie,
As you see I’ve changes my address again, you could not wish for a nicer place than Torquay. All around the
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bay and harbour are hills, with hotels and boarding houses upon them, and trees and foliage in between. We are in a boarding house 15 yards from the harbour, its only a third rate place but we have beds, and washbasins in each rooms, and a tall locker each, like a wardrobe We have meals in a hotel next door, in a room which used to be a Dance floor. The food is cooked ten times better than at Regents Park, the spuds are either cooked in their jackets or else properly peeled and mashed. When we came yesterday, we had, half a steak & kidney pud, two big roast spuds, some carrots and a saucerful of beetroot, and a big plate of rice pud. This morning we had Shredded Wheat, sugar & milk, pork sausages, fried tomatoes & gravy, and a pint of coffee. Dinner today was a large slice of beef steak, roast spuds, & cabbage, and after prunes and custard, hows that for a start. It took us 5 hours yesterday to get here, its about 2.20 miles from London. Its quite warm today, I wish you could all be here
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to enjoy I shall get through my course in 6 or 7 weeks, if I work hard, and then I shall have a weeks leave. The officers and N.C.Os say that the civilian volunteers mostly go abroad if they pass, while ground staff airmen, who have transferred to Air Crew, or Army transfers have to stay in England. Its going to be jolly hard work, plenty of discipline, but we need that! There’s plenty of drill, P.T, games swimming etc. We pay 2/- for the whole time we are here and can go to the Baths free, use the Recreation room, listen to the Wireless, have some of our clothes washed, and have several odd jobs like that done. The Officers and N.C.Os are very decent chaps, so we should get on O.K, I’m on fire picket tomorrow, I think I stick around, and don’t do anything till the sirens go. We had the “Sirens” last night, but the “All Clear” went into 1/2 an hour [sic] In receiving wing at Stockleigh there were 4 chaps besides me in my room, at Avenue Close, I was in a room with the two oldest, and here I am in a room with the two
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younger chaps. Theres Gilbert the youngest in the Flight (ten days younger than I), and Allen who’s nineteen. Allen is Methodist, so we had to go to the Congregational along with the other Denominations, we are going again tonight. Gilbert is Church of England, so he is going for a walk instead. That cake’s lovely, the five of us have shares in it. We don’t get suppers here, so as I said before it comes in handy. We have to wear white ceremonial belts here, and have to blanco them every day. We have Morse and signals here, navigation, maths, armaments, and Aircraft identification every day. We have to know 90 different planes but the navigation is by far the hardest subject in the whole course, or so the Officers say. We’ve got to learn to swim, and will not be able to play football till we can swim 2 lengths, I don’t mind a bit. We’re not having much time for going out, what with homework etc, its up to ourselves now. We wake at 6. AM, brekkies at 7 AM. – 7.30, lessons start at 9, half hour break about 10, then on
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till 1 o’clock. From 1 till 2 pm. Is dinner, then work till 6 pm, then tea, and we are free till 10 pm, 11 pm Saturdays. We can have a late pass till midnight once a week if we want it. Couldst thou send me one or two of they blue hankies, the white ones show the dirt so easily. I’ve got quite a large sore over my vaccination mark. I’ve got a cold: I’ve got a headache! And my “stitch” has bleeded this afternoon, all the effects of the vaccinations. Even with the hard work, I think I shall enjoy myself here. Lets know all the noos as soon as possible. Tell bruvver Gay-Gay that if he goes in the R.A.F. to go as Pilot, its ten times easier than Observer.
Cheerioh,
Len.
Beacon House,
Dear Mum, Dad & Infants,
Ow be things agoin on at No 10? I’ve just had a p c. from Shrewbury [sic] sent on from London, but that lost letter
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has not turned up. That [underlined] was [/underlined] a nice cake we all enjoyed it & no one refused a slice. Couldn’t send me some peanuts?, if you could get them, we can’t get sweets or chocs here, although we can get cakes at the Naafi. I’ve had some sweet cider, guess the price! 5d a pint. Tell Gay-Gay, if he wants a good Aircraft Identification Book to get Aircraft Recognition, by R. A. Saville-Sneath, it’s a Penguin Special, and only 6d. You can tell how good it is, one morning we were having A./C Recog, when the Officer recommended this book, and asked who wanted it, he counted how many, and then walked to the bookstall at the station, and nearly bought the shop out. He said they were the best 6d worth you could get. Monday morning, we had clay pidgeon [sic] shooting with 12 bore shot guns, Clay discs were skimmed in the Air & we had to hit them, we had 9 shots, standing in three different positions, and I hit 4, the highest was 5, by a copper. We can mostly
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get a second helping of pud but one day I got 3. I already had had two when the cook asked who wanted any more? No one answered as they had had enough, but he caught my eye! And beckoned, and he gave me twice as much as the other helpings. We’ve all had interviews with the C.O, and he wanted to know if we had any objection to going abroad after I.T.W. He said I was very good at Maths & to keep it up. We can sent [sic] our stuff to the laundry here, it should be Ok. We went swimming in the Salt Water Baths, I swam 3 separate widths, more than I’ve ever done before. Were supposed to swim 2 lengths before we leave here. Gilbert’s jolly hard up, he’s only got 7 1/2 d to last him till a week tomorrow. I was on Fire Piquet [sic] Monday night, we are only supposed to stay awake if the sirens go. They went on Sunday and Tuesday, but not on Monday, so I was Ok. My legs are pretty tired today, weve had drill, P.T, Swimming, walked up nearly all the hills in Torquay, besides tramping up and
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down 6 flights of stairs, I’m on the [letter deleted] top story. Lets know all the news as soon as possible
Give my love to thyself, Pop, Gay-Gay, Evelyn Jeanne Althea and Sylvia June
Toodle-pip,
Len xxxxx
Monday Morning,
I have not had time to post this letter yet, but will do so tonight, thanks ever so for your registered parcel, the ten shilling has come in very handy, also thanks for the suck, I can easily manage on 15/- a week, but its unexpectedly having to go another week that’s done it. Gilbert isn’t so well off, hes had to borrow 10/- from his Pop, he’s got no mother, its my lucky day today. I’ve had a parcel from Ede at Shrewsbury 7 blocks of chocs & 2/-, I think its because I went to Chapel twice yesterday. I don’t think I told you, but we heard they gave free teas at the Airmen’s Rest on Sundays, so three of us went. Half way through a bloke got up and said, “We will now sing
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a hymn. It proved that they have a Salvation Army meeting after tea. We waited till 1/2 way through, about 5 to 6 o’clock & then bunked, Allen & I went to the Congregational & Gilbert went to Toc H. Today we went into the Gas Chamber, they use C.A.P. Tear Gas. My nose tickled a bit, but my eyes did not water at all. In Aunty Ede’s letter, she says that although Uncle Ern has not named the day, the wedding will probably come off in the near future. They have asked Ede to be bridesmaid, but she says she does not know where to get the coupons from. It’ll probably be a very quiet affair, what with food and clothes rationing. Well thanks again for your parcel, but don’t rob yourself of sweets, Give my love to everyone
Ta Ta.
Len xxxxx
I’m sending on this photograph, John Hart gentleman farmer, David Anderson, clerk to the Westminster Bank London, Gilbert Fairhead Map maker Chelmsford, and Allen [indecipherable word]
[Photo missing]
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wages clerk, Loughborough
Len
Torquay,
Dear Mum Pop, & Erbs,
As you say I ain’t arf ‘aving a birthday, I got your cake & nuts yesterday, and another letter today. That cake is even better than the last one, if you’d taste them before hand, it would perhaps teach you to keep one for yourself once in a while. When I ask Gilbert or Allen to have a lump they never refuse. Last night the mice nibbled through the Cardboard and silver-paper to get at it, I’m putting it on the top of my locker tonight. Those nuts came in very handy, I was chewing them all through Signals class this morning. I’ll probably be sending another large photo of “A” Flight soon, we had our photos taken on Monday. Tell Gilly Hart that in 6 weeks time, I’ll probably be 4.A.C. with rise in way, if I pass my exams. Then I’ll most likely get two weeks Embarkation leave, before we go abroad. I don’t think we have had any baked beans here yet. You can’t
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grumble at the grub here. One day we had for breakfast fried egg on toast, porridge, bread and butter and jam. The best of it is at dinner, you can mostly get a second helping of fruit or dinner. Tell Padden of the Home Guard, that if he wants to go as Pilot or Observer to swot up Arithmetic, elementary Algebra, Morse (we have to pass out at 6 words a minute), and if possible try and learn to recognise British & German Aircraft, also Antigas Precautions. Its all pretty easy, the Arith & Algebra we did in first and second year at school. We have Maths and Morse every day, and at the end of last week 90% of us could send and receive at 4 words per minute. We had our laundry back yesterday, What a sight! the sleeves of my shirt have shrunk at least two inches, and the starched collars are only just big enough, also half the buttons are off. This afternoon I went to the Baths & swam 2 lengths and several widths They re salt water baths, shallow end 4’10” deep end 7’6”, I think I shall go in the sea next time. We got paid today, I got 34/- but
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there’s still a weeks money to come. We had a lovely tea today, Cheese & potato mash on toast, cake trifle, bread & butter & jam and currant cake & tea, hows that? And its only supposed to cost 1/ 5 1/2 a day to feed an airman. We had our Anti gas Exam yesterday afternoon, 6 questions on Respiration, Effects of gasses & First Aid, decontamination, Gas Defence Scheme & Gas detection. The official questions had not come, so the Gas N.C.Os had to set some. It’s the biggest twist out, they set easy questions that anyone could answer. Our Pilot Officers had to take the exam as well, so we didn’t find it so difficult. I’m writing letters nearly every night, but can only manage one at a time, as we get Arith Homework every night. I’m about the best in our Morse and Maths classes, There are two classes 24 in each.
Cheerioh for now
Love to one an orl
Len xxxxx
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Torquay
Dear Mum, Pop and the three babies,
Thanks very, very, very much for your parcel of sweets, You’ve no idea how pleased I was when I opened the parcel, I’ve been dying for something to chew for the las [sic] 3 or 4 weeks. You can get plenty of cakes at the Naafi, but nowt chewable, Thanks very much for the hanks, also thank Aunty Alice for the sardines and biscuits. I havnt eat [sic] the sardines yet, as I’ve got to get some bread from somewhere I’ll probably be able to slip a slice in my gas mask haversack when I’m up the canteen. I’ve still got two packets of sweets, after giving Allen & Gilbert some, oc [sic] I’ve kept myself well in hand, by not eating them all in a day Ive just had a letter from Loreen & Joyce so I will write them on Thursday when I get my pay. I’m sure weve got mice, because on Friday morning, I opened my locker & pulled the biscuits out. We had one each and then I noticed a little pile of what proved to be bits of paper. And then I found a little
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hole in the cardboard, and I remembered the biscuits had looked a bit crumbly, then one of my hankies had been bitten through in 4 places. When we were at Regents Park I thought it funny I hadn’t had a letter from you for nearly a fortnight. I’ve had a letter from Shrewsbury & one from Loreen redirected from there, but no sign of your two. I reckon there are about 800 Airmen in Torquay, pilots and observers. Weve got our Antigas Exam on Wednesday, and Maths Exams on Oct 8th. The maths Exam is like we did in IIs & IIIs at school, so I should walk the Exam. About laundry, we can send 1 shirt, 1 pair pants, 1 towel 1 vest, 1 pair socks & 3 hanks each week to the laundry, free of charge. Yes we do use sleeping suits, and if you can send another pair its O k by me, anytime will do, no hurry. Thanks muchly for the E & S cuttings, it seems ages since I was in W. hapmton. I’m writing to Grandma Compton & Mr Nicholls as soon as I can, thanks for the addresses. You want to know what woollies I will
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need, Well if were going to be here a couple of months, I won’t need as much, as if I was in Scotland. However, I think socks are the main thing, we get 5 pairs, but they’ve got to last as long as were in the Air Force. Thank Janet for her letter, tell her the innoculations [sic] were in my arm & two in my chest. You ought to see the scab on my vac, its bigger than a tanner. If Gay-Gay wants some girls tell him to come here, theres ‘undereds & fahzends of um. We had a mock gas raid yesterday afternoon. We were doing drill when the gas rattle sounded, we had to rush to shelter put gas masks cap covers & capes on & run back to our billets. Then there was a mock fire in one of the rooms, and we had to go into the street. I’m on the top floor of a four storeyed house, you can guess I puffed and panted. This morning we went to Congregational Chapel, then went & sat on seats on the Prom & swotted our Anti gas stuff this afternoon. By Jove, it wasn’t half hot, I’m quite sunburnt.
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This evening Allen & I went to Congregational, & they invited us to a Table Tennis Club, on Wednesday, I ve got exactly one bob to last me till Thursday, so I shant be able to get drunk this week. Ill write again as soon as I get time Love to everyone at No 10
Ta Ta,
Len xxxxx
PS Janet asked for a long epistle she’s got one
Torquay,
Dear Mum, Pop & Erbs,
Ta ever so for your parcel which I received today. We will be able to have supper of that cheese & biscuits I’ve been just as lucky this monday [sic] as last Monday, Ive had a parcel of choc & a few sweets from Brenda & a letter from Mr Nicholls.
On Saturday afternoon 6 of us went to the Baths, I didn’t do so good as last time, only single widths; we mostly have to go in in football shorts, as we have no trunks or costumes, sometimes we can borrow
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them from the Baths. On Saturday night Gilbert and I went to Toc H, and had a plate of chips sausage, fried bread and tea for 5d. Then we played Darts & table Tennis. If you want any buttons sewing on, or any clothes stitching, you can get it done while you wait at Toc. H. On Sunday morning we went to the Congregational for Church Parade. The following Sunday, however, the service will be held in Union St Methodist. After Church Gilbert and I had a boat out on the sea. There was quite a large swell, and the boat kept rocking up and down. We were out for an hour and I got three blisters on my hands from rowing. Then in the afternoon we went to the Baths, and I did 3 widths straight off, getting quite good ar’nt [sic] I? Gilbert managed 1/2 a width. After tea Allen and I went to Union St Methodist, it’s a lovely place, and so modern, much longer and wider than Bethel. Then we went to Toc. H. and met Gilbert there. We had to order our photos today, so I ordered a big one, and
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I will send it on as soon as I get it. Now that we’ve finished Anti-gas, we are starting on the Vickers Gas-operated Air-Machine gun. We’ve got to know how to take it to bits, & put it together again. We had a Morse and Maths test today. In the last Morse test, I was one of the three in our class who got it all correct. The former test was 4 words per minute, and the latter 4 1/2 words per minute. I think I’ve got everything right in the Maths test as well. We get our Maths Exam on Wednesday, & if we get less than 60% we fail on the whole issue, and have to go ground staff. I should get 100% if I go carefully, as it is very easy stuff, its gets [sic] Gilbert bottled though. Our Officer has been telling us that Torquay I.T.W. is the strictest in England, and that any one from here is supposed to be the goods. If we did so much saluting anywhere else as we do here, everyone would think us batty. However, I’m not browned off yet, and weve
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got the best to come. Air Commodore Critchley the Greyhound Racing and Boxing Promoter is over our Group, and his word’s law.
I think it must be the food, but I feel constipated, I have taken 3 Beecham Pills and a desertspoonful of Andrews liver salts, without effect yet. I had a letter from Auntie Ede, & she wanted to know if you had had those films developed. I weighed myself yesterday, and I was 11st 12lbs, and I’ve put on 3 to 4 lbs. The sun’s been brilliant today, it was as much as we could do to stagger up the hills to lessons. We have Morse at a Place called Rock End, & it’s a darn good name. You have to march 1/4 mile up two steep hills, and then along a rocky footpath, you don’t feel like lessons after that climb. Well I must buzz off and see what I can do.
Cheerioh
Len
Dear All,
I’m just adding a bit more
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to Mondays letter. It was boiling hot yesterday, and we had to march up to Rock End in our Gas-masks. This morning Commander Bullock of the American Navy inspected us drilling. It was quite a big event, they had the band out to serenade him. We had our Maths Exam this morning Its easy enough, and I think Ive got ‘em all right. Gilbert will just about go 60% just enough to pass.
Cheerioh Len,
I’m writing this lunch-time, so you’ll have to excuse the writing.
Torquay
Dear Mum, Dad & Erbs
I’m not sending this letter till tomorrow, as we get the results of our Maths Exams about 11 am. If we pass we should get our flyin [sic] kit sometime tomorrow. Yesterday we had a 6 w p.m. test in Morse with buzzer and I got everything right, I can do 12 words easily sending. Gilbert and I go to Toc H every night for supper. You can get
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sausage, bacon, baked beans, tomatos [sic], chips and fried bread and coffee for 11d, but we don’t usually have so much as that. We went swimming last Saturday afternoon, and I did four widths without touching side or bottom. So I should be able to do two lengths by the time I finish my course. I had to do a bit of sewing yesterday, we have to swing our arms to shoulder height when marching to attention and the seam of my jacket came undone under the armpits. Ask Pop if he’s ever made his boots shine with spit and polish, that’s how we do ours here, and I can almost see my face in mine. On Saturday morning I had a tooth [indecipherable word], and theres still one more to be done.
Monday
Thanks very much for the parcel of sweets. I should be home two weeks next Sunday, whether I pass out or not We had our Vickers gun Exam last Wednesday I thought I had made a mess of stripping the gun, and naming the parts, although I got the stoppages right, but I heard after
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wards that I had 84%. We’ve had our flying kit issued to us, it fills a kit-bag. If we go abroad, we shall have to give it up, but will have another issue on the other side. We have been learning the American Winchester rifle this morning, & will be [deleted] fl [/deleted] firing it next lesson We have not got to pass an Exam on this, so its nothing to worry about. I was on Fire Picquet last Tuesday, & on a guard last Friday, There are four of us on guard, and one has to act as Guard Commander, we had to toss for it, and I lost, so I had to have the job, and all the other chaps were over 25.
Last Thursday I was supposed to go to the Dentist at 12 noon, but the Dentist had too many there, I had to go back, the same thing happened this dinnertime, so I’m still waiting Tell Gay, we have a lot of A.T.C. Officers down here for training, you ought to see them doing drill, its better than going to the “flicks”.
Last Sunday Reg Shaw (one of the cops) and I were going for a row, but we could not get a boat, so we walked to Paignton
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and bussed back just in time for tea. Its getting colder down here, we get plenty of warm sun during the day, but its at night & early morning we feel the cold. We breakfast while the moons still out, and it isn’t very light when we have Inspection at 7.30 am. Some of the chaps are very tired, they go to sleep in Navigation and law lessons, and although the masters are in between. Pilot officers & Flight Lieutenant, they don’t mind, but tell the sleeper to wake up when they have anything important to say. How would you like to do P.T on a cold morning, with only shorts socks & slippers? Sometimes we have to lay flat on the dewy grass, to do some exercises. One P.T lesson last week it was raining, so we put shorts and vests on, then went for a cross country run, I enjoyed it more than P.T. Hows Gay getting on with his Morse and aircraft recognition? If he can’t read more than 6 words p.m, and doesn’t know more than 75% of the planes on the list I sent him, I shall want to know the reason why when I get home.
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Torquay is O.k., the only thing, they. don’t half sting you for food, I spend nearly all my money on coffee and cakes and supper at night. We get plenty of grub at the canteen, but we always seem to be hungry, I suppose it’s the hard work we do (Don’t laugh).
Well I think this is all the news for now, so Ill quit the cackle, love to all at No 10,
Toodle pip,
Len xxxxx
Tuesday Evening,
We don’t know for sure the Maths results even yet, but our officer says we’ve all passed. Monday morning we had a March past Air Commodore Somebody of the [indecipherable word] Air Force, we marched behind the band from Rock End, This afternoon we had to walk up to Daddy Hole plain behind Rock End in our Gas-masks, but when we got there, we lay on the grass for 1/2 an hour and eat black berries. I’ve had stomach ache all day today I think its something Ive eaten. I havent had a letter from anyone since your parcel last
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Monday. Im sending my mac and case home this week, it is only in the way here, we have lockers here, whereas in London we had nowt
Well, I must close now
Love to all
Cheerioh Len
Torquay
Nov 1st
Dear Mum Pop and Nibs,
Thanks so much for the oranges and sweets. They were the first oranges Allen & Gilbert had tasted this year. It’s bitter cold here now, except in the sun, anyway we did P.T in pullovers this morning, instead of stripping. I had a lovely day on Thursday. We should have had games in the afternoon, but I had to have a Medical Exam like the one at Cardington, then I had a tooth filled, and at 5.30 we all had two innoculations [sic] In the arm, it does not hurt as much as when we had it in the chest.
but my left arm is all swollen and red from shoulder to elbow. This morning we had a flying kit parade, and we had to put every
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thing on to see if there was anything that did not fit. It was lovely and warm in them.
Yesterday afternoon we had rifle practice, and had to fire rifles which were almost the same as the Home Guard 300’s. We had small targets at 25 yards and I got 25/25 for grouping, and 24/25 for hitting the centre, which wasn’t bad considering I had to aim 3” below the bull. We’ve had the photo’s dished out, so I shall bring mine when I come home on leave. Our officer says we will probably get only four days leave, which is not so good considering how far some of us have to travel. We take our navigation exam a week next Friday morning, and I believe we catch the train about 12 noon, as soon as we’ve finished the Exam. Our flight are on guard next week, but it’s a good job its not a week later when we take our Exams. You’ll have to excuse my writing, as I m writing this in my bedroom, and my fingers are nearly frozen,
Love to Pop and the nibs
Cheerioh
Len xxxxx
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Torquay
Dear Mum, Pop and Nibs,
How do you like my notepaper We had 6 sheets of paper and 3 envelopes given us [sic] from our Squadron Comforts Funds. That’s all we’ve received so far although we’ve paid a bob into it. I’ve had a rotten sore throat since Monday, it probably began on Sunday when I was walking with another cadet to Babbacombe because my nose started bleeding. I could hardly speak on Tuesday but I did not report sick, as I did not want to miss the party, so I went sick yesterday. All the M.O gives me is [indecipherable word] whatever that is, 3 times daily for 3 days, but I’ve bought a box of Iodised Throat Tablets. I’m writing this letter in Drill lessons, I asked Corporal if I could be excused P.T, and drill, and he said O.K. I should have been on guard on Tuesday, but its been changed to Sunday night. We had a lovely time on Tuesday night, the party took place in a Posh Hotel called the St George, Marychurch near Babbacombe. The C. O, Pilot Officer in
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charge of flight and Corporal Hayton were present, and I think they enjoyed themselves. It wasn’t a dinner, but a running buffet, but I think we all had plenty to eat. One of the cadets made up some verses about different members of the Flight including the C.O. a P.O. who asked for a copy of the song afterwards. It was a Stag Party, so there were plenty of good jokes flying about. We finished about 11.20 pm, so had to walk 3 miles home & got in just before 12. Theyve started having supper now in our Canteen, last night was first night, but I went to bed at 8 and missed it, anyway its only bread and soup.
“A” flight is the best in 4 Squadron, and up to yesterday no one had been put on a charge, and the P.O i/c “B” flight was jealous! Well we were up Rock End yesterday morning, some of us were in a cold room doing nothing while the rest were on the range, firing. We had been told not to smoke, but as no one was taking us, and it was very cold, some of the cadets lit up. That rat of a P.O.
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came snooping round and caught two of them so they got 7 days C.B. [Confined to Barracks] When our Corporal heard, he said he’d make it hot for B. flight.
Dear Mum and etc’,
Thanks very much for the parcel which I received yesterday, we heard yesterday that we definitely have 7 days leave, we had to fill our leave passes up, ready for the C.O’s signatures, and we had to put 7 days leave on from midday Friday to midnight the following Friday. I received the invitation to the wedding yesterday and am replying now. The C.O. told us that we are liable to recall at a moments notice should our Posting come through, but its very unlikely. I saw the corporal yesterday about chit for pygamas [sic], and he told me to see the C.O tomorrow
Reg Shaw (one of the cops) and I went to the pictures yesterday, the first time I’ve been since I’ve been here. We went for tea to Toc. H., then went to the “Regal” to see “Penny Serenade”. It’s the only decent cinema in Torquay. Then we went to the W.V.S. for supper, then to the Marine Tavern for a glass of cider, then to the chip
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stall for some chips. We really enjoyed ourselves Its very windy today, the seas the roughest I’ve seen since we’ve been here, the spray comes up to 20’ to 30’ over the pier. I’m on guard tonight, I hope it is not so rough as now. Then we have Morse Exam tomorrow morning.
Air Commodore Critchley, the chap who makes us wear white belts (were the only 4 squadrons in Brittain [sic] who have to wear them) is coming to inspect us next week, so we’ve got to jump about a bit. We’ll [sic] I’ll tell you all the news when I get home.
Cheerioh,
Len xxxx
The Senior man in our flight has just been round with a form, on which we have to put our destination station, and route for when we go home, 8 days more. I should be doing my navi exam about this time, If I get the 11.55 am train from here, I shall probably be in W ton by 6.45 AM. For the next week we will probably be swotting every night or going to evening classes. Well I cant think of
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anything else to tell you about so give my love to everyone,
Cheerioh Len
I’ll be seeing you soon
Nov 27th
Torquay
Dear Ma, Pa & Nibs,
So sorry I have not written before, but I have been feeling pretty rotten. I went to the M.O., and he told me to bathe my arms in hot permang, and put some ointment on, and also to inhale menthol every day for a week, I’m feeling much better,. although I still cant smell. Well, I’m not L.A.C yet, [indecipherable word] just heard we’ve got to pass everything at 6 [indecipherable word] in Morse, but it won’t take me long to pass that, there are only 8 chaps in our Flight who have passed. Everyone has passed in Navigation, but now have got to take laws or [indecipherable word] again. We look like being here over Xmas according to our C.O. who says everything slows down in winter. He did not say anything about leave, but we are optimistic. We don’t do much work now, the only lessons being Navi, Morse, Drill P.T and Games
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The rest of the time we just hang around. I was on guard on Tuesday from 7 morning to 7 evening [sic]. Its a lot better than night guard, although you have to run a few errands for the N.C.Os. Im on Fire Piquet again on Saturday night, which means I can’t go out. Our Pilot Officer has left us to go abroad. He was a decent chap, and we are sorry to lose him. Allen’s confined to bed today with a cold, he’s got a temp. of 102°F. I had to fetch his tea from the cookhouse tonight. I went clay pidgeon [sic] shooting this afternoon, instead of going swimming. It was drizzling and although it was windy as well, I hit 7 out of 15 pidgeons [sic], the highest score was 8. Although its windy down here, it isn’t very cold, and I don’t have to wear a pullover, I’ve stayed in every night this week so there isn’t any more news.
Give my love to everyone,
Cheerioh
Len
Dec 4th 1941
L.A.C. DORRICOTT
Torquay
Dear Mum, Dad & Little Twerps,
I received the requested
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parcel yesterday, and oh boy! was I pleased with the contents. Allen has got a wallet something like mine, but his is not so big, or such good quality. Thank you for a pukka Christmas present. Thanks also for the photographs, I think they have come out O.k. I’ll see that Grandma, etc. get one at Christmas. Sylvias getting quite an artist isnt she? You will have to send her to the Art School. I was on Fire Picquet last Saturday night and we had to clean out the Flight Sergeant’s and C.Os office. There were four of us on the job, and when we had finished we started nosing round to see if we could get any “gen” about posting. We didn’t find anything about that, but John Deas found a notebook, indexed with names of cadets who could do anything, carpentering and painting etc, in fact anything that could be useful on the station. Under the heading Draughtsman was my name and another cadets. As I have not told the C.O. I could draw, someone else must have told him.
On Monday afternoon we went
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out on the motor boats instead of doing Navigation in classes. The weather was awful: it was misty, pouring with rain, and there was a heavy swell in the bay. We had to plot our courses on a chart, find the current and steer the boat. I stayed outside the cabin all the time and John Deas did the plotting for the 6 of us. Two of the chaps in our boat were sick, both Scots. One of them got a bit muddled with the compass and read it the wrong way round, so that he was steering the boat in the opposite direction he should have gone. It so muddled up the course, that on returning, I had to steer at right angles to the course we had been told to use, else I should have rammed the cliffs. Gilbert and Allen left there [sic] dinners behind, but I enjoyed it, although I got wet through.
I think we must be expecting Gas attack [sic], because we have orders to wear gas. masks for 10 minutes every morning coming back from lessons as well as our usuall [sic] Gas Drills. Well, I have not retaken Morse but an L.A.C. at last. The C.O heard from Wing H. Quarters that all those who took the Morse Test before
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Dec 1st, had only to pass at 4 wp.m., I think we will get our L.A.C. pay from Nov 15th, at least that is the latest rumour. John Deas was one of the chaps who passed Morse at 6 wpm & was promulgated to L.A.C. after we came back from leave. But this afternoon we heard he has got to take the Prop down, because he failed his Armaments. Tuesday afternoon we had to scrub our stairs and landings, as A. C. Critchley was going to inspect us on Wednesday. We practiced March past and Eyes Right, but he did not come yesterday or today. I saw in the paper yesterday that they are going to conscript men up to 51, does Dad come into this? We went on a run with the Flt. Sg.t yesterday, and when he say [sic] run he means Run. Our ordinary P.T corporal lets us run or walk alternately for not more than 1/2 a mile, but the Flt, Sgt. Made us run 1 1/2 miles, and walk 1/6 mile and run 1 1/2 miles back all round Rock End. We all enjoyed it I think, although our muscles ache today. Well I think this is all the news, so I will put a sock in it. Cheerioh
Len.
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Sunday Dec: 14/ 1941.
Torquay
Dear Mum, Pop, and Nippers,
Thanks very much for the parcel you sent, it was a good idea you sending those crayons. I am sorry I have not written before, but over half of our flight have been posted to Eastbourne, on the south Coast They went yesterday, early morning and we have been celebrating. Allen’s one of those going, so we went to the pictures Thursday night, in case they were C.B. Friday night. As it happened we were told they were going Friday midnight, instead of Saturday afternoon, as we had been previously told, so Gilbert and I went out and brought back some lemonade, cakes and chips, and we had a little feast. The Ex-policemen had previously arranged to have a “beano” on Friday night, but that was knocked on the head Reg Shaw, the only copper who is not going away, was fed up so he and Dick Carr went on the booze. They came back just before 11; and you could see Reg had been rolling in the dirt, he was so drunk. He staggered upstairs to where
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we were shaking hands and saying “Good-bye to one another, and when we saw how merry he was, we started joking with him. He tried to walk up the next flight of stairs, but he could not keep his balance, and walked backwards downstairs, bumped into the bannisters, and fell over them, onto the ground, 4 flights of stairs below. It’s a spiral staircase and what saved him was the fact that he struck the other bannisters farther down, which broke his fall a little, and then landed on his side in the dustbin. We raced downstairs, took him into a room, and sent for the M.O. He was quite O.k. and said “I likesh fallin down shtairsh”, and walked upstairs to his room. Then he started dancing a hornpipe, and singing, but when he saw the M.O. he sobered down a lot. All he had wrong with him was a bruised thigh. He’s the first chap I’ve heard of who’s fallen down 25’ and then got up and danced.
Those of us who are left had to join the remaining half of “B” flight, so we’ve had to go into another part of the hotel. Sgt Cleverlys in charge of us and none of us like him.
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I had a parcel yesterday from the “Women’s own There were a pair of socks, packet of stamped envelopes, writing pad, Xmas card, and a nice letter from Mrs Bickley. I’m afraid there are no leaves or postings before Xmas. Those of us left are almost certainly for overseas, so before we go we should get at least 7 days leave. Four out of our Flight have got 17 days leave, as they are going abroad, but they are only to make up another squadron who are posted overseas. A new flight came in yesterday, and all new flights are having their courses extended from 8 to 14 weeks, so they will have to wait longer for their leave. I suppose we will have to do a lot of drill, and gardening up at the R.A.F allotments at Rock End. Its raining “cats and dogs”, and I got wet through looking in shop windows, coming back from Chapel. I think I’ve told you all the news now but I will write again before Xmas
Love to everyone
Cheerioh
Len
50
1230753 LAC. DORRICOTT
“A” FLIGHT
4 SQUADRON
ST JAMES HOTEL
TORQUAY.
24.12.41
Dear Mum Pop & Nippers,
At last I have found time to write and thank you for the parcel of cake and sweets. We have eaten almost half of us [sic], but I am saving the rest for tomorrow. Everyone said the cake was delicious. I‘m on guard today from 7 am to 7 pm, but I don’t mind as I don’t have to do drill or anything. We are going to have a lovely dinner tomorrow, roast turkey, roast pork, baked spuds sprouts & carrots, Xmas pud and plenty of other stuff. Tomorrow morning we have to do a March Past for Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Longmore, Ye Gods! If thoughts could kill! Then in the afternoon we can either go to the Good Companions Party, or the R.A.F. Canteen Xmas Dinner, also we have a late pass till midnight, so it wont be so bad after all.
What do you think of this? A week last
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Monday afternoon we should have had games , but as we were Duty Squadron, 24 of us were sent to Rock End to do gardening etc. Well three others and myself had to cart pig muck from the piggeries to the dump, while the others just swept a few leaves from the path. Next day we were told that we would have to go up their [sic] on Saturday afternoon, as we had not given the pigs the swill. We explained everything to the Flight Sergeant, and he got us off. Pretty decent of him wasn’t it? Well Mum, I hope you like the presents, I didn’t have much choice, as we didn’t have much time to get them, I had to do most of the shopping in the dinner-time.
I’ve just received your letter and Xmas card, and Aunty Alice’s purse, also a card from Ede & Gert. I’m getting L.A.C’s pay now, 5/- a day, so Im buying a Savings Certificate every fortnight, and sending a £1 a fortnight for you to get things for yourself, Pop and the Erbs’. Since 1/2 of our flight and half of B flight have been posted to Eastbourne, the rest have been formed into B flight, under Sgt. Cleverly, and P.O. Foley, the
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worst N.C.O. and officer in the Squadron. We’ve now got to leave out the name of the hotel & 3. I.T.W. from our address and just put St James Hotel. Our daily programmes have now been revised , so now we needn’t rise till 7 am. We parade at 8.15 am, break at 10.30 till 11.00. dinner 1 pm-2. 5pm and finish at 5.30. All our new flights have had there [sic] courses decelerated from 8 to 14 weeks, also an hour less lessons every day. We are mostly able to go to the “flicks” two nights a week now, as we have no swotting to do. I don’t think we’ll be posted for a while yet, as this Japanese business has probably knocked American postings on the head, however I should get another leave before
a months out.
Cheerioh, Merry Xmas and a Happy New Years
Len.
Sunday Jan 4th ‘42
‘B’ Flight
4 Squadron
St James Hotel
Torquay
Dear Mum, Pop & Nibs
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Thanks muchly for your letter, which I received on Thursday. I’m so glad you all liked the presents. I received the 10/- P.O. from Shrewsbury and bought a fountain pen with it. The purse I had from Aunty Alice is the same sort of leather as the wallet you sent me. I don’t think I written [sic] since Xmas Eve when I was on guard. Since then I’ve done Squadron Day Guard on Tuesday, St James Armed Guard on Wednesday night, New Year’s Eve, and Squadron Fire Piquet [sic] on Thursday night; so I think I’ve done my fair share of Guards for a bit. Xmas week, I went to the “flicks” 5 times with Gilbert, while he went another two by himself. On Wednesday afternoon we had a “pep” talk from the “Boss”, Air Commodore Critchley, and on Friday morning we had to march past him. There were about 3,000 cadets in the March Past, including Polish and Turkish Airmen. The Old Boy gave us all the day off, so he can’t be a bad old stick. Friday afternoon, Gilbert and I went to the Odeon to see Charles Boyer in “Hold Back the Dawn”, and in the evening to the [indecipherable word] to see “Ships with Wings”
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We saw the latter film twice, it was so good. When it comes to Wolverhampton, Gay-Gay should go to see it. Its about the Fleet Air Arm, and although some of the scenes are faked, its quite good. I’m afraid there will be no leave till we’re posted, which may be weeks or months, unless I can get a 48 hours pass. Critchley told us that while he was in the U.S.A. he had arranged for a greater flow of cadets but that had been knocked on the head with the Japanese attack. Still we’re not doing so bad here, so it won’t hurt us to stay a little longer. I don’t think theres any more news for the present, so I’ll pack up now, Love to everyone at No 10.
Cheerioh,
Len.
24. 12 . 41
Torquay
Dear Mum, Pop & Nippers,
At last I have found [deleted text] time to write and thank you for the parcel of cake and sweets. We have eaten almost half of us [sic], but I am saving the rest for tomorrow. Everyone said the [/deleted text]
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[deleted text] has probably knocked American postings on the head, however I should get another leave before a months out.
Cheerioh, Merry Xmas and
a Happy New Year,
Len.
[/deleted text]
St James Hotel
Torquay
Sunday
Dear Mum
Thanks very much for your parcel which I received on Friday. I ve got a bit of good news in this letter. It’s almost certain we get a weeks leave after we’ve been here 10 weeks, which is a week on Friday I shouldn’t bank on it, but its highly probable. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get any 48 hours leave, as they are only being granted on compassionate grounds. 13 more cadets out of “B” flight were posted to Eastbourne last Friday, leaving the young unmarried cadets. Our officer told some of the boys that there was a big Rhodesia posting in 3 weeks time and that we would probably in it. Gilbert and I are trying to
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get permission to go in Reg Shaw’s room, in place of those boys who were posted. Its on the ground floor, so we won’t have to climb any stairs.
I was on Day Guard on Friday, and on Fire Piquet [sic] at Haldon Manor tonight. We are now allowed to wear great coats on first parade in the morning, when there is always frost on the ground In the afternoon the sun is out and it is quite warm. I don’t think there is any more news this week, so I’ll pack up,
Cheerioh
Len.
ps The boys liked that Flap Jack
Tuesday
Dear Mum & all,
I’ve kept this back till I’ve known something definite about leave. I should be in W. hampton at teatime a week on Friday for 7 days. We might be able to get 9 days, but its not definite, anyway the 7 days is O.k. Last time Scotch boys were granted two days travelling time, but they are not getting it this time. Well, cheerioh for now, I’ll write again later.
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Wednesday morning,
Dear Mum,
Our P.O has just old us that our leave is cancelled & we are being posted to Eastbourne on Saturday. So it will be [indecipherable text – possibly erased] 8 more weeks before we get any more leave. We’re all terribly disappointed, and you want to hear the language some of the boys are turning out. Well, it can’t be helped,
Cheerioh
Len
Jan 21 st
R.A.F.
Eastbourne
Sussex
Dear Mum Dad & all,
I arrived at Eastbourne 11 am Saturday. We left at 10 pm Friday, so it was 13 hours travelling. We had to wait at Newton Abbot for 2 hours, then at London for 1 1/2 hours. At Brighton, Reg, Dickie Gilbert and I got out of the train and walked to the sea front. We are billeted at the best Hotel
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in Eastbourne, and there are a few score here I can tell you. Its called the Grand, and Oh boy, it’s a lovely place. Reg, Dickie Gil & I and 5 others are in a room 3 times as large as the sitting room at home, there are two radiators, one at the side of my bed, and pink satin curtains at the windows. The only thing that’s wrong is that we have no lockers or cupboards, so we have to put our stuff in our kitbags. The grub is about as good as at Torquay, only there is not quite so much. We have a “Naafi” inside the Hotel, so don’t need to go out at night, we have compulsory study 4 nights a week anyway. We work till 5.30 pm Mon to Saturday, and have all day Sunday off, except once a month when there is Church Parade. The Officers & N.C.O’s are all observers and are all pretty decent blokes. Our main subjects are Astro Navigation & Meteorology, we have been dished out with watches & sextants once between 5 cadets, and if they get lost they will cost us £30 each. Its going to be hard work for the next 6 weeks although we have an advantage over the previous 1/2 of our flight as we did a little
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astro-navi. at Torquay. This place is No 1 Elementary Air Observers School, and under a New scheme all air crew cadets have to come to an E.A.O.S. before going abroad for Flying Training. Eastbourne is a big place with scores of Cinemas of which only two are open, so if we had every night off, there would be nowhere to go. I don’t think we will get leave for another 11 weeks, & no 48 hours passes for the next 6 weeks. We can have a pass from 5.50 pm on Saturday till 10.30 pm Sunday, but we can only go 100 miles. I saw Allen & several other fellows of the Old A. flight today, and their hotels are only about 1/2 a mile away along the sea front from us. This morning a German J.U. 88 flew low over our hotels, although the sirens did not go. Well, I don’t think theres any more news, and as I want to get to bed early, I will pack up now
Cheerioh
Love
Len
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Feb 2 nd
Eastbourne
Dear Mum, Dad & Erbs
Thanks very much for the cake which I received this dinnertime. I don’t think we are doing so badly down here except for the grub. We nearly always have cornbeef [sic] or stew for dinner except Sundays. One teatime we had fishcakes made out of Icelandic Cod or Salt Ling and Oh boy! did they stink. We almost made one chap sick, by saying it was made out of pus from a discharged ulcer. Tonight we had cheese and potato and chopped up half cooked beans all mixed together and it tasted vile. The last couple of days, we have come back from lessons to dinner a bit late, and there has been a queue 50 yards long, so yesterday the four of us went to the Violet cafe and had two welsh rarebits, cake and tea, and it cost us 2/7 each. The food is not half so plentiful as at Torquay. At night we can go down to the N.A.A.F.I. which is in one of the ground floor rooms, and have minced steak and onions, or mixed grill, which does not cost us so much as when we go out to supper.
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At Torquay during break between lessons in the mornings, we would go to the Cove cafe, and spend as much as 1/6 on cream buns, etc, but here a NAAF.I. van comes to the College, and also there is a stall inside the Hall, so we only spend 3d or 4d on tea and penny buns. We have lessons in Eastbourne College, so we’re getting quite toffs, aint we? We have 24 hours of navigation a week, including astro-navigations, when we use a bubble sextant to find out latitude & longitude from the stars. We have to measure the altitude of a star to a 1/60 of a degree, and take the time of the observation to the nearest second, otherwise we are miles out in our position. Then we take Meteorology, and have to tell the state of the weather, by the forms of the clouds etc, We learnt the Vickers gun at I.T.W. and now we are doing the Browning machine gun, which is twice as difficult.
Its a lot colder here than at Torquay. From the day we arrived till last Thursday, the roads were 6 inches deep in snow, then it
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rained on Thursday night, and on Friday to Sunday, we had hot hot sunshine all day, now its just as cold as ever. The officers and N.C.Os down here have all got there [sic] observer wings up, and are all good chaps. At I.T.W. it was mostly ex school-masters who took us for Navi and although they could make us understand better than our instructors here, they had no actual experience. Most of them are down here for a rest, after being on operational duties for a few months. Our P/O was the only survivor of a Wellington that crashed. One of the sergeants who has got the D.F.M. is walking about and doing normal duties with a broken neck. One thing if you get injured in Air Crew, you get better medical attention than anyone, plastic surgery, etc, that would cost hundred of £1 [sic] in peacetime.
Dear Mum, I wonder if you could get a new winder put on my watch, as it would be very useful for taking star positions. We have been dished out with £30 watches, one between 5 cadets. They never vary except for 2 & 3 seconds a day. Also we have £50 sextants, so they must trust us.
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We had our photographs taken yesterday, but it will be a fortnight before we get them. I wonder if Gay-Gay would like to go to the Library for me and look for a book on astronomy its a smallish blue one, I don’t know who its by or who are the publishers, but if he sees it, you could perhaps send me the name of the author & publisher etc. We dont get any leave till we have been here six weeks, but I think I can get a 48 hour pass in a week or two, so if I do, I ll get home, if its only for a few hours. We have plenty of fun in our room, there’s not a night but somebody’s bed collapses under them, because someone has put the legs at an angle. Another trick is taking all the springs out of a bed, so that the victim drops thro’ the bottom when he gets in it. A few nights ago Dickie and Terence carted Gilberts bed out to the end of the corridor and left it there, so he pinched George Cators bed, and started to make it. When George came in he pinched it back again and thanked Gilbert for making it! Gilbert thought I’d take
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his bed away, so he tipped me out of mine, I’ll have to do something about tonight, I think. We have inspection only once a week, so we only had to clean our buttons twice a week. Would it be Ok if I sent my laundry home to be washed, as the laundry don’t clean them at all well. My socks are so short that the heel comes under the instep, but I washed a pair myself last week, so they are normal now. Well, I think I have said enough for this letter, so I’ll quit the cackle,
Love to everyone
Cheerioh
Len
P.s
I saw Neville Gardner form the Intermediate in the Barbers’ today, he came down here the same day as I.
R.A.F.
Eastbourne
Feb 10. 1942.
Dear Mum, Pop & Nippers,
Thanks muchly for the reg. letter I received on Friday, the astronomy book you sent was not the one I meant, but it’s a very
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good one, and I’m already half way through it. I’m hoping to have 48 hours leave about 12 pm – 1 am Friday night, I shouldn’t bank on it, as you never know what the powers-that-be are going to do, In any case, I can find my way from the station, so you needn’t wait up for me. Well I’ve been in sick quarters last week, from Wednesday dinner-time to Friday dinner-time with a high temp. The grub was a lot better, we had a roaring fire and plenty of books to read. I’m sending a photograph we had taken in front of Eastbourne College, a week or so ago, it isn’t very good though. [Photograph missing] We had a Meteorology test this afternoon, it was pretty easy, and I think everyone has passed. We had plenty of fun last night. George Cator went out to the “pub” to see his pals who were going abroad, and while he way away [sic], we put his ground sheet in place of his sheet. Then we bent the legs of his bed, and tied them together, so that when he pulled one leg, the others collapsed. Later on, ”Billy” Bennett and the Irish boy nicknamed “Shamus” started talking in their sleep. Then Billy fell out of bed
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and when we put the light on, he was still asleep on the floor. When we woke him up, he accused us of pushing him out of bed. He was asleep 5 minutes later and still talking.
I dont think there’s any more news, so here’s hoping,
Love to all,
Len.
Feb 24 th
Eastbourne
Dear Mum, Pop & Nibs,
I’m so sorry I haven’t written before now, but at present we’re swotting hard for the Exams. We’ve got to get 18 star, sun, moon, and planet sights by next week, also we get Armaments and Morse Exams on Friday & Saturday. I shall most probably be coming home leaving here a week next Saturday or Sunday, Ill let you know the exact time later. We’ve got our ration card that we should have had for our 48 hours, so I’m dating mine for next weekend. Dear Mum, you’ll have to excuse me, as this is a short letter, I’m writing it during Navigation, & I shall be swotting all next week. Anyway, I ll
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tell you all the rest of the news when I get home.
Love to everyone
Cheerioh for now
Len.
Eastbourne
Tue. March 17th
Dear Mum,
The Flight Lieutenant has just told us that we are being posted abroad on Monday next, and that we are getting 48 hours leave from Wednesday to Friday night, so you can expect me Thursday morning. We might possibly be going to Heaton Park before we embark & & [sic] might possibly get extra embarkation leave from there. I’ll tell you all the news when I get home.
Cheerioh
Len
We leave here 2.36 pm Wednesday, so might get home before 10 pm.
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April 9th 1942.
c/o. R.C.A.F.
Ottawa.
[underlined] Canada [/underlined]
Dear Mum, Dad, & Nippers,
As you see Ive arrived safely in Canada. I’m sorry I could not get a letter away at Heaton Park, but we were there only 3 days, and during that time had innoculations, clothing parades, and lectures, as you see, we didn’t get much time for writing. We were billeted at 25 Wellington St. East, Salford, near the Jewish District of Cheetham Hill. The Manchester people made us welcome, and were always willing to help us, exactly opposite to Eastbourne.
We had a very quiet trip across the Atlantic, although the sea was rather rough for 3 days. Gilbert was so seasick, that he ate no food for 3 days. We slept in hammocks, and at night when we slung them, we were packed like sardines. The cigarettes sold on board were very cheap, Woodbines 3d for 10, and Players 4d for 10. What I liked best were the tins of fruit and salmon and blocks of chocolate, which we could buy in
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unlimited supplies. We disembarked at an East coast town, and are now at Moncton, New Brunswick. The scenery we passed through by train was lovely: Blue sky above, fine trees covering the hills, with small wooden houses scattered about. Whatever the size of the villages we passed through, whether they contained 5 or 100 houses, they always had a small wooden chapel or church built in a prominent spot. You don’t see many brick buildings out here, except in the town centre. The food here is marvellous, although pilots who have come back here, after finishing there [sic] course elsewhere, say it is the worst place for food. We get plenty of eggs, butter and jam, and the bread is just like sponge cake, in fact I could make a meal of bread and butter alone. At Eastbourne it was a pain to queue for meals, but here it is a pleasure. The worst [deleted] place [/deleted] thing about this place is that when you go up town, you can’t help spending money. When you see the Restaurants dishing up turkey, steak or pork, you can’t resist going in and sampling some. The price of food isn’t bad, but we were
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staggered when we had to pay 45c/ or 2/- for a hair cut, and 15 c/ extra if you had a little hair oil put on. The “Dead End Kids” thats Reg Gilbert, Dicky, Shamus & I bought a folding camera for 30/-, so we shall take as many photographs as we can. We’ve all bought corn-cob pipes, and yesterday got a railwayman to take a photograph of us smoking them, standing above the cowcatcher of a locomotive. We shall not be staying here long, but will be most probably [sic] posted to where the cadets went who had their photos printed in the “Express & Star”. I would like to write to Mums aunt in Windsor, but I have not got the address.
We’ve had to change our English money into Canadian Dollars, and so far we’ve managed OK with the coinage. Those 12 sided 3d bits are rare over here and in the U.S.A, and cadets often get invited out for the evening if they give a civilian one. The people were [sic] them on their watch chains. Every where we go little urchins pester us for English pennies for souvenirs, Im rather late, but wish Gay Many Happy Returns of the Day
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for me , please. Its nearly lights out now, so I’ll pack up. Tell Grandma I’ll write as soon as possible, but when we get posted, we’ll have to work hard, so there won’t be much time for letterwriting. The next course should last about 6 months, so I should be home again before Xmas.
Cheerioh for now
Len.
Picture Card from New York, written on top of Empire State Building.
Wed 13th May ’42.
Dear Mum,
I’m writing this on the way down to Miami. I m having a fine time so far. At Moncton I met a nice family called MacDonald, & used to stay at their house. Bill & Dorothy are writing Gray & Sylvia. Letter following
Love
Len
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British Cadet Dorricott,
Room 306.
Hotel San Sebastion,
348 Santander,
Miami, Fla.
June 2nd 42
Dear Mum, Pop, & Erbs,
Thanks very much for your very welcome letters, the Air Mail which I received yesterday and the ordinary mail today. I don’t think theres much difference however you send it, although ordinary mail is not censored. That bit about the Home Guard in your Air Mail was censored. Well I’m glad everything is O.k. at home, and that you are getting plenty to eat.
By the way, before I forget, if you send me the sizes of your stockings & the kids, I’ll bring some Nylon ones when I come home, also if theres anything you want, just let me know, and I’ll get it. Theres nothing you can’t get in Miami. Boy, its hot down here, hotter in the shade than it is in the sun on an English Summer Day. My arms & face are getting quite brown
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and at the weekend I’m going bathing at Miami Beach, so I should soon be brown all over. At the University there used to be a lot of fellows & girls taking different courses, but they went last week, so we’ve got the place to ourselves now. While we are down here, we are given the same treatment as an officer. We are waited on at table, have our rooms cleaned out by the maids, and don’t have to clean our shoes even. However, we have to work hard, although so far its been pretty easy, as we did all the stuff Eastbourne, We get plenty to eat, in fact, as soon as one dish of food is finished, the waiters rush up to refill it. Imagine eggs, bacon, chicken etc lying on the tables as the fellows are too full. The national drink down here is “iced tea” but we always have hot tea. Over this side of the Atlantic, the people use there knives just for cutting their food, then transfer their fork to their right hand & drop the knife. It looks funny to us, but I guess we appear just as funny to them. Shamus & I go to Central Baptist Chapel, and we’ve met hundreds of nice people. Its one of the nicest
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chapels I ve been in. We go up in the gallery and the ladies dresses, and waving fans make a lovely sight. After the service people come up to you, and almost fight as to who is to take you home to dinner. Shamus & I have met two very nice girls from the Chapel, his is Kay Porter, chief telephonist and radio telephonist for Eastern Air Lines, she’s pretty rich, and owns a ranch in Texas. I go with her pal Betty Denham, who works at the same place. Last Sunday, Shamus & I went to Chapel with Betty, had dinner at a Cafe, & then she showed us round Miami Beach She works from 4 pm to midnight, so we didn’t have much time. Then we went to the Airport with her, and met Kay as she came off duty. Next weekend we are going bathing, so should have a grand time. I’m sending you a few photos of various places & people [photographs missing] & will send some more in my next letters. I’ve bought 4 shares out of 5 in that camera we bought on the boat, and I’m hoping Shamus will sell me his share. One or two girls who have stayed on for the Summer Session at the University,
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have formed a dating Bureau, the C.O has O’ked it, so its perfectly legal, the entrance fee is a dollar. I’ve not joined yet, although tonight Shamus is out on a “Blind Date” with a girl the Bureau have chosen for him. Gay-Gay would be in his element down here, the fillies are darn good, tell him. Tell him not to go by Betty as she is pretty lousy as regards looks & figure. I cant think of much else to say, its hard work thinking what to put down in this heat, even though I’m finishing this letter at 9. Pm with the windows and doors wide open. Still, I ll keep the rest of the “gen” (“pukka & Duff”) for my next letter, remember me to every one at home, including mrs Pugh, and let me have a letter from you as often as poss. We hang around the post-office 3 or 4 times a day, waiting for letters, So cheerioh.
Love from Len.
Miami Fla’
May 16th
Dear Mum Pop & Nippers,
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MAY 16 1942
Well, as thou seeest, I’ve arrived in Miami at last, We reached here yesterday morning at 7 o’clock, and even at that early hour we were melting with the heat. We left Moncton 3 pm on Tuesday, and out first long stop was St John’s, New Brunswick, where we had tea, or supper as it is called here, in a restaurant. Then we had a walk round the town. Being a seaport, it was almost as dirty as Manchester, and not half as nice as Moncton. We had a very uncomfortable night, as we had no mattresses and only 1 blanket, so we were up at 5 next morning. Our next stop was Boston, Masserchusetts [sic] in the USA., where we changed stations, and had a lovely meal in the large Station Cafe. Then we walked round the town, and took photos of the War Memorial. We only had an hour here, otherwise I would have like to have seen the [indecipherable word] commemorating the Boston Tea Party. However, an old man, who was born in North Devon showed us around the State House. It was a lovely building; it had the flags used in the Civil War. We also visited the House of Representatives,
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and the Senate Chamber. While I was there I bought a Camera, which takes 16 pictures on a [sic] 8 film roll, so I’m taking as many photos as I can. Our next stop was New York (I believe youve heard of it). The first thing we did after tea, was to [inserted] pay [/inserted] a visit to the top of the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world. It was one of the most wonderful sights I’ve ever seen. We could see the Normandie lying on her side in the harbour, the Statue of Liberty, the Chrysler Building, and other skyscrapers in Manhattan. One thing that amazed me was that all the streets with few exceptions, ran North-South, or East-West. We only had 4 hours in New York, so with the rest of the time, we walked down Broadway and other main streets. We spent an even more uncomfortable night on the train, as we had to sleep sitting up in the train, and as we were farther south, the heat was far worse. The next morning at Richmond, we were coupled to 2 streamlined Diesel engines, the “Florida Special”, and “Vacationers”, and were soon flying along at 70 miles ph. with 24 coaches in tow.
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That night we stopped for an hour and a half at Jacksonville, and as it was too dark to take photos, the “Gang” went into an Amusement Park, and had a game of “bowls” or Skittles as it is called in England. I ve never touched a bowling ball before, but I knocked 81 skittles down our of 100, Norman was next with 55 so I didn’t do so bad. Well. As I said before we arrived here yesterday morning. The food is marvellous, you get more than you want, the meals are served up as good as any hotel (serviettes etc), in fact its better than an officers mess. At every meal we get 5 drinks, water milk, grapefruit, coffee & tea. We have not been in the town yet, but what buildings and scenery we have seen is very picturesque, we are being allowed out to Coral Gables tonight and I shall take some more snaps, and get those I’ve already developed taken.
Now I ll tell you about the Macdonalds. One Sunday in camp at Moncton, the Padre asked for 25 cadets to go to a free supper at Moncton First Baptist Church on the Monday night, so
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[inserted some of us [/inserted] [deleted] and I [/deleted] volunteered. Well we enjoyed ourselves there, and a scout invited me up to his house, so I went the following night, and every evening I was at Moncton. Mr & Mrs M[inserted]acdonald [/inserted] oncton welcomed me as if I had known them for ages, I think they are the most hospitable family I’ve met yet. I went there every night before 7 pm and didnt leave till 11.55 pm on weekdays, and 1.55 am early Sunday morning. If I hadn’t had a tropical kit parade on Sunday morning, they would have made me stay the night. The first night I was doing Bill’s, Murray’s and Ida’s homework. Bill is about 16 years old, and I think he’s already written to our Jeanne. Murray is about 14 & Dorothy nearly 13. Dorothy is the image of Sylvia in her looks and manners, I’ve told her to write to Syls’. Ida is 17, left High School after taking Matric Course, and is now learning Shorthand & Typing at a Business College. She’s a very nice girl indeed. On Monday night before we left, I took my camera to take some snaps, we told Mrs MacDonald we would only be half an hour, but we walked so far
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and were feelish [sic] peckish coming home, so we had supper at a Grill, and didn’t get home till turned 11 pm. Of course, I took some photos, but did my usual trick of forgeting [sic] to wind the film after each photo, but I think at least one photo of Ida will be O.k, so I’ll send you one when I get them developed. When I’ve finished the course here, and go back to Moncton, Mr MacDonald is going to take me deer hunting, so I look like having a good time. After this weekend we’ve got to start working overtime, especially as [deleted] its [/deleted] the hottest part of the season is just starting I don’t think theres much more I can write about without being censored, so I’ll pack up now. Remember me to both Grandma’s in case I don’t get time to write much, Love to all at No 10.
Lets have all the news as soon as possible
Cheerioh
Len xx
July 4th
Miami, Fla.
Dear Mum, Dad & Erbs,
Gee, T’anks for your 3 rd letter which I received last Tuesday. I’m glad
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to see you’re carrying on O.k, & hope you are getting enough to eat. A funny thing happened last Tuesday: Gilbert received a parcel from home with a tin of oxtail soup in! The parcel had been addressed to Eastbourne, so you see how it came about that the British are sending food to America.
I think I ve beaten Graham is [sic] flying , as my first flight was a week yesterday, and I also had a longer flight yesterday. I had a good time, but on the first flight, Gilbert was up to his usual tricks, & was the only one sick on our flying boat. He was O.k yesterday, although it was much bumpier. It was a good job we had that course at Eastbourne, as it has helped us very much, and we mostly manage to get our homework done in class. I think the exams will be easy enough, although we’ve got to get 80% to pass. We had our Met. Exam this morning, and I think I’ve got on O.k. In another few weeks I should be able to put my “wings” up, although I don’t think we get our “stripes” till we arrive
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home. We are now Senior Course down here & shall not have to do any more orderly duty. One good thing, we don’t get any P.T. or Drill down here. We will do our first bit of parading (other than meal or pay parades) tonight. We’ve got to march round Coral Gables to celebrate Independence Day.
I’ve met another nice girl from Chapel, her name is Jackie (short for Jacqueline) Hutto, & she’s good looking, as you can see from the photo [photograph missing]. I’ve introduced Shamus to her blonde pal Mary Jane Fannin, Jackie & I see each other every weekend, but Shamus & I only met Mary last night. After going to the ‘flicks’, we all went & had a game of carpet golf. Up to last night Jackie was champ, but last night I was the winner, did 3 holes in 1. The girls are coming over to watch us marching, & then we’re going to meet them afterwards.
The last fortnight we’ve been almost bitten to death by mosquitos, although they are nearly all gone now. The ones they get down here, are what we call gnats or midges in
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Leonard Dorricott's wartime letters to his parents
Description
An account of the resource
Note book containing 84 pages of letters covering the period 1 September 1941 to 4 July 1942. It covers his training in the UK, Canada and the USA. He describes, in detail, his social life and eating arrangements but very little about the actual training he received.
(The notebook is incomplete.)
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Leonard Dorricott
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
84 handwritten sheets
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EDorricottLWVarious41-42
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Devon
England--Torquay
Canada
Florida--Miami
England--London
United States
Florida
England--Eastbourne (East Sussex)
Florida
England--Sussex
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
entertainment
Initial Training Wing
military living conditions
military service conditions
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
physical training
RAF Torquay
recruitment
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/53/500/EBoldyDABoldyAD400522-0001.1.jpg
9fb984acc63e2e1c74436fa1bf0cdcd4
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/53/500/EBoldyDABoldyAD400522-0002.1.jpg
633cb501a146a84844f61f1e8770ea46
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
Boldy, David
Dave Boldy
D A Boldy
Description
An account of the resource
334 items. The collection concerns Flight Sergeant David Adrian Boldy (1918 – 1942, 923995 Royal Air Force) and consists of his school reports, letters from school and photographs of family and locations in India, letters from training and service, and photographs from his social life and time training. It also includes newspaper cuttings and letters about him being missing in action. David Boldy was born and attended school in India and studied law at Kings College London. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force and trained as an air gunner in South Africa. He flew operations in Manchesters and Lancasters with 207 Squadron from RAF Bottesford. His aircraft failed to return from an operation to Gdańsk 11 July 1942. <br /><br />The collection has been donated to the IBCC Digital Archive by David Boldy and catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.<br /><br />Additional information on David Boldy is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/102182/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Boldy, DA
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[RAF Logo]
[inserted in different hand] Re my correction on this page, it puts me in mind of a story of a navigator in training over England. When asked to work out his position he handed the result to his superior officer who burst out Good God son by your reckoning we are in the middle of the Sahara! I thought of Dave then! [indecipherable]
I am sending you all Dave’s letters but should be glad to have the ones to me back again.
from BOLDY.
59, Bathurst Mews,
Lancaster Gate,
London, W.2.[/ inserted in different hand]
R.A.F.
22nd May 1940.
My darling Dad,
Many thanks for your letter. I am glad to hear you are getting on well. Just as well you didn’t play in the tournament as it would probably have been a sham.
I am getting on very well in the R.A.F. My set of friends is very nice & we have a good time though at this moment we are doing a lot of preliminary training. I was at Uxbridge for about 16 days. We got our uniforms etc. there. From Uxbridge we came here to [deleted] bri [/deleted] Bridgenorth (it is up north) [inserted in different hand] Nonsense! It is on the border of Wales! West [/inserted in different hand]
We are having marching drilling it’s [indecipherable] of which I have done before. I’ve also had Physical training every day so
[page break]
I should be quite tough at the end of it. We should only be at this place a week. I don’t know yet where we go on to from here.
I had a letter from Peter the other day. He is training for the Navy at one of the training Centres.
Mum Olive and I bought the cigarette case (a silver one with R.A.F. wings) a present from you and Mum, thank you as it is very nice. Everyone likes it. It is pure silver & has inscribed in it [deleted] from Mu [/deleted] “Dave from Mum & Dad 1940”.
I had my photo Taken. It is not a very good one but it is better than nothing. Mum will send it on.
No more to-day. God bless & keep you for us. Love [underlined] Dave. [/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Subject
The topic of the resource
World War (1939-1945)
Description
An account of the resource
Letter from David Boldy to his father about being in the Royal Air Force, with details of training at Uxbridge and at RAF Bridgnorth. He bought a silver cigarette case with Royal Air Force wings.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
David Boldy
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1940-05-22
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two page handwritten letter
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text. Correspondence
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EBoldyDABoldyAD400522
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
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Shropshire
England--London
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940-05
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter from David Boldy to his father
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Steve Baldwin
physical training
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Uxbridge
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/660/9202/EGortonHGortonLCM440220.1.pdf
175e26b1d4af9d85548e75d3042caead
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
Gorton, Harold
Description
An account of the resource
136 items. The collection concerns Squadron Leader Harold Gorton (1914 - 1944, 120984, Royal Air Force) and contains eight photographs and 126 letters to his wife and family. Harold Gorton studied at Oxford, and throughout his time in the RAF he continued studying law. He completed a tour of operations as a pilot in 1941 and was then posted as an instructor to RAF Cark. He returned to operations with 49 Squadron stationed at RAF Fulbeck in 1944. He was killed 11/12 November 1944 during an operation to Harburg.<br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Mair Gorton and Ian Gorton, and catalogued by Barry Hunter. <br /><br />Additional information on Harold Gorton is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/108964/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-05-30
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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Gorton, H
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
TEL. SILVERSTONE 252
OFFICERS’ MESS,
ROYAL AIR FORCE STATION,
SILVERSTONE,
NR. TOWCESTER,
NORTHANTS.
[Royal Air Force crest]
Sunday 09.30 a.m.
Dearest,
The R.A.F. seems to be very concerned about my soul today, because I have to attend Church Parade this morning – the first time I’ve been to an Air Force service for 3 years. Sunday is our day off, but the authorities seem determined to make it as useless as possible, first by having it on a Sunday, and then be giving us a clothing parade at 9.0 a.m. (so that we can’t stay in bed), and then this Church Parade.
Anyway, we’ve only three more days lectures now, and then we can go to Turweston on Thursday.
This place is proving very unsatisfactory as far as law is concerned. Apart from the fact that I haven’t got a room to myself, after eight hours lectures a day I just don’t feel like studying, & I haven’t done any yet. Moreover, they seem to enjoy thinking up something to do after 5.30. What with extra film shows, dental parades, and the like, we’ve only had one evening this week when we finished at 5.30.
Pardon all this moaning, but
[page break]
2.
just trying to give you an idea of the sort of life we have here.
Thank you for the washing darling. It really was very nice of you to do it for me.
The P.T. hasn’t proved quite so much of a bogy as I feared. We’ve been down for it four times, so far, but I’ve only done it twice. The anticipation part is the worst – sitting in a cold lecture room for [deleted] four [/deleted] those hours & looking forward to changing into thin P.T. kit.
There doesn’t seem to be much to say today, except to repeat how much I miss you. It’s a very strange existence, this, carrying on from day to day & yet all the time feeling that the most important part of my existence is at the other side of the country. Everything seems so unreal, somehow, as though one were living and moving after one’s body had been cut in two. I never feel complete unless I am with you.
All my love,
Harold.
P.S. Bank statement enclosed
[page break]
National Provincial Bank Limited
[deleted] 24 Milson St., [/deleted] [inserted] Wellsway, [/inserted] BATH Branch,
1st February, 1944
F/O H. Gorton,
R.A.F. Station,
Cark-in-Cartmell, Lancs.
Dear Sir,
As requested we beg to advise you that at the close of business on the 1st February, 1944 our books showed the following balance at the credit of your account £149.9.7 (One hundred and forty nine pounds, nine shillings and seven pence).
Yours faithfully,
[signature]
Manager
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
He writes of activities at RAF Silverstone and encloses a bank statement from the National Provincial Bank Limited showing he is £149.9.7 in credit.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Harold Gorton
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-02-20
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Contributor
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Tricia Marshall
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter from Harold Gorton to his wife
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Format
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Three handwritten and printed sheets
Identifier
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EGortonHGortonLCM440220
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Civilian
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Northamptonshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-02-01
1944-02
aircrew
faith
military living conditions
military service conditions
physical training
RAF Silverstone
training
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Wynn, Ian Archer
I A Wynn
Description
An account of the resource
146 Items. Collection concerns Pilot Officer Ian Archer Wynn (1908 - 1943, 146838 Royal Air Force). After training as ground crew he remustered as a flight engineer and flew operations with 100 Squadron. He was killed 25 May 1943 on an operation from RAF Grimsby to Düsseldorf. Collection consists of a diary, a memorial book, an official report on what was his final operation, photographs of his crew, his family and the squadron as well as official correspondence from Air Ministry and British Red Cross, letters of condolence and a large number of letters from Ian Wynn to his wife Kathleen. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Patrick Anthony Wynn and catalogued by Nigel Huckins. <br /><br />Additional information on Ian Archer Wynn is available via the <a href="https://internationalbcc.co.uk/losses/126116/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-07-13
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. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wynn, IA
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
Babbacombe
29-3-41
Darling,
Many thanks for your parcel received today. You should not worry if you can’t get Cigs I can always manage. Anyway I received [underlined] my [/underlined] first pay today 10/=. I was just on to my last 1/-. Still you see the First week and has to buy all sorts of things Pastes Brushes & cleaning tackle. Ink etc [sic] & etc [sic] again.
Furthermore while one is in disciplinary training there is no time for smoking etc [sic].
I hope David has got over his cold & is much better by now, because I dont [sic] like him having so many colds. I miss you all you know more than I thought I would.
[page break]
[underlined] 2 [/underlined]
The food here is still good & I suppose ample but we all feel that we are starved. It is the [corrected] exercise [/corrected] & fresh air I suppose. This morning we had a three mile run then doubled to the Parade ground & did P T exercises I was pretty surprised to see that I was so fit apart from a little stiffness in the groin I dont [sic] feel any the worse for it although some of the chaps were hard put to.
Keep Carters letter and I will enquire whether they can charge anything extra for that war risk in summer. I dont [sic] think they can do.
I have applied for Civil liability to cover 15/- Rent & 2/1 Insurance & £1-1-9 Quarter for the Vacuum
[page break]
[underlined] 3 [/underlined]
So if you get any Enquiries you will know what to say. I do not expect you will though.
There are all nationalities her now Jamaicans Poles Free French Checks [Czechs] U.S.A. New Zealand Bahamas & there is now in our room a Chap from Chile named Ian Scott. A very nice chap indeed.
Anyway I have heard that only 40% get through the training satisfactorily so that is some consolation
Well if you can write to me so that it arrives [underlined] not later [/underlined] than [underlined] FRIDAY [/underlined] next do so on that day I shall know whether or not I am being moved after that it will be a week to week existence here waiting to be posted
Love to all & Thank David for his letter Tell him to hurry up and get better & here are some
[page break]
kisses & hugs for you all
XXX [deleted] o [/deleted] XXXX
OOOOOOO
O = Hug.
Love Ian.
P.S. How is the Shelter procceeding [sic].
I x
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
Letter from Ian Wynn to his wife
Description
An account of the resource
Thanks her for parcel and states he has received first pay. Asks after his son and goes on to describe training and food. Discusses financial affairs and mentions other nationalities that are training.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1941-03-29
Format
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Four page handwritten letter
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EWynnIAWynnK410329
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Civilian
Royal Air Force
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Devon
England--Torquay
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941-03-29
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.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ian Archer Wynn
Initial Training Wing
military living conditions
military service conditions
physical training
RAF Torquay
training
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Fuller, Frank Tilden
F T Fuller
Description
An account of the resource
19 items. Sergeant Frank Fuller was the rear gunner on a 7 Squadron Lancaster captained by Squadron Leader C H Wilson, Distinguished Flying Cross, which was shot down during operations to Nuremberg on 3/31 March 1944. Collection consists of letters to Mrs Wilson, the captain's wife, from the parents of other crew members and official sources after crew reported missing. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Maurice Burl and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br /><span>Additional information on Frank Fuller is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/209870">IBCC Losses Database.</a></span>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-01
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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Fuller, FT
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[Royal Air Force crest]
March 29. 1944
Dear Gray:
Thanks for your letter I’m sorry we can’t manage & meet but that may happen later. I haven’t been able to get any leave lately either.
A little thing like a tetanus shot shouldn’t worry you. I have had 6 in the air force – two of them by mistake last year when the documents were lost I am getting lots of other ways now to pass an evening besides dancing. Can you get coupons for clothes? If not I’ll see what I can do. Probably not much but I can try anyway.
I have a new pilot now as Pete got it at Stuttgart two weeks ago [deleted] on [/deleted] as they say
[page break]
here he was “posted by night” I am sorry to lose him. My new one is a squadron leader and a very good pilot and although too keen I guess we will make out all right. To my way of thinking we are doing too much flying. I have flown twenty two times in the last three weeks most of them for practice This is just like a training station with P.T. at 9 in the mornings and so on. I have done three ops in the last week (Frankfurt, Berlin and Essen) No trouble on any of them worth mentioning. I must close now
Lots of luck
Jim
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
Letter from Jim to Gray
Description
An account of the resource
Writes that is not possible to meet and cannot get leave. mentions tetanus shots and clothes coupons. Writes that he has a new pilot as his own was killed recently. Complains of too much training flying. but has done three operations recently to Frankfurt, Berlin and Essen.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-03-29
Format
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Three photocopied sheets, two page handwritten letter and printed transcript
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
E[Author]J[Recipient]G440329
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Essen
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-03-29
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
David Bloomfield
bombing
physical training
training
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Doughty, James Charles
Doughty, JC
Description
An account of the resource
40 items. The collection concerns Sergeant James Charles (Jimmy) Doughty (1386802 Royal Air Force) and contains correspondence and photographs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 102 Squadron and was killed 13 August 1944. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by William James Cuthbert and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.<br /><br /><span data-contrast="none" xml:lang="EN-GB" lang="EN-GB" class="TextRun SCXW44180884 BCX0"><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW44180884 BCX0">Additional information on James Charles Doughty</span><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW44180884 BCX0"> is available via the</span></span><span class="EOP SCXW44180884 BCX0" data-ccp-props="{"201341983":0,"335559739":200,"335559740":276}"> </span><a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/207652/">IBCC Losses Database</a>.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018-01-23
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Doughty, JC
Transcribed document
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
[postmark] [postage stamp]
W/206227, Pte. Doughty,
9, Princess Road,
Leicester.
[page break]
Hut J.8. 2 Squadron,
No. 1. Aircrew Training Wing,
R.A.F. Stn, St Athens,
Glams,
S. Wales
Dear Winnie,
Thanks very much for the parcel, although its very pleasant to receive cakes I’d sooner you hadn’t done it especialy [sic] as you are going back to Army food again, you might find a need for it yourself.
Well I haven’t any great news, nothing unusual happening.
The weather done [sic] here though seems determined to freeze every thing above ground, & running around the country side, these days dressed in shorts & slippers is no joke any longer, it takes the rest of the day to thaw out
[page break]
Up to the moment, I think I’m going on “Halibags” (Halifaxes to your), we spent the best part of the week inside one, & they seem pretty good crates.
Well I [deleted] kn [/deleted] now intend going to bed, to undo some of the [underlined] good [/underlined]?, my P.T. lessons have done. In other words get rid of a wonderful cold, contracted when doing the he-man stunt, in the wide open spaces, during icy conditions,
Well thats the lot for now,
Love
[underlined] Jim. [/underlined]
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Letter from Jimmy Doughty to his sister Winnie
Description
An account of the resource
Thanks her for parcel. Not much news. Comments on weather and PT, running in local area. States he was going on Halifax.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
J C Doughty
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Leicester
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
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
British Army
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Correspondence
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two page handwritten letter and envelope
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription. Under review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
EDoughtyJCDoughtyW[Date]-03
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Tricia Marshall
Halifax
military service conditions
physical training
RAF St Athan
training