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25
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1989/41032/MGeorgeDB1796593-171117-01.1.pdf
f5f12a5becf7229ddc35e52aa90ba02a
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
George, David Burrows
D B George
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
2017-11-17
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
George, DB
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. The collection concerns Sergeant David Burrows George (1796593 Royal Air Force) and contains operation reports, correspondence, a biography and photographs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 153 Squadron and was killed 22 January 1945. <br /><br />The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Shelagh Wright and catalogued by Barry Hunter.<br /><br /> Additional information on David Burrows George is available via the <a href="https://losses.internationalbcc.co.uk/loss/108520/">IBCC Losses Database.</a>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Raid Report Book - 9 Squadron
Description
An account of the resource
A record of operations conducted by 9 Squadron aircraft between 15 February and 26 March 1944.
Creator
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9 Squadron
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944
Temporal Coverage
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1944
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Stuttgart
Germany--Schweinfurt
Germany--Augsburg
France--Marignane
Germany--Stuttgart
France--Nord (Department)
Germany
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
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Service material
Format
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41 handwritten pages
Identifier
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MGeorgeDB1796593-171117-01
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. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Conforms To
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Pending text-based transcription
9 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb aimer
mid-air collision
navigator
pilot
radar
RAF Manston
RAF North Killingholme
RAF Silverstone
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Swinderby
RAF Tangmere
RAF Woodbridge
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/349/3518/PWhiteRR1601.1.jpg
fe069536c41a571ddb9dd906a128148a
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/349/3518/AWhiteRR160607.2.mp3
8a1d50dfd1e1ebd27540c7db00715556
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
White, Ralph
Ralph Robert White
Ralph R White
R R White
R White
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Ralph Robert White (1923 - 2021, 427630 Royal Australian Air Force), a training report and four photographs. He flew operations with 192 Squadron from RAF Foulsham.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-06-07
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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White, RR
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AP: This interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Ralph White. A 192 Squadron Halifax skipper. A Special Duties squadron he tells me. The interview is taking place at Ralph’s place in Burwood in Melbourne. It is the 7th of June 2016. My name’s Adam Purcell. Ralph, we might start from the beginning.
RW: Yes.
AP: If you don’t mind.
RW: Not at all.
AP: Can you tell me something of what you were doing before the war and where you were when you heard that war had been declared?
RW: Initially I was employed as a junior clerk or office boy at the Melbourne City Council. From there, when the [pause] when I turned eighteen I wanted to join the air force. But my parents were not signing forms. So I then made a very silly mistake and joined the army and I spent eighteen months in an infantry battalion. Which — when the, when the Americans came into the war 7th of December ‘41 the unit I was with got, were sent to Western Australia. So while spending my time in Western Australia I got up as far as Geraldton and they were looking for aircrew trainees to join the air force. So I volunteered as an air crew cadet in from Geraldton starting off with recruit training in Busselton and then sent as an aircrew guard while we were waiting to start ITS training. Poor aircrew. You were made aircrew guards which didn’t, didn’t worry us, being out of the army. The guard duty was ok except that when we got to Pearce which was the air force main ‘drome in those days — located nearby was petrol dumps. Forty four gallon drums of petrol in the bush and it was our job at night to guard the petrol dumps because light fingered Perthites were coming out and stealing forty four gallon drums of petrol. But once, not — I didn’t do it, but someone caught someone or someone had pulled up in a car so they felt suspicious and they fired a shot and we were never troubled with them again. So that was the start of my aircrew career as a cadet. From there, once initial training started after we’d done our duties as air crew guards we were sent to Victor Harbour. ITS at Victor Harbour. EFTS at Benalla. Went solo at Benalla on Tiger Moths. Over to Mallala on Ansons. Got my wings at Mallala. Came back to Point Cook to do beam studies and from there was sent to the UK to start with the RAF.
AP: How — alright tell me about your first solo.
RW: First solo. Oh God I wish you hadn’t as a matter of fact [laughs] At Benalla. Yes. Went about, it was about seven and a half hours I think that was there and I had a very good instructor. The instructor had four pupils. One of them was scrubbed. That meant three of us. But when it was my turn to do the solo trip Mr, Squadron Leader Kinnear was a very big man. And squadron leader. And I did the solo test with him which was the usual things. Loops, slow rolls, stalls and just little areas before we did the circuits and bumps just to pass the pilot’s test. And then coming in to land I really didn’t take into account that he was a very big man in the front cockpit. Which, when I came into land it sank too quickly on me and I bounced across [laughs] across the aerodrome which wasn’t the right way to go. However, I said to him there, I said, Oh, you know, ‘I’m sorry sir but I reckon I can do better than that.’ He reply was, ‘I wouldn’t fly with you again. Too dangerous.’ So I got, I got my wings. So that was that. So I wish you hadn’t asked me because it was not done in glory.
AP: It very rarely is. What was a typical day like at EFTS? What sort of things were you actually doing?
RW: What? At Mallala?
AP: EFTS. So Benalla.
RW: EFTS. EFTS would be — each time you’d practice something different. First was familiarisation. Just on there. With an instructor. Practicing stalls and spins and recovery. And from then on you were sent out to practice by yourself. Every couple of days they might give you a taxiing test or something of that nature. But it was just a matter of going up, practicing yourself and coming back. Stall turns. You know some aerobatics you did better than, or I enjoyed better than others. But as a slow roller I was impossible. The, I’d lose so many feet, about five hundred feet every time I tried to slow roll. It was never done graciously. But that was about it. It was a matter of getting, I think, eighty hours. I think I had to get eighty hours up before they’d pass you on to the next unit at Mallala.
AP: And what did you think of the — what did you think of the Tiger Moth?
RW: I loved it. I think it was great fun. It was more or less a joy ride really. Really. It was responsive. It never let you down. If you did the right thing the old Tiger would do what you told it. But apart from that it never gave me any trouble.
AP: An instructor of mine once said, ‘A Tiger Moth is easy to fly but hard to fly well.’
RW: Well yeah. Well, I can remember an instructor once saying to me, ‘No matter what way you fly as long as you do it smoothly,’ which was fair enough but they won’t let you down. The funny side in all of it really when you’re saying about Benalla, thinking back we had similar weather to what we’re experiencing at the moment. That, the first flights in the morning that took off this particular day when we, when we were coming in from whatever shift we were going to do the flying the afternoon there were five Tiger Moths all with their nose in the ground. All sitting up. They had landed but the ground was boggy and they all tipped over. All you could see across the field was Tiger Moths.
AP: I was, I was actually going to ask you about accidents in training. Were they common? Did you see a lot of them?
RW: Not really. No. The only trouble was that sometimes before you were told to do something I’d go out and say, practice stall turns, practice fancy slide slipping. I can’t think what other ones we were, but at one stage we weren’t allowed to, we weren’t allowed to do a loop until we’d had a few more hours up. And one of the boys tried to do the loop. Stalled at the top. Spun in. And actually he got out of it which was lucky. He didn’t get killed but just badly shaken up but showed him that, you know, when you get to the top of the loop you just have to have sufficient speed to get out at the top.
AP: Nothing has changed. The laws of physics are exactly the same. Yeah. Very good.
RW: But you can’t help enjoying flying a Tiger Moth. It was just pure fun.
AP: I would agree exactly with that. Absolutely. What sort of things happened at Mallala?
RW: Mallala was modest flying. The old Anson. It wasn’t a good, I don’t think it was a good aircraft to train on because with the coming in to land with an Anson you were given a speed. I think it was, from memory, sixty. I think we still operated sixty with dual aircraft. Flying two together. Two pilots. We were usually flying together so one would do one hour as pilot and you’d sit back and do navigating. And then the other chap would have a turn of his hour flying. And they were very bad because as you might remember from the Tiger Moth you don’t pick up a stall with your ailerons. And with an Anson you could pick up a stall with your ailerons. You’d have to pop out and kick the wing and it’d come good. It was that placid. It used to stall at forty seven. It was nearly stopped. So I, from that area, a lot of the chaps we were with that went solo at Mallala, from Mallala, and stayed in Australia they went on to Beauforts. And I often, I often put down to the fact that so many of our lads went on to Beauforts and spun in. And I think it was picking up their wings with their ailerons. But that was some of the things. Very awkward to fly solo. You had to do solo flying in an Anson but it meant getting out of your seat and changing petrol tanks and they were sliding ones. Ones that you slide up and slide down cutting off and they weren’t ever maintained very well. But you had to get out of your seat, get over to the side of the aircraft and try and change tanks and get back to the seat again before you hit the ground. Very rough. It was all good training. ‘Cause when we got to Point Cook after we got our wings we didn’t know we were alive when we got on to the Oxfords at Point Cook because they were comfortable. Automatic undercarriage and flaps and all those sorts of things. It was good.
AP: Moving up in the world.
RW: But learning to fly in Australia was very easy compared to going over to the UK. Picking up the practice of flying there that they were more precise. When you got to the UK in the RAF initially we had to wait a while before we could start flying. And I did something that you’d be familiar with. We had to learn aerodrome control. Which was, was good fun at the time but the practice then of course was the way you approached it you approached the landing and did your circuit before you landed each time which made it a bit of hold up when you were trying to land. The queuing up to get on the ground particularly if it was two squadrons on one station was a bit, a bit tricky. But the Ansons never gave us any trouble as I can recall really. The, the second pilot in an Anson used to set up as a single pilot but the co-pilot had to plunge his control in with, you know, a ratchet to get the controls picked up. And quite often it would jam and wouldn’t do it so you were left to hang on ‘til the co-pilot could do change over and change pilots. But they were very old fashioned. Lovely old things. They had no vices. That’s why a Lancaster has got no vices. I think they learned a lot from that.
AP: Avro. Avro. Yeah. Background coming through I suppose. Can you remember much of the process of a beam approach? You were saying you did beam approaches at Point Cook. Can you just tell how they worked and what they were.
RW: Well beam approach. Beam approaching the point, that of course, you understand that the beam approach is a beam. A signal that you’re getting and once you get on to a beam it’s a single note until you drift off the beam. If you go to the left well you get dit dit dit dit dit so you know you’ve come off the beam. Steady note and your, and the other one would be a dash, dah dah just to try and get you back on the thing. But the beam set up in Point Cook was what they called a four degree beam that went out in that. The further you got out the wider the beam was. And when we got to the UK of course, we said yes we’d done beam work. ‘Righto. Off you go and do beam work on Oxfords.’ But their degree of signal was point four — not four degrees. It was point four of a degree. So you really once you got near the control that was sending out the beam you had to be spot on. Which was good. Once again good training. But to be truthful when you think back on it we didn’t use the beam that much. Occasionally with the fog you might try and put it on but you were never left to go around training too long while the fog was coming in and you couldn’t find the approach.
AP: So beam approach though — you trained on them though.
RW: You trained on them but you never, never used it.
AP: Not usually used in anger.
RW: Well, I don’t remember. Maybe some other people did. I can’t remember. At Foulsham, when I, when I finally got to 192 the, the aerodrome there at Norfolk was on low lands but it was fitted with FIDO so we had the approach shown with the burning the old FIDO so we didn’t really need the beam.
AP: That’s, that’s one way of getting around it I suppose. Fair enough.
RW: I never used it anyway because each time, coming back we were usually in the mornings and it was ok.
AP: How did you get to the UK?
RW: Oh the UK. From Sydney. There on an American vessel. I think it was nineteen days to San Francisco. Across the States by train to New York. And then from New York to Gourock in Scotland on the Isle de France. A big French liner that eventually was sunk in the harbour. At New York — sabotaged. Sabotaged but we got there. It was big but very rough getting there and what I liked about it — when we landed in Gourock which was just up north of Glasgow I read the notice in the train. It didn’t say if there’s an air raid. It said when there’s an air raid you do — [laughs] so it was just a difference.
AP: That was, that was going to be my next question actually. First impressions of wartime. Of the UK in wartime.
RW: That surprised me because we got down to Brighton there. Once we got off the boat we went to Brighton to wait. To wait to start our training again. Flying training after doing the aerodrome control. But it [pause] very close. Brighton’s not that far. It’s only twenty two miles, I think, across the channel to, to the occupied France at that stage. And every now and then a 109 would come over and particularly on parade mornings. He’d come up, rip up to Brighton and try and catch us, you know if we were on the parade ground and things like that. That’s what you got used to it. And then of course going to London occasional raids coming across until — you know the raids really stopped and then started again with the buzz bombs and that sort of thing but we got used to it there. The people sort of take it naturally. I can remember even going down Brighton this 109 used to come across at regular intervals. But people would be queuing up for something. Old ladies. You know. Civilians. And blokes going to pubs. And as the warning came out that he was coming again people would just drop on the ground. Once he flew over they’d all stand up again. So that took a bit of getting used to.
AP: Just a part of life I suppose.
RW: It was really.
AP: Yeah.
RW: And particularly going in to London. To see them sleeping on the underground tube stations.
AP: Yeah. I’ll be there in a minute. So you mentioned aerodrome control. Tell me a bit about that.
RW: Well it would be so different from yours. The girls did it all. It was just that we were standing by in case we were needed. But originally the idea was you would ask for permission to land which was always cheating because within ten miles [laughs] ‘I’m number one.’ Everyone dodging their position, but the idea was you came over, identified yourself over the ‘drome. You went on the, about at a thousand feet straight down the runway, to the crosswind. You’d go cross wind and tell them when you were turning cross wind. Go across wind. Come down wind. Down wind, middle of the down wind you’d let the tower know that you were downwind. Then you were turning in to crosswind again and then once you were in the funnels you said, if you were in funnels you just notified you’re in the funnels and you were given the ok to land. But that’s all it was. It was just an acknowledgment and then you had each one doing it and then turn. And you spaced yourself out. Now, does that make sense to you?
AP: Yeah I can, I can understand. I’ve got a vague idea.
RW: It’s none of this coming straight in [laughs]
AP: No. No. Of course not. No. Of course not. Just sort of moving, moving forward a little bit.
RW: Yes.
AP: To, to operational life.
RW: Yes.
AP: You said, you know, when two squadrons arrive at the same time. How did they sort that out?
RW: Well, they just, as you, as you called in. Whichever your call sign was. They’d give you a spot. In other words you know, when you were overhead. If you were overhead you told them you were overhead. If you said you were approaching then they’d give you a situation. If you got too many there that, around, that they were, you were starting to stack them around the aerodrome which was a bit dangerous then they’d send you off on a cross country. Give you a, you know —
AP: Come back.
RW: Anyone short of fuel would be happy but being on special duties we didn’t carry a bomb so we only carried overloads. So at any time we came in we were always sent on cross-countrys. They knew we weren’t and of course cunning ones that had lost a motor you know they would say, ‘I’m approaching on three.’
AP: On three.
RW: Or something like this. To get priority. Feather his motor.
AP: One veteran I have interviewed for this programme said — he was a wireless operator and he said he patched in the more powerful power supply in to their RT.
RW: Yeah.
AP: So that they had a range of thirty miles.
RW: Oh yes. That’s it.
AP: Instead of fifteen.
RW: He’d be saying he was overhead and he could be thirty miles away.
AP: That’s right. Sneaky.
RW: And I think after a while the, I think the signal would come in and then they realised they were weak and you’d say, ‘Stand by,’ and if you could understand he was cheating a bit because we [pause] normally, on special duties, they were very secretive. And of course we only would, sometimes only use two out of the squadron and things of that nature and wherever you were sent was a little bit off key because instead of being through Bomber Command you went through Air Ministry. Which was rather unusual. Now, now you might have to correct me here but I think our instructions came through Air Ministry. From department A14. That doesn’t mean a thing but it was out of Air Ministry. It wasn’t out of Bomber Command because old Butch, he can’t stand — unless you were dropping a bomb you’re no use [laughs] but we were given that and would have been given the — I’d better not get too far ahead of myself.
AP: That’s alright. We’ll, we’ll —
RW: But that was the idea. There was always a little bit of a give and take with the approaching.
AP: Very good. Alright. After Brighton what happened next?
RW: After Brighton, went back on to Tiger Moths. Of all things at a place called Fairoaks but it was really Windsor Castle’s —
AP: Take a couple.
RW: With Fairoaks and we were given, and we were now sent to Smith’s Lawns. Smith Lawn, which was Windsor Castle’s own private airfield. So we did our flying from Windsor Castle. Smith’s Lawn it was known as. And that was just, just routine. Getting familiar with English conditions and flying the Tiger Moth. We weren’t particularly given any aerobatics to do. It was mainly cross-countrys and things of that nature to get us used to the countryside really. Because as we, as we went there you got a bit sick of just doing cross-countrys because I remember once that they’d taken all the street names down. I shouldn’t say town names so it was always a cunning move if you were ever lost was to try and nip down to a railway station to see what the [laughs] where you were. And they didn’t have that there so I was going in and out doing this cross-country. So many hours up and back on different courses they give you. And I’d put, “Crossed road. Crossed railway. Crossed road.” I couldn’t mention, I didn’t know a town. Any there. When I handed my navigation papers in the instructor very sneeringly said, ‘What did you do? Go by road and come by rail?’ [laughs] But no that was the sort of training we did there and from there on I don’t know how many hours we would have done there. It was very interesting being at Smiths Lawn being Windsor Castle. We had one of the lads on flight with us. An English lad. Or English Czechoslovakian. He was royalty from — Prince, oh I know, he was Prince Peter. And he was from Yugoslavia or somewhere. One of those states over there . And as a result with the prince there the RAF were looking after him a bit. So when it came Sunday we were all invited to go to the chapel at Windsor Castle with the royal family. And it was interesting too. He of course went off and sat with the royalty. The ones he knew. But we, the lads we all stood at the back there of the chapel just having a good look around. But of course it was Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth were there with the King. King and queen. And afterwards we went for a bit of a tour around the, around the castle and we got to their own home garden and of course the royal family were interested in growing food for, for the sake of wartime restrictions. And we noticed that Princess Elizabeth’s garden, she had a plot of her own, it was perfect. You know beautifully done. And I thought, oh I know what’s happened here. You know they’ve got the gardeners to do it for her. Then we were taken [laughs] then we were taken to see Princess Margaret’s garden and it was a shambles [laughs]. Weeds and everything. So no she obviously did her own gardening and so did the king and queen. We presumed. We didn’t look at theirs. But that was just one little thing.
AP: Yeah.
RW: That was Smith’s Lawn. While we were waiting then to go back to, to go on to Oxfords. Our next.
AP: What particularly made England different to fly in than Australia?
RW: The, the amount of flying from Tiger Moths and the Ansons we had there was that here we have set towns. You know you’d go to Benalla. You know you’d hardly, I’ve forgotten half the towns up there now. Wangaratta, and the different, Winton Lakes and things but in England there were villages and towns and little bits and pieces here, there, everywhere. Like a patchwork quilt compared to an expanse. And that’s what we got used to. One of the things that the aerodromes, usually — not like ours you know. Benella was miles away and there wasn’t another aerodrome anywhere near it. But if we were in England there was an aerodrome somewhere near you somewhere so you had to watch your pick. In fact, it got to the stage of, really in the UK that on the approach to the different ‘dromes — like Foulsham would be FU. You’d see FU up there so you’d know you were heading for Foulsham. But there would be five or six ‘dromes all around that you could jump into if, if you knew who they were. But you had no identification really from small towns. In other words I’m thinking of when we got to South Cerney when we did proper navigation we flew at Bibury which was a little village say a couple of miles away. Then further north was Cheltenham and Gloucester and places. Not Gloucester. Oh, Cheltenham. See I’ve lost track of the towns but they were bigger towns heading towards Manchester and the Cotswolds and places like that. But it was different flying. You had to get used to the difference of finding out where you were. But eventually that was while we were just flying on AFU. Just on, we were virtually doing solo in the Oxfords.
AP: Alright. What happened after that?
RW: After that. That was beam. Once we got on to Oxfords you went and did the beam course again and then you did advanced flying. Even to the extent of, a lot of the instructors you had at AFU were ex-operational pilots having a rest from operations. And the, it was just a matter of flying around and getting used to things. One of them even said you know who we were flying around with the instructor would get in and say oh we’ll go in flying here, there and everywhere and go down towards Bath or some place like that. And he said, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘It’s too nice just to be sitting here doing nothing.’ He said, ‘How would you like to try a roll?’ And I thought, my God. A roll. I was rotten in a Tiger [laughs]
AP: Rolling in an Oxford.
RW: He said, ‘Let’s do a roll.’ I’d do the roll, but of course he did the roll but it meant that we had to stay in the air for ten minutes because all the gyros had tumbled [laughs] So that was, that was your training for not using your instruments all the time. You couldn’t use your instruments for ten minutes. But that was it. He was a Canadian pilot but he didn’t, he did the roll alright but it was a barrel roll. But I thought I’ll do it when I’m not seen.
AP: A bit flak happy perhaps.
RW: He could have been. Yes.
AP: Yeah.
RW: I think he was actually relaxing after operational stuff. I don’t know what he, I can’t remember what he came off to start with but a lot of them weren’t staff pilots there. You had a lot of staff pilots on these places to beam courses.
AP: Alright. And the next step was Operational Training Unit.
RW: OTU. Yes. OTU was good. That was on Wellingtons. Wellington 10s. I did pretty well on, on Wellingtons except the aircraft we were flying. They were clapped out. We had to do, you know, cross countrys at night and this sort of thing to imitation targets and that type of training. Getting used to it. Getting used to night affiliation where you’d get attacked by a fighter aircraft with cameras to see how you go. But on one occasion there the aircraft I picked up was u/s. It was u/s. You couldn’t fly it that night. So we had to get out of that, go and get another aircraft and then pick up with a dummy raid. But it meant I got attacked left, right and centre but halfway through it I lost a motor. And then I had a fire in the, a fire in the wireless ops room. He put the fire out. I said, ‘Righto Lin.’ They were always grizzling they never came out front to have a look out. So I said to Lin, the wireless op, I said, ‘Come up and have a look out now. Now that you’ve put the fire out.’ No sooner got him sitting up front there than the motor went. And of course — had to go home. So we came home and of all things had to do a, I had to a left hand circuit instead of a right hand circuit because I’d lost the port motor. And it came in on one and put it down beautifully, I say it myself because It was a perfect landing and the crew reckoned it was only perfect one I ever did [laughs] But that was, that gave me a, I think that started off why I finished up on special duties because I got reassessed as above average and then, well volunteered for required, didn’t require, ‘Would you volunteer for Pathfinders?’ ‘Yes,’ and was accepted for Pathfinders. And the crew. And that was at OTU so that was on Wellingtons to then, and got, and got a commission. I was commissioned from OTU and then finished up joining, doing heavy duty conversion to the big, to the Halifax 3s and eventually a squadron.
AP: Tell me how you met your crew.
RW: The old — everyone in the hangar [laughs] Yes. Now, the, the hangar there. There was twenty pilots, nineteen navs because I had, I had a navigator with me that I wasn’t satisfied so I had to leave him behind to do more training. Bomb aimer, wireless op and forty gunners. And when I went in to the place there a little bloke came up to me and said, ‘Have you got a crew yet?’ and I said, ‘No. Would you like to be mine?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ And he was the wireless operator. In the meantime he’d gathered a bomb aimer and one gunner. But that was, it just sorted out. Eventually the navigator was replaced because he would have been a sick, a navigator gone sick the previous course so he was a spare and I picked him up as a spare and I used him all the way through.
AP: What — what sort of things did you do when you were on leave in England to relax?
RW: We’d go to Lady Ryder’s billets and things. I didn’t have a girlfriend or anything like that. I was sort of a bit keen on the flying and all that sort of thing and a bit more, I was interested in, you know, I wanted to be a pilot and that was it. But a lot of the boys had girlfriends. The crew. OTU there was an Australian pilot. We jumped up together. We’d flown since the time we left Australia till we came to OTU and he and I would probably go to a different billet as they were called in those days. Staying with different people and enjoying the peaceful side. Go to Edinburgh for a trip up to see what Edinburgh was like. Glasgow. But that’s about all on leave. There was, I didn’t have any relatives over there to visit but that would be about all I can recall really what we did on leave. Go and get, go to — you’d mix with different courses you were on. Perhaps you’d get someone a bit familiar when you were at AFU. There would just be pilots only so you were more or less stuck with pilots. Perhaps if you met a mate there you would go and have a few drinks and go into town for a night. That business. Have a drink up.
AP: What was, what was the local pub like? What sort of things happened?
RW: The local pubs. The AFU was Cheltenham and you got to know how to get over the back fence. And that rationing had come in and every now and then they ran out of beer so you had to know which fence you have to go in. A lot of the beer in the pubs in, particularly in Cheltenham, very posh towns there. Very lovely towns really. And to go into the pubs in our dark blue uniforms quite often they had, instead of beer they’d have ciders and you got used to watching your step there. I was leaning on the bar, with my elbow on the bar, sort of, say drinking and with that the barmaid come up and said, ‘Love take your elbow off the bar, it’s in all the drinks.’ And I said, ‘Oh sorry.’ She said, ‘No. It takes the dye out of your uniform.’ [laughs] So I had better watch this. You did meet the locals in the pubs. They’d quite often take you on. Or they’d be playing darts and they’d be all over the place like madwomen on scooters. You know they’d be throwing their — and whatever game they’d challenge you to a game. And of course immediately they challenged out came their special darts. You’d play them. You’d play. They’d beat you and you’d have to buy them a beer. But they were cunning. They conned us [laughs]
AP: What, what was your first impression of a Halifax?
RW: The Hali I thought was lovely. I was very impressed. Actually when I did the aerodrome control it was Halies then but of course they were the old Hali 2s and 5s when I was doing that. And once again when you’d done Conversion Unit. They’d all been all clapped out. The aircraft we were flying had been ex-French squadrons we were using but when I got used to her she was beautiful. I loved the Hali. She was good to fly. She was responsive. Never gave me any trouble. The only thing I’d say that was wrong with the Halifax I think everybody had the same trouble — brakes. The brakes weren’t effective. You know, you’d have full brake on and you’d still keep going. But I liked the Bristol Hercules. They were very powerful engines so she could climb like a homesick angel as we’d say. They were good. They were comfortable. They were responsive to fly. I had no complaint with them.
AP: Alright. Now you’re getting towards your squadron at this point. Where was that?
RW: Squadron. Yeah. 192.
AP: Where was 192 based?
RW: Hmmn?
AP: Where was the squadron based?
RW: This was in Foulsham in Norfolk.
AP: Foulsham. That’s right. Cool. Right. So where and how did you live at Foulsham?
RW: Lived there as, once again an officer at that stage so that was in billets mainly. Mainly pilots together because the crew was still — the flight engineer was, he had done a special tour. He had already done one tour, the flight engineer. Which we picked up at Marston Moor when we did the conversion. So he was, he would be in the officer’s mess with us and and the rest of the crew would be in NCO quarters. But we were usually two to a room perhaps. That would be — mostly if you got a room on your own you were lucky. But they’d bunk you in with someone else. And 192 of course had, as I’ve showed you that photo with, they were all the Halifax pilots but we had a Mosquito flight on 192 because when you, when you accepted special duties we weren’t bound by the thirty, thirty trips for a tour. We had to do forty five straight. And once you were forty five straight you were tour expired. They never wanted you again on that. For that reason. So you were a little bit different from Bomber Command itself because we had our own set up there. And it was comfortable. Good living. It’s just someone that spoke to me the other day. In fact it was Laurie Macpherson? Laurie. Laurie Larmer?
AP: Oh Laurie Larmer. Yeah. of course.
RW: Laurie. We were talking to him and he said, ‘Whitey, can you remember when we got the bacon and eggs before we went on a trip?’ And I said, ‘Oh yes.’ He said, ‘What time did you get it?’ And I said, ‘We used to get it about, I don’t know, depending on what time we were going out. 11 o’clock. I don’t know. 12 o’clock. Depending on when we were going to fly out. Yeah.’ He said, ‘Ah. We used to have ours in the morning.’ And I said, ‘What?’ Then I didn’t realise. He was doing daylights.
AP: Oh of course.
RW: Because we were all, we were still doing night work so it was just one of those things. You forget little things like that. The same old thing. People could never get used to it. Telling you about, you know how the Benzedrine tablets were there to take, you know. These days we would have had so many druggies we wouldn’t have known what happened [laughs] But that was, I didn’t realised that the Benzedrine tablets were to keep you alert whilst — I never used them which I was lucky to say. But some people did. They’d sort of get their Benzedrine, they’d take the wakey wakey as it was called and of course then all of a sudden the op would be cancelled and they were bright eyed. They’d sit there playing billiards half the night because they were awake [laughs] I learned that but I believe the idea was you took your Benzedrine tablet when you were coming in to the target and of course — so as far as we were concerned we found that very often we didn’t have targets. We, most of the time if it was a special we were escorting a bomber group out you’d got the track drawn in. I think with operational units the track was in the, the navigator didn’t have to alter course for as long as it was in the ten mile bracket that they gave for the ten. Now we were, one of us would be on one side and one, the other from 192 would be on the other side checking on the counter measures. It was all radar. Radar. Radio and radar counter measures. Basically with the special operator. And of course depending on which operator you had, he wasn’t a regular one. When you had to there were two waves going in. We had to hang around the target area whilst the next wave was coming in which was usually two minutes and two minutes and two minutes. So it was always hang around waiting and not very often we would change over. We wouldn’t be in communication with the other 192 bloke and just hang around. The big thing was that when we did go out because normally we would just wander. They’d give us so many set courses to go and fly and we were just flying with the, with the RCMs listening in to what they could do. If they, if they went on a target then the German speaking one would — with 192 they can tune into the, we could tune into the Germans talking. And of course no good for us but the German translator he could chip in to give them the fighters the wrong info which was a bit sneaky [laughs] But no the funniest thing was that on one of the ones that we were in just out of Oslo. Norway. Tonsberg. When we came and the bombers had done their two minutes and we were hanging around waiting for the next wave to come in and while we were doing and whilst we were there we were having a marvellous time. We could see the lights of Sweden in the distance so we were busy. So busy were we looking around not being alert. We were looking at the lights of Stockholm or wherever it was and over us — we were here and over like that, it would have been as high as this ceiling an 88 went right, just over us like that. Here I am down sitting here. We’re having seven or eight blokes all supposed to be looking out for it and he just went. In fact I can see, I can still see the dirt on its belly to this day and I ducked [laughs] But it one of those things that only goes to show you, you know a moment’s lack of concentrations. Everyone’s gazing. And I think the German bloke was doing the same thing. I think he was looking at the lights and wasn’t looking because after a while our operators could pick out when, when we were being tabbed. And the Germans were very good at your height. The flak bursts were pretty well spot on with the height but they couldn’t find you just where you were. And the rear gunner was always very much aware that if he saw two flashes coming very close to his tail he’d let us know when to divert and get away from it. But that’s about it really. About the only excitement we ever had. Except that while we were cruising around, and before all this aircraft where the 88 went over us the crew said, ‘How about,’ because we had money. We carried the gold sovereigns to give to the patriots, ‘Why don’t we have a forced landing in Sweden, spend the money, wait for them to rescue us and we’ll go home and perhaps the war will be finished.’ Which it wasn’t at that stage. And I was the most miserable man you’ve ever met. ‘I said Martin. Mark. You won’t do it. You won’t do it,’[laughs] It was just a bit of a joke but that I think was why we were, I can say messing around arguing about whether we should make a forced landing in Sweden just to get rescued.
AP: A very, very forced landing.
RW: Where was the honour amongst thieves I don’t know.
AP: So what, what sort of things— you were talking about the German speaking operators.
RW: He was special, he would come in once we’d — we didn’t know what they were doing really. We had no idea. They, they’d come and get on board. They were always known, as far as we were concerned they was a co-pilot. Just a squadron bloke learning to, if you got, if you were forced down he was Milner. I only knew him. He just joined us to do an experienced trip. You know. You knew nothing about him because you couldn’t let on that he knew how to speak German if you were forced down. But that’s about it really. I don’t know really what else I can tell you.
AP: What I was just trying, I have been reading a little bit about the radio counter measures.
RW: Indeed.
AP: And the sorts of things that were done.
RW: Initially we were told about the idea. Because, you know we thought oh bloody hell, you know. We want to drop bombs when you go there and special duties were ok but it was just special duties on what we were doing. Just fiddling around with the special operator. And it was initially told to us that the Window was cut to a certain length and it had to be cut to the length of whatever the radar, or the radios were working on. So that the window would be effective against jamming the radar. But I don’t know if that’s right or not. That’s my recollection of what we were told we were doing. And the idea was that if you, no matter where were just floating around in a — going up to Norway you know. It was still active so far as the Germans were concerned because at that stage we’re now getting there that France had been occupied up to Paris at that stage. So there’s nothing, we didn’t have to be required to go to Italy which we were initially sent to get to know, you know, what was wrong with the Italian radar. But it was all German so it didn’t make much difference I gather. But it’s, we had to, we had to take a photo of where we’d been though. You must remember that no matter what, what jobs you did you still had to take a photo of something to prove that you’d done your trip. Which evidently at times certain blokes would get the twitch. All they’d do is go out and wander around the North Sea, drop their bomb and come back. And so then you had to take a photo of your ,where you’d been to prove that you’d done a trip.
AP: How, how would you time that as a special operator? Without a real target. You just go somewhere and say that’ll do?
RW: With the real target you’d just go and bomb him. If, in the case of the one I just mentioned. Tonsberg there. That at some stage of the game you’d go over the near target, let go of the photoflash and go home. But until, until you’d got your trip because obviously there would be a timer on your camera because we were supposed to stay there for always for the second wave to come in so they’d have to. You’d have to prove your point.
AP: So, so your tour essentially was just go flying?
RW: Go flying.
AP: In random directions.
RW: The only.
AP: And then come back.
RW: The only thing we had that, I’d say that JU88, I would think that he’d been sent. Because he was almost the same height as us, you know, just over the top of us, that I think he’d been sent to find us and he didn’t find us thank God because otherwise, it might have been a different story.
AP: So —
RW: That’s about the only excitement I can give you, Adam.
AP: It sounds like an ideal tour for someone who just wants to fly an aeroplane.
RW: The only thing is if you had to fly you’ve always got the twitch. No matter where you are you’re supposed to be, you know ready and willing and able to do evasive action. Because every time we did there because when the war finished they even sent us out to do [pause] oh God. Simulated attacks. I can’t think of the word. Affiliation. Fighter affiliation. You had to do fighter affiliation and then do corkscrews and that sort of thing. So you were always on the tip of your toes. It wasn’t relaxing flying.
AP: Of course not. What —
RW: The only part that was relaxing was the fact that the Bristol Hercs were a very reliable motor. Hardly coughed.
AP: The — you were saying before about doing aerobatics in an Anson and they toppled the gyros.
RW: Yeah.
AP: How did a corkscrew —
RW: Oh no, the Oxfords
AP: The Oxfords, sorry. Oxford. Anson.
RW: The Oxford. Yeah.
AP: They’re very similar [laughs] but how did a corkscrew affect the gyros in the Halifax?
RW: Oh the, well we didn’t go out. We didn’t. You had a certain a certain limitation on what we could do. With the gyros were of course actually in the cockpit. They were in the Sperry panel there and the gyros were set up in the thing. Whereas in the Halifax the master control was down the back end where you had the gyroscope down there which was in a cradle. And a bit like a centrifuge I suppose it would be called. But it didn’t affect them at all.
AP: Ok. So it was sort of more designed for —
RW: Because really we didn’t, you know, with all due respect to the Hali a thirty degree you very seldom would put her wing down to forty five to do it. But as long as you were giving your gunners maximum deflection that’s all you had to do. And of course when you do your corkscrew and of course up top you were a sitting beauty for any [laughs]. Anyway, but you didn’t really throw her on her back. No.
AP: Right.
RW: But the old Sperry panel, I think it was the gyros were fitted in the panel. I gather that they were. I could be wrong on that.
AP: Not a, not a technician so I don’t know. How did you, how did you cope with the, I guess the stress of these operations? Was there stress?
RW: I think there was. I think you slept well. I think you were actually six, eight hours. See the minimum you would do would be six and a half and otherwise eight. Eight hours. By the time you’d done you were tired really and you went to sleep. I think we, we only had to operate once every three days. It gave you time to recover from the stress because I think once you were where you’re going and you’re going over enemy territory no one’s very friendly to you if — whatever’s happening. There will always be flak around you. Not intensive as the target. To be truthful I’m not too sure. I think we were young and stupid. [laughs]
AP: Fair enough.
RW: I don’t think. I think it must affect people differently because up until that stage, you know, until we got to squadron it was just joyful flying. Whether you were doing a conversion on to a four engine aircraft you were still just practicing over England. But once you went over the enemy coast you really felt you, instead of relaxing you really would hang on and I presume that’s what it was. And I think as a captain of the aircraft you’re inclined to get a bit snappy with people and I think that at that stage you got on well with your crew but you very seldom complained to them about it. They crew would complain. The navigator would always complain that you weren’t flying, you know, true course that he wanted. And this and that and all the rest of it and, and of course the bomb aimer had nothing to do and he was our second nav. And they used to always be, we had the friction between the navigator and the bomb aimer in jobs to do. In other words it was a bit useless having a bomb aimer on but he had to be on there to say it was an ordinary bombing aircraft.
AP: Ok.
RW: And that bit. My navigator had, the navigator I got was a very good one. Thank God I did because as I say I had to lose the first one and, but he was always late. Once, you know you’d go to the briefings for whatever we were doing that particular night and he would always be the last one to get in, you know. He’d always be dawdling to get in to the briefing. And it used to irritate me a bit and I’d tick him off for not getting there on time. And eventually I thought I had to teach him a lesson because we were, the boss, or the flight commander said to me would I go down to Woodbridge. You know, it’s an emergency ‘drome down there. Evidently someone had left something down there and so they decided to send an aircraft down to pick it up. A table or whatever it was [laughs] but I went down to Manston to, I said, ‘I’ll go down and pick it up for you.’ So I told Derek and the gang to, you know, ‘We’ll go off about half past ten. We’ll go down to Manston. Pick up this table they want us to get.’ And of course I’m waiting there. You have to pick up your ‘chutes and all that because you were going out and Derek’s not there. So I said to Terry who was the bomb aimer/navigator, I said to Terry, I said, ‘Could you navigate me down to Manston?’ He said, ‘Oh yes.’ I said, ‘Right. We’ll go.’ So we all marched out, went out to the aircraft, picked up the aircraft less a navigator. And went down there and when I came back of course there was a furious navigator [laughs] ‘How dare you take off without me.’ I said, ‘Just to show you you’re not essential.’ But you know it’s one of those silly things. One thing that you can find that you get a bit snappy with them but the — when you’re taking off with, well you’ll probably see on those pilot’s notes where the controls are very far apart and I haven’t got a very big hand. So taking off, and with four, four Bristol Hercules all pulling in one direction your aircraft wants to weathercock and quite often you’d let two go. Let two of the throttles go and just keep going with two. And your engineer would be standing behind you and he would be watching his gauges which he was supposed to do because when you’re taking off your fuel pressure goes down. And anyway, he was supposed to carry on just when I got full bore, then he’d bring the other throttles up to me and once we were taking off and it was on this Manston trip I think that he must, the fuel pressure lights were blinking like hell because I could get a reflection from them and I thought it was trouble. And he had shot the two throttles up and locked it. Locked the throttles on, which is grip. And of course all of a sudden I started doing a mighty spin so I had to unlock it and take them back and I ticked him off for not watching what he was doing. But he was really watching the pressure gauges. But you can get a bit crusty with them I’d say. If I was under tension. I don’t know. I think so. I think probably the tension caught up with me in later life.
AP: How did your tour end?
RW: The war ended.
AP: The war ended. Oh fair enough.
RW: I only got twenty two in so had I, had I got a full trip tour to — it finished on the — the last op I did was the 25th of the April which, the war was still going, but you know, it was knocked off. And initial thing was when I said that we were only going to do forty five trips. We were going to do thirty on Halifaxes and fifteen on Mosquitoes. So the final fifteen I would have been transferred from the Halifax flight to do fifteen on the Mossies. So that, I missed out on that. So that just finished. After the war we then did [pause] it was called Operation Post Mortem where we took English radar operators over to the German side of things for them to operate the German equipment and we then put on a mock raid in daylight so that they could see the effectiveness we did. We did a mock raid with Lancasters. The whole lot. In daylight. Over to [pause] I can’t think. Gjol. A place called Gjol in Denmark. We did that as a bombing trip and it showed us, you know where the faults were in the British equipment and where the faults were in the German equipment. It was quite an interesting exercise. But after the Post Mortem then the squadron disbanded and that was it. And I came back at Christmas time.
AP: How did you then find re- adjusting to civilian life?
RW: A little bit ratty I think, then. I think I was getting stuck into the grog too at that stage in the game and I think that might have been a little bit of an indication of what it was but that was when we came back home. And as you can imagine I said I started off as an office boy in the Melbourne City Council. And it, you know it was a pretty dead sort of existence after [pause] after the flying days. And then I didn’t settle so I went off and went into insurance broking. And that was what I finished the rest of my days as. I only flew once. In 1953 they called us up on the reserve to train as instructors and we’re back at Moorabbin on Tigers. So I got some flying in again. But I tell you what. I wasn’t the brave boy I was at Benalla. When, you know — I think we had to finish, at Benalla we had to finish our aerobatics by three thousand feet and I’d get to three thousand feet — too bloody cold. This’ll be fine. Another thousand [laughs]
AP: That’s —
RW: So there it is. It caught up with me eventually. That’s about it I think unfortunately.
AP: So how [pause] my last question then.
RW: Yes.
AP: How is Bomber Command remembered? What’s its legacy? I mean, how do you want to see it remembered more importantly?
RW: I think what you’re doing now is ideal because being an odd bod which was the only thing left for us originally when we came back in so far as the Air Force Association which we, you know, we kept up straightaway through ourselves and odd bods there, But I think what you’re doing at the moment is something peculiar, special –not peculiar. Special to Bomber Command and the Bomber Command boys and seeing you’re part of their group then that’s the place I find it’s more comforting. And I think that now we’ve started to take it there I think quite a few bomber boys including myself were very disappointed with the RAF not giving us the bar for the odd bods. For the area we did. And eventually John [Frayne?] and Laurie — I think we both complained to John [Frayne] that nothing was done to remember Bomber Command and I don’t think we actually had a day declared which now is taken as been either the 30th of June or the 1st of July. I take it. Would that be right?
AP: As in the one we’ve just done?
RW: Yeah.
AP: So it’s yeah. The first Sunday in June is the day.
RW: 1st Sunday in June.
AP: Yeah.
RW: I had an idea it was either going to be the 30th no, the first Sunday in June.
AP: The first Sunday in June.
RW: Now, that’s, that is ideal. I think it’s just what we need there. Because Anzac Day really doesn’t mean as much to us and now that we are just going to travel in a motor car I don’t find is it’s like a parade really. But I think what we did yesterday was worthwhile and just feel that though yesterday was unlucky that the weather didn’t give us much chance to talk. Plus that bloke pinched my umbrella [laughs] so if it’s raining there you’ll have to blame whoever it was. I don’t say pinched but he obviously took it by mistake. No. That was I think full marks to Jan Dimmock and the rest of you good folk on the committee now as I know. I thought you were doing it by yourself at one stage of the game.
AP: Not quite. We’ve got some good help.
RW: No. But you did a sterling job but you were battling by yourself for quite a while weren’t you?
AP: I wasn’t. There was, it was Jan and Ed Robbin set up the first one.
RW: Yes.
AP: I came on board about three years ago.
RW: Did you. That was round about the same time as —
AP: So I’ve been involved with about three now.
RW: I took an interest in Bomber Command then.
AP: It’s been, personally I moved to Melbourne about five and a half years ago so.
RW: And you came down from Sydney?
AP: I did.
RW: Three years ago did you Adam?
AP: A bit more than that but I so my background is Sydney. So I was in Canberra on Saturday night.
RW: Yes.
AP: At that gathering.
RW: At the gathering.
AP: And then came down early for our one on Sunday.
RW: Are they in each state?
AP: Not quite on the same day.
RW: No.
AP: There’s a few different days around the place.
RW: Ok.
AP: But yes. Except for the Northern Territory each capital city has a ceremony.
RW: I was just going to say yesterday we didn’t realised that there was that RSL thing was on at the shrine as well.
AP: Yeah. Yeah.
RW: Has that affected our attendance?
AP: I think it affected some of the dignitaries.
RW: Did it? Oh yes. Because there was quite a few apologies.
AP: Yeah. I think it kept their numbers down a little bit.
RW: A little bit.
AP: Yeah. And it meant that we had to sort of rush through a bit and get out quite quickly afterwards but —
RW: Was that, were they before you?
AP: They were after. They were at 4 o’clock.
RW: I wasn’t aware of that.
AP: Yeah. Neither were we when we booked it.
RW: Serve them right.
AP: Yeah. Oh well. But yeah it all, It worked out quite nicely. We’re looking forward to the next one.
RW: Yeah. Looking forward to the next year. That’s good. And thanks Adam.
AP: Any final words before I turn the tape off.
RW: No. Just to wish you well and whether you find as I say I have no memorabilia that I can really give you that is of value because a little thing that actually happened there. When I was getting commissioned I had a month off or something. They did all the commissioning in the UK. And I was down — staying down in London whilst I was getting measured for my uniform I think. Something like that. And I had a bike, a kit bag and a suitcase, and I was going to Earl’s Court which was where we stayed overnight on leave. And whilst I was booking in I had three things to get inside. So I left my suitcase, took my bike and kitbag in and someone pinched my suitcase from outside. And in it was all the, all the papers. Quite a lot of bombing atlases and maps I had there but someone pinched it and eventually when I got back I found out that he got six months for pinching it. But did I have this Halifax book there.
AP: Yeah. I think it’s in this pile.
RW: Halifax. There was just something to read. That’s something that you don’t really see. We used to call them H sheets. That was [laughs] there was my perfect landing. I had to keep it [laughs]. The little bit down below.
AP: That’s commission of — yeah. Very nice. Perfect single engine landing. You’re, you’re not the only veteran who has told me flying a Wellington and something —
RW: Goes wrong.
AP: Engines stops or something like that. You’re about the eighth.
RW: Eighth. Really?
AP: It happens a lot.
RW: Mind you the poor old things were clapped out.
AP: Yeah. Of course they were.
RW: The very thing that happened with that there — the Halifax that I ended, the Wellington that I changed over to and took the one that the engine broke down — the reason why it made such a fuss is that ten days later that Wimpy was out on a cross-country in daylight because that was at night time, but daylight, and it went in. Killed the lot of them. And it sort of brought it to light the fact that that particular one because it played up with me because I had a fire and the engine and the throttle, actually it was the throttle connection that vibrated out so it must have been vibrating terribly to ruin it within ten days from being —
AP: It happened again.
RW: Previously being done.
AP: Yeah.
RW: So it was a bit of a shame.
AP: Yeah. Who was the last bloke? Someone told me a very similar story as well. How they flew. And it was a Wellington and it had a problem and then a couple of days later someone else flew it and in they went.
RW: Well, that was it. You just couldn’t.
AP: Yeah.
RW: You know, you can’t, you couldn’t tell and that happened and that’s happened when you finally got there. You said what did I think of the Halifax because all of a sudden I’m not flying a 2 or 5 at Con Unit but I’m flying a brand new 3.
AP: Yeah. Like me driving a brand new car.
RW: Yes there you are. That’s right. Everything’s right. But thanks very much.
AP: No worries. I shall turn this off.
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AWhiteRR160607
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Interview with Ralph White
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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Sound
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eng
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01:09:52 audio recording
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Adam Purcell
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2016-06-07
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
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Ralph White grew up in Melbourne, Australia and originally joined the army. He later volunteered to become aircrew and undertook initial pilot training at Benella and Mallala in Australia before sailing to the UK via San Francisco and New York. He flew operations with 192 Squadron from RAF Foulsham and recounts and attack by a Ju 88. After the war he took part in Operation Post Mortem. English operators went to Germany to test their equipment while his squadron mounted a mock operation. This was to see how effective the British and German technology had been.
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Australia
Germany
Great Britain
England--Norfolk
New York (State)--New York
Victoria--Melbourne
Victoria
New York (State)
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
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Julie Williams
192 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
crewing up
Halifax
Ju 88
pilot
radar
RAF Foulsham
Tiger Moth
training
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1041/11414/AMunroKW160522.2.mp3
b281050359604d4fa350d7a3b662ec59
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Title
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Munro, Kenneth William
K W Munro
Description
An account of the resource
Eight items. An oral history interview with Kenneth Munro (Royal Air Force) and seven photographs. He flew operations as a night fighter navigator with 456 Squadron flying Mosquitos.
The collection was catalogued by Barry Hunter IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-05-23
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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Munro, KW
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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KM: I was not in Bomber Command. You know that of course.
AP: Well, you were, you were Mosquitoes.
KM: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: That’s close enough.
KM: Night fighters, is it? As Bob, he wasn’t, wasn’t the CO. He was next door to him. And the fellow Baz Howard, he came from Queensland and he, we were down at Bradwell Bay. Down Essex. Down there, and he said one day, we were all sitting down in the mess down there [coughs] and he said, I’m going up to see a friend up in Yorkshire.’ And Peter said, ‘Well, I’ll go with you in a Mosquito,’ and he said, ‘No. I’ll do it on my own.’ And he went up there and saw his mate and came back and he got just about back to Bradwell Bay and one of the motors conked out. And so just coming in and just landing it because they were putting all the things that went into the North Sea and taking them home and putting them in there and he, he went down and he said he couldn’t get in in a tight turn because one motor was gone. So he went around again and about just as he got over the, what’s it called, the Black Sea I think it is, and all of a sudden the other one went as well and he just sailed along. We could see him. He hit the water bumped his head on his forehead here and sank in about five feet of water. And we tried to get out because there was probably about sixty of us, probably a hundred guys from the [unclear] walk out to find him. But it was quite a big current was going like that and we couldn’t get out ourselves. Even if we turned the clocks off and walked and went out there but so he drowned in a Mosquito and just sank there. So it was a great shame but he was a very nice fellow too. But it just shows you. If you didn’t have to do the right thing and you didn’t get in the first landing, went around again. He should have just put it down.
AP: Regardless. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I’ll ask you about accidents and things later on I think. So, we may as well if you’re, we may as well kick off the proper interview.
KM: Yeah.
AP: And it’s recording now. I can see it jumping away there. So what I normally do I start with a little, a little spiel at the beginning. Just to sort of set the time and place.
KM: Yeah.
AP: And then I dive in. Ask a couple of questions. We’ll just have a chat.
KM: Yeah.
AP: For an hour, two hours. However long it takes.
KM: Yeah.
AP: Until you run out of stories.
KM: Yeah.
AP: Or one or the other of us begs for mercy. Right. So this interview for the International Bomber Command Centre is with Ken Munro who was a 456 Squadron Mosquito navigator during the Second World War. The interview is taking place at Ken’s place in Doncaster in Melbourne.
KM: Yeah. Applewood it’s called.
AP: Applewood it is called.
KM: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: That’s right. It is the 22nd of April err I’ll try again it’s the 22nd of May.
KM: Yeah.
AP: 2016. My name’s Adam Purcell. So Don, you’re not Don. You’re Ken. Sorry.
KM: Yeah.
AP: Ken, tell me something of your early life and what you were doing before the war.
KM: I got a job in nineteen, on the 24th of January 1938 in a chartered accountant’s called Wright and Roberts. Mr Wright died and it became MG Roberts. A well-known chartered accountant. And I stayed there until I got half way through the exams. Sort of half of the heart of it done and I was going to join the air force then. And he, Mr Roberts said why don’t you do your intermediate exam and then go? So I said ok. And by that time they didn’t want any more in the air force at that stage up in Russell Street and so I joined the Victorian Scottish. You know, you’ve probably seen my photograph over there. But I’ll show it to you later on but — so I was down there. Mount Martha was a beautiful spot down there in summertime. And after a while when the Yanks came in we had to go down to Back Beach at Ryde Down there. So we packed up. Went down there and we were there until about February I think it was. And then the word came around we were going to Fremantle and join the general who got out of Malaya. You know, when the Japs came. He got back to Australia. They didn’t like him doing that but he got there and we were to join up with him over there in the army at a place called Bushmead just out of Midland Junction there in Perth. They came around and there was a big van said, “Would you like to join the air force?” So I said, ‘Yes. I’d like to join the air force.’ So anyrate had to go, had to stay with the army. Went to Moura which is halfway to Geraldton. And at, finally they got in touch with me at Geraldton and said you can come down now to Busselton which is down near Bunbury. Down there. And so I was in the air force down there. And I was there probably for about probably about four or five weeks. I did a course down there.
AP: So that was your Initial Training School was it?
KM: Yeah. Then —
AP: Yeah.
KM: We went up to Pearce. You know, north of Perth. And we were there on guard you know. Still doing a job there. And there was Ralph White of course. Ralph White was the same thing. He was in the Victorian Scottish and so we got out. I came back to Somers in about [pause] September I think and then I did a course down there. Then Hubert Opperman, you know was our flight commander. He was, he was a teacher really. He was very good and he had another man called Ginger Markham, you know. And he came on top of the exercise we had to do and I was about second I think and he said. ‘We’re going to make you navigators.’ Which we didn’t want to be but [laughs] we sort of did well at arithmetic and that sort of thing. So anyrate, he said ‘Would you like to go to Canada?’ We both looked at one another. He said, ‘Well, if you’re not quite sure go to bed and sleep on it and come and tell me tomorrow.’ So we came back and said we’d like to go. So away we went and I went up to Bradwell, was it Bradwell Bay? Brad Park? Up there.
AP: Bradfield Park in Sydney.
KM: Yeah.
AP: Yeah.
KM: In to Sydney. And we were there. There for probably about three weeks and we were going on the Queen Elizabeth. And then somebody said there’s submarines outside there so they cancelled that and we had to stay back. Went across on the [pause] starting to forget things now. On an American very old steamer. What was it called? I’ve forgotten now. Anyway, we started from Sydney on, in March I think and it took us twenty eight days to get across the Pacific to — we were going to go to Vancouver but halfway across all of a sudden they could hear the throbbing of the motors going. Deathly quiet and the engines wouldn’t go and we were stuck there [laughs] about halfway across there. And anyway, they got them fixed up in about a day and we carried on. It took us twenty eight days to get us across the Pacific and they decided to go to San Francisco which, we had a day there. Bought a lot of chocolate and that sort of thing. People were very good there. The Yanks met us with cars and drove us all around ‘Frisco. And then we were only about a day and a half and then we got a train up to Vancouver which was marvellous. Beautiful scenery. And went to Vancouver and I think we stayed there a day or so and went out to Edmonton. That’s where I did my course there. So that was about all I think.
AP: Alright. Why did you want to be in the air force?
KM: Well, my father was in the barracks at St Kilda Road there and he knew the man who was the civil aviator. Sort of pilot you know. And he got this German three engine one with one there, one in the front sort of thing and he said, ‘Would any of your sons like to have a flight?’ I was about thirteen or fourteen and I said, ‘Yeah. I’d like to have a go at that.’ So a friend of mine who was, who was finally joined, [unclear] actually, he was a very clever bloke so he couldn’t join the forces because he was needed elsewhere. So, anyway we had all around Melbourne and he came back and he said to my father, he offered me to go down to Cerberus down there in the Mornington Peninsula as a cadet. I was about thirteen. I said, ‘No thanks. I don’t want to go to the Navy,’ so, ‘I want to go to the air force.’ So that was about how I got in the air force. And I did a course at Edmonton. I think it was about six months I think. And I was made an officer off course. And we went up to Halifax and got on the Aquitania and went to, to what’s that in the Clyde? What’s the name of it again? In the Clyde. That’s where we landed in there. I forget the name of the place but, and then had a train down to Brighton and that’s where we decided, want me to carry on?
AP: Yeah. Keep going.
KM: Yeah. Well —
AP: Keep going. I’ll come back and fill in the gaps later on.
KM: Yeah. Well. We got there. We got on the train. A little, little kid by the train line as you went to slide out to get out and he said in his Scots, ‘Have you got any gum mister?’ [laughs] And we said, ‘No. We haven’t got anything.’ So, anyway we went down to Brighton which was, we had a very nice hotel there. Just on the corner where the boulevard goes all along. Just around the corner down there. Near the Grand. You know, where Mrs Thatcher and they got — just away to the east from there. But it was very nice. We had a nice room there. And Focke Wulfs used to come across and shoot them up a bit occasionally. And at any raids that came we had to get down in to the, in to the bowels of the, of the hotel. And one day I I couldn’t be bothered. I thought I’d just stay in my room. And this Wing Commander Swan I think his name was, a bit of a nasty sort of fellow he came around, found me and he said, ‘I’ll let you off this time but you’ll be on a charge next time.’ Yeah. Anyway I went in to, in the, in the lounge one day and I sat down at a table like this. A man was reading a paper next door and he said, ‘Have you just arrived?’ and I said, ‘Yes. I just came in yesterday.’ And he said, in another two days he came and said, ‘I don’t know whether you know but I’m the posting officer from Brighton.’ And I said, ‘Oh. I think I’m going to Bomber Command.’ He said, ‘Well, they’ll probably take about three weeks before you can do that. But,’ he said, ‘There’s a new course.’ And I said, ‘Well, what is it?’ And he said, ‘Radar.’ I said, ‘I’ve never heard of it.’ He said, ‘Well, you have to do an exam.’ With another friend who came across so three other fellows came with me and we got, did the exam and got passed and so he said, ‘Well, you’re going up to Ouston which is up near Newcastle on Tyne.’ In there. ‘You’re going to learn all about radar.’ So, so anyway we waited about a week and away we went. And that’s when we, we — it was quite a nice station too. It was about October then I think and there was snow all around up there. And we started flying in Ansons you know. They had all the gubbins in there. And that’s how we learned how to operate radar and later on in [pause] first of all what did they call it? Radial engines. Oh God. Bomber. I’ll think of it later on. But it wasn’t a Mosquito, it was in. It was easier to sit back. The pilot’s up the front and I used to sit back there. Bomber —
AP: Beaufighter perhaps.
KM: Beaufighters. Beaufighters. I liked them. What did they call them? The creeping death, I think. You know.
AP: Whispering. Whispering death.
KM: Whispering death. Yeah.
AP: It took all the [unclear] sort of thing.
KM: They had plenty of power down below. I used to just sit back. There was a swivel chair. I used to face the back like that and then they put the power on and away it goes, and whirr like that. They were a very good aircraft. And down low they were very good indeed. But I did that for a while. And, I can’t remember. We had fellows that was going to do a camera thing, sort of thing and he got in one and went up and I was down the back and he, he did all sorts of things. Turned this and turned this and went over and back again. And I said, ‘How long are you going to be on this?’ And he said, ‘I won’t be that long.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m going to be sick in a moment.’ [laughs] and, which I was. And when I got down a WAAF came out and said, with a bucket and said, ‘You can clean it up yourself.’ [laughs] But so that was my and from then on we did mostly all sorts of things. It came behind an aircraft and it dropped down below them so they looked up and fired a bullet sort of thing. And then, then they had to do one, one coming straight to you and you had to go. You could see them coming. You had to do that left hand turn to come below. And if you could go, catch him again and again shoot him down sort of thing. So we learned all about that there. As a matter of fact Keith Miller was up there.
AP: Ah.
KM: Yeah. He was flying ones you know. Doing what we were. Trying to get behind him sort of thing but [pause] So, I think I was there ‘til about the beginning of February I think. And then we went down to Bedfordshire. At Cranfield. And that’s where I met my wife down there. And we did a lot of more work on, we used to get behind the [pause] I’m forgetting aircraft. Wellington. Yeah. We used to get behind them and do the same thing, sort of thing. And that went on for about in February ‘til late April I think. And then I was going to go to Bomber Command as an escort. And I had packed everything up and I was going to get the train down to London and go out to Coltishall. Out in Norfolk. And the signal came through from the air vice marshall from Australia — all people are going as night fighters. Going to 456 down in, in Arundel. Down south, And Arundel’s just near little, little Hampshire I think it was. Near Worthing. Down there. And so here we had to come back and finally get a train down there and that’s how I arrived at Ford which was a marvellous station.
AP: Sorry. Ford, did you say?
KM: Ford. F O R D.
AP: Yeah.
KM: But from Arundel we used to come down the road and over the railway line and a winding road down into the, into Ford which was a very good ‘drome, you know. And I think I finished up in B flight. B flight I think. There were two in the squadron And, and that was about it I think then. Do you want me to carry on?
AP: Please carry on. A whole story we want.
KM: Well, I met a wing commander. God, I forget things now. Big fellow and of course I think I’ve got, no I lent Bob Cowper book to a friend. Any rate the wing commander said, How do you do,’ and he told me what pilot I was going to be on and everything like that. And he, he was a good pilot but wasn’t very popular because he thought everybody, thought, he thought everybody was not up to his standard you know. So, but any rate I went down in the [unclear] I think it was and we had to do quite a few exercises at night, you know. And, and it was beautiful weather down at Ford down there because the summer was from, from June onwards. Right all the way to Christmas time. It was good weather down there so, so my first thing was to go up and shoot down the buzz bombs you know. And one day we had to go to — there were searchlights. S for Sugar and T for something else. T for Tear or something like that. And the ground control said to the wing commander, he said you need to go to — is it, what’s the name? Tearing or something like that. And he said to the wing commander you’ve got to go to tear west or something. He said, ‘I’m tearing west,’ he said. Which was a great big joke and he got the wrong thing altogether. But we went to S for Sugar and stayed there. And he could, he used to get up about, say about eight thousand feet you know. Angels height you know and look towards the French coast and you could see them coming because the fire out the back of them used to light up. And he said, ‘There’s one coming towards you.’ So up at eight thousand feet he said, ‘When it gets close enough you start to go down behind him.’ Like that. ‘Get right behind him and just press the trigger you know.’ And we were just about to do it on one thing and a Canadian fellow in a, in a single engine aircraft got in front of us and shot it down himself and he was put on a bad books. And the fellow was very cross about that but, but anyrate so we didn’t get any more from then. But, but one fellow in 85 Squadron, they were on Ford with us as well and Cat’s Eyes Cunningham was in 85, and his name was Mellish. And strangely enough I read in the paper one day and it had a thing about things in Great Britain. Quite a size. About that size in the paper and said he finished up a wing commander. He was, I think he was flight lieutenant then but he shot down eight when he was up for three hours. Eight of them. God. But he died probably about, oh about five years ago I think. But —
AP: Sorry. When you were shooting down, when you were chasing the buzz bombs.
KM: Yeah.
AP: You were in a Mosquito at this point?
KM: Yeah. In Mosquitoes. Yeah.
AP: And you were obviously talking to ground control.
KM: Yeah. Yeah.
AP: So they would, they would tell you that they could see one coming on the radar.
KM: Coming. Yeah. That’s right. Yeah.
AP: And just sort of, did they give you like vectors towards it? Or did they say it’s over —
KM: Yeah. Yeah. We — I think [pause] my memory’s going but yeah it’s one’s coming. Go to vector say to the right hand. Like that usually. So they, they would come down like that behind. Yeah. They go to a vector but it’s just forgotten. It was to the right. Usually to the right so we could do the left hand turn and come down. So we enjoyed all that. It was great so, and then what happened after that? [pause] Oh, we went down to B Flight and we used to get — they had a — what did they call it? On a slate or something. And they would be first say about 8 o’clock at night for three hours. And we’d go into France. Go into Le Touquet. There was a little inlet in there. There’s as I say Beachy Head about there. About here. Le Touquet’s across there. Used to go across and then go up to Lisle. Again, a man on the ground used to tell you what to do sort of thing. But did you know Fred Stevens at all? He, funny he’s got a friend down here I was talking to last night. He was one of the best pilots on 456 and the just natural to fly and, but my pilot was Karl McLennan. He was a very experienced pilot who [pause] he was 3 Course out of Australia and he did a lot of, as a to teach pupils you know. And finally came to, to Cranfield. I remember I was reading the paper one day and he came in. The bar was across there and he said, he looked around and he saw me with an Australian uniform on. He said, ‘Oh g’day. ‘G’day.’ He said, ‘Want to have a beer?’ I said, ‘I don’t drink.’ ‘Oh,’ he said, and after a while I was reading this and I thought I should do something and he said, ‘Are you sure you don’t want a drink?’ I said, ‘Oh ok. I’ll come over and have one.’ So that was my first beer.
AP: [unclear]
KM: So anyway, he said, ‘Are you going to crew up with anybody?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘What about me?’ and I said, ‘That’ll do me.’ He told me all about 3 Course. And I said, ‘You’re much more experienced then I am,’ you know but at any rate he said, ‘No. We’ll go together.’ So we did and he said, he talked to me, he said, he said, ‘Look, I’m what you’d call a live coward,’ he said, ‘So no fancy stuff. I’ll do exactly what I’m supposed to do,’ you know. Any rate he was a very good pilot you know. So we did, we did some cross countrys’ over as I say, over to Wales and back to High Wycombe. Up to Lincoln. Up there. And then back to, to Cranfield. And then there when we went down to Ford just before D-Day we were — I had, they had to show me as a navigator on Mark 10 radar which was a different sort of thing. So I had to go to Twinwood Farm which was a satellite of Cranfield for a month. So I missed out on Normandy. And [pause] but I learned all on how to work all the gubbins in a Mosquito. The pilot got in first across there. Quite small you know. He was rather chubby because he drank a lot [laughs] Mac. But, and I, I had the set there on a sort of a pulled out sort of thing and he sat there and I sat here. I used to pull it out when he got in. Pulled it out here and have it on the radio sort of thing which is with a dividing line down like that. That’s left or right sort of thing. And one for height sort of thing. Across like that. So it had a range of a hundred miles so if you, say you were coming back to England you just, and every aerodrome had a code you know. Say BA and AB or something like. And you wanted to go to that destination you knew what their code was and he just turned the aircraft around so it was dead in front of you like that. Whatever height you wanted to do. You either go up or down. And just sit there. And when you come to almost there you just knew exactly where you were and, and so when you got to say, Ford it was going beep beep beep and down you go. And that was great you know. Coming from say Germany there you just, just set it for where you want to go and a range a hundred miles so, you know —
AP: So this is Gee?
KM: Eh?
AP: Is this the Gee system?
KM: No. We had the Gee later on.
AP: Oh ok.
KM: Yeah. When we went for longer trips in Germany and you need that to — you had two. Two maps as a matter of fact. You had one that was going to certain distance about there. Then you’d get the other one would go further on. In fact one of our senior navigators he kept on using the first one and he [laughs] his pilot, Smithy said, ‘I don’t think we’re going the right way.’ And he said, ‘I’m in charge. I’ll tell you where you’re going.’ Anyway, he was going to Germany and, Smithy we called him, he was a pilot, he said, ‘I can see lights down there,’ he said, ‘It looks like Switzerland.’ Oh he got a black mark for that [laughs] But but he had to use his second one but they were very good.
AP: So the — sorry the first radar you were telling me about. That’s a navigational radar or an airborne like interception radar?
KM: In the aircraft yeah. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. It’s in the aircraft but —
KM: Yeah.
AP: Sorry. Was that for navigation or for finding fighters or something?
KM: Yes. Yes. Yes, a blip would come up.
AP: Yeah.
KM: A blip. Yeah. We were one, not that far from Berlin. We used to go over there until the petrol. Had to watch out that we had enough petrol to get back again. We used to circle the aerodrome. And it was a bright moonlight night. I remember that. And we were going around like that and I said to Mac, ‘I think we’d better go home in a moment because, you know the petrol is getting down a bit.’ So, you know, I just spoke to him. I just, like that, and I saw an aircraft about a hundred yards away sort of thing. I said, ‘There’s a German right there,’ and I said, I said, ‘Lose height. Left hand turn,’ which we used to do. Lose height. Went down like that. Ok. And then of course all of sudden they had the lights on the fellow. All the lights went out you know. And it came back and we couldn’t see too well then but we could see the runway and that sort of thing and it had all the, you know the, what do they call them? Sort of the pens where the aircraft went into and we went up and down the runway shooting all those things that we could see. We’re not quite sure whether we hit this aircraft. But at any rate the next one to start firing back at us so we did another run too and did all what we could about what we could see on the ground. And then we decided to go home after that because we were getting short on the petrol. So that was a bit of an unfortunate thing but just seeing that bloke but he just appeared. I can see him now just out there. But anyrate we went home again and we used to do that sort of thing, you know. Quite often. Circle the aerodrome and see what’s coming.
AP: So —
KM: They were getting short on their for petrol. The Germans. You know. And, but I’ll tell you about the last thing that we did. Bob Cowper picked us to go with him down to a place call Linz on the Danube. Way down. Almost to Budapest sort of thing. Down there. And the river came down like that and it went down like that down south a bit. About twelve miles down was an aerodrome and we were going to go. And we had a squadron leader from the, the, what are they called? It was all the big wigs down at Ford. And it was going to drop a napalm bomb on the aerodrome down there. Anyrate, he, it was a bright moonlight night and we went all the way. We went to Juvencourt, just out of Paris and we got more petrol and carried on down to, to Linz down there. And we had just arrived and I could see it in the moonlight. We got there right on ETA. I could see them in front of us. And then we had to go to the right hand side, down south and go to the aerodrome. Drop these bombs sort of thing. And anyrate this squadron said, ‘I’ll lead down,’ you know. And he went down then. About half way down he put a flare out and we said, ‘Oh, you’ve put it in the wrong place.’ You know. And all he could see was a farm, cows and everything else. And we said, you’re only halfway down there so he went on down there and he said, he went round an aerodrome and he said, ‘I’ll take the in charge. I’ll do the first run in now.’ And he went down then. He went down because they were ready for him I think. He said, ‘I’ve been hit already,’ he said, ‘I’m going home.’ So that was all he did all night. So, we said we, we were going down so we went down once. Did a left hand turn over the river there and came back again like that. And just as we got around to go down again on the aerodrome some tracer bullets came right past my ear. My hair went up like that. And it just missed us actually. And anyrate we, I mean say that that’s the river down there. We went down like that we came back like that. Came down. Did another run in again and that’s when the tracer bullets came across there. But we did it again and again they were ready for us again because somebody — I don’t know who did it, it must have been on the other side of the river there. It’s quite high up there because I can remember it seemed to be coming down like that you know. But anyrate, we did the same thing again you know, circled. They were ready for us again. But anyway came back and Bob Cowper said, ‘What a mess up that was,’ you know. Bob Cowper was going to do everything and did nothing you know [laughs] But strangely enough Bob Cowper went down to Ford one day and he went down to the intelligence and saw what this fella said. Said it was a great success. Which was [laughs] we were very upset about that but so that was about it and then back to Bradwell Bay and on May the 8th, you know, the Germans decided they’d had enough. And, and then on — Mac had been getting into the liquor all the time and he got, what do you call it? Like jaundice. Sort of thing. Had to go to hospital. And then they asked 456 and another Mosquito squadron to go to the Channel Islands where the Germans were going to fight on. And so they went. Three — two, two lots went down. Went down to quite low and first said if you don’t we’ll give you, we’ll shoot the whole lot of you, you know. So they finally decided. So the war finally finished on the 9th of May. So you know that was about it I think. But so we went, we were supposed to come — the rumours said we were probably going up to Burma, you know, when we get back. But we went back to Brighton again and stayed about a week I think. We had a little car. I’ve got a photograph of it over there as a matter of fact. And we had to drive up to post this out in the east end of London and we had to go across — was it Dartmoor or something? Where there’s a ferry used to go across and you go up the hill like that to this place where they had all, they got a whole new or old cars He came from nowhere. He was a [unclear] actually. We saw it. We went up there and he said well go back to that fella and see what he’ll give us for the car, you know. We bought it for thirty seven pound and went up there. He came around and he went all through it like this looking. And said, he said, ‘Eighty pound.’ So he said ok. We said, ‘Can we have for it about a week because we’re going to Brighton.’ He said ok. We came up here in a week’s time. He came up and John Darling who was a great mate of mine he was, he was driving and he came across this thing. This ferry or something. And as he came up the hill that. It was hard to get. I think I said, ‘Put your foot down.’ He said, ‘I am,’ he said. Going up the hill he said to me, ‘It’s just about gone. The engine.’ So anywhere we got that, this [unclear] came around. He went all over it. He looked up, he said, ‘Well, there’s a mark on the ceiling.’ And he said, ‘No. I won’t give you eighty. I’ll give you seventy five.’ So we said ok. We got our seventy five. Rushed like mad and got on a bus and went back and went to the very posh hotel. I can’t remember the name again. I was trying to remember it this morning. And we had a night there and spent the whole seventy five [laughs] Oh dear. But so that was the end of our story really but —
AP: So, I might go back and fill in a few gaps. You mentioned a few little bits and pieces that I’ve sort of —
KM: Yeah.
AP: I’ve grabbed hold of there.
KM: Yeah.
AP: You said you met your wife at Cranfield. Can you tell me that story?
KM: Well, I went to Cranfield and that’s as I said where I met Margaret. My wife. And well, no we just, we just carried on with that was Cranfield. I’m forgetting things now but [pause] it was, is it the second one that was at Ouston. Number one. It was, what would you call it? The EFTS or something like that. There was a name for it and then you did all that and then you went to the squadron.
AP: Operational Training Unit perhaps.
KM: Yeah.
AP: OTU.
KM: The word. That’s right.
AP: Yeah.
KM: Yeah. But Cranfield was a lovely station. A peacetime station. And, and we had a beautiful cricket ground there and we had married quarters, you know. You used to go out two story ones and that’s how I met Margaret actually.
AP: Did you get married in the UK?
KM: No. No. She was still in the air force down in Benson near Oxford. And she was still in the air force but we’d gone then from Liverpool back home again. And no, she came out in September 1946. Yeah. And we were married on the 15th of, of November. So we’ll be seventy years married in November.
AP: Wow. Wow. So was she, she was in the WAAF?
KM: Yeah.
AP: What was she doing in the WAAF?
KM: She was one of the managers of the, of the officer’s mess.
AP: Ok. Cool.
KM: Margaret. Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Margaret. Cool.
KM: Yeah.
AP: Lovely. You also mentioned something about when you, when you were young. When you were thirteen, I think.
KM: Yeah.
AP: That triplane.
KM: Yeah.
AP: Or the tri motor thing.
KM: Yeah.
AP: Tell me about that.
KM: Well, I don’t know why it came out here but this man was a very experienced pilot. He was a civilian sort of chief sort of thing but, no I always sort of wanted to go into the air force but but that flight it was a lovely day. Went all around the bay and that sort of thing, you know. That’ll do me, you know so, but at that stage was in Russell Street they had the air force sort of recruitment place. But they had enough at that stage and couldn’t take any more you know. In fact another thing. When I went on leave in England I think every six weeks you used to get a leave and that Lady Ryder’s Scheme that said do you want to go to the country or a town? Do you want to play golf or, you know. I said, ‘I want to go to Scotland and I want to play golf,’ and everything else. So anyrate I got up to Aberdeen and I got a train out to a place called Stewartville and I think I’ve got a map there. And I got out and we were with another fellow. This one from Somers, you know who was a navigator with me and there was a horse and cart there and where we were going. He took all the bags and he said, ‘I’ll drive you to the general’s place.’ He was the number one general in the UK at the beginning of the war. A very nice old man he was. And, anyrate, he had, I got it in my photographs in my album there. So, we went there and he welcomed us in. His wife and so forth. At about 5 o’clock or about half past five, it was summertime and he said, ‘Come down and we’ll have something to eat.’ So we had some cookies as they do. And we had to get them out of the cupboard sort of thing and I said to [unclear] ‘Is that all we get for dinner?’ You know [laughs] Never had — what do you call it? High tea. That’s right. High tea. I went upstairs and I wrote a letter to my mother, “This is a very nice place and I’ve got to know a leading general but we don’t have much of a dinner here.” [laughs] And all of a sudden there was a gong went and down we went down. We had jugged hare. I can remember it to this day. But he was a very nice bloke and he understood. He said, ‘Look I’m old and you’re young.’ He said, ‘You want to play golf go to Peterhead.’ He said, ‘You can have a game there.’ So we got on our bikes. And the wind we could hardly get past it. It was just blowing like one thing and we got there and then we were allowed most of the golf clubs that people from abroad would be allowed to play you know. So we got there and he came around and he said, ‘Yes. Well, you can go around here. he said this way we can go out here and I said, ‘I’m a left hand.’ ‘We haven’t got any left handed.’ Oh God [laughs] they’re like that, particularly in Scotland. They didn’t like left handers so we went all the way there and did nothing. So [laughs] but no, there was, in fact he had a brother I think it was. Sir Charles Burnett, I think. Down at Crathes Castle just on the way to Ballater out of Aberdeen. You know, along the river there. And a beautiful castle. We had a lot of pleasure whilst we were there. And he was the chief of the Gordon clan, you know. And in fact part of the castle that he had was used as a hospital for people in from the war. And we went down there. We had lunch down there. And he came [laughs] he had a, he bought a great big bulldog in one day and we were fooling around like this, ‘Come on here,’ and doing this. And he could see the dog wasn’t too pleased about it and Bob like, it bit him on his wrist. He wasn’t too pleased about that either but, but it was a lovely place. They had gardens. There was. They had like a purple one. A yellow one. Green one. Red one. One, two, three, four going down the hill sort of thing. It’s a lovely place. We’ve been back there quite a few times. Crathes Castle. I’ll show you where it is. Have you got a minute?
AP: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I’ll give you a hand if you want.
KM: Yeah. [unclear]
AP: Oh where am I going? Ok. I can go and get it if you want.
KM: In the bottom drawer. On the right hand side there. No. No. No. Back here. Over here. Right hand side on the bottom one. There’s a map there.
AP: “Road Atlas of Great Britain.”
KM: It’s, yeah, that’s right. That’s it. That’s it. Yeah [pause] probably need my bloody glasses.
AP: Where are they?
KM: There. Right on [ pause ]
AP: Here. These ones?
KM: No. That’ll do. Yeah.
AP: That’ll do.
KM: I’ve got one. Another one. When I’m here it’s always over there so I’ve got two of them. That story. There’s Aberdeen. We went up here to — I’d better get this one but there’s Peterhead there. That’s about there this. The [unclear] yeah. Going out from there but what’s that? ’83.
[Pause. Pages turning]
KM: It’s been a marvellous book this one. I’ve kept it all those years.
[pause]
KM: There.
AP: Ah yes.
KM: Aberdeen. Went up in a train. Up here I guess. Stewartville. There we are. We went from there in a horse and cart. About there. That’s where he lived. About there. So, and then we got on our bike. Went to Peterhead there but no, there isn’t a station there but no I know quite a bit about Scotland. I’ve been about seven times now.
AP: Lovely.
KM: I’ll show you where Ford is.
[pause]
AP: Oh yeah. There’s Beachy Head there. Yeah.
KM: Yeah. Beachy Head. There’s a marvellous spot there. And living about here I think [pages turning] [unclear] See there’s Brighton and, and you see that’s a lady down there. She was at, she lived at Carshalton which is up towards London and she was, we used to stay with her. She had two hundred and fifty seven colonials. Australian, Canadians and that sort of thing at her house during the war. She was a marvellous lady, and anyrate at Carshalton Beeches two storey place. And the buzz bombs used to come over and she was out putting clothes on the line, and had a big fig tree there near the clothes line and she could hear the buzz bomb brrrrrr like this and didn’t worry to peg the things out. All of a sudden the sound finished. So she went for her life towards her dugout down there with steps on it and just got to the top and bang it landed in the back yard and blew all the leaves off the tree. And blew her down to her dugout down there. And she was bruised and that sort of thing. But it moved the house about a foot you know. So they had to move out of that and went down to Seaford. Down here. But she was a marvellous woman because she took it all in her stride. I would say [pause] Littlehampton. [Pause. Pages turning] Here’s Brighton. Came down to Worthing. Little Hampton. Now there’s Arundel. That’s where the big castle is. Played the first game of cricket there. Inside that thing is a cricket ground in there. And we used to have dances in his dining room once every a month you know. Because he knew, he knew the queen as a matter of fact. He was a cousin or something. But, but we used to ride down here. We used to have a swim down there. And but there were barbed wire along there as well but and our ground station was at Angmering, that’s right Angmering, that’s it. About there. That’s our ground station there and Ford was just, you just crossed the railway line there and just about there. That’s where the aerodrome was. There. That’s it.
AP: Oh yeah. I can see it says Ford there. Yeah.
KM: Yeah. Yeah. But, and then, and then we had [laughs] used to play cricket down at Middleton Sports Club. There’s a cricket ground down there and 456 had a — I’ve got something about that over there. I’ll show you my book later on but we beat them down there. You probably don’t know about Charlie Kunz. A marvellous pianist. He was a Yank who came to Britain before the war and stayed on. He used to have a programme on the BBC. Playing the piano. It was called, “The Hot and the Cold.” He used to play softly and then louder. Softly and louder. Very nice. But he had a son who played in a team against us. He was only about seventeen I think and the fellow that opened the bowling was the captain of the other side. His name was, I’ve got it over there. He played for England actually and a medium fast bowler and I opened up with another fellow and he got three wickets or something straightaway but I stayed on. I made fifty. And I dropped one a bit short note went bang. Was almost six. This young kid stuck his hand out and caught it. He came in after the, after the match. Very nice clubhouse there. Two storey place with two squash courts there. And he said, he came and he said, ‘Would you boys,’ Don Darling and myself, ‘Would you like to go and see my father?’ And I said, ‘Who’s your father?’ He said, ‘He’s a pianist. He’s at the Hippodrome at Brighton.’ So he said, and he gave us the tickets and everything. So we went to see and that’s the first time I heard beautiful piece. Fairly old, you know. It was getting a bit grey. And at any rate the lead at the Hippodrome with Arthur Askey. Do you remember Arthur Askey? He was a comedian, you know. Little fellow. And he had a, he had on a stage. He was in front of it. Behind it I think a ladies toilet like that and he came on and he said, ‘I’ll now play for you, “By the waterfall,” you know [laughs] Oh dear. That was a good night. So anyrate we had we got quite friendly with his son and I went over there one day and I wrote a letter to him and he was back in London by that time. But he got an OBE because he — I think he might be dead now I think because he wasn’t too well the last time I got a card from him, you know. But yeah so that’s about the end of my story I think.
AP: I’m sure there’s more in it. What, what other things did you get up to while you were on leave in England?
KM: Well, it all came back and said, ‘If you want to go to this places. This is a beautiful spot,’ kind of thing. So this fellow by the name Luke. Luke I think. He came from Tasmania. He went, ‘Oh you ought to go. He’s got four cars. He’d got two squash courts, he said he’s got a cricket ground and he’s got a three storey house.’ I said, ‘Well we’ll go to that.’ I got one of my brothers to go there. Mr [unclear] — he had a brewery in the east of London. Mr — God, I’m forgetting names. Old fellow with a moustache, you know. And Mr [pause] he had a younger wife and he had gout and I said to him one day, ‘Do you mind if my brother,’ who was in the navy, ‘Comes up to see me?’ ‘Oh no. that’s ok. He can come up.’ So anyrate he came over and he stayed the night. And he had a butler as well. He used to come and say , ‘Your bath is ready, sir.’ You know [laughs] I forget his name. This was very posh this place. His wife was very nice. And one night we were having dinner one night and he used to sit at the top of the table there, I was here and she was over there and she said, ‘I’ll bring the grandchild in now to say goodnight to him. He came and said goodnight to him and when she went out of the room he went down and he had a whicker sort of thing. Almost to the table. Opened it up and he had a gin or something with like this [ laughs] pushed it back before his wife came in. But it was a lovely place. I stayed there about a week, you know. I don’t know whether you know about Bill Edrich . He was the opening bat for the English Test Team. Came out to Australia in 1946 I think. And he was a flight lieutenant in the air force and his father was the manager of the estate where this Mr what was his name? I can’t think of his name but anyway when he stayed at his estate he he had an aerodrome on one part of his estate. A Yank aerodrome. And across the road was a place called [unclear] I think it was. And the fella in there was, came from Lancashire and he was a sir something. Sir Humphrey. Sir Humphrey his name was and he owned quite a bit of Lancashire up there. I think the, the Yorkshire ground was one, was on his land as a matter of fact and [laughs] we had, we had a pheasant shoot down at the one I was staying at. And they had all the men in the estate going beating to the, to get the pheasant out you know. Going around like that. He had to get in turn. He said, shoot when I, when you want them to fly. Bang. Knock one down. At any rate we both knocked one down and Humphrey, you know, Sir Humphrey [unclear] and this this fella from Tasmania, ‘Come on Humphrey. Come on. Get one,’ you know. Took him about five shots to get one. We didn’t know he was Sir Humphrey. Whatever. And he was the one we stayed with. His wife said, ‘I’d like to introduce Sir Humphrey.’ So we found out he was Sir Humphrey. So, but yeah but that lady, Lady Ryder used to do it for everybody. You could go down to to Devon or, I went down to to Predannack. Right down at the end of England. Right down. Right down there. In fact 456 were going to go down there but they didn’t go. Somebody else took our place I think. So that’s how they came to Ford actually. From there. That’s about all I think.
AP: A couple more questions. A couple more questions. So you, we haven’t spoken that much about your operational side of things. What you actually did as a navigator and a radar operator. Did you have, in the — well first of all what sort of trips were you actually doing in the Mosquitoes?
KM: Intruder trips. We used to go usually quite often on a bright moonlight night you know and yeah, you’d go up and down their, what do you call their roads again. Not the freeways. Anyrate you could see them to go like that. Two or three of our fellas used to see a train, you know. You could see that when they opened it with the coke or something in there. And they were sitting ducks. They used to go down and knock them off. We didn’t see any of those but Ron Lytton who lives, used to live out near Essendon and — how long have you been out there Adam?
AP: Three years now.
KM: Oh no. He’s probably dead about ten. He was a, he was a plumber out there. And his, his and he’s still alive actually Geoff Reeves was his pilot. A very good pilot and he knocked over about two trains I think, you know. But we used to do those things. Anything we could see. And the Arnhem. You know the one bridge too far. We were on that day. It was foul night. God it was blowing like mad, you know. And we got on to there was one in front of us. I could see one and I said to Mac, ‘Turn left,’ you know,’ And drop height,’ and everything like that. And then as he went around and around and we were behind him going there there and there and he, Mac my pilot, he said, ‘I think he must be one of ours,’ he said because we could turn inside a JU88. You know, get in beside him. He said, what about it? He said what was our call sign [pause] oh God I’ve forgotten that but he called out, ‘Is that one of our crowd?’ He said, ‘Yeah B,’ he said [laughs] and he said, ‘I’ve been chasing you,’ he said. ‘No. You’ve got the wrong one.’ So, but, but on Arnhem the [pause] oh yeah. We had a fellow called Woodhouse or we called him Woody as a matter of fact who was a leading ground controller. And they ,they took him over and they were going to parachute him down and then and he had some, a glider or something there put down what he needed to contact us in the air. So anyway he got down there but the Germans were waiting for him. Grabbed him, you know. So, so we never got any call about the Germans at all in the air. But, but we went up to, to Arnhem. Now, what happened there? Oh that’s right. As I say terrible weather. So we were going along and got St Elmo’s Fire. Have you heard about that? All along the wings. What’s going on here? You know. Anyway, we got out of that. But anyroad we got off course and everything else. We didn’t do much about that but after doing that chasing that bloke and this thing I didn’t know exactly where I was. And going home to England Mac said, ‘Well, where are we now?’ I said, ‘Well, about the time we went home now I think.’ I said, ‘Just go to the west. We’ll get to England someway.’ So in fact we got up to The Wash, you know. And we were down at Ford you know. In fact we started our flight at Manston which is down, down in Kent. Down there. It’s a very big aerodrome. Three runways you know. So big aircraft down that one. The middle one was ok. Anyone in trouble be on the right hand one. But we got, when I got back we were at The Wash which was probably about a hundred miles up to the north. And we turned down. I said to Mac, ‘Turn down south again.’ We got down there and then the, the, what was it? He couldn’t get the wheels down or something. The hydraulics didn’t work. So I had to get down and I had to pump it myself. I finally got them out after about half an hour but so we landed back there. So, but that was quite a night actually. But I’ve seen that. We’ve seen that film about one bridge too far.
AP: I haven’t seen it but I am aware of it.
KM: It’s very good.
AP: [unclear] Yeah.
KM: How did I get it? I don’t know where I’ve got it. It was over there. It had all the well-known actors in that one. Sean Connery’s in it and a lot of them. It’s a very good film actually. But I went to see it too as a matter of fact. There’s a bridge over the, where the they stopped the Germans actually there. But I went over to Normandy with a friend of mine. A cousin of Margaret’s actually. And they’ve got a sort of a museum there as well but there’s— have you ever been to Normandy?
AP: I have.
KM: Yeah.
AP: I have yeah. I spent a few years over there so —
KM: We went together and was over. And that was good too.
AP: But you said you missed Normandy because you were in a training programme.
KM: Yeah [unclear] on that but —
AP: What did, what did you think of the Mosquito?
KM: Beautiful. Nothing wrong with it at all, you know. I said that Don McLennan said the Halifax went, loaded up went to the left and then the right, you know. This went straight down. A very good pilot Mac. Once we were going down I used to go, he would drop it down. H would just go [unclear] very good. He was a good pilot Mac. Poor old Mac. He died probably about twenty years ago. He had Parkinsons Disease you know. I think it might have been all the beer he drank.
AP: How did you find adjusting to civilian life after the war?
KM: Eh?
AP: How did you find adjusting to civilian life after the war?
KM: I didn’t mind it. I I went into work. I was still in uniform. I didn’t have a suit. And Malcolm Roberts said to me, ‘Do you want to come back to work?’ And I said, ‘Oh yes,’ you know. And he gave me five pounds worth of salary [laughs] per week. And so I went to a place in, in Flinders Lane. He was one of our clients and I went in there and strangely enough he was the son of the chief there. Wade. You know. Evan Wade. And Terry Wade is over here in Doncaster. He’s still alive as a matter of fact. His wife’s dead unfortunately. But anyway so I did work there and I went back and forth until about 1948. Then I became a chartered accountant then. I went to RMIT to finish my course and so after a while he said to me, ‘Do you want to come over and be the secretary up here?’ So I went home and said to my wife what about — I’m not quite sure about it but anyway decided to give it a go and I was there for twenty one years. So, well worth it. So was that about it?
AP: Any, any final thoughts on your air force service?
KM: Eh?
AP: Any final thoughts on your air force service?
KM: No. No.
AP: What you got out of it.
KM: No. I got the, I got the Legion of Honour over there.
AP: Oh excellent.
KM: Yeah. But that was, that came later on, you know.
AP: Of course.
KM: But it was mostly the intruder trips that are as I say we’ve got the lady up in Canberra and had them all put down where I went to and that sort of thing. And then I was surprised to get it but I’ve got it over there as a matter of fact. You see the one, the blue one there on the [unclear]
AP: This one here.
KM: Pop it on there. My sister did that for me. Take the top one. That one. Yeah.
AP: Oh yeah.
KM: That’s it.
[pause]
KM: Is that? Is that —
AP: Oh this is the presentation is it?
KM: Yeah.
AP: Yeah. Ok.
KM: That’s [unclear]
AP: Yeah. I see that.
KM: That’s the man who put them on. He gave you a big hug [laughs]
AP: Of course because he’s French. I see Gerald there as well.
KM: Yeah. Yeah. Gerald. Funny. He came in the same day as I. His son came out of Norway for it.
AP: Fantastic.
KM: But yeah. But — yeah.
AP: Alright. Well —
KM: Well —
AP: Well, I think we’re done. Thank you very much.
KM: Thanks Adam. It’s very good of you to come all this way.
AP: Oh it’s alright. I love it.
KM: [unclear]
AP: I really do. I’ll just turn the recording 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
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Interview with Kenneth William Munro
Creator
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Adam Purcell
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-05-22
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AMunroKW160522
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:25:28 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Australian Air Force
Spatial Coverage
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Australia
Austria
Austria--Linz
Canada
England--Bedfordshire
England--Northumberland
England--Sussex
France
Great Britain
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Channel Islands
Netherlands
Netherlands--Arnhem
Victoria
Victoria--Mornington Peninsula
Victoria--Mount Martha
Western Australia
Western Australia--Bunbury
Western Australia--Busselton
Western Australia--Geraldton
Western Australia--Moora
Description
An account of the resource
Ken was a 456 Squadron Mosquito navigator. He initially joined the Army’s Victorian Scottish regiment but changed to the Royal Air force. He was selected to be a navigator and sailed to Canada. Ken did a course at Edmonton and was made an officer. He then sailed back to Scotland and went down to Brighton. After undertaking a new course on radar, he went to RAF Ouston to learn how to operate it. He flew in Ansons and Beaufighters before going to Cranfield to fly Wellingtons. Ken met his wife there, a Women's Auxiliary Air Force who managed the officers’ mess. He was due to join Bomber Command but eventually became night fighters aircrew and joined 456 Squadron. Ken was stationed at RAF Ford.
Ken describes how he met his pilot. They initially shot down V-1s flying Mosquitoes. They went to northern France and did cross countries. Ken missed D-Day as he was training on Mark 10 radar at RAF Twinwood Farm. They did intruder raids. He describes going to Linz and Linz and their encounters with fighters. His squadron, along with another Mosquito squadron, were sent to the Channel Islands and was instrumental in the surrender German forces stationed there on 9th May 1945.
Ken was a recipient of Lady Ryder’s Dominion and Allied Services Hospitality Scheme and describes some of the hospitality and leisure pursuits he experienced.
After the war, Ken received the Legion of Honour.
Contributor
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Julie Williams
Sally Coulter
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1945
456 Squadron
85 Squadron
aircrew
Anson
Beaufighter
love and romance
Mosquito
navigator
Pippo
radar
RAF Cranfield
RAF Ford
RAF Ouston
RAF Twinwood Farm
training
V-1
V-weapon
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2198/40172/BMcInnesAMcInnesAv1.2.pdf
039409582741300cd52a4251b3dd8e46
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
Royal Air Force ex-Prisoner of War Association
Description
An account of the resource
97 items. The collection concerns Royal Air Force ex-Prisoner of War Association and contains items including drawings by the artist Ley Kenyon.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Robert Ankerson and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Date
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2018-01-29
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.
Identifier
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RAF ex POW As Collection
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
Alan McInnes memoir
A German Holiday 1944-45
Description
An account of the resource
An autobiography by Alan of his time as a prisoner of war. He describes the night they were shot down over Germany. Also his training with his mainly Australian crew. Then he goes into more detail regarding the operation when he was shot down.
He describes their capture, mistreatment and interrogations at various locations. After interrogations at Dulag Luft they were sent to a transit camp in Frankfurt then on by train to Heydekrug, Stalag Luft VI. Although their camp section was new it was cramped and basic. He describes camp life in detail. As the Russians got closer they were sent by train to an Army camp at Thorn. He read a copy of NCO education in the camp. These courses were extremely popular and supported by text books sent from the UK. Exams were sat and papers sent to the UK for marking. At Thorn they marched to Stammlager 357 but not for long. They then marched back to the railway and were sent to Fallingbostel. He describes the rail journey in detail, then in greater detail he describes camp life.
Later he was moved to an officer's camp at Eichstadt. This turned out to be an Army camp which refused them and they were sent to Sagan. He stayed there for a short time then was moved to Stalag Luft 3, then 111A. As the Russians neared they moved again. After a couple of days waiting in trucks they returned to their camp. The railway system was breaking down as the end of the war neared.
After the Russians reached them they were allowed out of the camp but still remained billeted there. He writes about his impressions of the Russians.
His journey home was delayed by rain that did not allow aircraft to fly.
His story ends with his retelling of the night his aircraft was shot down, his night in Brussels and his return to England.
Creator
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Alan McInnes
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Magdeburg
Australia
Great Britain
England--Lichfield
Poland--Szczecin
Germany--Bremen
Germany--Stendal
Switzerland
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Lithuania--Šilutė
Poland
Italy
Canada
United States
Poland--Szczecin
Poland--Toruń
Greece
Greece--Crete
Poland--Vistula River
England--Staverton (Northamptonshire)
Germany--Bad Fallingbostel
Poland--Żagań
Poland--Bydgoszcz
Poland--Poznań
Germany--Pasewalk
Germany--Neubrandenburg
Germany--Stavenhagen
Germany--Malchin (Landkreis)
Germany--Güstrow
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Lübeck
Germany--Eichstätt
Germany--Munich
Germany--Kassel
Germany--Eisenach
Germany--Fürth (Bavaria)
Germany--Treuchtlingen
Germany--Ingolstadt
Germany--Regensburg
Germany--Leipzig
Germany--Plauen
Poland--Wrocław
New South Wales--Sydney
Victoria--Melbourne
New South Wales
India--Jammu and Kashmir
China
England--London
Germany--Elbe
Germany--Potsdam
Germany--Jüterbog
Ukraine--Odesa
Germany--Dresden
Germany--Halle an der Saale
Belgium--Brussels
England--Brighton
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Hannover
Ukraine
Germany--Luckenwalde
Poland--Poznań
Germany
Germany--Hof (Hof)
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Australian Air Force
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Text. Memoir
Format
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85 printed sheets
Identifier
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BMcInnesAMcInnesAv1
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-01-21
Conforms To
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Pending text-based transcription
83 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
C-47
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
crewing up
Dulag Luft
entertainment
final resting place
flight engineer
Fw 190
Goering, Hermann (1893-1946)
ground personnel
H2S
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
incendiary device
Lancaster
Mosquito
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
prisoner of war
radar
RAF Bicester
RAF Lichfield
RAF Wigsley
RAF Wyton
Red Cross
shot down
sport
Stalag 3A
Stalag Luft 3
Stalag Luft 6
target indicator
the long march
training
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/469/8352/ABaronC160321.1.mp3
385c27519d9e75f7bcf44a0808ce8da5
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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Baron, Charles
C Baron
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Baron, C
Description
An account of the resource
One oral history interview with Charles Baron.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-03-21
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
AH: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre, the interviewer is Anna Hoyles, the interviewee is Charles Baron. The interview is taking place at Mr. Baron’s home in Louth Lincolnshire on 23rd March 2016.
CB: Here we are I volunteered for aircrew 1940, you can have a copy of this [laughs], I think the calling up system was somewhat chaotic at that time because it took the authorities another eight months to send me my calling up papers, the instructions were that I report RAF Uxbridge where I was issued with a uniform for an AC2/UT/AIROBS i.e. that means an Aircraft Hand Second Class under training for Air Observer close brackets, I volunteered for pilot but my eyesight test discovered that I was partly colour blind and that made it no good so err, when ‘cos I oh yes yes well then I’ll read this and then you’ll see what’s what’s useful and what isn’t, umm err, I volunteered for pilot but my eyesight was partly colour blind I remember that I had whilst I was at Uxbridge I was posted to Uxbridge and that’s where I got this funny title, which consisted of roast beef stroke yorkshire pudding followed by plum duff I remember being impressed and pleased that I had volunteered for aircrew as a meal that size and nature had not been at our table for years. I was then given a train ticket to Blackpool and billeted with several others in a seaside boarding house there were about ten of us recruits billeted there and most of them were friendly except well yes that’s nothing, I spent six weeks marching up and down the promenade after six weeks parading at Blackpool we were posted to a receiving wing based at Stratford on Avon I was here for two or three weeks and wasted my time as it was merely a holding post pending a vacancy for proper training at an Initial Training Wing ITW, this was well worth the wait as early in 1941 I was posted to Number Two ITW Initial Training Wing and billeted in Emmanuel College Cambridge I shared students quarters with two other navigation trainees, tell you I had it soft, the courses were for me actual luxury as I realised quite soon that I had what I had missed by not going to university for further education [laughs]. There was some forty of us billeted in different colleges we livened the local populace by marching everywhere at one hundred and forty paces per minute I remember our first drill lesson [laughs] ? standing for attention and being lectured by an instructor who was an obvious Londoner, I remember very ‘stinctly his first instruction relating to smart appearance which was, [how do I read this] ‘now tomorra I want all your buttorns cleaned’ [imitating a London accent] that was exactly what he said [laughs]. At Cambridge we were initiated in the mysteries of air navigation, air recognition, meteorology, morse and similar too many to remember in detail, the course lasted eight weeks I passed the course and was promoted to LAC Leading Aircraft Hand with my daily pay increased from two and six a day to five and six a day [emphasis]. We were then posted to Sealand near Chester for onward transmission by sea to Florida where where we due to spend six months being thoroughly trained in air navigation by Pan Am pretty good hey, on arrival at our embarkation port Avonmouth four of us found that our papers had not been received and the ship left without us [laughs], we were returned to Cambridge and you can imagine our feelings, this time we were billeted at Downing College where we cooled our heels for some weeks before I was called before the CO and asked if I would be prepared to volunteer for a highly secretive and dangerous training [whispers], as I would have been prepared to go anywhere to serve and play some useful part in the war I said ‘yes please sir’, after a day or so I was sent to Air Ministry where I was given some very odd looking diagrams to study and provide answers to various questions passed out and satisfactorily shortly after my return to Downing College I was posted to Prestwick. At Prestwick I was introduced to air born radar instead of six months full training by Pan Am I received six hours air training in a Blenheim 3 which was a twin engined bomber which had been furnished with a radar set for me to study during which time my training consisted of using the radar to instruct my pilot to follow and close with a target aircraft at night until he could actually see the target I was using a radar set to do this you see and I had to understand how to operate it the object would have then been to be able to shoot down the target I was passed [coughs] above average and then promoted to Sergeant Navigator Radar with a daily pay increase from five and six to, you’ll never guess, thirteen shillings a day [whispers] this equated to four pound eleven a week and was more than I had ever earned as a civilian [laughs], had I been passed average I would have been posted to an operational training unit for further training before being posted to an operational squadron I was bypassed because I passed above average, I think I told you, I was sent to Canadian Operational Squadron at Accrington Northampton er Northumberland where I spent several interesting months, our operation area was the North East included such targets as Newcastle and Durham so I expected a good deal of activity however compared to Southern England it was [?] and disappointing, I teamed with a Canadian pilot Sergeant Hughie Gorr we became very close friends and after the war we exchanged home visits, he and I stayed together as a crew for about three years. He proved his worth as a talented pilot on many occasions but one in particular sticks in my memory that happened quite soon after I was posted to Accrington the squadron oh yes this was Number 406 Canadian Squadron also maintained, you can have a copy of this photocopy of this no problem at all, also maintained a detachment at Scorton near Catterick in Yorkshire where all crews spent about one week in four, on one occasion we were on patrol at night there when one of our two engines failed and Hughie said ‘I think I can make it on one engine if you give me a course for base’ I duly did so but very shortly afterward the other engine failed [laughs] and Hughie said ‘bail out’ I opened the rear hatch and was halfway out of the aircraft with my parachute on and Hughie said ‘ooh I can see base and I am going to make a glide landing’ bearing in mind that this was dead of night his confidence was a tribute to his piloting skill when we less than a thousand feet and too late to bail out he said ‘oh lord it’s a dummy’ in other words a dummy was a false runway close to the proper runway and built to mislead enemy activity, I reluctantly climbed back in the aircraft er closed the rear hatch and settled down to await my fate it was then considered to control the engineless aircraft but kept the wheels up and made a crash landing in a field roughly fifty yards from a small wood I then climbed out [whispers] with a bruised knee, and that was that was quite an experience, er as enemy air activity was very low the squadron was posted for a year to Scotland not far from Prestwick where I had received my radar baptism this posting was also not terribly exciting and when volunteers were called to venture overseas to join the Middle East battle Hughie and I were happy to do so we were then posted to Wilmslow in Cheshire to be fully kitted out for overseas duties and then to Avonmouth where we boarded a steamer bound for Freetown in Sierra Leone our ship was part of a convoy on arrival at Freetown after surviving a few submarine scares we then boarded another steamer bound for Takoradi in the Gold Coast what was called the Gold Coast er that’s now Ghana of course, which went without convoy protection but fortunately we had no attacks from enemy submarines, we learnt while on board to Takoradi that all the passengers were aircrew and that the RAF had built an airport there for the purpose of ferrying fighter aircraft to the war zone in the Middle East, the aircraft had been shipped separately, this is very interesting, in knock down form for assembly in Takoradi the reason for this was that the Germans controlled the Mediterranean and it was considered to wasteful to fly direct aircrew had to wait a few days while the aircraft arrived and were assembled and then flown in convoy to the war zone across Africa, the route from Takoradi to the base in Egypt called Abu Suweir was a long one and we had to stop several times for refuelling and this meant overnight stops at Maiduguri Nigeria, El Fasher in Darfur, Wadi Halfa on the Southern Nile and finally up the Nile to Abu Suweir that’s how we got to Egypt. Unfortunately when we landed at Takoradi I was bitten [laughs] I was bitten by an annapolis mosquito and spent the next three weeks in a military hospital recovering from malaria this meant that Hughie and I missed our convoy and so our Beaufighter was three weeks late we were further delayed because our plane suffered a magneto drop and we had to leave our convoy for an emergency landing in another strip at El Geneina this meant we had to wait another week or so while a replacement engine was flown out to us finally we flew on our own the rest of the way by the time we arrived in Egypt, Montgomery had won the battle of El Alamein, it’s the story of my life [turning pages over] experience. We stayed in Egypt with 89 Squadron for about six months 89 was commanded by a well known commander called Wing Commander Stainforth he was a magnificent pilot and 89th Squadron he was given what was about three times the size of a normal RAF Squadron having a detachment as far away as Malta, Abu Seweir was comparatively quiet and our duties were largely uneventful patrols though I do remember coming out of cloud over Alexandria being mistaken by a JU88 by our own Mediterranean fleet and hastily removing ourselves from a concentrated anti-aircraft barrage. Now around the time this time Hughie was seconded temporarily for ferry duties and I was a spare navigator a squadron leader pilot who had completed his tour of Whitley bombers was posted to 89 Squadron to learn to fly Beaufighters the aircraft Beaufighter and I acted as navigator while Hughie was away Squadron Leader Clements had great difficulty in mastering the Beaufighter which tended to swing to starboard on take off and landing one day we took off as usual but squadron leader temporarily lost control and we were at right angles from the runway before we had got to the end we then wondered around the sky while I showed him our various points of interest Port Said, Alexandria and so on and eventually we approached our own airfield and he began his descent on landing he failed to control the swing tendency but this time on the landing the aircraft was once again at right angles to the runway [laughs] and heading straight for to a Hurricane which was occupied the Hurricane was, its’s engine, where are we, was running because the chocks had not been removed because the people who pulled the chocks away the aircraft er yeah the airmen who pulled them away couldn’t quite rightly saw that if they stayed where they are they would get killed by us you see, so anyway, I still remember I had not yet been [?] so he so that he was stationery I still remember the look of absolute panic on the face of the hurricane pilot as we removed his starboard wing [laughs] can you imagine that as we went by [laughs] the nearest the furthest away he could get so yes so fortunately he didn’t get hurt at all the squadron leader added to our problems by turning around in ever decreasing circles and the undercarriage finally collapsed on the ground we stopped I had a slightly bruised knee for the second time I also remember Squadron Leader Clements saying ‘I’m terribly sorry flight sergeant’ I was a flight sergeant by then my own reply had better not be printed. Fortunately Hughie returned the following day there was very little action around this time and when early in 1943 we were asked to volunteer for a three month detachment in India where the Japanese were reputed to be bombing Calcutta heavily and frightening the local population many of whom ran panic stricken into the jungle we gladly responded positively the volunteer flight of eight Beaufighters was commanded by Flight Lieutenant George Nottage a first class chap he and I became great friends after the war, after an interesting albeit uneventful side trip Dum Dum Airport Calcutta with various stops in the Gulf and in Bombay we arrived and moved to RAF airfield at Bicarchi [?] we then found that the enormous Japanese bombing turned out to be three Mitsubishi bombers flying at night with their lights on, I’m not joking, and carrying antipersonnel bombs, the night after we arrived the first of our eight crews on night readiness was piloted by a chap called Flight Sergeant Pring sure enough three Japanese bombers in formation with their lights on approached Calcutta and Pring duly shot them all down in four minutes his radar navigator W Warrant Officer Phillips didn’t have a much to do, two nights later three more Japanese bombers approached Calcutta this time shot down by an Australian flight lieutenant, the name escapes me, and his radar navigator Warrant Officer Moss unfortunately Moss could not have been looking at his radar set at the time because he overlooked the Jap fighter that was shadowing his three bomber friends and he shot the Beaufighter down happily happily, there is no tragedy in this so unhurt when they crash landed they were picked up by Burmese Irregulars [?] called Force 136 who looked after them and they were taken to the nearest allied post and in due course returned to us, thereafter Japanese night bombing ceased because they didn’t know about radar you see radar was so important to us enough in the war it was one of the keys that got us the win, I forgot to mention on arrival at Dum Dum we were told that as were now under RAF India Command our service was to last three years and not three months [laughs] you can imagine our reply [laughs] but I wouldn’t tell you. Consequently we spent most of our time in Burma what is now Bangladesh we were based in Chittagong resorted to intruder flights over Burma where our targets were mainly trains and convoys of lorries these were fairly long flights and I remember in particular Rangoon and Mandalay we also dropped the occasional senior officers to Infall [?] where the 14th Army were besieged the airport there used to be attacked during the day but we managed without incident, er one hot summer day what’s all this about, oh yes this is interesting, one hot summer day in 1943 I was laying on my Charpoy [?], do you know what Charpoy it’s a straw bed, er where am I oh yes, er perspiring freely, wh en an officer came to my billet and told me to quote his own words ‘George wants you’ and I asked ‘why?’ and the officer didn’t know ‘I don’t know go and ask him’ I duly presented myself at the officers mess and in due to course to George Flight Lieutenant Knowledge Flight Lieutenant Nottage came to the door and said ‘oh hello Charlie move your move your stuff in here you’re an officer now’ that’s how I got promoted this was the sum total of my officer training it’s silly isn’t it [laughs] but it’s true [laughs]. As an officer in addition to my navigation duties I was given various jobs i.e. savings officer, officers mess, bar officer and entertainments officer, every Friday I sat at the end of the airmen’s weekly pay parade and collected such amounts as such as each airman gave paid from his weekly wage to be handed a savings certificate in return for his donation which I then banked. My bar officer duties consisted of replenishing stocks from weekly visits to Calcutta and setting prices for all the different types of alcohol initially I made myself very unpopular by raising the prices but this changed completely when I opened the bar for free for the five days around Christmas, I am considered to be responsible for the squadron leader admin acquiring DT’s. My most memorable experience as an entertainments officer was when I learnt that Vera Lynn was visiting the area this was just after the end of the war in Europe actually and Egypt and so on, I made an emergency flight to Calcutta and at short notice given an appointment and I successfully persuaded her to come to Bicarchi and giver a concert there which was of course highly successful despite the fact the only date we could offer was the Sunday at which she said ‘well it’s me day off really but I’ll do it for the boys’ what a wonderful person she is. Shortly after my pilot and various other officers having completed their flying duties were flown home, my flying duties were also completed but instead of being flown home I was promoted to Flight Lieutenant and posted to Basci [?] Air Quarters in Delhi there I was initially responsible for organising the various training headquarters throughout India for Indian Air Force Ground Crew, excuse me, nearly finished. After a few months I was transferred to the organisational department with the grand title of ORG1A here I was once again promoted to squadron leader and was involved with planning the invasion of Singapore unfortunately somebody dropped an atom bomb and ruined all my work subsequently I handled various aspects of construction on airfields under our control and exceptionally after the war ended this included the Indian Officer Building of British Overseas Aircraft. At long last I was posted home with my wife, not this one [laughs], Winnie was a WAF corporal whom I had met in Accrington years ago we’d been in correspondence since then and she followed me to India via Ceylon at the first opportunity but the disparity in our ranking met with some disapproval but we still married in Delhi and gave a popular ceremonial drinking party on arrival in England in 46 after due leave with my new family [?] er oh yes well after that I mean you don’t want to know you won’t
AH: I wouldn’t mind knowing what you did after the war?
CB: Oh right, my work at Air Ministry was a member of the British bombing survey I was posted to Air Ministry to assist in the analysis of the different bombing targets as instructed by Air Marshall Bomber Harris you’ve heard of him, his policy of bombing towns to break the morale of the German people was considered [coughs] correctly in my view as wrong both strategically and morally because the carriage that resulted the carnage that resulted failed completely to break the German civilian aircraft German civilian morale and cost our Bomber Command fifty per cent casualties the highest casualty rate of any arm of any service in allied command that’s true Bomber Command, well I had an elder brother he didn’t last there you go. On my release later in 1946 the RAF paid for a short course in business admin and a posting for two years, do you still want to hear that, at six pounds per week [laughs] er in a repetition woodworking company specialising in turnery where I was supposed to continue my business training in fact I was in effect an underpaid office manager my boss was so pleased with me that he doubled my pay to twelve pounds per week ‘cos he only paid six of it and the government paid the other however when the two years were completed and the government subsidy of six pounds per week ceased his attitude changed during this time I qualified as a Chartered Secretary my workload kept on increasing and after blazing row I left, still go on. It took me a few months to find a decent job during this time I kept the family in funds by selling insurance door to door you know life insurance door to door for the United Friendly Insurance Company, the branch I worked for used to give a ballpoint every week to the salesman who sold the most insurance during the week after five weeks I had acquired five ballpoint pens and the inducement for all salesmen ceased, during this time I kept on answering advertisements for office managers as a result of which I recognised I acquired a recognised office managers job in Thetford ooh six hundred and fifty a year getting all right, Winnie and Rosalind remained in the rented flat in London for a few months as it took me some time to find suitable rented accommodation in Thetford, er well nothing there really nothing. We stayed in Thetford until 1969 1949 sorry the company I served manufacturing company raw material moulded pulp the raw material was discarded cardboard boxes which by immersion into water produced articles such as baby baths, trays and flower bowls we were in fact the largest producer of babies baths in England, it had another division in a branch factory in Newmarket using vulcanised fibre to make two thirds of Britain’s coal miners helmets at that time the miners workforce in the UK numbered seven hundred thousand, one of the papier mache formed the basis for motorcycle crash helmets which we sold to a firm called Helmets Limited for the vast sum of two shillings and ten pence, when the Duke of Edinburgh initiated the idea that all cyclists should wear crash helmets I persuaded my company to market a new product as we had the equipment and the technique to make completed cyclists and motorcyclists helmets, I was given carte blanche by my boss to devise a new production line and advertise and market the product which I named the Centurion this product rapidly became the most successful of all work and profit doubled during that time I qualified by correspondents course as an AC as a cost and works accountant now enjoys a more prestigious title a cost and management accountant ACMA the company was owned by an absentee board of directors I was congratulated by the chairman who said that as a result of what I had done about the crash helmet I would be given a bonus of one hundred pounds this resulted in my leaving the company and taking a job in Calcutta as chief cost accountant for the largest group of paper mills in India at three times my previous salary, oh you don’t know anymore it goes on you know, well basically after that oh yes of course I was in India, gr oooh, oh yes that could be interesting actually. I left my family with Winnie daughter Rosalind aged eight then she’s now sixty nine now she’s seventy no rising seventy still going strong.
Other: No, no you mean Winnie you mean no no no you don’t mean Ros.
CB: I mean Rosalind her daughter is nearly seventy yes that’s right, er how could she be nearly seventy then? Oh yes of course she can but I’m ninety five. In Aiden I bought a blue Rolex Oyster Royal for fourteen pounds which I still have, [laughs] must be worth a hundred or two, we landed in Bombay proceeded by rail to Calcutta here we were met taken by road to Chandannagar [?] which is on the Hooghly River about thirty miles away where we billeted in a very large flat in a compound with other paper mill executives, errr well nothing very well yes [laughs] well I’ll show you how it changed my life I was soon advised that as cost accountant I was responsible for all the accounts and I controlled the stores at that time two large paper mills the largest being in Chittiga and the other where I was based in Chandannagar [?] I was provided with a chauffeur driven limousine which enabled me to visit both mills every day Monday to Friday at each of which there was a storekeeper controlling very valuable stores for equipping the papermill machines at each mill a large area was allocated for storing of thousand tonnes of bamboo sticks for bamboo we made the paper out of the bamboo, ah and having been cut down by contractors from miles around the bamboo was weighed on arrival before being unloaded and the moisture content which varied from freshly cut forty percent moisture down to seasoned around ten percent was weighed at the main at the mill weighbridge and the contractors were paid only for the seasoned weight this was obviously capable of corruption between the contractor and the weighbridge keeper I very soon found that corruption was endemic in the end this was an example I appointed a [?] the weighbridge keepers who were Indian but understood and spoke English as at the time I spoke no Urdu one of the weighbridge keepers said to me ‘don’t worry Barron saab while I am in your backside no harm shall come to you’ it was impossible to sack anybody at the as the union was very strong so I merely had him sidestepped the other stores housed in large buildings which were locked up out of working hours by the storekeeper this was also subject to corruption and as the chief engineer British was also corrupt I found in due course that control was virtually impossible, the Head Office was in Calcutta and my own boss whose title was simply the boss my own boss he was number one and I was number four answered my query on the subject of corruption by saying tongue in cheek ‘you can take anything which you can eat or drink but nothing which crackles or rings’ there you go, social life was good especially for me, after a few months Winnie took Rosalind home to England we’d already booked Rosalind for a place in boarding school I’d taken the oh yes I’d taken the opportunity to play my violin and in fact I joined the Calcutta Symphony Orchestra as deputy lead violinist the orchestra was composed largely of amateurs like myself and it was conducted by a Welsh Englishman David Jacobs whose family owned several jute mills as Calcutta was on the world circuit of prestigious soloists and I was the only fairly knowledgeable musician we occasionally entertained famous names such as [?] and I was placed next to him keep him entertained at dinner in the luxurious head office dining room [?] and I took to each other and we had a most stimulating discussion about the life of a professional musical soloist he invited me to call on him at the Savage Club in London whenever I managed to get back to England unfortunately he died before my first home leave, I did call on David Jacob’s family in London to go and see, err [flicks through pages], oh yes [laughs] the work conditions were not without interest and occasional excitement as for example when my office was invaded by some hundreds of bamboo coolies demanding a rise in wages this was understandable because they were quote “outcasts” unquote and were at the lowest possible rate of pay thirty rupees per month about ten shillings per week of fifty pence as we now call it my hands were tied but I did manage to have their pay increased as a result of my representation on their behalf at head office this put them on equal pay with the next cast rank above whose member well the members were not at all pleased. I was rather more for more fortunate than the chief engineer of a large engineering company in Calcutta when his workforce through him in the boiler [laughs], as the executive responsible for labour relations throughout both paper mills I was chairman of the grading committee, er oh yes mmm, you don’t want to know about all that, oh yes well during this time yes I got a Dear John letter from Winnifred telling me she was leaving me and wanted to marry my best friend I was naturally devastated there had been no hint of this before I left England, my six months furlough was not due for about another year but my company were good enough to bring my furlough forward for a few months during this time I managed to divorce Winnifred and put Rosalind into a good private school and then er when I came back I had time to spare and I it was six months you see and after a couple of months I got a temporary job in National Farmers by the National Farmers Union as a representative of Joe Nickerson and Company have you heard of them well it’s very big locally er it’s a seed growing company which offered to pay me adequately for introducing a new lawn seed called “Agrosstistolernepherous” [?] to retail seed sundries man and they gave me free rein to go where I wished and call on retail seed sundries man and after, I’m cutting this short, after a few weeks I decided to report and after initial annoyance that I had not sent them weekly reports Nickerson were delighted with the number of seed sundries men I had appointed added to their customers, the annual summer dinner dance I was invited to attend as their guest the organiser was the managing director’s PA and who introduced herself to me during the course of the evening her name was Janet Franklin and we were married about one month afterwards, unfortunately I received an urgent call from my Indian employers to return to India immediately a flight [coughs] a flight had been booked for me to return on Christmas Day which meant I had to leave Janet behind for about two months while she had while she put her local affairs in order and she joined me a eighteen months later ahhh [long sigh]. I soon realised that the salary I received in India could be equalled with the greatest of difficulty and required considerable initiative and therefore initially having qualified for management accountant I decided to use it in the field of management consultancy so the first company I joined was a firm of charlatans and I left them to try my luck as a self employed consultant at this I was reasonably successful but my plants were rarely close to our home in Sussex being largely in Scotland and Northern England and this necessitated almost continued absence so when Jan Janice, not this lady, was hospitalised following a miscarriage we decided on her release to look for a home much closer to her family living in Grimsby and near Louth where she had been educated so then sixty one sold the house er in Sussex where we lived um for seven thousand five hundred pounds er and then we bought The Elms no we bought The Elms for seven thousand five hundred I think we sold the Sussex one for about the same The Elms was a large six bedroom house here in Louth er and then I was introduced to a gentleman called Ken Addison who was a general manager of a polythene film extrusion company owned by Pickford Paper Mills Ken was very anxious to run his own company but had no capital neither did I however in my travels I had made friends with a well to do business man named Anthony Jowell who was prepared to invest three thousand pounds and we needed about ten thousand although I had no money of my own my financial reputation was such that I was offered three thousand by the bank which was then the National Provincial Bank and Addison had a friend in the scrap metal motoring business and I persuaded his friend to buy three thousand to buy one thousand shares and make a shareholder for three thousand pounds and he did so the odd two thousand shares I presented to Ken Addison and he was the MD and I was the financial director that’s when we made some money real money, er do you want to know how [laughs], got pages yet, is that enough?
AH: Yeah [laughs] thank you its very interesting
CB: Cos I made another I started another company double glazing after this we sold our company that was where made some real money the first time but do you know what taxation was then? Maximum taxation of anything over one hundred thousand earnings was eighty five percent and capital gains that was the cheapest way out that was forty percent so when we sold our company we had to give the government forty percent of it doesn’t happen now its about fifteen not fair is it.
Other: If you remember tax on unearned tax on unearned income as opposed to earned income was ninety eight percent.
CB: Yeah the maximum
Other: Can you believe it?
CB: Ninety eight percent for unearned income if you were a rich person that’s the sort of money that they ought to be charging the very rich now but they don’t do they? Well that’s about roughly it oh yes the other company was double glazing
Other: Yes
CB: Yes Primo Windows
Other: Primo Windows
CB: Of course you don’t come from this area and I sold that after ten years having got this three thousand pounds and I sold that for another three hundred thousand ten years later so there we are okay.
AH: And where were you from originally?
CB: Pardon
AH: And where were you from originally?
CB: Islington.
AH: Really.
CB: Yes, 17 Chapel Market second floor above a shop of a er shop anyway where I shared two rooms with my mother, father, two brothers and a sister that was where I started.
AH: And why did you want to join the RAF?
CB: Where did?
AH: Why did you join the RAF?
CB: Well I I thought what a marvellous thing what a wonderful thing to be able to do fly like that
Other: And there was a war on too.
CB: Yes and there was a war on it was either RAF [burps] or army or navy and not being a very good swimmer navy was out for me and the army I didn’t fancy being in those blasted trenches all the time and the RAF sounded much more interesting and they accepted me so there we are [takes a drink], so I can let you have a copy of the relevant stuff if you want it [sifts through papers] er
Other: I can print some off
CB: Yes can you print pages four, five,
Other: Yes I’ll just go get it turned on
CB: Six and seven and eight I think that will do. And er at that time er I was given a job with the British Bombing Survey Unit er what the start of it actually the chap in charge was an air marshall I mean he was this was to have to investigate an air chief marshall’s duties so I I was I was a senior assistant to the bod [?] I forgot who it was now it was a very very well quite a well known name.
Other: Well that was Harris wasn’t it?
CB: No no that was the chap we were investigating.
Other: Oh right yes okay. So which is two cups I think they were actually these are clean.
CB: No these are new ones.
Other: Yes they are, there you go.
AH: Thank you.
Other: Did you have sugar? Lots of musical terms on there [laughs]
CB: Yes, er I can’t the trouble is my memory is not good it really isn’t and I.
Other: Very good you’ve just got ninety five years of memories to to drag out that’s the thing it’s the hard drive that’s full.
CB: What?
Other: The hard drive is full.
CB: Yes [laughs] I reckon.
AH: So what did you do exactly when you were there?
CB: When, when? I was well I had an office and a secretary I think yeah I did and I er I visited a I forget where a lot of information about how many aircraft which type of aircraft had had a percentage more er knocked down by the Germans and so on all sorts of things like that a lot of statistics and the statistic showed um cos I said the best things to do is to look at all the places that we were told to bomb by Harris and what the results were and he kept on um er he kept on giving the giving air command giving er fighter command the instructions to go bomb towns more than military targets and that’s why I said we killed a lot of German civilians and as a result of that that was part of my report when I said that we we er um unnecessarily went for these and put as my real reason which wasn’t quite my real reason the fact that we lost so many aircraft of our own fruitlessly that was really the sum total of what I found and he was disgraced and sent sent er but I wasn’t the only one there we were we were there was about a good half dozen of us going different areas and so on and so forth it was an important thing British Bombing Survey Unit there I had it all written down there so if you want to know [laughs] that’s what I was mainly in charge of or partly in charge anyway all right.
AH: And what reaction did you get to your report?
CB: Report well the report was then read by the top brass in Air Ministry and in due course he got the sack [laughs] well he was er he was dismissed to some very minor post in South Africa and er had no real power or duties after that and it’s only recently that some some idiots have started to resurrect him er as what a wonderful good chap he was but he really wasn’t there you are history can be distorted sometimes.
AH: And was the general view of like your family what did they think of Harris at the time?
CB: He was well they knew nothing any apart from the fact that I had lost a brother who was a navigator on Lancaster’s er I was lucky I was stuck where well I started before he did er and er didn’t get involved in bombing I was night fighting and intruding [?] and you were fine in there
AH: Where was your brother stationed?
CB: Pardon.
AH: Where was your brother stationed?
CB: Oh stationed in England and er his grave which we have visited is at er
Other: Hanover
CB: Hanover in Germany.
Other: That was very emotional wasn’t it?
CB: It was yes yes, he was he was a brainy fellow too and er he was a much brighter bloke more intelligent fellow than his elder brother who was a bit of a well nothing important shall we say yes.
AH: What was your brother called?
CB: Well he was originally christened Emmanuel but then people called him Manny and he didn’t like that so he rechristened himself Ernest and he was then called Ernie [laughs] in the same way as well I might as well admit I was born and christened my parents christened me Cyril and I didn’t like Cyril particularly in the air force where they made fun of it so I said my name was Charles and I have been Charles ever since now well it began with C so that was enough [laughs].
Other: You couldn’t do that nowadays could you [laughs] in fact it is much easier to change your surname than your given name.
CB: Well there you go.
AH: And what was it like working with when you started training on radar did you know anything about it before?
CB: Nothing whatso, well nobody did it was a high ever so secretive and as I say it was a very very important arm of the of the armed forces because we got to it before the Germans did and in consequence our our bomber um our defence night fighter defence er and day fighter for that matter ‘cos you could see them from oh even miles away so then [?] you could trace them it starts off with a ground office you’ve seen those photographs of WAFS with the stick in their hand [laughs] you can see their underclothes and there all round the table pointing at things and these are the directions that they are pointing at because you got the table was the map and they pointed to all and were told as they were told they pointed towards them and it was all done by the people controlling the radar because the radar it was a way of controlling um it would start off with a name radio direction finding that was what it was you see and they are all around us you can’t feel them or anything but there they all are and it was fantastic I wish I could remember the chap who discovered how to use them because he got highly decorated for it I think we met himah what was his name no good if it comes to be I’ll let you know but you can find that out anyway.
AH: Was it difficult to learn?
CB: We didn’t have much time did you, er I um my sole instruction of reading I had to read two tubes were two air tubes and various funny pictures upon them er one the left hand one had a line there straight along and that was the line started with the ground and ended and ended much in line with the heavens and if you were at ten thousand feet for example a little blip occurred at ten thousand it was all measured so that you would know if he was above you or below you and also how much above or how much and the distance and then you had another one like that another line like that and and there it was to the right of the left of the line either they were east or west as you were flying and however near you were or near they were to you or however further away and the idea was for us to move to use the radar which we could direct which we could find where if there was an aircraft in front of us within our our distance and our distance at that time was above er the distance we were above the ground so the higher we went the longer the tine the longer the line and this little blip was you could have a half dozen blips er above or below and there was there was also you could tell friend from foe by because they had a little er piece of equipment that once the little thing you looked at looked for and once you got the line you tried to follow it and catch it catch up with it then your pilot who had who had in a Beaufighter ohhh um four canon and six machine guns you could then shoot it down and he wouldn’t even know what hit him you see and a lot of people did that when the time came I was quite good at it as it so happens er it was as a sergeant a flight sergeant although we were on duty a lot when the commanding officer or senior officer came and there was a raid on he took over and he then went up when there was an aircraft there to get shotdown before we got a chance at it we used to get very cross about that but we weren’t officers [laughs] but there we are there all sorts of things I could teach you it would take years.
AH: Did you have to stare at it all the time?
CB: No no if the er we had loudspeakers attached to our ears and if the command if we heard there was ‘action is required’ or whatever we then we then stared we then stared at but we used it for all sorts of other reasons we used it for I had a map in front of me and if I wanted to get to a particular place a particular place say we were fifty miles away I could er I could use the radar to check where the objective was roughly and then get closer to it and closer to it until the pilot could see it so it was quite interesting – ahh I can’t remember it all that well it was a long time ago.
AH: What were the Beaufighters like?
CB: Oh great stuff um I’ll show you one.
Other: Oh right where is it its not a very big one
CB: There’s your Beaufighter [shows a picture] the pilot was there and I was there okay and we communicated by radar by telephone that’s it very manoeuvrable it was oh yeah and he was thank heaven for me he was a first class pilot and he seemed to think I was a decent navigator so we got on well in fact we got to know each other and he visited us after the war and we visited him in Canada, yes but he’s dead now died of natural causes.
AH: How come you went to a Canadian Squadron?
CB: That was when at the time it was the nearest definite one that was available that’s all I cannot tell you why I was picked in the Canadian Squadron or not I was very pleased about it eventually it didn’t make any difference to me whether it was Canadian or English but the Canadians were a good lot they really were, yeah I imagine that they were ones that had been they had been fully equipped and were and had so they were granted an airfield and off we went.
AH: And when you were flying to Rangoon and Mandalay were they Beaufighters as well?
CB: Oh yeah yes they were Beaufighters as well very very serviceable aircraft then they were outgrown in speed er and er by the Mosquitoes you heard of the Mosquitoes and I but the last couple of months they finally because we were the forgotten air force really out in India um we had to put up with Mos with Beaufighters for two and a half years really and then for a few a couple of months that was all I was I converted to Mosquitoes and then they said ‘no you are an officer now we’ve got an office for you now in Delhi go there so we went there do as you are told’.
Other: It was in Delhi where everybody ran screaming into the when the Japanese came over everybody ran screaming into the woods in Delhi.
CB: No from Calcutta which is east east they came and they took over Burma
Other: Oh yes
CB: And eventually they couldn’t they didn’t take over what is it now part of India called Bangladesh no it’s separate now which was Bengal which was at this end of Burma and so they never took that over completely although the British Army had a had an army which was defended they defended itself for who what was the number of that [?] well it’s in there somewhere I think anyway and er they defended themselves but they didn’t couldn’t defend them from the Japanese taking over Burma and that was when we had to fight from in the air to get it back and at that time the east part er the north east that way we managed to hang on to that bit and I was stationed at Chittagong you’ve heard of Chittagong look at the map and you’ll get a rough idea I suppose it would interest everybody it would interest at that time all we wanted to do was get home of course but three years [laughs] – and as I always did what I was told I got promoted [laughs].
Other: Don’t believe a word of it [laughs]
AH: Could you describe a flight for example to Rangoon?
CB: Could I describe a flight most of the time it was boring it just went boom boom boom for a thousand miles or so from where we were was it no it wasn’t quite as far as that it was about six or seven hundred miles oh yeah easy um that’s right then we had to find where we told to shoot at which we did through radar [laughs] and fly back unhurt we were lucky.
AH: What did you do in your spare time?
CB: How dare you [laughs] I don’t know what I did in my spare time probably got drunk half the time we had quite a lot to drink but that was in our spare time we were not supposed to well we had those of us who survived anyway had the common sense not to get drunk so that we couldn’t operate decently after all we had a family at home.
AH: Were there other people that didn’t though?
CB: Well people did get killed yes, Pring the man who shot those first three he didn’t survive so it was one of those things, ah.
Other: Still there can’t be many more survivors around really.
CB: Oh there are.
Other: No there can’t be you’ve got to be
CB: No not now who are still alive
Other: You’ve got to be seventy five upwards haven’t you at least may be more
AH: Yeah more may be
CB: Oh yes you won’t have any youngsters, I was always twenty years younger than the century very easy to remember.
AH: And was your father in the First World War?
CB: He was but er he wasn’t English he was Rumanian and my mother was Lithuanian and I am a Jew as you’ve gathered.
AH: So when did they come to Britain?
CB: Oh they came they came to Britain from their relative countries before the First World War before the First World War to escape the er Pogroms, Russian Russian and Rumanian Pogroms and er they had relatives that I lost touch with I’m afraid a long time ago they had relatives in Manchester and er and er in London so er we ended up in London and er I cannot understand this but we ended up in London but the people who to be honest I can’t explain it but the people who they got in touch with who they were related both my mother’s relatives related to people in Manchester why my parents and co ended up in London and settled there I just cannot tell you but they did and of course there was quite a large Jewish population in the east end of London and er.
Other: Anyway London was nearer to Europe.
CB: London was nearer to Europe so it was easier to get to I suppose yes, there is so much of my early years I just cannot understand the domestic situation all I know is that we were not very well off you see there we are.
AH: Were you aware of the build up were you like Cable Street and?
CB: Cable Street
AH: Yes
CB: Cable Street that was Jewish yes that was Jewish but we didn’t live there that was the east end for some reason or other we settled in I no there was in Chapel Street London it was a Rumanian Jewish settlement and it was a market and they used to have stalls stalls stalls rather outside shops some of them quite a few of them had er either owned or rented the shop and were quite well to do but my parents did have a shop and had to rent a stall so there we are no we weren’t very well off shall we say [laughs] there you go it happens.
Other: So the remote chance of you being in North Lincolnshire at this point in time amazing isn’t it.
CB: Well as I say that that you’ll find in there as to where why we came to Lincolnshire why I came to Lincolnshire we didn’t come together my first wife had gone off with my best friend and my second wife I hadn’t met until I er was asked by these Nickersons who were very very wealthy farmers in where we are very wealthy now and er by Nickersons to er and I volunteered I put an advert in the Times ‘cos I’d done the divorcing bit and I had four months to spare before I went back from my six months furlough back to my accounting firm in India you see and er it was then I put this advert in the Times saying I had this four months did anybody want to employ me and they did having interviewed me here some in Grimsby yes and given me this job er particularly it was rather nice for them no no no this was a long time after after [?] I’m getting myself confused I’m sorry but er
Other: You know there used to be in the time when lots of people worked in India and other places and they would normally do two and a half years overseas and then come back for six months.
CB: This is what I did.
Other: This is what he did and I’ll tell you they were a bit of a menace sometimes because they were coming back with nothing to do for six months can you imagine it.
CB: Well as I say.
Other: Particularly if they didn’t have families you know.
CB: Well I had lost my first wife I’d divorced my first wife and her daughter had been born then Rosalind who’s alive now but er I’d got her into what’s the name of the top class school?
Other: Roedean
CB: I got her into Roedean so she had a Roedean education and on holiday she used to be with my sister my sister had a home in London and it was quite a nice home her husband was the you see that carpet there in the next room have you had a look at it it’s a very good one he used to be the branch manager of Derry and Toms Carpeting department [laughs] and I got that comparatively cheaply but I suppose probably wouldn’t make much difference now I’ve had it some considerable time but it’s a very nice carpet do you want to have a look at it? [laughs]
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Charles Baron
Creator
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Anna Hoyles
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-03-21
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01:09:51 audio recording
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Sound
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ABaronC160321
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Pending review
Description
An account of the resource
Charles Baron grew up in London and volunteered for aircrew in 1940. He trained as a navigator and on radar. He later volunteered for overseas duties and was posted to India where he flew intruder operations over Burma. After the war he worked training Indian Air Force ground personnel and with the British Bombing Survey. When he left the Air Force he qualified as a Chartered Secretary and worked in India and the UK.
Contributor
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Jackie Simpson
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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
Spatial Coverage
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Burma
Egypt
Great Britain
India
United States
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1943
aircrew
Asian heritage
Beaufighter
Blenheim
entertainment
faith
final resting place
forced landing
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
navigator
perception of bombing war
radar
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/896/11136/AInkpenH160712.2.mp3
769d6de8ba72622ffed198bb128df8ce
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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Inkpen, Harry
H Inkpen
Description
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An oral history interview with Flying Officer Harry Inkpen. He flew 33 operations as a pilot with 162 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-07-12
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Inkpen, H
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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AB: This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Anne Brodie, the interviewee is Harry Inkpen. The interview is taking place at Mr. Inkpen’s home in [redacted] Ryde, Isle of Wight, on the 12th of July 2016.
HI: Thank you. Right.
AB: If you’d like just to tell us a bit about your service in the RAF?
HI: Now I talk now? What do I do, talk now?
AB: Yes, you can talk in there, and then it’s hearing there.
HI: It’ll pick it up?
AB: Yeah. It’s picking it up. I can see.
HI: Ah yes. I joined Bomber Command in November 1944 and that was one of the headquarters with number 8 group based in Huntington, Cambridgeshire and the commanding officer was Group Captain Don Bennett, subsequently he was an air vice marshal but he was a remarkable man, not only was he an ace pilot but he was a remarkable navigator in his own right. We started to, the operations with my navigator for our first tour together. The tour was supposed to be thirty five attacks on Germany. In the end, we only did thirty three, because the war ended in April and we were two short of the target, not that that mattered, but we joined 162 Squadron, a Mosquito squadron for markers for Pathfinders and we operated from Bourne in Lincolnshire, that was the aerodrome, and we shared the aerodrome with 105 Squadron, another Mosquito squadron who were master, master markers, they marked the target before we went in. The, when we were first into the Mosquito, as a pilot I fell in love with the aircraft because I’d never seen such a beautiful thing in my life. It had two Rolls Royce engines and the body was all wood and it was called the wooden wonder because it was a real wonder. I think the top speed, straight level, was four hundred and fifty miles an hour. In that day, that was very fast and this was how we had no defence against enemy fighters because we relied entirely on our speed and nothing could catch us. The German Air Marshall Goering was our main enemy, he was, they were very, the Luftwaffe were very, very good but our, really our very worst enemy was General Winter and that was the weather. Because from 1944 to over into ‘45 the weather was atrocious, on our operations, the thirty three trips we did we never lost, personally we weren’t even harmed on those trips but we had terrible troubles with the weather. And our number 162 Squadron, if I remember rightly, never lost an aircraft over Germany, but we lost twelve aircraft on take-off and landing because of ice, snow, fog, et cetera and that was our real enemy. The, can I pause there?
[recording paused]
AB: Okay [unclear].
HI: Of the thirty three raids that we did, Joe and I, seventeen of them were onto Berlin and Berlin, we never talked about Berlin, it was called, it was called the Big City, we used to say, we are going to the Big City and it was seventeen times we went there. It was very well defended because as the war was drawing to a close, it was in the last six months and Germany was being forced back towards Berlin, all of their anti-aircraft guns, all their searchlights, most of their defences were concentrated on Berlin, so when we were told it was a Berlin night, we knew we were in for some fight. They were very clever, the Germans, they had, they could pick us up on radar and on our instrument panel there were three little lights, if one of them, there was two red lights and a white light, if the red light first came on, it means the radar was actually picking us up, if the red light came on, it means the actual guns were firing and within a few seconds there will be a burst and if the white light came on there was a fighter on your tail, which was very, very helpful, now I only had once, when the red light came on, and the immediate action to do was to turn away smartly and drop down and just above you would be the bursts of the anti-aircraft fire, very clever and I only once had the white light came on which was when a fighter was on your tail and the only fighter that could catch us was the new Messerschmitt 262 which was a jet aircraft, now he could, he could catch us easily, he actually had to throttle back so that he could stay on our tail, now he got on the tail, the white light came on and the tracer went over the top, ‘cause immediately I dropped down and the tracer went over the top so that was really the only problem we had with the defences but the, so if you got caught with the searchlight it was rather remarkable, they had four blue searchlights around Berlin, North, South, East and West and the blue searchlight was radar controlled, if it came on, you could look on the end of it and there was an aircraft, it picked it up straight away and then all the other searchlights were white and they were called the slaves, that was the master searchlight and the white lights were the slaves and they then came right onto the plane, now once only we happened not, we weren’t personally caught but one of the slaves caught us in the light, it was a remarkable experience because one moment you’re in total darkness and the next moment you’re in blinding light and it is blinding light and the only way out of that is to go down straight down the searchlight so when it, when we were in this terrible light, I went straight down it to about five hundred miles an hour and then pulled up and lost it but quite an unusual experience and the other amazing experience was coming back from Berlin when we had dropped our bombs and we got as far as Hanau, H-A-N-A-U, which was a fairly big German city and they had some, a few good defences but we were roundabout thirty thousand feet, that’s nearly six miles high and quite unknown to us, both of the engines stopped, now if you can imagine, nearly six miles high an engine stopping, that is something very unusual, now not only did the engine stop, but the aircraft flipped over and it dropped from thirty thousand feet to eighteen thousand and not because of me but my hand was on the throttle and actually hoping to God the aircraft would come back again the engines and suddenly they came on and the relief was unbelievable and the power of the engines shot us forward, my navigator had disappeared down at the bomb bay and he came up rather shocked and I said, ‘I can’t believe it, Tom, we’re flying’ and the aircraft righted itself and flew on and we stayed at eighteen thousand feet and came home. Now, how that happened we checked afterwards to think what could possibly have stopped two Merlin engines and the current thought was that there’d been a burst of enemy anti-aircraft fire, a big burst and it had left a vacuum in the air and we had flown into the vacuum and because the engine could not get oxygen, the engine stopped and that was, that was the technical reason, the explanation but I was only too happy to say we were alive and home. And that was another remarkable explanation. Now the other, I’m telling you the highlights not the general, just run of the mill but the other experience we had, we got as far across the North Sea on another occasion and as we’d been two and a half hours away, by the time we got to the English coast, the North Sea fog had slowly crept in and the whole of the east coast, all the aerodromes were blotted out with ground fog which came up to a thousand feet, we went down to a thousand feet and we were completely blotted out in fog, we got through on the radio and from Bourne and they told us we must go to a nearby aerodrome thirty miles away which was not clear but it had FIDO on the aerodrome, F-I-D-O, and that’s Fog Instant Dispersal Operation and it’s, there’s two lines of metal strips running down the airfield perforated with flames coming out and it burned the fog away and it was quite remarkable, they gave us a course to this aerodrome and as we were going through the fog, which was grey and white, grey and white colour, as we got nearer to the point where we knew the airport should be, it started to turn yellow and then it turned bright yellow and then we realised we must be right over the aerodrome but we couldn’t see it, but what I did, I did a four minute time course on instruments to go round the airport and coming in on my last leg, I lowered down to five hundred feet and at five hundred feet suddenly the fog stopped just like, as if somebody had lifted a cloud and right in front of you was the airport with these two strips of flames, now these flames were six feet high each side and we landed, you could feel the heat, and there was a few gaps down the side where you get off and Joe said, ‘For God’s sake, don’t swerve’ because we should be roasted because we’d have gone into the flames so we found a gap and got off and the first time my navigator really any showed any great emotion, he just put his arm on my shoulder, he said, ‘Thank God we’re down’, I said, ‘Joe, I couldn’t agree with you more.’ And after that, we went in and saved the night and forgot all about it. Can I stop there for a bit?
[recording paused]
AB: Right.
HI: Aircrew are very suspicious, superstitious people, they’d all have some little gimmick that they carry with them, hoping it might give them some luck, in my case, on my right hand, I always wore my father’s gold ring, and on my left hand, I wore a silver ring which I had made from a silver dollar in America where I was learnt to fly in 1941 I gave an Indian, Navaho Indian a silver dollar and said, would you make me a silver ring?
US: [unclear]
HI: And that and he did and that flew with me and my father’s ring all through the war, all through the operations against Germany and I think it did me very, very well. In the case of my navigator, he was a bit of a lad on the ground was my navigator but in the air he was a remarkable man and quite so capable that I had fully reliance on him and what he did I saw he had something round his neck when he was flying and when I looked at it I said, ‘What’s the scarf you’ve got on then?’ No, no, no,’ he said, ‘That’s a petticoat.’ I said, ‘Oh yeah?’ ‘Yes, a silk petticoat, it’s a blue silk petticoat, and it’s from my current girlfriend’, and he said, ‘I always fly with that.’ I said, ‘I’m so pleased you got something to hold onto even if it’s only a petticoat’, well, halfway through the tour, I then noticed it wasn’t a blue petticoat, but it was a yellow petticoat, and I said, ‘You know, what’s the change of colour?’ ‘Well’, he said, ‘We had a little bit of a tiff, and I’ve moved on.’ So that was why, that was a little bit of unusual thing,
US: [unclear]
HI: About superstitious [recording paused]
HI: When I think that there was, in Bomber Command, those terrible losses, all of those fellows on average would have been carrying something and all those little gifts and [unclear] had gone forever and never been recorded but in my case they did me a favour,
[recording paused]
HI: As far as I can remember, because security was so great in the war, nobody said anything about anything but as far as I know 162 Squadron was, the Mosquito squadron that I was on was the only one that never actually suffered a loss through the enemy, we suffered a twelve, a loss of twelve crews through bad weather, fog, ice, snow and crashes, particularly running short of fuel and going into the North Sea and but we only lost through, purely through weather, bad weather and the weather was so bad, up to nowadays people wouldn’t be flying in it, they wouldn’t be allowed to fly in it but in the war, you didn’t question it, if you flew, you went and that was it, that was, that’s and therefore I can’t remember hearing of any other Mosquito, Pathfinder Squadron who actually lost a plane over Germany, they all lost through bad weather.
[recording paused]
HI: Okay, we are now talking about the last leg into the target, which had to be very accurately flown because the bombsight in the nose of the aircraft was pre-set before the actual aircraft took off, so in the, on the bombsight, if it was Berlin, let’s say it was set at thirty thousand feet and the speed had to be four hundred and fifty miles an hour, the wind had to be, already been calculated, that was put into the bombsight and heading for the last leg, say had to be three hundred and sixty degrees, now all that was actually put into the bombsight before we took off but on the last leg into the target, when the navigator went down to drop the four bombs, which were incidentally were four five hundred pound bombs, he had to know bomb is watch, exactly the time when he pressed the button and said, bomb’s gone, because it was dictated by the bombsight, we were, what we were doing exactly what the bombsight told us to do and that was most important, we actually dropped four five hundred pound bombs, three of them were instantaneous and the fourth was had a twenty four hour delay on it, which was a hope to confuse the enemy when they were trying to clear up that another bomb went off but when they were released and you lost a thousand pounds worth of bombs, the aircraft would jump quite visibly and it was a very pleasing sight.
[recording paused]
HI: To qualify for Mosquitos, certainly for Bomber Command, you had to, a pilot had to have a minimum of a thousand hours flying experience and also had a very high instrument rating because as everything was at night you’d require, you relied entirely on instruments, you you must have an absolute trust in instruments to qualify for this and that’s why it was very difficult to get on to a Mosquito squadron but I was very, very happy that I did because it was an experience I’ll never forget and those qualifications came in very useful in the end, also my lucky rings were a bit of a charm,
[recording paused]
HI: In the Air Force were really going back to school because you were always in class, always learning navigation, mathematics were very high on that and aircraft recognition, firing guns, all all ground work and studies took quite a year on the ground and then suddenly you were selected for, to be a pilot, which was the what you were trying to get to and been aiming all the time, when you, when you became selected to be a pilot, you, they put a white flash in your helmet to designate that you were a pilot and not anybody else and then of course we were sent over to Canada and we went from Gourock on the Clyde out into a troop ship, which was SS Louis Pasteur, which was commandeered from the French, we pinched one of their liners, and we ‘propated it into a troop ship, we went up by via Greenland to try and avoid the submarines and then ended up in Halifax near Brunswick
US: Nova Scotia.
HI: As a gathering point and from then on we moved into New Brunswick to Moncton, New Brunswick which was for pilots only, selected for pilots only and the destination from there could only be Florida, South Africa or America. Now, everybody wanted America because, number one, America hadn’t actually entered the war, we were still at war with Germany but, they had never declared war on America so we were sent down by train right down the Saint Lawrence to Toronto, then on to the East Coast line, the West Coast line to Texas, through Texas to Arizona to the little town of Mesa, Arizona, which is an offshoot of Phoenix and Mesa was where the aerodrome was. And of course, we were, there was only fifty of us, fifty English boys, all in civilian clothes because we weren’t allowed to wear a uniform, we were we were entered as visitors and treated as visitors so to get us a training at that time they wanted fighter pilots because it was 1941 and we were seconded to the American Army Air Force as a fighter pilot under training and that was only for a few days and in December, the 8th my birthday, Pearl Harbour happened, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour and America, and then Germany declared war on America, and at that point we were allowed to have uniforms flown down from Canada and suddenly we became air force people and not civilians and then we went to the English British Flying Training School at Mesa, Falcon Field and we were trained there as fighter, to be fighter pilots and my instructor was a civilian, American civilian, he’d been a crop-duster, he’d been an aerobatic pilot in air shows and he’d signed on with the Americans to train pilots and my fortune was that he trained me and he was old enough to be my father and to me, I respected him as my father, and that man taught me to fly and he did me the biggest favour anybody can ever do, and he got me solo in six hours, which was almost a record, but he’s taught me always, because I taught thousands of people to fly after that, and he always taught me to tell them, when you step into an aircraft, you become part of the aircraft, you are not an alien, you are part of it, do exactly what you do with it and from then on I used to tell everybody the same story, and that man taught me to fly, now when I eventually went solo at six hours, we passed on to advanced training to really high quality Harvards and then that was the end and we were told we had our wings, we were made sergeants and we, they pinned the wings on our chest and we were on our way to go home to England. And of course I went back to Canada and this time still to Halifax and this time we got on the troop ship called the Duchess of Atholl, and she was nicknamed the Drunken Duchess because she was a pretty bad ride, she was a luxury liner commandeered as a troop ship but she was pretty rough and we had a very rough passage going over, we went as far as we could up to Greenland and back to Europe but on the way back, we sunk the, had four destroyers as escorts personally for our boat and they left us and went off to laying minefield, depth charges in a circle, and I witnessed the most amazing thing because all these depth charges exploded and suddenly a submarine appeared in the middle, they’d actually got him and when he, when the submarine appeared, every gun from every ship fired at this because they were so delighted and they sank the submarine and after that, we went on quite peacefully to Gourock and from then on we went to Bournemouth, you know that was another point, and there we were sorted out into groups, they’d suddenly realised in 1942, they didn’t want fighter pilots, so we’d been trained as fighter pilots, so here we go, what are we gonna do? So they selected, were you good at instrument flying? Yes, okay. So then, I then went on a course on twin engines because they wanted bomber pilots, so when I did the course on twin engined Oxfords they realised, I did a lot of night flying, and they realised I was fairly good on instruments and also they thought, I could well teach people to to actually fly at night so then I went to Upavon on Salisbury Plain which was the Central Flying School of the RAF and that dated back to the First World War and the mess there had a big fire in it, in the fireplace and over it was a vast propeller and it was from a Zeppelin [unclear] shot down at the First World War, so that was the Central Flying School of the RAF and I had to pass through that to become a flying instructor. When I became a flying instructor, I was sent to Flying Training Command which was at South Cerney in Oxfordshire and South Cerney was the base but they had many satellite aerodromes which were all training aircraft for Oxfords, twin engine aircraft and from then on I trained people on twin engine Oxfords at night flying so I gathered a hell of a lot of night flying hours and hence a lot of night night instrument flying and in that time I was quite a few years with Flying Training Command doing just that, I had one slight respite when I was taken away to train people to fly Horsa gliders, for God’s sake, and they were army officers or army sergeants drafted from the army to just learn to land an aircraft, that’s all, you had to take them up, show them how to take off, but they wanted to know when you cut the engine, how to glide because they were going to be glider pilots and for about two months I trained people to fly that, just fly the Tiger Moth and glide till they knew the angle and from then on I moved on from there back to Flying Training Command and then to twin engines but for me in that little period they took me to Brize Norton and let me actually get in a glider, a Horsa glider so I had the experience of being co-pilot in a Horsa glider with thirty five men in the fully armed back and a landing jeep and a machine gun at the back of me and I remember being towed up by a Lancaster and then at the point of return everything suddenly went silent, the nose dipped and the aircraft took a very steep dive, I reached about a hundred miles an hour and all I could think of was thirty five men in a jeep and a gun in my back and are we gonna land alright and he made a perfect landing and that’s the first time I’d ever been in a glider but I had the experience, I think that was it. So, you see, it’s varied.
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Harry Inkpen
Creator
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Anne Brodie
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-07-12
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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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AInkpenH160712
Format
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00:31:54 audio recording
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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Canada
Germany
Great Britain
United States
England--Gloucestershire
England--Lincolnshire
Germany--Berlin
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1941
1942
1944
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Inkpen joined Bomber Command in November 1944 and flew 33 operations on Mosquitoes as a pilot on 162 Squadron. Tells of how, in his view, his squadron had more losses because of bad weather conditions than because of encounters with the enemy. He flew 17 operations to Berlin and talks about the German defences and searchlight organisation. Recounts a harrowing experience of the aircraft’s engines suddenly stopping while returning from Berlin. Tells of aircrew superstitions: he wore his father’s ring as a lucky charm; his navigator carried a silk petticoat. Remembers being caught in fog returning from an operation and managing to land thanks to FIDO. Recounts travelling to Canada and America, where was trained as a pilot. Mentions the sinking of a U-boat on the way back from Canada. Remembers training army officers to fly Horsa gliders.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Peter Schulze
Carolyn Emery
162 Squadron
4 BFTS
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
British Flying Training School Program
FIDO
Horsa
Mosquito
Oxford
Pathfinders
pilot
radar
RAF Bourn
RAF South Cerney
searchlight
submarine
superstition
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/564/8832/PEmlynJonesA1601.1.jpg
5a87ab19fbe21121173bd90fd1d7fd8e
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/564/8832/AEmlynJonesA161012.1.mp3
bc8126645f0b2316e1d629a80b2452f6
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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Emlyn-Jones, Alun
A Emlyn-Jones
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archvie
Identifier
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EmlynJones, A
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Alun Emlyn-Jones (Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a bomb aimer with 51 Squadron.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-10-12
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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This interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Anne Roberts, the interviewee is Alun Emlyn-Jones. The interview is taking place at Mr Emlyn-Jones’s home in Cardiff, in Wales on the 12th of October 2016.
AR: Thank you Alun for agreeing to talk to me today.
AEJ: My pleasure.
AR: Also present at the interview is Julie Emlyn-Jones, Alun’s wife.
AEJ: That’s right.
AR: So Alun, could you tell me something about your early life?
AEJ: My early life? Well I was brought up in Cardiff, my parents - I was one of two children, my sister was six years older than me and I was the second one and I spent all my early life here really. Then at the age of ten I was sent away to school, I was banished to England for my education. I was very unhappy at school, it was a very difficult time for me, it was just emotional. I was a home boy, I wanted to stay at home I didn’t really want to go but I went to Summer Fields in Oxford to start with and that’s in my book under the title ‘Nightmare’ [laughing] and then I went on to Charterhouse, which was easier. And then, heaven knows what might have happened, I might have gone on to university and so on I suppose, but as a matter of fact I don’t think I was all that scholastically brilliant because I wasn’t working as much as I should have, but the war came to make my decision for me. So I was able then, my parents let me come home waiting for whatever should happen. When it came to, as you know if you volunteered, even if for a short while before you would have been called up you got the privilege of putting down preferences of where you would go, and I must say I wasn’t directed by anything more noble than the fact that I didn’t really want to slog through muddy trenches, so I decided on, you had to put one for each service. So I put my priority as aircrew in Bomber Command, my second one was the submarines and my one for the Army was in tanks, so the idea was that I was going to be carried wherever I was going [laughter] and in due course I was given my first choice and I went to Penarth, I’ve skipped a lot of my youth I’m afraid, went to Penarth to start training there. I’ve skipped a lot, you want to know more about my youth of course.
AR: No, whatever you want to tell us, it’s fine. So your training was in Penarth?
AEJ: We started our initial training, well we started, we met in Penarth before we were sent out to our stations, you know. We went to various places, all over the place. I spent a lot of time training in South Africa, went out on a troop ship, it took six weeks out and six weeks back, incredible, and did my training in a place called East London in South Africa and then came back in due course.
AR: And what did the training entail Alun?
AEJ: Well I suppose we did a lot of flying, Ansons and aircraft like that and then we graduated I think to Whitleys and it was on Whitleys that I was flying with my first crew at the conversion unit. At that point, at the conversion unit we moved to Halifax, the Halifax which we were going to fly during operations. And that’s what we did, so we flew in the Halifax on a regular basis from RAF Rufforth on the flat plain of York and then one day, my crew, well I had my appendix out, that was a very important thing for me. I had an appendix attack. I was able to get home, or it happened somewhere where I could be at home and I had my appendix attack and I had my appendix out in a local nursing home in Cardiff. I wrote to my skipper Stanley Bright ‘I do worry about one thing’ I said, ‘because this has caused me to leave you now and you may not be able to wait for me’. He said ‘don’t worry a bit, the weather’s clamped, we’re doing very little flying, you’re going to be back in a few weeks and that’ll be fine’ And that was the last I heard of him, from him. They were flying from Rufforth on one of their training trips, conversion trips while I had my appendix, they had taken off but they were In, I think, 10/10ths cloud and they were doing simply something like, a simple exercise, I think something like circuits and bumps, you know landing, taking off, landing, taking off, all that sort of thing and I think they got slightly off track in this dense cloud and didn’t realise, because we didn’t have the sophistication with radar that they have now and didn’t realise that the hill, called Garrowby Hill was between them and the ground and they flew into the hill. They killed a passing truck driver and the plane hit the road near Cot Nab Farm, top of Garrowby Hill and disintegrated in the fields and they were all killed. So suddenly I was left, an odd bod with no crew and ah, had to wait to see what would happen. But of course that caused quite a lot of delay in when I started flying and so on as you can see from my logbook, and eventually I was adopted by a crew whose bomb aimer had been taken, borrowed by another crew, and when he was borrowed he was killed. So they ended up as a crew without a bomb aimer and I was a bomb aimer without a crew and they asked me if I would like to join them which of course I was, I was delighted to because that period of just hanging about, just going wandering about the station, not belonging to anybody was a very difficult time, a very, very difficult time. What I couldn’t understand was the attitude of the, I don’t know who he was, one of the senior officers. I couldn’t understand his sort of antagonism to me. He just interviewed me and wanted to know what I was doing and things like that, and then he said ‘get out’. I couldn’t understand that but later, I think I saw that he had been unaware of me not being killed at the time and included me in the list of those who had died that day and I think that he was feeling guilty about that and took it out on me. There was no other reason, I had no personal contact with him that otherwise could have caused that but that made me feel even more isolated really and I just wandered round very lonely and hopeless for quite a while until my new crew adopted me.
AR: And then you flew a number of missions?
AEJ: Well first of all we had a lovely pilot, he was a great guy, Danny and he’d done 13 ops and crashed with a full bomb load. He broke his back and he’d nevertheless come back to flying again and he adopted us and I had great admiration for him, I think we all did. But I of course, as a bomb aimer it was only over the target that I was in charge really and the rest of the time I did odd jobs. I was assistant pilot, I was assistant navigator and all the bits and pieces that went with it, you know helping the wireless operator and anything they could find for an odd job man really. I used to sit next to Danny on take off and as he pulled the heavy aircraft off the ground he would come out in an absolute sweat and I knew he was in pain. After he’d done six or seven ops or whatever it was, one day we were actually out on the dispersal point waiting to take off and he called us together and he said ‘it’s no good I can’t fly, my back is playing up so badly I’ll kill us all’. And I just said to him, because I thought it would be true, ‘don’t worry Danny they’ll understand’. Well they didn’t. The Wing Commander came out in his Hillman and he treated Danny as though Danny was a traitor of some sort. It was dreadful. He said ‘King get into my car’ and then he turned to us and he said ‘I’m sorry your pilot is LMF - lacking in moral fibre’. I thought that was terribly cruel and we asked if we could have an interview with the Wing Commander, which he granted and I was the spokesman and I went in on behalf of the others, with them, and said ‘we want you to know sir that we have great admiration for Flying Officer King and I told him about his broken back, he ought to have known that from the records, and how he’d carried on despite that and how I could see how much pain it gave him when pulling the aircraft back and that in the end he decided that to save us all, he wouldn’t fly. He said ‘your comments are noted gentlemen’ and that was that. Danny was banished from the airfield and we never saw him again.
AR: How did that make you feel, you and your other crew members?
AEJ: Oh very badly about that, very badly. Then my third pilot came into it and took us over and we went on eventually and completed our tour. Well actually they did the full 30 ops and because I had missed one, the one they were on, actually the first one that I’d missed was the Nuremberg trip where we lost more aircraft than any other raid. Because I’d missed that I was officially granted my tour on 29 ops, that was that. That was how that ended and then I got on to Transport Command and so on and I was [emphasis] going to be posted to Japan and that really frightened me. I’d heard such awful stories about prisoners of war in Japan and I thought that was going to be dreadful and I said to then Wing Commander, I don’t know if it was the same one or not, ‘I wonder if I could have a training job of some sort for a while?’. He said ‘you ought to be honoured to be chosen for Japan’. I could have done without the honour. Anyway, the awful thing, but nevertheless, it saved my bacon, what was it, the atom bomb? Yes the atom bomb, because of that the war became over, the war with Japan finished and thankfully for me, I was saved the task of going out there. Then I went on to Transport Command and did various things and I flew quite a lot really but that was the end of my active [unclear]
AR: Where were you in the transport corps Alun?
AEJ: I can’t remember but I’ve got it in my logbook which is there. Yes I’ll have to look it up.
AR: After the war finished, what did you do then?
AEJ: Well, I had been, before the war, before I got called up, working with a little firm called Copy [unclear] Ltd at Treforest Trading Estate, near here, where we made carbon paper and typewriter ribbons. Before the war, as a young man I was pressing green buttons to make a machine go, red buttons to stop it, and things like that and when I came back they said ‘you’d better go in the sales department’, so I spent a lot of time writing sales letters. Which suited me because I like writing so that suited me very well. What was I going to say now, I’ve forgotten.
AR: Well you were talking to me about after the war. Tell me when you did all the work to create a memorial to your crew at Garrowby Hill.
AEJ: Yes, that’s the memorial there. We go up every year. Julie was able to take the service, bless her, as a, what is it for your church, you are a?
JEJ: That’s not part of it.
AEJ: I wanted to say it.
JEJ: I’m an elder.
AEJ: That’s it - I can’t remember things. She’s an elder at the church, so she is able to take the service, which she does wonderfully and we have, very often, and we’re hoping for the same number this time, about 40 people gathered on the hilltop for that occasion. So we do that every year on Armistice Sunday.
AR: And it was you who got the memorial put up?
AEJ: We did, we arranged that, or I did I suppose, well we both did, didn’t we? Yes we both did. We arranged it. We got very friendly with the people who did it, they did a lovely job as you will see. We’ve got the aircraft on the top and it’s a beautiful memorial. They come every time, the people who made it and I think he’s very proud of it and we’re very proud of what he did, it was a great job. That’s what we do every Armistice Sunday. We’ve done, how many? Huge number. A very big number anyway of these, for years and years and years.
AR: And you still keep in touch with - ?
AEJ: It was the seventieth we stopped at, no that was something else wasn’t it?
JEJ: Yes.
AR: And you’ve kept in touch until recently with your old colleagues from the war?
AEJ: I suppose I haven’t really. I’ve lost contact now.
AR: Alan can you tell me about going up to see the memorial and how you feel about Bomber Command being recognised now?
AEJ: Oh very thrilled, very thrilled, yes. Of course we had a lot of fighter boys here and they turned the tables really at that vital moment, but all the boys at St Athans were in fact killed. Every one that we knew, we knew well. My sister was a very attractive girl, and very vivacious, and she had a circle of friends wherever we went and she knew a lot of the pilots. We used to go and stay locally at Porthcawl at the Seabank Hotel and a lot of the pilots from Battle of Britain were there and they all died, sadly. But I think I’m wrong about not having any contact with my crew but my memory, it’s been shot to pieces. [pause] Nobby, Wilf, Geoff Taverner, yes. My bombing leader, Geoff Taverner, he lives in Newport so although we didn’t fly together, he was the bombing leader for my 51 Squadron and I see him quite regularly. He got the DFC actually. And I, incidentally, have just been awarded the medal Chevalier de la Legion D’honneur because quite a lot of my trips were in support of the French and a friend of mine over there, [unclear] Thomas, he said ‘you really ought to apply for the Chevalier Award because I’m sure, knowing your record that you would qualify’. And I did and I was. And Geoff as well, Geoff Taverner. We had a very moving occasion in Cardiff for that. It was rather lovely and the family were able to be there and it was fantastic really.
AR: Congratulations, that’s wonderful.
AEJ: It’s a nice title to have. It’s a wonderful medal, very, very handsome.
AR: That’s lovely to hear. So after the war Alun, life continued and you were working in Cardiff?
AEJ: That’s right and then I got to feel that, it was pure chance really. I wanted to help the people. Because there was a tendency to have a drink problem in my family, on my mother’s side, one of my uncles had a problem and my sister and I both inherited it. And I thought, when I heard about this job, an organisation was being formed in Cardiff, the Council on Alcoholism, if I could get in on that I would be able to help others as well as myself. I applied. My sister, however continued to drink although she was married and she had two children and a loyal husband and she didn’t mean to do these things but she couldn’t stop, you know. She was wonderfully talented, a very gifted and bright girl who drove cars at great speed. She was a tremendous character but she couldn’t quite come to terms with this and I was worried about her and it was because of her, as much as anything, that I thought if I join, if I get in on this job, I’ll learn enough to help her properly and she died the very day I was appointed. But I was appointed, and having put my shoulder to the wheel, as it were, I thought that’s what I’ll continue to do and it became my life’s work. I built up a hostel for people with the problem in Cardiff, Dyfrig House and then moved on and did Emlyn House in Newport. And then we moved on, out into the nearby valleys and did a third one, the Brynnal [?] and then my daughters, two of my four daughters, decided that this was for them so they came in, Rhoda and Lucy and played their very significant role and Lucy became the Director of the Gwent Alcohol Project and Rhoda was in charge of the Community Alcohol and Drugs Team and so we made it a family business [laughter] .
AR: That’s wonderful.
AEJ: I think over the years we were able to help quite a lot of people. The hostel in Cardiff for example, Dyfrig House, we had a Day Centre and a workshop, we had crafts that people could make and all sorts of things as well as having accommodation and support, so there was a lot happening.
AR: Wonderful. Is there anything else Alun you can remember about your - going back to the RAF, your time in Bomber Command, anything else you would like to tell us about what it was like to fly on the Halifaxes?
AEJ: Well I liked the Halifax. The Halifax of course was overshadowed a bit by the Lancaster, in the same way really as the Spitfire outshone the Hurricane. The Hurricane did a very fine job nevertheless and the same applied to the Halifax. It was eclipsed by the glamour of the Lancaster. But I liked it, on a practical basis it had much more room inside so you could move around more easily. Also, which I think is a very important point, it was easier to bail out of [laughter] . It was a good sturdy workhorse and I got very fond of it yes. It just didn’t get the glamour and people always think of Lancasters, they don’t think of Halifaxes. Of course before that, there was the Stirling, after the two-engined ones. I didn’t fly in those, I think I got one trip once but not an operational trip and of course before that we were on Whitleys. We were flying Whitleys. Yes I liked the Halifax very much indeed. I enjoyed flying actually. I mean compared with my friends who are in civilian airlines who drew thousands and thousands and thousands of hours, the whole war I think my total was seven hundred and fifty but seven hundred and fifty hours we packed a lot of stuff into it. I find it such a privilege really to work with crews like that. We became great friends, that’s the thing, it wasn’t just that we were working together, we became great friends. You know we went out together as well and met socially when we could. Oh it was tremendous comradeship. I deem myself very fortunate indeed to have had that opportunity and of course to have survived because the expectation of life was only six weeks, and so to have survived was extraordinary good fortune. We were losing boys all the time. You know, ‘so and so bought it’ that was the expression, ‘so and so bought it’ so you know one of the people we knew well hadn’t come back, they had crashed or been shot down. I mean on one daylight (sortie) I remember seeing lots of aircraft going down. Later, this particular man, lives in Cardiff so I see him quite often because I’ve got a group called 51 Squadron and Friends. The group meets quite regularly and I saw this aircraft just below me, being shot down and it turned out to be his so I was able to tell him I’d actually seen him shot down. He was then captured by the Germans but they treated him with respect. Another of my friends who was shot down in the First War was put into Pfaffenwald which was dreadful and he had a dreadful time there but then the Luftwaffe itself said ‘you shouldn’t have this man there, he should be in a proper prison, so he was transferred, that surely saved his life although he died young in the end, but that was a separate matter. But er, yes there was great comradeship. I’ve rambled on enough I think.
AR: Not at all, it’s been fascinating.
AEJ: Thank you so much.
AR: No thank you, thank you Alun very much for giving us the time.
AEJ: It’s was my pleasure. I just wonder how many things I’ve missed out.
AR: Alun we’re going to carry on now. Can you tell me a little bit about your nickname?
AEJ: Actually of course so many of my compatriots from Wales were called Taffy and I suppose I would have been but in fact Grem fitted in very well and I got called Grem all the way through my Air Force career. That’s because it’s short for Gremlin and Gremlin was the little creature who used to disturb our instruments in the aircraft, imaginary one I need hardly say [laughter] . It was short for that and it also rhymes with my name Emlyn, Alun Emlyn. So for those two reasons I got called Grem and enjoyed that nickname and I’m still called Grem by some people. Geoff Taverner my colleague and one time bombing leader from Newport, he still calls me Grem for example, so it’s very nice to have that.
AR: And animals played an important part for you.
AEJ: Yes, well when we were stationed at one place I picked up a goat, a little goat. He was a dear little thing and he used to live in my billet and used to greet me with licking my face at night and things like that but then he got bigger and bigger and bigger and I had to think of something to do with him so we asked a local farmer if he, no we didn’t, we found a spot at a water tower in the village and he would have shelter and he was on a long lead and we had him there for quite a while and then one time he got away from his lead and went all round the village eating the tops off people’s plants. That became rather unpopular so I gave him to the local farmer on the strict [emphasis] understanding he would be used for breeding and not be killed. So I hope that’s what happened, I hope he had a happy life. Then we had our dog, Jimmy, I picked Jimmy up somehow and Jimmy sort of lived constantly with us and was a great guy. I can’t remember what happened to Jimmy in the end.
AR: Did Jimmy wait for you when you came back from - ?
AEJ: Yes Jimmy used to be there. Wherever we’d been and wherever he’d been in the meantime , he was always waiting on the tarmac when we got back and he lived in my billet with me. So we had a bit of a menagerie really. I can’t remember what happened to Jimmy, pity we can’t ask [laughter]. So there we are and of course when we searched for the spot to put the memorial for the first crew at Garrowby Hill, a lot of research went into that. We had a local archivist, he worked very hard at it all. We met a girl, a woman then, as a girl she’d been stationed in that area where the crash took place and through personal contact we were able to be sure [emphasis] that where we put the memorial was exactly where the crash took place, so that was very helpful. But the trouble is Anne now, for me is that my memory is shot to pieces and I can’t remember clearly. I can’t , even though a few moments ago I had it clearly in my mind I can’t remember everything that I was told unless I wrote it down.
AR: Thank you Alun, what you’ve been able to tell us has been marvellous.
AEJ: Well you’ve been very kind and I’ve know it’s not been adequate.
AR: It’s been wonderful and it will be a great addition to the archive. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Alun Emlyn-Jones
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Anne Roberts
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
2016-10-12
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AEmlynJonesA161012, PEmlynJonesA1601
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Transport Command
Format
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00:34:11 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Alun Emlyn-Jones (known as Grem among his RAF colleagues) was raised in Cardiff and attended boarding schools in Oxfordshire. He worked manufacturing office supplies when he volunteered to serve in Bomber Command, hoping to avoid being called up to the infantry. Alun trained in Penarth and in East London, South Africa, and then worked as a bomb aimer.
Alun talks of flying on the Anson and Whitley, and of being assigned to a Halifax crew. He describes a training flight accident at Garrowby Hill, Yorkshire in which his crewmates were killed. Alun, who was hospitalised at the time, was not on board the aircraft. He recalls his loneliness at being without a crew, and the unexplained animosity towards him from a senior officer. He talks of joining another aircrew and of adaptability being a part of the role of the bomb aimer, before reflecting on his feelings about the unjust dismissal of the crew’s pilot for lack of moral fibre.
Alun recalls his transfer to RAF Transport Command in 1945 and talks of organising the erection of a memorial to his crew at Garrowby Hill. He mentions his pride at the memorial, and his attendance at annual commemorations there for many years. He goes on to reflect on his preference for the Halifax over other aircraft, his enjoyment of flying, and on the great friendship and comradeship among aircrews, describing a closeness which continued after the war. He also mentions his affection for the animals that he kept in his billet during the war.
Alun relates that he first returned to his pre-war job after the war, but later joined the Welsh Council on Alcoholism to help others and in support of his sister, whom he describes affectionately.
Temporal Coverage
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1944
1955
Contributor
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Leah Warriner-Wood
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Oxfordshire
Wales
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
Wales--Porthcawl
Wales--Newport
South Africa
South Africa--East London
Germany
Germany--Nuremberg
Japan
England--Yorkshire
Wales--Penarth
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending revision of OH transcription
51 Squadron
aircrew
animal
Anson
bale out
bomb aimer
bombing
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
gremlin
Halifax
Hurricane
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
memorial
military ethos
military service conditions
pilot
radar
RAF Rufforth
RAF St Athan
Spitfire
Stirling
training
Whitley
York
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/277/7906/PIronsH1501.2.jpg
62e8999adc6227a8e1dcf9d08e401fbc
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/277/7906/AIronsH150723.1.mp3
113b2cff64ef934152b89828f1ea404f
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
Irons, Harry
Harry Irons
H Irons
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Harry Irons (1924 - 2018). He was an apprentice tailor in London, but lied about his age and joined the RAF aged 16. He flew operations as a rear gunner with 158, 462 and 9 Squadrons.
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
2015-07-23
2016-07-30
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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Irons, H
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Okay so, this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moodie and the interviewee is Harry Irons. The interview’s taking place at a hotel near Kings Lynn and we’re here for the 9 Squadron Association hundred year dinner.
HI: Yeah that’s right, yeah.
AM: And it’s the 23rd of July 2015. So, off you go Harry. Tell us –
HI: Er, actually I won a scholarship to go to a grammar school, but my father insisted that I left school at fourteen so I could go to work and earn a wage. So, being in the east end the only jobs you could get was either tailoring or cabinet making. There was a whole area that’s – it was a big Jewish area and the, most of the people were either tailors or cabinet makers, and they were good, very good, brilliant craftsmen. So I took a job on as a trainee tailor and I was doing that for two years until I was sixteen, nearly sixteen, and we lived in an area of London called Stamford Hill and one evening we, me and a few other chaps were on the hill, and we see the huge blitz on London, and we actually see the whole of the City of London literally ablaze. Enormous, as far as your eye could see was buildings all, all ablaze, that was the City of London. Actually, they weren’t after the City of London, what they was after was the Docks, and they just, their bombing, what we used to call creeping, crept back from the Docks into the City of London and once it hit the City of London course everything went up in flames so, two or three friends said ‘we’ll, we’re gonna join up.’ I was sixteen at the time, so we went up the recruiting office in Kings Cross, London, and I told ‘em I was seventeen and a quarter, how they believed me I don’t know but they said ‘alright you’re in,’ and that was at the end of 1941, and I was called up in January 1941 [unclear]. The blaze was – the bombing was in 1940 and we joined, we joined up at the end of 1940, and 1941 they called me up and I went to a place near where it was called Bridgnorth then six weeks square bashing [?] there and they said ‘you’ll have to wait to sele’ – they asked me what I wanted to be in the air force, I said ‘I wanna fly,’ they said ‘alright, we’ll put you down for either a pilot, navigator or an air gunner and we’ll sort that out later on.’ Anyway, I went to Bridgnorth, done my six weeks training, and they sent me to a RAF station, Wisbech in Cambridge and I had to do menial jobs there, in the cook house, in the stores, waiting for, to go on a course. In the mean while they told me I was gonna become a wireless operator air gunner, and I’ve got to wait for a course to come up, a vacancy for the course to come up, so I stayed at Wisbech ‘til August ’41, and then they posted me to Blackpool on a wireless course and everybody in the RAF went to Blackpool to do their wireless course, and you had to stay in a, all the border houses were commandeered, and all the aircrew used to live in these border houses and the thing was when you’re at Blackpool you got up to twelve words a minute which we all did, and then from there you’re posted to another sta, er, air force station to continue your study ‘til you become up to eighteen words a minute –
AM: When you say eighteen words a minute, doing what?
HI: Morse code.
AM: Morse code right, okay.
HI: Yeah, dit dah dit dah dit dah dit. Anyway, we was all queuing up to wait for postings and the sergeant came out just like that he said ‘you lot, over that side. You lot, that side,’ and fortunately or unfortunately I was in that lot on that side and we become airgunners. Not wireless operators, airgunners. Just airgunners. And the reason for that, I didn’t know at the time, was the heavy bombers, the Lancasters, were going on production, and there was, they were short of airgunners, because they had to carry another air gunner so they said ‘you lot over there, you become airgunners,’ and I went back to Wisbech – I was a bit cheesed off about it all anyway, couldn’t do much about it, and I waited another couple of months and then they sent me on a gunnery course, a place called Manby [emphasis] in Lincoln, it’s a big air force gunnery school there, and we done six weeks training there as gunners, gunnery, and I got the huge total flying hours of nineteen hours, that’s all I got, and they said – and from there you’re supposed to do a four month, five month operational training course, that’s getting accustomed to actually doing bombing raids on enemy territory. But then whatever happened they said to me ‘you’re being posted straight on a squadron’ and I tell you what, I was a greener than this.
AM: [Laughs] we’re sat on a green settee, for the record.
HI: Yeah, yeah. It was as green, I was as green as anything then. ‘Cause I got nineteen hours and I didn’t know what to expect. Anyway, I was posted to Waddington [emphasis] to Number 9 Squadron. And when I arrived there, as it was luck [exhale of breath] was in my favour because a flight lieutenant named Stubbs came up to me and said ‘you’re gonna fly with me as a mid-upper’ and I said ‘fair enough.’ They’d already, he was already on his second tour, he’d already done thirteen trips on Wellingtons [emphasis].
AM: So you didn’t do the usual crewing up thing?
HI: Never done anything like that, no.
AM: You just –
HI: No, no they just sent about ten of us to 9 Squadron, ‘cause I was just converting from Wellingtons onto Lancasters, and consequently they was one gunner short because the Lancaster carried a mid-upper. So he said to me, anyhow I didn’t know what it was all about actually, he said to me ‘the rear gunner I’ve got at the moment is a big Australian,’ he was about six foot three [unclear] ‘and he’s too tall for the turret’ he said ‘what we’re gonna do is you’re gonna do your first trip in the mid-upper and after that you’ll go in the rear turret, and the Australian will go’ –‘cause in the mid-upper you can pull your legs down, straighten you know, you’ve got plenty of room, so what we done then, we done – as time’s gone on, this was 1942, round about June 1942 and we started getting to used, well the crew getting used to flying a Wellington twin engine bomber onto a four engine bomber. And that, you use what they call conversion, and that’s pretty difficult ‘cause you learn how to fly an entirely different aircraft, land it, you got to find out all the different things, the different systems and the turrets, anyway we done about six weeks training, well not, training it was, well converting from the one engine to the Lancaster, and then September ’42 we was in a crew, we had a big crew and we used to lay and loll about smoking, swearing everything else [laughs] anyway, they said ‘ops tonight.’ So, before you went on operations you done what they call a night flying test [emphasis], you took the aircraft up, you tested the bomb site, you tested the, the bomb bays open and closing, you tested the turrets and you give a, you went outta sea and give the guns a little squirt, see everything was alright, the compass [emphasis], check the compass and the, the under carriage we’d dropped up and down a couple of time to make sure it was alright, and we landed, and as we landed, the bomb aimer had already done thirteen trips on Wellingtons, and this is vivid, and as we’d come out of the steps of the Lancaster, the bomb aimer’s behind me, and coming along the road was tractor carrying a four thousand pound bomb, and fourteen hundred incendiaries, and the bomb aimer said to me ‘oh, we’re going to Happy Valley tonight.’ He said ‘by that bomb load, we’re definitely going to Happy Valley,’ and I thought ‘well that don’t sound too bad, Happy Valley,’ I thought ‘well Happy Valley, that can’t be too bad,’ I didn’t know that that was a nickname for the Ruhr Valley. The whole of the Ruhr Valley was called Happy Valley, and I didn’t realise at the time but the Happy Valley, the Ruhr Valley, as you went in you got a brilliant [emphasis] reception and a better, a, what you say, a bye-bye on the way out, and I tell you what, right I’ll go on, anyway we – it was always ritual, always [emphasis] for bomber crews to have bacon and eggs before they went on ops, always. Didn’t matter where you were, all the time I was in the air force, I done sixty bombing trips, and every time we went on a bombing trip we got bacon and eggs [emphasis] and if we come back we got bacon and eggs. And that was a luxury in those, in wartime, and then of course the joke was, always the joke ‘if you don’t come back, can I have your bacon and eggs?’ you know. Anyway, we went to the, we got – there was a bit of a rigmarole getting ready, you had to, you had to have your bacon and eggs and you go down to – most, most aircrew wrote a last letter, most of ‘em. I think the majority of aircrew wrote a last letter home to their wives, and they used to put them on the bed, and I’m afraid to say, I seen many, many, many letters being collected by the padre, many, that’s why I never wrote one myself. Anyway, we had our food, our bacon and eggs, we were all laughing and joking, you know we were young blokes, and we went to the crew, to the briefing room and we all sat down to see who would come in, and the map [emphasis] had a huge sheet over it, and the CO always, always done it, come in, whipped the sheet off and there was the target. So the bomb aimer said to me ‘I told you.’ It was Dusseldorf, he said ‘there you are,’ he said ‘I knew we were going there’ he said, ‘we’re going to Happy Valley,’ and I still didn’t twig on, ‘oh well, that don’t sound too bad,’ thinking of German girls tryna start [?] kisses you know what I mean. Anyway, we went down to the crew room and the atmosphere changed completely [emphasis]. We went in the crew room and the whole squadron was in the crew room ‘cause we had cabinets for all our flying gear and used to get dressed in there, and as I walked in, all the crews were there, it was dead silence, and everybody was looking at each other, there was no jokes, no laughing, nothing. And there was simply a – the atmosphere was incredible [emphasis] to what it was in the mess having our egg and bacon. Anyway, we got dressed and it was – airgunners dressing was long underpants, pure silk, and a vest that was silk and then your shirt and then your pullover, and then a, over the shirt you put a, I think it was, no, before you put the shirt on, as we put the shirt on we put an electrical heated suit with gloves and electrical heated gloves and body and feet, which was really, really important. And over that we put our uniform ‘cause you had to wear a uniform, if you never wore a uniform, I never realised but at night if you’ve was parachuted out in civilian clothes you was likely to get executed, which many, quite a few boys did get executed, especially by the civilians. And over that we used to put a huge [emphasis] fur jacket and fur trousers, fur lined boots, and there we were –
AM: Fur trousers?
HI: Fur trousers, yeah [murmur from AM]. You know, thick, made of the same material as your jacket. Irvin jacket, you had Irvin trousers, thick Irvin trousers and they used to tuck them inside your boot, zip your boots up and there, you could hardly move by then, but – and I’ll tell you what, on a warm day you was walking out you was absolutely sweating [emphasis, laughs]. Anyway, we went out to the aircraft and everybody smoked, everybody smoked [emphasis] except the skipper, the skipper didn’t smoke, he never drunk, never went out with women, he was absolutely – they said in the officers mess that they couldn’t understand the man, he wouldn’t, he never swore, he never smoked. Anyway, he – a good pilot mind you. Anyway, we got in the aircraft and I was in the mid-upper, first time. And in the mid-upper turret of the Lancaster, I’ve got a picture of it, you had a fantastic [emphasis] view –
AM: Hmm, all round.
HI: All three hundred and eighty degree. You could see everything [emphasis]and I got in the mid-upper, and I never got, I was still raw, we done, only done six weeks training, and I plugged in the electricity for the heater ‘cause if we, even in the mid-upper the temperature was about forty-five, fifty below zero. Worse still in the turret, rear turret. Anyway, we got ready and then the crew room, nobody was talking, it was like that, nobody spoke, and off we went. We took off at Waddington, and the thing was at Waddington they had no runways at that time. There were two squadrons of Lancasters there and no runway. All we had was grass, and in the winter it was very, very difficult with full bomb loads to takeoff. Before that, when we arrived at Waddington there was a squadron there, 44 Squadron, a Rhodesian squadron, and apparently they was the first squadron in the RAF to be equipped with the Lancaster, in March, April, round about April. And what they’d done, they’d decided to do a daylight raid, a low level daylight raid on a town called Augsburg in Germany. They sent six Lancasters flying at zero feet right across France, right into Germany –
AM: At zero [emphasis] feet?
HI: Zero feet, I mean zero – well when I say zero feet, about half of these buildings.
AM: Right okay.
HI: Can you imagine six Lancasters –
AM: No [laughs] –
HI: At that height over, just ducking over the trees, going as low as low as they could, else they would have invade [?] the radar.
AM: Right.
HI: Anyway, what happened – unfortunately there was squadron of Messerschmitts flying, I don’t know if it was practicing or flying, and of course they see these six Lancasters, and they immediately they shot down five [noise of shock from AM]. So outta the six they sent, one come back badly, badly damaged, and his name was Nevillson [name unclear] and he got the VC. The other five that was shot down got nothing [emphasis] so, he was fortunate, he was leading the squadron from the front and they gradually cut the other five down and he managed to avoid and managed to get back badly damaged. So, I’m just telling you that because it deal with another operation I went on. Anyway, we all got ready to takeoff, and everything was quiet in the – nobody spoke, when we was on ops, very rarely we spoke. The only time we spoke is when we was being attacked, when the navigator was giving instructions to the pilot, or the bomb aimer or me or the mid-upper or the rear gunner could see something downstairs they could identify and then inform the navigator what we see, and that helped him to crack the course. ‘Cause in those days, 1942, we had no radar. We had what they called Gee-box up to the coast and once we hit the coast the Germans blocked it, so it was from then onwards it was the navigator used to have to go from one spot to another spot, estimate the time of arrival at the other spot before he made a correction to the course, and of course things improved later on in ’43, and the gunners helped a lot because they could, especially the rear gunner could see, or the mid-upper could see different –
AM: Rivers, train lines and stuff like that.
HI: -- objects, yeah. And sometimes that wasn’t possible, there’d be ten-Thames [?] cloud. And then navigation become very, very difficult. And don’t forget we didn’t have no radar help whatsoever, but we managed and we flew over, as we took off we flew over the Dutch coast and the bomb aimer, he used to lay pronged in the nose [very unsure about what was said here], he said ‘skipper, enemy air coast [?] ahead, flak, flak.’ Always gunfire was called flak [emphasis]. So I looked down and I see all these beautiful, indescribable [?] lights, every colour, reds, blues, greens, there all tracers [?] from what they call night flak. They went up to about eight or nine thousand feet and then it dropped down again. And that’s when flak –
AM: And how high were you at that point?
HI: We was about twelve thousand feet. So when I looked down from mid-upper and I see that flak below us and I thought to myself ‘if that’s flak, we’ve got nothing at all to worry about.’ So we flew over Holland, don’t forget this was the early phase of bombing. Before that the bombing was nothing ‘cause they had obsolete bombing, bombing aircraft and no idea whether they reached the target. It was only in beginning, half way through 1942 they was giving the apparatus so they didn’t really find the target. Anyway, you crossed the Dutch coast and I’m in the mid-upper, spinning it round, and for about, I should imagine it was about hour, hour and a quarter, then the bomb aimer said ‘target ahead skipper.’ So then I thought to myself ‘well I’ll have a look to see what this target is all about,’ and I swung the turret around and I had really [emphasis], really the shock of my life. In front of us, with no exaggeration, was one solid massive explosion of shells. Absolute whole area was full up of high explosive shell fire, and we gotta fly through that. And searchlights were creeping about, and they had one searchlight which was radar operated and it was a different colour, it was blue, very light blue. And that was a searchlight, never missed. It went up bang, like that, straight onto an aircraft. It was radar controlled [coughs] excuse me [pause to drink] so when I see this huge massive explosion ‘cause I had a beautiful view, so I thought to myself ‘cor blimey, surely we haven’t gotta go through all this.’ And I could hear it, and the plane was bumping up and down from the force of the explosions and the skipper said to me ‘mid-upper, keep an eye above you, because bombers above you will drop their bombs on you’ which happened many times. So I said ‘okay skipper,’ and – we called the pilot skipper, always called him a skipper. Doesn’t matter what rank he was, always a skipper. Anyway, we, I started looking up and there right above us was a Lanc, bomb bay open, ‘cause you know the bomb bays were enormous, I says ‘there’s a bomber above us skipper with his bomb bay open, dive port.’ We dived port, good job we did because he was ready to drop his load, so we slammed our bomb bay shut, because we was on a run as well and, and the bomb aimer said ‘we’ll have to make a correction on our way into the target.’ You must realise that all around us these huge [emphasis] explosions of shells, I’m telling you not few, hundreds [emphasis] of ‘em exploding into the sky. Anyway, as we were flying in, the skipper said ‘skipper, I’ve lost the target point,’ he said ‘we’ll have to round again.’ And I just told you, the skipper never swore. I’ll tell you what [laughs] he said to the bomb aimer ‘you are a silly chap’ [laughs]. There was a few more words. So we slammed the bomb bay shut, went right through that target, went all through that explosions and the plane was rocking about, could hear shrapnel hitting the bloody machine, in our machine, and we went round and we do a dogleg. We approached the target like that, and then we go like that, like that, in again. But you had to be very, very careful ‘cause when you left the target and you was gonna come in again, you was coming across the last of the bombers that was going in. And it was very, very, very dangerous. Anyway, when we went round, and by that time the German radar was on us and it was giving us a real, real shellacking [?] I’ll tell you. Anyway, we made our run round, opened the bomb bay, dropped our bombs, slammed the door, slammed the door shut and what we usually do then, you couldn’t – slammed the doors shut but you couldn’t get away, you had to stay straight and level for another forty seconds because the camera was turning around and at the same time you was dropping what they called a photo-flash [?]. That was in the fuselage. And as the photo-flash dropped down, the cameras turning over, and they took a picture, an actual picture, of you bombing the target, which was very, very important because if you didn’t bring back a picture the intelligence officers said to you ‘well it’s your word against mine that you went there,’ even if the aircraft was full of bloody holes, they still say ‘we don’t believe you,’ well, ‘not saying we don’t believe you but you’ve got no proof that you went to the target so it don’t count, so you can go all that way there and back for nothing,’ which happened several times. Anyway, we slammed the bomb bay down, we made a dived [emphasis] to the port, turned round and come back and that’s when your trouble started, the fighters. But that time they wasn’t so dangerous as what they were to be. They, we used to see the fighters flying about and straight away, I don’t know if it was instinct or not, when I see a fighter, I wouldn’t fire on him unless he was interfering with us, I let him go, because generally you’d find on a fighter he had huge [emphasis] canons and you had no chance, I tell you, you had no chance whatsoever.
AM: So you’re just causing trouble for yourself really –
HI: Yeah because they could stand off from two, three hundred yards and you couldn’t do nothing about it, ‘cause your 303 went about a hundred yards and started dropping what they called a gravity drop. They had canons and he could rake you [?] which happened a couple of times. Anyway, we slammed the bomb bay shut, and we started coming back, and the bomb aimer said to the skipper and the navigator, ‘skipper, we can’t breathe. We’ve got no oxygen.’ And what had happened, the shrapnel had cut through the oxygen lines, so the skipper said ‘alright, so what we have to do is dive down below ten thousand feet,’ which we did do, and coming home in the mid-upper I thought to myself, ‘if this is bloody Happy Valley, I hope we don’t go anywhere that’s miserable’[laughs]. And I’ll tell you what, it’s a terrible, terrible place. Anyway we got down to – we crossed the Dutch coast at about four thousand feet, and these beautiful lights we see were flashing past us like that, all over, and lucky enough we managed to get through a few bangs and we were damaged but not that bad. And we dropped down about two thousand feet and we headed home, and I thought to myself ‘dear oh dear, I got thirty of these, thirty trips to do like that before we get a rest.’ And we landed, and I was exhausted. Even at that age, at seventeen, I was exhausted. And we went into the briefing room and I stood there and we was asked a load of questions, and they said to me, it was only my first trip, they said to me ‘what do you think?’ And I said ‘I see four or five bombers exploding in the sky,’ I said ‘apart from that everything was alright.’ He said ‘you never seen no bombers’ – this was the officer, the briefing officer telling me that, he wasn’t even a flyer. He’s saying ‘you didn’t see no bombers blowing up, that was scarecrows.’ What the Germans were firing up shells to mimic a bomber exploding, and they kept this up right the way through the war.
AM: So it was true, you hadn’t, you’d seen the scarecrows, not a bomber blowing up.
HI: No, no they were actually aircraft blowing up in the sky. They did admit after the war there was no such thing as a scarecrow.
AM: Ah right.
HI: They admitted it, the Air Ministry, but they kept it a –
AM: So why did they say that?
HI: Well they – one of the reasons was they didn’t want us to duck and dive about. They wanted us to fly straight and level, ‘cause it was dangerous anyway, ducking and diving. But every time we went back we say we seen three or four, sometimes more than that, explosions, literally exploding in the sky. They said ‘no, that’s German scarecrows to demoralise you.’ Anyway, we got back and in the briefing room he said, he told me about the scarecrows so I thought ‘oh well, that’s it.’ Anyway, I didn’t know how exhausted I was, it was only a four and three-quarter hour trip. I went to bed and I felt absolutely exhausted. And I think the mental strain of the first trip. Anyway, we went back to the mess, we went to bed, and I think next morning we had a day off. The following day I think we went to Bremen, and the reason why went to Bremen, or Bremen [different pronunciation, shorter vowel sound] as they called it, they was building the submarines, the U-Boats there.
AM: Right.
HI: And we went across the Baltic that time. We didn’t see no flak until we hit Bremen, and the flak was unbelievable. It was worse than Dusseldorf.
AM: Were you in the rear gunner at this –
HI: I was in the rear turret, yeah.
AM: So you’d moved to the rear turret by this time?
HI: Yeah. And different position and the different visibility of the – when you’re in the rear turret you can see that way, see the bits you couldn’t see really above you or at the side of you –
AM: Or behind you.
HI: And at that time, the Germans were only attacking from dead astern, port over or starboard over . That was the method of attacking at that time [emphasis], things were getting much, much worse, but they had a little bit of a chance because if they come in close you had four guns here and you could – you had a bit of a chance, not a lot, but you had a bit of a chance. Anyway, I think it was after that trip, couple of trips, I complained to the engineering officer that the rear turret, that the oil for the Merlin engines was coating the Perspex in the rear turret, which obviously, the exhaust was coming out. So we was sitting in the crew room, the officer come in, he said ‘we solved the problem of the oil on the turrets,’ and I thought ‘well that’s good’ ‘cause after about two hours this oil used to go onto the Perspex, it was starting to be difficult to see outta it, and when we went out there [chuckles] what they had done, they had taken the whole Perspex out [chuckles]. So there we were in a rear turret with no bloody Perspex, and I tell you what, it was cold [emphasis].
AM: How did that – what so nothing between you –
HI: No, just – they took the whole of the front of the Perspex out. We used to look through, they took out because the oil.
AM: So it was just you [emphasis] and sky –
HI: Yeah, yeah.
AM: Nothing between you?
HI: No, no. Well the Perspex only stopped the slipstream but they took the Perspex out. Yeah, on all the Lancs, but they solved the problem [laughs]. Anyway, we –
AM: But the oil would just hit you in the face instead.
HI: Yeah, but it was, it wasn’t so bad because you could just wipe it with your glove with it [AM laughs]. But, we got rid of the – it wasn’t such a huge amount but it was enough oil to stop, to obscure your sight a bit, you know. And you had to be really, really on your toes all that time you was in that turret. It was bitterly cold in there, forty-five, fifty below zero, was nothing.
AM: Did you ever have an occasion when your suit didn’t work, or?
HI: Yes sometimes it, it didn’t work a couple of times. I burnt me foot ‘cause it was a new, new idea you know, they’d, after the war they made electric blankets [AM laughs] that was only through the electrical heated suits and it’s the short shirts – it’s like everything in the war, everything was crash, bang, wallop, get ready , but every gunner was issued with an electrical heated suit, and they were good when they worked. So I’d done my first op, and I thought I was proud of myself, but I had other twenty-nine to do. I mean, twenty-nine successful [emphasis] ones, so you can, you can go all the way there, and you get, you get engine trouble and you gotta come back, that don’t count. Even in respect of what you’ve gone through, it didn’t count.
AM: You had to drop your bombs on the target for it to count.
HI: Yeah, the gunner target, yeah. You see, what actually happened, I think at the beginning of the war, the few of them used to go to North Sea, drop their bombs and come back and say yeah they’ve, they’ve, and they – ‘cause they realised Germany wasn’t being bombed really, it was a, the most that we got to was five miles from the towns [?] so what they decide to put the camera in, and the photo-flash. And that stopped it all, ‘cause you had to bring back a picture. The first thing they asked for when you walked in, ‘have you got your picture?’ It was the first thing – [unclear] you’d land on the aircraft, there was a [unclear] photography unit come out and take the film out, and there’d be developed or they used to take it back to the crew, the, where we was being briefed, and they could see if we bombed the target or not. Anyway, so we went to Bremen, we gained a good shellacking [?] and we done a bit of damage there, and we come back, and I was blowing my chest out, I’d done two trips [laughs]. The following, following day, er day after that, we went to Wilhelmshaven, and that was worse. That’s where I was really in full, full strength of building submarines there, and we did – it was devastating the bombing we done there, it was very successful, they held up the submarine building for a long while, and then I’d done, I’d done three trips, and I was, you know, thinking to myself, well –
AM: Were you scared?
HI: Frightened outta my bloody life. The first one, I told you, that first one, Dusseldorf, I could not believe, I could not [emphasis] but everyone was the same –
AM: Did you talk about it?
HI: No, no we never talked about it, no. I’ll tell you one thing, we used to get crews coming straight from OTU into the squadron, ‘cause their losses were horrendous you know, we was losing so many aircraft, and they’d say ‘what’s the ops like?’ and we’d always used to say ‘you find out, you find out yourself.’ We never said ‘oh it’s terrible over there’ or nothing, never. And I don’t know if that helped them or not, but a lot of the crews only done one trip before they got shot down, hell of a lot of ‘em. Just one – in fact, what they used to do when a crew come from OTU, they used to let the pilot fly with an experienced crew on his first trip, so he’d understand what an actual raid was. Very often he never come back off his first trip, it happened time and time again. The crew used to be walking about the station with no, waiting for a new pilot. Yeah, happened many times. Anyway, after Wilhelmshaven we went back to Happy Valley again, and this time, I tell you what, I thought Dusseldorf was bad, we went to Essen [emphasis] and Essen was something out of this [noise of disbelief] something outta, I tell you what, it was absolutely ferocious. The flak was enormous, everywhere you look there was shells bursting, aircraft blowing up in the sky, aircraft going down in flames, and I had something with me because we just went through – we always got hit, always got hit with flak, big holes in the aircraft, but when we got back they used to bang ‘em and tap ‘em back and –
AM: Bodge [?] ‘em up.
HI: Yeah, that’s it [chuckles]. Anyway, we went to Essen, then we went to Munich, and I’ll tell you how my luck is, what happened, losses at Waddington on 9 Squadron, even those few weeks I was there, was horrendous. So they sent two scientists down from Cambridge with a new device to put into the rear turret so that when a fighter was five or six hundred yards away, which we couldn’t see, they could see us on their radar, this instrument was radar. It could pick up the fighter and warn us with a red light that there was a fighter in the close vicinity. Unfortunately the first time the squadron was equipped with them, we lost two aircraft and the Germans must have sorted the, must have examined the wreckage and seen this device in the rear turret and copied [unclear] a wavelength or whatever it was, anyway we went to Munich and that was a long trip, that was about eight and a half hours and we went over, and how the navigator found Munich I’ll never know ‘cause we went over in ten-tenths cloud, that means to say underneath you was solid cloud, but he found Munich as – before we reached Munich the cloud broke and there was Munich and we did, we did give it real good hiding.
AM: Is this day time or night?
HI: It’s night time –
AM: It’s night time isn’t it?
HI: Never, never done daylight.
AM: But you could still see it, so how come you could see it at night time?
HI: We could see it yeah because the – a couple of people had been bombing it and the searchlights –
AM: Right.
HI: And you could see the town anyway. You – but that’s why bombing – they, they said ‘well why did you bomb areas’ – the only way you can do night bombing was to, at that time was area bombing and in that area you probably got a load of factories you could destroy, but you couldn’t pick out – it was very, very difficult to pick out an individual target so you had to bomb an area, they used to pick an area out. This was before pathfinding [murmured agreement from AM] so we used to drop flares ourselves, we dropped a few flares as we was going in, or people before us would drop a few flares, and you’d sit and the bomb aimer would see the target.
AM: Who dropped the flares, the bomb aimer?
HI: The bomb aimer, yeah. Someone on the squadron [very unclear what was said here] would drop a few flares and then down they went, but that was the beginning, when we really first started bombing Germany, before that it was a joke. Anyway, we bombed Munich and we made a good frame [?] on it actually, and coming back the skipper said ‘I think we’ll fly through cloud’ because the fighter activity, we could see the fighter flares, and so he said ‘if we go through cloud we won’t meet any fighters,’ which we did do, so we was flying for about an hour in the cloud and all of a sudden the cloud broke clear, and believe it or not, right by my rear turret, as I looked outta my rear turret was a Ju-88. I tell you what he was no more than thirty yards [emphasis] behind us. And he opened fire with his cannons and the tracer went just above the aircraft, just missed us. The reason was that he was so close and we was up and down like that and I suppose as we went down he fired and he missed us. Anyway, we opened fire, me in the rear turret and the mid-upper ‘cause he was right close to us, and down he went, he spun over and down he went.
AM: So you got him?
HI: Yeah we got him, yeah.
AM: Which one of you got him, do you know?
HI: We don’t know, I think –
AM: Both of you?
HI: We both opened fire on him, and he was more surprised than what we were, he never expected it, and down he went. Lucky enough because usually once the night fighter got on your tail, it was very, very difficult. Anyway we, when we got back we told the intelligence officer that this night fighter had followed us through ten-tenths cloud for an hour ‘till the cloud broke. So they put two and two together and realised the apparatus they’d put in the turret was sending out a ray for the Germans to pick up and that’s what he was following us on. So what – immediately they took the radar thing out of the turret and I don’t know if it made any difference or not. After that we were talking and laughing about it and they said ‘you gonna do some low level formation flying in daylight,’ so we thought ‘well surely we’re not gonna have another daylight raid after the huge loss to 44 Squadron,’ and I mean we never even considered [emphasis] that they would do anymore daylight raids. So anyway, we done this practice formation, well it’s not formation flying – at that time there was over ninety Lancs in 5 Group, and there was ninety of us flying over Lincoln, around this area, right on the ground, well I don’t mean on the ground, as high as these buildings. Everyone was moaning down below because can you imagine ninety Lancasters flying about thirty or forty feet and they said ‘you’re gonna have to cut the squadron of Spitfires doing damning runs [?] on you.’ So I’m sitting in my turret, and the Spitfires come straight for me, and he was so close our slipstream hit his, hit his wings, and he turned like that, and being so low, he couldn’t, he couldn’t get outta the dive and he went straight in the deck. And I was ‘that don’t sound too bad, that’s gonna happen.’ Anyway –
AM: What happened to him? Crashed? Killed?
HI: Crashed, just crashed yeah. And when I looked along the road there was about three or four Spits on the deck, burning [emphasis] doing the same thing, come straight in –
AM: So they were killed?
HI: And the slipstream, they had no chance of correcting, correcting, ‘cause it’s too low on the ground. Anyway, on the Saturday they said ‘there’s gonna – report to your flights ‘cause there’s gonna be a daylight raid.’ So we went out to do the what they call a night flighting test, and when we landed there was the trailer, but all it had on it was six [emphasis] one thousand pounders. So we knew it was gonna be a long, long journey. We were – a bomb load like that was only a third of the weight of what we’d usually take to the Ruhr, so we were, obviously it was gonna be a long journey. We went to the briefing –
AM: Can I just ask, so why obviously, ‘cause that would conserve the fuel because you had a lighter load?
HI: Yeah we had to take more fuel and less bombs, so –
AM: Yep, okay.
HI: So actually we knew the distance when we see a big petrol load [emphasis] going in we knew we were on for a – we see a small bomb load we knew, the petrol, it was being loaded up for all the tanks and we knew we was on for a long trip. Anyway, we went and had our – even at that time, we’d already had breakfast, but they sent us out and said ‘we’re gonna have bleeding bacon and eggs’ [laughs]. That was always done, it don’t matter what time of the day it was bacon –
AM: Well what would happen if you didn’t like bacon?
HI: Well –
AM: What did they get, sausage?
HI: There were a few Jewish people who, they had to eat the bleeding bacon [laughs].
AM: Did they, they ate it?
HI: Yeah, well, by then I’d done five or six trips, and I thought ‘so I better eat the food, you never know what’s gonna happen.’ Anyway, we went to the briefing at about ten o’clock, Saturday morning, it was, in October, round about, I forget the date, about the tenth of October, and we went to the briefing, and the officer come in, pulled the blind down, and there it was. Place called Le Creusot. It was right on the other side of France, nearly on the Swiss border. It was a nearly ten and a half hour trip and we were looking at each other, and they said ‘you’re to fly as low as possible, even lower than that if you can,’ and they said ‘there’ll be two hundred Spitfires,’ or hundred, two or three hundred Spitfires ‘escorting you to the coast,’ but the trouble was the Spitfires went to the wrong bleeding place, we never see ‘em. So we crossed the French coast at about the height of these buildings, and then you imagine what a sight that must have been , ninety-two Lancasters flying –
AM: What a noise [emphasis] never mind a sight.
HI: Yeah, there was loads and loads of ‘em. And all we got was the French girls waving at us and I thought ‘that’s handy,’ and everybody was coming out and waving, it was a beautiful day, and we went right across France. I mean right across France, looking, wondering where the fighters was ‘cause there was thousands of by that time, ’42, there was hundreds and hundreds of fighters in France –
AM: German fighters?
HI: Yeah, German fighters in France. Anyway, we went right across France, there was no incidents, everybody was waving, and we approached the target [coughs] excuse me, and six of us had to break off and bomb the power station that was supplying the electricity to this huge armament factory in Le Creusot. It was a huge armament factory, nearly as big as what the Germans had, and they was producing armaments for the German army. So we broke off, telling you now there was six of us who broke off, Guy Gibson was with us, he was on our port side, and he was on 106 Squadron, Guy Gibson was on, and his second in command was flying the other Lanc, and on our starboard side was two Lancasters from 50 Squadron on the other side, we was in the centre and there was six of us. We broke off and went straight to this power station. Oh, and as we approached the power station, one of the Lancasters on our starboard side just went straight in the deck and exploded. We were – he had six one thousand pound bombs on it, and it literally went straight in the deck and exploded. What happened we don’t know.
AM: Don’t know.
HI: Anyway, the five of us carried on, Gibson was on our portside with his second in command and we was in the centre, and the last one of 50 Squadron was, was on our starboard side. Anyway, we bombed the power station and we absolutely flattened [emphasis] it. We was carrying six one thousand pounders, and we went and we climbed up a little bit and dropped ‘em, and we could see that the whole place was flattened. In fact, the factory was – actually I went back there last year, to the factory and it’s bombed, still bleeding bombed [unclear, laughs]. Anyway –
AM: Did you get your photo?
HI: Pardon?
AM: Did you get – not last year, I mean in 1942.
HI: No we didn’t, I don’t think we took a photo because it was daylight and everything –
AM: So they knew –
HI: Everyone was bombing the same target. Anyway, the ninety Lancs turned round, it was ninety-two ‘cause when we turned around there was only ninety-one, one had blown up in the sky, and we came back over the – by the time we’d got to the French coast it was getting dark –
AM: Still flying really low level?
HI: Yeah, and we started climbing when we got to the French coast, and as we passed the French coast it was getting dark, and we was flying for about another thirty or forty minutes, and all of a sudden the sky was smothered in bloody high explosive shells again. So the pilot said ‘where the bloody hell are we,’ so the skipper said ‘ I think we’ve, I’ve miscalculated and we’re flying over Jersey,’ and we were over Jersey with these huge explosions coming up, anyway the pilot called him a nice fella again, he said ‘stupid chap you are’ like that, and we branched out and come back, but that was a catch that, Jersey was very, very heavily armed, and anybody strayed off the course they wait for you. Shot down quite a few bombers over there. Anyway, we got back and went to the briefing, we were told exactly what had happened, and they confirmed that we done a good job there –
AM: Good.
HI: And I thought ‘there won’t be no more daylight raids after that.’ And we went to, in a week, we had a couple of days off and we went to Genoa [emphasis], and we couldn’t make out why we was going all the way to Italy, it was eleven hour trip to bomb Genoa, but we soon found out because on the Thursday [emphasis] they said, a briefing for Saturday, a daylight raid. So we said ‘surely we’re not having another daylight raid, we was lucky we got away with La Crusoe.’ Anyway, believe it or not, the target was Milan, and we was gonna bomb it, in daylight, taking it from a very, very low level ‘till we got to the Alps, we couldn’t go low level so we had to wander through the Alps, and there was ninety- two Lancasters, darting and diving through the Alps.
AM: Had the Spitfires turned up this time?
HI: No we never see no bloody Spitfires at all this time, and same again, we went right across France, no opposition whatsoever. We went through the Alps, and this is what I call a terror raid. We went across Lake Como about hundred feet then, we climbed to three hundred feet, and there was Milan waiting for us. No air raid shelter, no flak, they never expected British bombers to come all the way from England in daylight, never expected.
AM: Could you, were you low enough to actually see people in the –
HI: Pardon?
AM: Were you low enough to actually see people?
HI: It was, we was that low, we dropped down to about a hundred feet, hundred and fifty feet over Milan, we could see everybody in the streets, in the restaurants, we could see ‘em all. And we see ‘em started running about, there was no alarm given, and the city was completely open, and imagine ninety-two Lancs with six one thousand pounders on. We caused absolute havoc there, and a few of the boys I know were machine gunning, which I thought was wrong. Anyway, we climbed up again, came back, slid our way through the Alps, dropped down again to nought [?] feet and came right across France again.
AM: You missed Jersey that time.
HI: Yeah, we missed Jersey that time. We had our pullovers on [laughs].
AM: What did you feel about that then? The fact that you could actually see people?
HI: Oh we could see ‘em yeah, yeah because we –
AM: What did you, did you talk about it afterwards?
HI: No, we never talked about air raids, never mentioned it. Once you got back it was finished. No body, and same as the logbook, all we used to put in the logbook was the raid, the time, we never, what we should have done was put a little, exactly what happened, but when you put your books into the commanding officer to be signed once a month, [unclear] shooting, just put down what the raid was and that was it, that was what we used to do. But we should have done, we should have put the whole story of what exactly went on. And after that raid believe it or not the Ities [?] didn’t want to know anything more about the war, and there was huge – we had a big publicity the next day in the Daily Express, had a huge photo of Number 9 Squadron, coming back off the raid, and they reproduced it in Italy with, English Gangsters they called us, and there we are. I think we lost four aircraft that night, I don’t know where we lost them, might have been technical trouble, I don’t know, but, to go all that way in daylight and not see a German fighter was incredible. And after that we felt ourselves very, very, very lucky. It was about my ninth trip then, I was one of the top, experienced men then –
AM: And you’d shot somebody down by then.
HI: Yeah, yeah. But we’d, we were the top men in the squadron, we’d done about nine or ten trips.
AM: And you were seventeen.
HI: Yeah, yeah. And from then things got worse. Worse and worse and worse. The –
AM: In what way worse, Harry?
HI: The fighters got much more efficient, and their radar got much more efficient. Their guns got more efficient. Search lights got better, and more, and they had guns that fired with radar and they never missed. I remember later on in the year on my second tour we was bombing a place in the Ruhr Valley, and we was going in, our squadron, and as we was going in, there was people in front of us bombing, and they’d already turned starboard and coming out again, and for some reason, I don’t know, a Halifax [emphasis] I don’t know if it was in our squadron or the squadron beforehand, instead of going hitting the target, I don’t know what happened, he turned and joined the aircraft that was coming out of the, from the bombing run, which was in daylight, and there was a big gap between us going in and those coming out, and then he flew across, and as he flew across the flak went bang, bang, and the third shell hit him right underneath, and just exploded, yeah. Why he done that I don’t know, ‘cause we was all in the shadow of the silver paper we was dropping, and that helps with the – this one had got outta range with it going across and they shot him down straight away, yeah. And as it went on, we used to get leave every six weeks, and Lord [pause] what his name, Rank, Rank, wasn’t Rank, it was the er, the bloke that owned Morris, BMC, owned BMC, and he said, and he gave every aircrew bloke that was on ops, when he went on leave he doubled their pay, for a weeks leave yeah, he done that right through the war. Must have cost him a fortune.
AM: Every airman?
HI: Yeah, well it was in Bomber Command.
AM: In Bomber Command.
HI: Who was flying. He used to give ‘em – he used to, he used to double our pay, yeah.
AM: You know what, just going back to operations, you know the gaps between them, as in a day, a couple of days?
HI: All depending upon the weather. It was entirely dependent upon the weather. If the weather was, it was a bright – I’ll tell you one we went one, we went on one and I still think about it, it was a full light night, getting onto Christmas I think it was, and they said ‘there’ll be no ops tonight because there’s bright moonlight and no cloud,’ and it was suicide to go over there. Anyway, they said they’d picked out sixteen Lancasters, they’d picked out about eight from our squadron, four from 44 and I think four from another squadron, they said ‘we want you to do a low level night time raid on small towns just outside the Ruhr Valley.’ And the excuse they gave us was that the civilian population wasn’t getting any rest from the bombing raids on the Ruhr Valley and they was letting them come to these small towns to get rest. That’s why they wanted to go over there and liven ‘em up. So, it really was a terror raid and we carried sixteen one thousand pounders with a delayed charged of about half an hour, and we found this small town, we was after, just outside the Ruhr Valley, and we went right down, it was brilliant [emphasis] moonlight we were in, we went right down this village or small town and dropped the sixteen one thousand pounders right down the centre of the town. And I often wonder what happened about that, but I don’t, there was no need really to do that bombing really, but there you go, that was war.
AM: Well you called it a terror raid.
HI: Pardon?
AM: You called it a terror raid?
HI: Yeah, yeah, and that was Christmas, went home and had some leave, came back and we started again. And by that time, all the crews that I knew when I joined the squadron in June had all gone, they’d all gone. All been shot down.
AM: Every single one.
HI: Yeah, and they was all new recruits except us, and we was all NCOs.
AM: What do you think kept your plane – why your crew when all the rest of them got shot down? What can you say?
HI: I don’t know, I don’t know. I’ll tell you, shall I tell you?
AM: Go on.
HI: Well, what they used to do, before you went on a raid they used to give us a bag of sweets –
AM: Go on, keep going. I know the story, but keep going.
HI: Oh you know the story do you?
AM: You told me earlier on, but tell me again.
HI: And, we couldn’t undo the sweets with the cellophane, so we used to throw them out of the rear turret, and the Germans knew that and that’s why they never shot us down. ‘Cause they wanted the sweets [laughs]. That’s only a joke [both laugh]. I don’t know, I got no idea. Well, what actually happened, the crew I was with, I said they’d already done fourteen trips on Wellingtons when I joined them, they finished, and they finished, we finished our tour, was up to about sixteen, fifteen or sixteen trips, and I was left with no crew, and I was sitting in the mess, and a bloke walked in, I knew him as Sergeant Doolan, pilot, and he said ‘my rear gunner Robbie has just been killed, would you take his place?’ That was, that was luck really, so I said ‘alright, I’ll become your new rear gunner’ which I did do, and we was an NCO crew, and we was the only crew to, that I know of, all the time I was there, that finished the tour. And how many crews we lost, Lord knows.
AM: But you were the common denominator.
HI: Yeah, yeah –
AM: From the first sixteen and then fourteen and then the –
HI: Yeah, and then, we was all NCOs and we finished the tour, yeah. And I think the pilot got the DFM, and none of us got even a mention of a medal. And there was – but the thing was, what was happening by then was the Germans had come up with a new technique called Schräge Musik, that was what they’d come up with, they’d put two cannons at eighty degree, put the two cannons behind the cockpit at eight degrees so there was the aircraft, and these two guns stuck up like that –
AM: Okay.
HI: And all they had to do, they had radar, and all they had to do was coast [?] yourself underneath a bomber and just fly underneath him. You didn’t have to have no sight, no tracer, it just went underneath the aircraft, up to the petrol tanks, quick squirt, and we used to see ‘em blowing up but we couldn’t make out, we used to come back and tell ‘em that we seen aircraft blowing up in the sky, there was no flak and no fighters we could see, and the, and they literally shot down thousands [emphasis] of bombers, and not once did they ever mention what was going on at the briefing, not once. Never.
AM: Would there have been any way to avoid them if you’d have known about them?
HI: Well, if we knew and known about it, which they knew what we’d be doing, we’d start jiggling up and down, so they wouldn’t get a clean shot at us, but then when you think about it, you get five or six hundred bombers doing that in pitch darkness, you’re gonna get, gonna get a lot of problems. And that was it, but they were shooting them down, ah, unbelievable. Yeah, you had to be lucky really, because if you bowed out you had to be lucky, because if the civilians, you come out near a target and the civilians get hold of you they’d rip you to pieces. Yeah, and the Gestapo shot a few as well. If you was lucky the Luftwaffe got hold of you, was alright, but, or the army got you –
AM: But you never got shot down?
HI: No, I never got shot down, no.
AM: What happened at the end of your first tour, then?
HI: What happened then, finished my tour, didn’t get no bloody medal, don’t know why not –
AM: Even though you shot one down, ‘cause people got medals for that didn’t they?
HI: Yeah I know. Anyway, I went as an instructor, and then I realised how risky this business was, because all [emphasis] that was coming from OTUs were crews being trained in Canada. And when you think they were being trained on single engine aircraft in beautiful weather, all they had to do was follow the railway line from one point to another, everything was easy. Of course when they come to London, especially, and England, especially where, with the weather, and was OTU we had to train ‘em for three or four months before they went on operations, and hell of a lot of ‘em got killed on accidents, but they were very raw, they should have had much, much more training, but then again –
AM: And how old were you at this point? Eighteen?
HI: Yeah, eighteen, about eighteen and a half yeah. And I was an instructor, and apparently, I carried on for a little while and the, we had a bit of a go – oh they sent me up to a place up in Scotland to a gunnery school to do some – the instructors up there wanted to get on ops, don’t know why, but they said ‘you go up there and relieve them,’ about ten of us went up there, and we were in the mess one night, and we all got drunk and caused a bit of a havoc and we went in front of the CO next day, he said ‘I’ve had enough of you blokes, I’m posting you.’ So I thought ‘oh go on, I’ll be posted somewhere out in the Middle East’ or somewhere like that, and anyway I got posted to South End, about fifteen miles from where I lived, and I was thinking ‘be at home every night’ and while I was there, what we was doing there was flying drogues [?], the flak along the south coast, we had a big drogue pulled behind, and I tell you what, when I see that I knew we had no chance at all. They had these, we had to use a toeless drogue, and they used to fight, not at the drogue, a couple of degrees past the drogue, because they kept hitting the drogues and it was becoming expensive. So, but the flak [emphasis] to follow you, right, same height, would follow the drogue all the way along. Anyway, after a while they said ‘you’re posted,’ and this I knew was why the government knew what was going on in Germany with the fighters. They said ‘you’ve been posted to the 77 Squadron, Halifaxes.’ So I thought ‘alright,’ so and when I got up there –
AM: Where was that? Where was it?
HI: Er, Full Sutton I think, yeah Full Sutton. And when I got up there, the CO said he wanted to see me when I got up there, so I thought ‘that’s handy, the bloody warrant officer and the CO wants to see me, I must be important’ and he took me out to the, where the arment [?] officer, out to a Halifax, and what they had done they’d cut a big hole in the bottom of the Halifax and placed a point manual point five over the hole –
AM: Point five –
HI: Yeah, point five, point five machine gun.
AM: Okay.
HI: A much bigger shell than the 303. And they said ‘have you seen any German fighters coming, coming at you, you’ll be able to handle ‘em.’ So they knew what was going on. Anyway, we took off for Duisburg and I was sitting there – I was bleeding freezing, can you imagine there’s a big hole like that, about twenty thousand feet and –
AM: Hang on where’s this, is this in the middle of the plane?
HI: In the middle of the plane.
AM: Right, okay.
HI: A big hole.
AM: Where the bomb doors would have been?
HI: Er, it was different in the Halifax.
AM: Okay.
HI: It was different from the Lancaster. Most the bombs – up, further up and underneath the wings as well.
AM: Right.
HI: Anyway, they dug this hole, cut this hole in the Halifax and they had a point five there, and I sat there, and can you imagine it was about forty-five below, and it seemed the whole world was coming through that bloody hole. The pilot was moaning, the bomb aimer was moaning, and the – anyway, we’d done the bombing raid, come back and they complained bitterly about it, and that was the last that – and they said to me ‘we’re posting you to Driffield, to an Australian squadron’ and that’s where I went then, as a rear gunner at 462 Australian Squadron. I stayed there for a couple of months and I don’t know what happened there, I don’t know if I’d lost my logbook or – anyway, I done about eight or nine trips here and never even registered, and then they posted from there, from 64, er, 462 Squadron on Driffield to its other squadron which was at Driffield –
AM: Why did you keep, why did you keep getting posted to different ones?
HI: Well the pilot I went with in 462, bloke, Australian called Heurigen [unsure of spelling] – 462 they posted away completely [emphasis] but he, he stayed, he said ‘no I wanna stay here at Driffield’ and he went onto 466, and he took me with him. And when he finished, I was in, I didn’t know what to do, and they said ‘we want you to go to 158 Squadron at Lissett’ and that’s where I finished. I don about another ten trips there, and they said to me ‘you done enough, that’s it.’
AM: What was Lissett like?
HI: Nissan huts, terrible. Baking hot in the summer, freezing [emphasis] in the winter. And you come back off an op and you had to go in one of them bloody tin huts. The bedding was wet, yeah. But I survived.
AM: You did.
HI: Yeah, I really survived, yeah. All, most of them, all my friends went there, yeah, a lot.
AM: Was the DFC then for the number of operations you went on?
HI: Number of trips I done, sixty trips, yeah. Yeah, I done more now actually, but –
AM: Well the ones that didn’t yeah, didn’t get counted.
HI: Yeah.
AM: And then so from that point, when you did your last tour, sorry your last operation, then what happened, were you sent to demob?
HI: No, they said to me ‘what was your trade?’ The war had finished, and they said to me ‘what was your trade before the war? What did you do?’ and I said ‘I was an apprentice tailor,’ they said ‘we’ve got the job for you’ I thought – they sent me down to Newmarket on the racecourse, in charge of about eight or nine WAFs on sewing machines. I don’t know why they thought I was – they were making lorry covers on these machines, and they put me in charge of ‘em. Oh, when I was there.
AM: What was that like Harry?
HI: [Laughs] had a little giggle [laughter].
AM: So what, how old are you at this point you’re about twenty –
HI: About twenty, yes. Yeah, about, getting on for twenty.
AM: So go on, you had a little giggle [HI laughs], tell me [HI laughs] go on, tell me some stories.
HI: Yeah I was charge of them, that’s it [laughs].
AM: Right, alright then.
HI: Yeah and then I stayed in Newmarket – oh blimey, it’s, oh it’s only twenty past.
AM: No, we’re alright.
HI: Newmarket was a bombing station if you believe it or not. The Rowley Mile was a runway for 75 Squadron, a New Zealand squadron, and after the war they turned it into a Prussian [?] depot. They was dropping all the aircraft into Newmarket and crushing ‘em.
AM: Crushing them?
HI: Crushing ‘em. Hundreds of ‘em. Into this big machine they just went pfft like, just crushed ‘em up, piled ‘em up. As far as we could see was one huge pile of aluminium.
AM: Going back to you though, so you’ve had your giggle with your WAFs –
HI: Yeah.
AM: Then what? Did you get –
HI: I had a couple of giggles [laughter from both] but it was handy there because we could get up to London from Newmarket, they had a railway station –
AM: How long was it before you were demobbed then?
HI: Er, got demobbed in forty, 1946, August ’46.
AM: So quite early, a lot earlier than a lot of ‘em then? ‘Cause you’d been in the whole –
HI: I’d been in the whole, since [unclear] yeah. I come out, about to find a job, I couldn’t go back to tailoring, I’d missed it you know. Anyway, I tried, went back to tailoring and learnt a little bit. Things were very difficult when we come out, we had no houses, you can imagine London, there was all bloody roofs off the buildings, and then we had to wait for a house. I was married then.
AM: I was gonna say, where did, where did you meet your wife?
HI: I knew her from the, from the blackout. I was sitting on a seat in the blackout and she came along with her friend and we started talking and that’s how it started, and I, it was only when I [unclear] and we got married in forty, 1945, Christmas 1945, and I remember we, we done a couple of trips, and I remember I bombed Dresden, we bombed Dresden just after Christmas, February, but we got married on the Christmas, and I shouldn’t have got married ‘cause we had nowhere to bloody live, better than living with the mother-in-law for a little while, got fed up with that.
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/.
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2015-07-23
Format
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01:15:35 audio recording
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AIronsH150723
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Conforms To
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Pending review
Spatial Coverage
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Germany
Great Britain
Italy
England--Lincolnshire
Title
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Interview with Harry Irons. One
Description
An account of the resource
Harry Irons left a tailoring apprenticeship to join the Royal Air Force and trained as a wireless operator but actually became an air-gunner. He describes the uniform he wore and the unreliability of heated suits. Discusses the invention of scarecrows which crews believed were sent up by the Germans to distract and demoralise them. Also describes a number of operations including to the Ruhr Valley and a number of daylight operations including Le Creusot (17 October 1942) and Milan (24 October 1942). Goes on to discuss the removal of Perspex from Lancasters to prevent oil from exhausts from affecting visibility, the introduction of radar into the rear turret and it’s quick removal after it was found as used by Germany and Schrage Musik. He returned to tailoring following his retirement from the Royal Air Force.
Contributor
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Katie Gilbert
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942-10-24
1942-10-17
158 Squadron
462 Squadron
5 Group
50 Squadron
77 Squadron
9 Squadron
air gunner
Air Gunnery School
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Bombing of Augsburg (17 April 1942)
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
briefing
Distinguished Flying Cross
fear
Gee
Gibson, Guy Penrose (1918-1944)
Halifax
In the event of my death letter
Ju 88
Lancaster
military living conditions
military service conditions
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Nissen hut
radar
RAF Bridgnorth
RAF Driffield
RAF Full Sutton
RAF Lissett
RAF Manby
Scarecrow
Spitfire
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/597/8866/ALeatherdaleF151018.1.mp3
0656231076eab0f126437dd54aae5a5b
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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Leatherdale, Frank
F Leatherdale
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Leatherdale, F
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Squadron Leader Frank Leatherdale DFC (b. 1922, 151162 Royal Air Force). He flew operations as a navigator with 7 and 115 Squadrons.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-18
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
GR: It’s Squadron Leader Frank Leatherdale.
AM: OK. [laugh] So, my name’s Annie Moodie. I’m working as a volunteer for the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln and we’re recording memories of Bomber Command veterans for the learning centre in Lincoln so that there’ll be there as a record for future generations. And, I am in Norwich today and with Squad— Squadron Leader Frank Leatherdale and it’s the 18th of October 2015. So, thank you for agreeing to this. And, maybe can — if you can just tell me a little bit about your early days. Where you were born and what did your parents do?
FL: I was born in Thornton Heath, which is part of Croydon these days, almost London, but — and educated at the City of London Freemen’s School at Ashtead, um, not that my father was a Freeman. He — we were day pupils there, my brother and I, um, and I was born on 3rd of November 1922. We’d better start there and [clears throat] when I finished school war had just started. July, I finished and, um, I was still too young to join the RAF. They wouldn’t have me until I was eighteen so I joined the local Defence Volunteers, which was before the Home Guard, and I was a bit of a nob [?] on aircraft recognition because I used to make Skybird models. These were 1:72nd wooden scale models of various aircraft and if you’d been filing away at a piece of wood you know that shape when you see it in the sky very well. And this was known in our DV and so they made me a fulltime aircraft spotter and, um, whenever the air raid alarm went I had to leap in my bike, cycle up the road about three or four hundred yards, to where a house had a very good vantage point all round. This was in Leatherhead in the North Downs and the people at this house on the corner left a window open downstairs so I could reach in and grab their telephone. So, this was known as Point L21. Whenever I got there I had to put two numbers, one was the Leatherhead Police Station, the other was a number in the Brooklands Defence. I never did find out quite where it was but it was an Army number. Anyway, and then I reported what I saw and I never saw great droppings of parachutes or anything like that but I did see aircraft and, on one occasion, I was watching the sky and saw this flash out of the corner of my eye, to the south east, and I thought, ‘That’s funny, what was that?’ And the only equipment I had was what we had in the family. I didn’t get any government equipment. So, I just got some little binoculars and I looked through this thing. There was a group of some twenty-odd aircraft coming across and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s unusual,’ and wondered what the flash was I saw and I reckoned then they were Messerschmitt Jaguars which I’d just read about it. The Messerschmitt Jaguar was a version of the 110 fighter but the bomber version with the glass nose. In fact, later on we learnt that they only built about three of these things but it was reported as a new type in our journals. And, um, anyway, I thought they were going to try and get down to London through the back door’ sort of thing, coming over our way. And —
GR: In fact, this would have been, this was 1940 while the Battle of Britain was —
FL: Sorry?
GR: Was this 1940 [unclear] during the Battle of Britain?
FL: October 1940 yes. And so I reported these aircraft through, to the numbers that I had to ring and I found that, whilst we had air raid warning at Leatherhead, um, it hadn’t reached Brooklands. Their sirens hadn’t gone, which was a bit odd, someone slipped up there but, nevertheless, I didn’t think these things were going to Brooklands. I thought they were going to try to get round, as I say, to London from the north, from the north to west through the back door but they got over at Esher and then they then just peeled off. It was like watching something at the Hendon air display in the peacetime. But they just came down one after the other and bombed the Vickers works at Brooklands. They didn’t touch Hawker’s on the other side of the airfield, thank God, but the trouble was, that as the sirens hadn’t gone, they didn’t respond to my warning, which was, would have given them about five minutes. They would have to be pretty quick off the mark. But one of the bombs hit their canteen and it was lunchtime and two hundred workers were killed there with that bomb. Luckily for us, a Polish Squadron based at Croydon, with Hurricanes, had seen these aircraft approaching Brooklands and the chappie in charge of them said, ‘We’d better go and investigate this.’ And they just managed to get there and attack them as, as they were breaking away from their dives and they shot one down, and the Bofors guns got another one and, um, that was it. Well, when the raid was over I jumped on my bicycle and cycled up to where I’d seen this smoke coming up from the one that had been shot down by the Hurricanes in fact, but it didn’t matter. But being an excited schoolboy (I was only seventeen) I didn’t write down how many there were or what it was. I could so easily have looked at this wreck on, burning on the ground and identified it. I, in fact, took a piece of wreckage of it, which is in the museum at Brooklands now. It’s only a little piece of metal. So, as I said, we weren’t very sure what these aircraft were but we eventually found out that they were a fighter bomber. The Germans only built three Jaguars [slight laugh]. These were just their normal fighter bomber Messerschmitt 110. Anyway, I eventually joined the RAF after that and wanted to be a pilot, like we all did, and was sent out to Canada, to the Empire Air Training Scheme, and I went out right across to Calgary and we were flying Tiger Moths at the Elementary Flying Training School and, very quickly, I didn’t have many hours, I got my log book. I had only twelve hours altogether, um, learning to fly this thing but I crashed one on take-off. A lot of people had trouble landing. I had no trouble guessing my height off the ground. I could land them beautifully. It was take-off that got me and when you open up the engine on a, any aeroplane but particularly a thing like a Tiger Moth there’s a vertex, vortex of air going back onto the tail plane and if you don’t do something about it that’s going to push that tail round so the pilot has to take off some of the rudder to keep the thing straight. I was told all this and I thought, ‘Well, that was easy.’ And then I was given a flight commander’s check and this was when I did a ground loop on take-off, spun round, and, you know, well what happened there? Well, of course the undercarriage collapsed. Not a lot of damage done but worrying. Anyway, I was given another check by a more senior instructor and the same thing happened. I did another ground loop. Years later I realised what I think what was happening was that my first instructor was only quite soon, only just been appointed, a pilot himself and, um, and when he said I’d got control he was still on the controls, quite unwittingly I should think. And so, as we were starting to take off he was working the rudder but didn’t know he was. And so I thought, ‘Oh this is fine.’ Off we went but when the flight commander gave me the check he didn’t have his feet on the rudder bar and I had [emphasis] control when he said I had and, um, and of course I didn’t do anything about correcting this swing until I saw the nose starting to move on the horizon and so then I started to over-correct in the opposite direction and that caused the ground loop. So, I was re-mustered, um, and sent down to a training unit right across the other side of Canada to be re-mustered as an air observer. And well, I was all very upset by that but still, I did what I was told, and became an air observer and qualified as such in February ‘43. Oh, I had been sick in hospital in the meanwhile, in Canada, with glandular fever but anyway, so that put me back a bit. And I eventually, afterwards, realised that how lucky I’d been because the most of the pilots on my first course had a very rough time of it. Many of them were killed when they eventually got across Europe and I always thought, ‘Well, I’d rather be a live navigator than a dead pilot.’ Until I was a sergeant na— navigator with the flying Os, we had in those days, I won’t tell you what we used to call them but you know what [laugh]
GR: I know what [laugh].
FL: And, um, came back to England and joined 115 Squadron up at Witchford, just outside Ely, and when we formed up as a crew an Australian pilot said would I be his navigator and I said, ‘Yes.’ And I’m glad I did. He was a very nice chap and a very good officer and he selected the rest of our crew as he was going round in this big hangar meeting people as we did in those days. It was all very voluntary. And so, we got to 115 Squadron flying the Lancaster Mark 2s. Now, the Lanc 2 had Hercules engines so many people thought they were Halifaxes, looking at them quickly. Of course they’d got these Hercules engines but it was a Lancaster Mark 2 and a damn good aircraft because the Hercules engines had got more power than a Merlin so it was rather like having four — a Hercules was an equivalent four Merlins so we could lift a heavier bomb load. Our difficulty was, we also gobbled up more fuel, especially at high altitude. Anyway, quite shortly our pilot was — went into Ely Hospital with pneumonia and they wouldn’t let us wait for him to come out. They sent another pilot up to take over the crew and he was a Canadian and probably a far better pilot than our Australian chap but nothing like the officer that the Australian was. The Australian really was a good officer, had us all trained and — right, this Canadian, he’d come back from a raid and said, ‘Where have we been?’ [laugh] If we’d been shot down, you know, he wouldn’t have a clue where he was. And that was Mack all the time. He was sitting up late at night playing cards with his oppos in the billets and, um, there was one occasion when, in the following morning — oh, I by this time I was a flying officer and so was the pilot, um, anyway, we were down for flying that night and I looked at Mack and I thought, ‘I’m not flying with you tonight.’ His eyes were little slits and red. He’d been up half the night playing these cards with his — and smoking away there. And after, well years after the war I — oh, the raid was cancelled, thank goodness, so nothing happened, but I went to the flight commander, who was George Mackie, a very famous — also a, a navigator, well a flying O [laugh] and I said, you know, ‘Had I gone to you and told you this at the time what would you have done?’ He said, ‘Well, I’d have had to court martial him.’ And I thought it’s a good thing I didn’t. He was a good pilot as I say. But anyway, we got through our thirty trips on that first tour and I, myself, had only done twenty-nine. Because of the change of pilots we were, most of the crew, were one short. However, I was awarded an assessment of above average and so I thought if we went to Pathfinders we’d get more money. And this is a little tale that needs to be told, that when the Pathfinder Force was formed — and, of course, the shot rate was pretty high. Clearly, you were out in front of the main force, they were coming along, and just these few aircraft out in front to mark the targets and our air officer commanding number 8 Group wanted to get us more money and Air Ministry said, ‘No, we’re not paying you danger money. That’s not how we work.’ So he went tick, tick, tick, tick. He promoted everybody one rank and got his money for us. So everybody was happy and, um, there we were and the rest of the crew were mostly made up to officers. They were sergeants or one was a flight sergeant. And so we went to 7 Squadron. After training at the Pathfinder Training Unit you went to Oakington just outside Ely —
GR: Did you have a break in between? Sorry Frank in between finishing your first tour and then going did you have a break, did you have —
FL: No, no. We, we carried straight on.
GR: Oh you went straight through.
FL: And, um, and I think well, I’m going to volunteer for Pathfinders, are the chaps are coming with me? Well the pilot didn’t want to, being Canadian he was going to go back to Canada and do more training, um, and the flight engineer didn’t want to because he’d just got married on one of the deep leaves that we had at the end of our ops. The rest of them came with me and joined, we joined Pathfinders and we picked up a new pilot there. And, in fact, we didn’t have, we had several different pilots in Pathfinders. It wasn’t a sort of regular crew. The rest of us were but the pilots seemed to come and go. And so, we staggered through a tour on Pathfinders, and we had — twice we were master bombers on the raids so that was good and when I finished there, I was assessed as above average and I thought, ‘Well, that was pretty good.’ But assessed as above average in a Force which was itself was above average. Anyway, I was then I posted to the Radar Research Establishment down at Defford which did all the flying for all the boffins at the Intelligence Communication Radar Establishment at Malvern and, um, I was the station navigation officer at Defford and they had all sorts of aircraft there so this was great fun for me. I liked flying in different planes and, um, anyway I did a lot of flying with the CO of the bomber flight. There was a bomber fight, a coastal flight and things like that at Defford, a naval flight as well, and this pilot, the CO of A Flight, was a chap called Ken Letchford [?] DSO and bar, DFC, from his Pathfinder days. Anyway, I did quite a lot of flying with him and got on very well with him and I flew with a lot of other pilots as well and, um, one of the jobs we were working on was Doppler navigation and the boffins were sitting at the back of a, another Mark 2 Lancaster actually and I had to align the nose, looking at the road or ground ahead, and the boffins would say, ‘We’ve got a return coming up at two miles.’ And I’d say, ‘Yes there’s a motorcycle there,’ or whatever it might be so, eventually, over time they would learn what these returns were on their Doppler. A car would give them this sort of picture and something else would give something different and so on. Well, this meant very low, a lot of it was very low level flying, and Ken Letchford would get right down on the deck, which is what the boffins wanted, so that their Doppler radar looked along the ground. This was just after the Germans had broken through in the Ardennes and, um, so there was a bit of a hurry on to get this equipment working because, at the time of the German breakthrough, which was a bit foggy, the air wasn’t able to give much support to the American sector where the Germans had attacked. Anyway, I would be lying there in the nose and all down the Bristol Channel you’d get these little blocks with a pole and a little light on it for, to warn the shipping, a little — fishing smacks and things, and Ken would go over [slight laugh] and down the other side. Well, when you switch the microphone on in an aeroplane you get a swooshing noise and as soon as I switched on Ken would say, ‘It’s alright Frank. I know where it is.’ And he always did, while most pilots would lose have lost it under the nose, they’d no longer see it, but his skill was he always knew right where it was, and sure enough, as I say, up and down the other side and so there it was. Anyway, one of the pilots I was flying with was — it was the first time I’d flown in a Beaufighter and he’d done his ops on Beaufighters, this chap, and, um, we had a, or the boffins had, a radar station on the Welsh coast, at a place called Brawdy, so that they could work out over Fishguard Bay and so we’d gone down there for, to take some equipment to them. On the way back this pilot decided to beat up Porthcawl and he dived down on the beach at Porthcawl as we were flying back home and to get in the Beaufighter the navigator had to go up through the bottom of the back compartment. The main spar separated you from the pilot’s cabin, no way through physically, and it was the general practice and I did the same as I’d been shown to leave my parachute pack on the airborne interception equipment and, anyway, as the pilot had dived down on Porthcawl, pulled up afterwards, he pulled a lot of G and I was crushed down in my seat and hanging on the sides of the plane and I could feel myself slipping down. And the floor of my compartment was the door which I had climbed in through and it had put the extra load and the extra negative G had snapped the lock on it and that meant I’d slid out a bit so my intercom plug pulled out of the socket and I couldn’t talk to the pilot at all. Thank God he was the man he was because, not only was he an experienced Beaufighter pilot, he’d also done the test flying on Beaufighters at Bristols and as soon as this door started to open he felt the change of trim. So, he thought, ‘Crickey.’ You know, he could guess what was happening and so he quickly put the plane into a bump, and a bump is a reverse loop, and you can — and coming down like that and again had he continued he would have done up and done the loop but he just, just pulled up. So, anyway he stuck the nose down quickly and that got me [unclear] back into my seat with positive G instead of negative G and, um, I was able to plug in and say I was still there and he said, ‘Yes right. We’ll carry on.’ And we got home alright. Just after he’d left Defford, which he was wing CO there at this time, a chap Peter Gibb, he set the world record for a jet aircraft altitude climb. He was — had gone to, back to Bristol’s as a test pilot and, um, he set this thing at about sixty thousand feet or something [clears throat] and about a fortnight later he thought, ‘Well, I can better this.’ Bristols had different engines so he got them to fit more powerful Bristol engines to this Canberra and he went up, and he left the navigator out so it would reduce his weight, and set another world record, which might be even still there to this day. Certainly all the time war was on it was still the record, of about sixty-five thousand feet. Anyway, as I say, I flew with several interesting people, many of them much medal-ridden. One, a chap called Trousdale, he was a New Zealander really, um, but he got the DFC and an AFC and he was also awarded a Dutch [emphasis] DFC because he’d done intruder work in his Beaufighter and he bombed bridges and barges and things like that. Anyway, the Dutch DFC is like ours but is — where the DFC’s got blue and white stripes and the Air Force Cross has got red and white stripes, the Dutch one has got orange [emphasis] and white stripes so, until such time we was issued our campaign medals, these three medals were together. Later on, of course, the Dutch one, being Dutch, would become at the end of his row of medals with the — so you would have the DFC, the AFC, then the campaign medals and then this Dutch one but until that time they were these things and then he was an outstanding chap to look at, he’d got all these strips of different colours. Anyway, he was a very good pilot and, um, one of the flights I did with him, he decided to go in a B17. We had one Flying Fortress, an American Boeing B17. We also had a Liberator there. Anyway, we had to go down to Geschborn, Eschborn [emphasis] in Germany to pick up some equipment which the boffins had left there. As the Army advanced across Germany they got parcelled this stuff up to bring it back to examine it more carefully in this country. And we went over to pick this up and we had to land at Croydon airport coming back, both to clear Customs and to dump off this package of radar equipment, which was going to go Air Ministry to get it in their hands quickly. And so, as we came into land I had wonderful seat right in the nose of this B17. I was navigating on a thing called a Bigsworth board, which was a mobile chart table really. How I came by it? I don’t know. I must have found it somewhere in some odd corner of a RAF station I’d been on. It was from the First World War really. But anyway, it was a very good mobile chart table, and as we flew up the Thames and then turned south to go into Croydon, over the houses, which I hadn’t seen before because they didn’t go that way, bombers obliviously at night but even in daylight we wouldn’t fly over London. Anyway there we were having to fly over London, all these houses, incredible, and we came in and Croydon was a grass aerodrome, didn’t have built-in runways at that time, and I’d been there as a boy, before to war, to see airliners go in and out and, um, I thought, never thought I’d come and land here so it was quite an experience for me to land there. Anyway, um, when I’d finished my two years as a station navigation officer at Defford I was sent to the Pathfinder Training Unit as an instructor and I hadn’t been there very long when the CO said, ‘Oh Frank, go and get your kit. The AOC wants to take a Lanc up.’ The AOC, this was Bennett, Air Vice Marshall Bennett, the most famous navigator in the world, you couldn’t get a — you know, what he hadn’t done, a tremendous man. Anyway, the reason he wanted to go on this flight whilst we had target indicator bombs, which were red and green and one or two yellows but we, our boffins couldn’t get blue and the Germans would make up false target indicators, which they would fire up with their anti-aircraft guns, and try and make people bomb the wrong place so, if they could get a blue marker then the Germans would have — apparently one Dave Brocks [?] said, ‘We’ve got the thing for you. We’ve got a blue marker.’ And so Bennett, being the man he was, said, ‘Right, I want to see it.’ And so, this is why he took a crew made up of other instructors at the Pathfinder Training Unit and, um, I must admit I wasn’t unworried. I was right on my toes because I was ready, knowing that Bennett was an efficiency man, and we took off from Warboys where we were. You could see the Wash and the ranges on it but of course coming the other way I knew very well — but he would knew where he because he knew the place was like the back of his hand. Anyway, I kept the thing right up to date on my G Box. If he asked for a course I could give it to him immediately. And anyway, these marker things, what Brocks had done was to fill marker bomb case with chopped up blue paper and so, when it was burst in daylight, this showered down and make quite a little blue cloud of — in the sky but quite hopeless for a crew to see it and in daylight not at all. So he wasn’t very pleased with that but it was interesting. Well when we landed — By the way Bennett wrote a book on air navigation, I think it might be still the book on it and I had it in my RAF bag and so we landed and I said, ‘Would you mind Sir autographing my book.’ ‘No lad!’ [laugh] I thought he’d be happy to do it. And he turned round to the wireless operator, sorry the flight engineer, and said, ‘And get your microphone checked.’ And this chap had been stuttering and stammering all the way through the flight and I didn’t know him from Adam, of course, it was just other instructors pulled together to make this crew up for the CO, AOC, and he turned round to this flight engineer and said, ‘Get your microphone checked, lad.’ And the chap looked a bit red faced but still. There wasn’t anything wrong with his microphone at all. He was just scared of Bennett. Couldn’t say two words together but you didn’t need to be scared of Bennett. If you were doing your job he would back you to the hilt but if you weren’t doing your job that was another matter. He would soon see you were going to — and he was a great one for training and even when we were on the Squadron we never wasted time. If you weren’t on ops for some reason you’d be sent off on a training exercise. Now, I didn’t worry about this because I could see the benefit of it. It speeds up your work, certainly as a navigator, if you keep in practice every day but some of the boys didn’t like this. They thought it — they would rather go into town [slight laugh] and relax and so on. But anyway, there we were that was Bennett’s method and I think it saved a lot of lives and improved a lot efficiency. So —
GR: So where are we in war time now?
AM: 45? Or 44?
FL: Well, the war came to an end.
AM: 45?
FL: Well, I was eventually demobbed and, um, oh, whilst I was at Defford at the radar establishment I was working on equipment called Airfield Controlled Radar, 3X, X stands for ten centimetre waveband and I said to the wing commander of flight and I said, ‘Look if I’m here to use this equipment and help the boffins I need to get trained as an air traffic control officer.’ He said, ‘Yes I can understand that.’ So I was sent off just on — as duty from Defford to the Air Traffic Control School at, er, Edgeware. I became a — qualified an air traffic control officer so, when I came to be demobbed, I got myself a job with the Ministry of Civil Aviation and, um they were all ex-RAF chaps of course. I was posted to the area control at Uxbridge and one Saturday the boys were going off to lunch and they said, ‘Frank, you’d be alright looking after things.’ I said, ‘Yes, no trouble.’ And a little Airspeed Oxford came in up in, er, distress having flying from the Channel Islands to Southampton lost an engine and this was November, which was not the sort of time to come down in the Channel, cold water and so on. Anyway, as soon as the emergency arose and did what we would have done the RAF always and I picked up the telephone, got through to Mountbatten in Plymouth and said, ‘We’ve got a problem here. Can you have a launch standing by?’ So they said, ‘Yes.’ And alerted a launch somewhere up, probably in Southampton, to get ready to fish someone out of the water. Well, the aircraft landed in Southampton so didn’t leave anyone on tenterhooks waiting for this emergency that no longer existed. I made another telephone call to Mountbatten to say, ‘Thank you very much, stand down, all is OK.’ Come Monday morning, the senior air traffic controller at this centre, who had been at Croydon before the war and how he dodged the war I don’t know but he was in air traffic —, and he, the plane was so antiquated, it wasn’t true. I mean, the RAF had been using radio telephony for ages but not these boys. They were sending turns to land at their simple air fields by WT, on the Morse code, so it meant carrying a wireless operator in the aircraft to trans— for the messages between the air and the ground. Anyway, this chap came in Monday morning and said, ‘What are these two telephone calls to Mountbatten?’ And I explained what it was and he said, ‘Oh no, no, no. You mustn’t do that. Only the Minister can ask the RAF to help. You should have sent a telegram (or a signal he put it but that turned out to be a telegram) to the Minister asking if he would give permission to help these poor blokes.’ Well, by that time they’d had been dead if they had landed in the deep and so I was so infuriated and instead of taking humble pie I said, ‘That is ridiculous, the cost of two telephone calls.’ And all the correct procedures, a far as I was concerned, and the bad thing would have been if I’d left them standing by and hadn’t told them the chap had landed safely. So anyway, instead of eating humble pie, that very morning I had a letter from the Air Ministry in my pocket offering me a permanent commission in the RAF. At this time I was still a volunteer, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. And I thought I don’t know what to do about this but that made up my mind, and I said, ‘I’m going back to the RAF.’ And that was the start of my proper RAF career in post-war days. I did a tour on Lincolns at Waddington and, um, and then I had been doing quite a lot of work on evasion and escape. There was an organisation, the Air Ministry Air Intelligence 9 it was called, and it taught people how to evade and so on and they used to lay on exercises to train people and each station might have one operation perhaps only once a year perhaps, but it laid on that the air crew go off as if they were invading, evading and told they would be dropped off of coaches and they didn’t know where they were, they wouldn’t be told where they were, they had to find out where they were just as if they’d bailed out and, um, and the local police and some army units usually provided opposition for them, trying to catch them. Almost the first exercise that I did, actually organising it, I thought well it’s — when these chaps are caught and brought in to the Police Headquarters, the Police Headquarters were regions around the country, they were being interrogated and I realised that this was not teaching them very much at all because there was no fear at all so they wouldn’t, wouldn’t know quite what, how to react to it. So I had myself, hired myself from Mos Bros an army officer’s uniform as a captain in the artillery with some war medals — oh, and I should say I’d been awarded the DFC in Pathfinders, so I had an MC on this uniform, and the exercise started and I was at the Police Headquarters where these chaps who were caught brought in and I had two big labels put on doors of two different rooms, one saying ‘RAF Interviewer’ and one saying RA— ‘Army Liaison Officer’. So, they would come in and they had been told, of course, to say nothing until the exercise ended on the Monday, the course was over a weekend, and various chaps were brought in and, much to my surprise, one of them was the station commander of RAF Coltishore and he’d decided to go on the run with the boys and he got caught. So anyway, he came in and to me as an Army Liaison Officer and he started to tell me all about the exercise, where they were going, where the [unclear] were and I was taking all this down and when he’d gone I went round to the wing commander policemen who was in charge of the opposition and said, ‘Look if we let this information out it’s the end of the exercise because there’s no point in it so we’ll keep this quiet until Monday morning.’ But then I had to put my report into Air Ministry, which I did, group captain so and so said this, that and the other. He was livid [emphasis]. He was going to have me court martialled wearing a uniform to which I wasn’t entitled, a medal to which I wasn’t entitled and, of course, it had all been laid on by Air Ministry, quite legitimately as far as I was concerned before-hand, and this station commander was none other than a chap called Bing Cross who was always a bit of a firing one. So anyway, that was that. Oh, and then the Suez operation came up and at this time I was at Upwood which was a Canberra station. I was in charge of the ground support system there and, when it as over, it was decided that proper, um, honour should we say, should be given to those who took part and Prince Michael, I think it was, came round and I had to lay out a graphic, get all these photographs that had been taken during the operation in Suez and, of course, you could speak to all the air crew of the squadrons that had gone from Upwood. Well, of course, naturally with such a high ranking visitor the air officer commanding Upwood, which was 1 Group, was Gus Walker, a little man who’d lost an arm during the war when he was rescuing a team, a crew of a bomber that crashed on his airfield at Flintham [?], a wonderful man, and anyway he was there and Cross turned up to represent his squadrons that had taken part in Suez and so Gus Walker, this 1 Group Air Vice Marshal, started to tell Bing Cross, the Air Vice Marshal of 3 Group, about me and I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ And Cross turned round to Gus Walker and said, ‘I know him.’ [laugh] And, much to my surprise, told this tale about himself. I didn’t think he was like that. He’d forgotten over the years perhaps but, um, anyway, he told Gus Walker all about me so that was that.
AM: Gosh, where, where did you —
FL: And then I went out to Korea with the Army still on this evasion and escape drop. I was an Air Ministry liaison officer, the only one north of — well only one in Korea really, certainly —
GR: That’s while the Korean War was on?
FL: Korean Headquarters where I had a little tent and each new lot of soldiers coming in I had to brief them on evading and so on. Well, of course, evading in Korea was very different from evading in this country. I mean, you couldn’t walk around and pretend you were anything other than what you were, with your white face and so on. But, um, so really it was a question of teaching them how to live off the land rather than how to evade but, anyway, that’s what we did and so for two years I was doing that, not only with the Army, I was, I went out onto the boats, HMS Ocean and HMS, oh, the other one. Anyway, there were two aircraft carriers [sneeze] and also I used to work with the Americans, 5th Air Force. I went out on the other coast to one of their big aircraft carriers and spoke to their air crew and so on.
GR: And that would be the early ‘50s, wouldn’t it? 1952, ’53?
AM: No later than that. It’s later than that isn’t it —
GR: The Korean War was ’53.
FL: Anyway, I went back to — well, Air Force Technical Training Command, working in research branch, that was interesting, no flying really, and then from that back — well to 115 here at Marham then, and flying Washingtons, B59s, as the Americans called and I was flight commander on B Flight.
GR: When did you finish in the RAF, Frank?
FL: Sorry?
GR: When did you finish in the RAF the second time around?
FL: Yes —
Frank’s wife: We always forget don’t we?
AM: ‘80s?
FL: Well, oh, from that I was given command of 220 Squadron with Thors, ballistic missiles, so for that I had to go to America to be trained as a launch control officer and ,um, then came back and was stationed up the road at Swaffham, north Ickenham, and when I my tour of duty was finished with that, the only job open for a squadron leader of my seniority, was to run the officers’ mess at one of the three bomber stations and I thought, ‘My God, going from missiles to messes, you know, what is the RAF coming to?’ [laugh] I had long realised that it was a pilot’s Air Force and didn’t have the same promotion chances as navigators. It’s changed now. You’ve got quite a few navigators right up the top but not in those days. If you weren’t a pilot you got nowhere so I thought, ‘Well, I’ll come out.’ And, um, sorry, I can’t think of the year. It doesn’t really matter.
AM: No, it desn’t matter.
FL: So that was the end of my RAF career, running this officers’ mess. In fact, it got me a job in civil life but that’s another story and you won’t want to know about that [laugh]. It’s probably about some of the things in Bomber Command and there’s one flight that I would like to record —
AM: It’s on.
FL: And that’s with 115, from when I was at Witchford. 115 was a big squadron and A and B Flights had used up all the letters of the alphabet because our code letters were KO for 115 Squadron so you had KO, then the roundel and then the aircraft identification A, B, C, whatever it might be. Well, when they got round to C Flight, as I said, they’d used up all the letters of the alphabet so, instead of having KO as the number we had A4. Well, it was a big A and little 4 like a Q and this particular night we’d been down to bomb Friedrichschafen on the —
GR: Maltese [?] coast.
FL: There’s a big lake there now.
Frank’s wife: Lake Constance?
FL: The Messerschmitt factory was in — it was a terrible night, stormy, thunder clouds, bouncing around and I was feeling quite sick. I did suffer from air sickness a great deal in rough aircraft. Anyway, we got down there, markers went down, we bombed the target and turned to come back when we did I didn’t get much help on the way down fixing our positon. And so I knew we obviously — Friedrichschafen that was the name of the place. I knew we’d been at Friedrichschafen when we bombed so from that I could work out what the average speed wind had been since we took off and I thought I’d use this average wind to get home. And the wireless operator couldn’t get me any bearings. Because of these thunderstorms the radio waves had been bounced off the thunderclouds and so the DF direction systems couldn’t help us. It was us on them or them on us. But we got back to where it was over Witchford to Ely and, in those days, all the aircraft had a radio transmission in the aircraft to speak to the ground but it had a limited range of nine miles, deliberately, because there was so many airfields that if it was any wider the ether would be absolutely cluttered with talking so, anyway, we got to where we should have been over Witchford, over Ely, and calling up for a turn to land, deathly quiet, nobody about, no other aircraft, nobody answering. So I thought, ‘Well that’s odd.’ Well, if the wind has changed well we would have been blown this way so I’d go north for ten minutes but then the wind may have gone the other way so I’d go west for ten minutes, still trying to find Witchford, and we had a system, if you were lost you called out ‘Darky’. That was the call sign to get help and any ground station hearing somebody calling ‘Darky’ would answer it with the name of their station. As I said, we were limited to nine miles so you knew you would be within nine miles of that airfield, um, but anyway, nobody answered our Darky call and we went north ten minutes, west ten minutes, north ten minutes, west ten minutes and all the time the bright lights on the fuel tanks were glowing red and I thought, ‘Oh my God, you know, we’re going to be in trouble here.’ And then, just as I was going to tell the crew to — I think I did tell them actually, yes, we sat on the Mae West dinghy, individual pack, and but you didn’t have it clipped to your parachute harness. Normally we just sat on it, that was it, but when you wanted to use it you had to clip it on to the side of your parachute harness otherwise you wouldn’t have a dinghy. So, I warned the crew to hook on their dinghy’s and just at that point we were going north and the rear gunner spotted a searchlight to the rear, to, in other words, to the south and just shining a single searchlight on the cloud. Well, that was, er, quite a normal procedure for showing where an airfield was, a Sandra light it was called, a single searchlight, so we turned to go towards that and I thought, ‘Hang on. We’re going south and we might have been blown a long way south to start with and we could be going to France.’ And we knew the Germans had set up airfields in northern France, along the coast, to make them look like RAF airfields to try and say, ‘Come on in boys. This is where you are.’ Just to capture you, capture the aeroplane, so we carried a little bomb in the aircraft and coming down on hostile country this was to be put in the wing over the fuel tank and then you ignited it, it was an incendiary bomb, and it would burn the aircraft up. And that was the job of the wireless operator was to get out through the hatch on top and go and do this once we’d landed. Anyway, we did quite agree and what I told them to do was for the gunners to protect the aircraft while he was going to do that. Of course, he couldn’t get out until the aircraft had landed, obviously. Anyway, as we got down into the circuit, once we’d broke through this layer of cloud, we could see where the searchlight was shining on the cloud, reflecting all around like daylight underneath, and one of the gunners said, ‘Cor, this is a Messerschmitt over there and a Dornier over there.’ Oh yes, this is one of those German places so I said, ‘Look, gunners stay in their turrets and fight off anyone who comes while we get out and get this bomb burning.’ Well, I used to carry a Mouser pistol because I didn’t like the idea of the RAF only giving you a Bentley 38 with six rounds of ammunition. It wasn’t going to last you very far on the continent but a friend of my fathers had captured this Mouser nine millimetre in the fighting in Russia after, as the First World War ended, and he’d had given it to me so I had this thing. Well, I was going to go to the door and help fight off any Germans coming to try and capture the aircraft and as the tail hit the runway, as we landed, the engines cut, we were right out of fuel. I thought, ‘Goodness me we couldn’t ever get any closer than that.’ Well, we knew it was really low because we’d had red lights on the fuel tanks for some while but, of course, as the engines cut the lights went out because it was the dynamos in the engines that kept the lights going. So, I went on back down to — in the darkness to fiddle with the outside door. Well, it was opened from the outside and a good old English voice said, ‘Oh, 115 Squadron.’ Oh no, there’s something funny about this because, as I said, we didn’t carry 115 letters. We weren’t marked up as KO we were marked as A4 so I thought I’ll put my pistol behind me [laugh] you know, and we found we had landed — oh, sorry as we were approaching it through the static we did pick up the words, ‘Something Ford Bridge standing by.’ I thought Stamford Bridge. Can’t be Yorkshire but it might have been. But anyway where are we? And it turned out what we’d now call Blackbushe, down near Woking . And, um, so it transpired our gunners were quite right, what was happening was that this was just before — well, D -Day hadn’t happened but they were getting ready for it and they got such German aircraft as they caught and assembled there, so that pilots could learn to fly them, so that when the invasion took place they could get over and bring German aircraft back to us. But I was so shattered after that I said, ‘I’m so sorry I can’t stand any more after this. I’m going to resign.’ Of course, it wasn’t just me. It was six other aircraft and they were relying upon me and I failed them. So anyway, when we eventually got back to our base at Witchford the following day, um, the station navigation officer went through my work and said, ‘I couldn’t find any mistakes here. It’s just you didn’t have the information that you needed.’ Well, I said, ‘That’s true. I couldn’t get any information on the way back.’ So, we were just lucky and I said, ‘Well, as a navigator or as an old flying O, I was trained as a gunner. I could go and fly with somebody else in the turret. It didn’t worry me. I’d be quite happy to fly in the turret.’ But the crew said, ‘No, we want you as our navigator.’ I said, ‘Well, you know, we went all through the business of laying mines and mines and so on.’ But we stayed together and carried on with Pathfinders.
AM: Crikey.
GR: Wonderful.
FL: That was a very dodgy, that was the most frightening flight I had.
AM: The dodgiest one of the lot.
FL: Sorry?
AM: The dodgiest one of the lot. You just can’t imagine actually that moment of landing and no fuel. Two more minutes, three more minutes and — gosh. I’ll switch back off again then.
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 Frank Leatherdale
Creator
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Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-10-18
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ALeatherdaleF151018
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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00:59:36 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Frank was an aircraft spotter for the Local Defence Volunteers and volunteered to join the Royal Air Force as a pilot. He went to Calgary in Canada on the Empire Air Training Scheme, where he few Tiger Moths at the Elementary Training School. He was, however, re-mustered as an air observer and qualified in February 1943.
Frank joined 115 Squadron at RAF Witchford, where his crew was formed and flew in Lancaster Mk 2. His first tour consisted of 30 trips, although they only completed 29 because of a change of pilots. He then joined 7 Squadron, part of the Pathfinder Force. He trained at the Pathfinder Training Unit and went to RAF Oakington where they were twice Master Bombers. After his tour, Frank was posted to the Radar Research Establishment at RAF Defford as station navigation officer. It involved several different aircraft and flights (bomber, coastal, naval). He describes several of the interesting people he flew with and the work on Doppler navigation. Frank was subsequently sent to the Pathfinder Training Unit as an instructor and recounts a flight with Air Vice Marshal Bennett, investigating blue target indicator bombs.
After Frank was demobilised, he worked initially as an air traffic control officer before accepting a permanent commission into the RAF. Frank goes on to describe his post-war RAF activities.
Squadron Leader Frank Leatherdale was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his work in Pathfinders.
Contributor
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Sally Coulter
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Cambridgeshire
England--Worcestershire
Canada
Alberta
Alberta--Calgary
115 Squadron
220 Squadron
7 Squadron
aircrew
B-17
B-29
Beaufighter
Bennett, Donald Clifford Tyndall (1910-1986)
bombing
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 2
Lincoln
Master Bomber
navigator
observer
Pathfinders
radar
RAF Defford
RAF Marham
RAF Oakington
RAF Waddington
RAF Witchford
searchlight
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/846/10841/PGreenwoodBE1502.2.jpg
ff17c42ebef7a5b84f373dcca56d73cb
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/846/10841/AGreenwoodB151123.1.mp3
eae2676ba92c1d4ffebda91c844f7c7e
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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Greenwood, Betty
Betty Elenor Greenwood
B E Greenwood
Description
An account of the resource
Four items. An oral history interview with Betty Greenwood (b.1926) a pair of gloves and two photographs. She was a plotter in the Royal Observer Corps.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Betty Greenwood and catalogued by Nigel Huckins.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-23
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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Greenwood, BE
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Right. So, this is Annie Moody on behalf of the International Bomber Command Centre and Lincoln University and today I’m with Betty Greenwood in Eskwith, near York and it’s Monday 23rd November 2015. So, thank you for agreeing to take part Betty. I’m going to take my bangle off ‘cause it makes a noise.
BG: You’re very welcome.
AM: Betty, can you tell me just a little about where you were born, what your parents did and your childhood?
BG: Yes. I was born in Belton in Lancashire and my father was in catering at that time. He was then given a job as a coffee buyer but he had to go and live in the Isle of Man and he was paid in the Isle of Man. Now regrettably when I was eight he died so that had all gone by the board and I came to live with my grandmother who brought me up and I lived in Leeds. But prior to living in Leeds I’d had a couple of years in Halifax at Princess Mary High School which was very pleasant actually. It was very nice.
AM: Um. So, you lived in Leeds and how old were you when you left school, or?
BG: Sixteen.
AM: OK. And then what? Then where?
BG: Well this is where it starts.
AM: Um.
BG: This was towards the end of the War and I was at Notre Dame in Leeds. And at the moment seven per cent of the population is privately educated. So, sixty years ago probably it would be five per cent and I reckon they’re all there on that photograph.
AM: Wow.
BG: Right.
AM: And I’m looking at an amazing photograph of the whole?
BG: It’s the Observer, that’s the Observer Corps.
AM: Right. I was going to ask what about the three gentlemen at the front there?
BG: Yes, because they would not be called up, because there was obviously something wrong with them.
AM: Right.
BG: An ailment or something like that. But they gave their services for free to the Observer Corps.
AM: OK.
BG: Now when I left school the War was coming to a close but you couldn’t go out and get a job, you were directable.
AM: Can I just wheel back again?
BG: Yes.
AM: Val said that you were at school in Paris at one point?
BG: No, only for three weeks.
AM: Why Paris though and what?
BG: Notre Dame, Notre Dame in Paris, because my grandmother thought it would be very good if I had French and things like that. And my friend and went on a very battered boat to France, but the nuns there obviously knew that the War was imminent.
AM: So this was in 1939?
BG: Yes, this was the beginning of the War, and we were shipped back within three weeks. But when you had your meals there you had to ask for them in French so I only really got pomme de terre and water. That was all and I came back as lot thinner. [laughter]
AM: Pomme de terre and l’eau. [laughter]
BG: Then when I went out.
AM: Right.
BG: But getting back.
AM: OK.
BG: To leaving school at sixteen, seventeen. The War was nearly over but we were directable. And within a fortnight we had letters from the Government saying what we could do and what we couldn’t do. I had three letters, one from Barnbow, they were the tank manufacturers in Leeds, I could go and rivet nails there. I could go to Bilborough Hostel, which was like, where do they send the naughty boys?
AM: Like a borstal?
BG: Like a borstal. I could go and scrub floors there. Or, it was, what was it? It was Barnbow, Bilborough Hostel and another one. I can’t remember the other one. But the other one, oh it was the Askham Bryan Prison.
AM: Equally attractive then?
BG: Yes. So, they were all three jobs and none of us could understand the Barnbow and prison. Not the Barnbow, the prison and the Bilborough Hospital, why the inmates couldn’t scrub the floors.
AM: Quite.
BG: Unless it was giving them too much freedom to escape I don’t know. But we couldn’t. So, my grandmother and my friend who is on that photograph next to me. Where am I? That’s me and that’s my friend.
AM: OK.
BG: She’s not next to me, she’s one away.
AM: Next but one.
BG: That’s me and that’s Win. Now we all look alike. All the hair-do’s are alike, it’s incredible isn’t it?
AM: I’ll scan this photograph and you’re absolutely right.
BG: Um.
AM: You’ve more or less got the same colour of hair.
BG: Yes. Now this had to be voluntary work so my grandmother said ‘Right you’re not going to do any of those things when they have inmates in these places that should be doing that work.’ So, I went, joined the Observer Corps with my friend from school and that was it really. And we were in headquarters which was in Kite Park in Leeds.
AM: In Leeds.
BG: And you approached this by going up, it was either Grove Road or Grosvenor Road, and I can’t just remember but it was a house, a detached house, stone built with about six or seven bedrooms, they were large houses.
AM: And did you and your friend just go on your own or with your grandmother?
BG: No, no, you had to do things on your own in those days, you weren’t mollycoddled. [laughter] And we were accepted obviously and –
AM: Well you say obviously, what, was there an interview, what?
BG: Well –
AM: Or did they just say ‘Yes please you can come?’
BG: You didn’t really have CV’s in those days. You just saw a man in charge in air force uniform and that was it. I mean obviously you had to be with it I suppose in some ways because there was a big table, a plotting table, with seats all around, and you had headphones and a ‘pusher’ and you pushed the aeroplanes onto the, this table and you could talk to guns. It was talking to guns, or talking to headquarters or talking to them in the aeroplanes. And then there was a big board, oh as big as that on the wall. And that was called a long-distance plotting. And that was when they sent over the hundred bomber raids and they appeared on this big thing.
AM: What training did you do?
BG: None at all.
AM: None? So how did they show you, who showed you what you had to do?
BG: Well, you just observed. You were stood behind, ah I remember now. There was a plotter on a chair with a pusher, and you just stood behind and listened and watched. So, it was observation really. And I suppose if you hadn’t been any good you would have been thrown out, I don’t really know, but it was very hit and miss.
AM: So, so tell me again what exactly you would. On a normal evening? Day?
BG: Oh, nights.
AM: Nights.
BG: Every night. We only worked nights. And we worked nights and I had to go through Leeds but I met up with my friend Win and we went through Leeds and there was a dance hall called the Mecca.
VT: There was.
BG: And it was all red plush, it was all red plush. And we used to sneak in and we were not allowed to go into this dance hall because there were Americans there, and you might get pregnant! [laughter]
AM: Would you have known what that meant at sixteen? Yes, you would.
BG: Yes, I suppose.
AM: What were you dressed in then when you sneaked into the dance hall?
BG: Oh, in the uniform.
AM: You had your?
BG: With a forage cap.
AM: OK.
BG: It was an air force, like the air force, what do they call the air force ladies?
AM: The WAAF’s?
BG: WAAF’s yes. It was a skirt, an air force skirt, stockings, black brogues, lace up’s and a bomber jacket with a matching tunic thing underneath and a forage cap. And we went into this Mecca dance hall dressed like that. Then, because we’d spent our money getting into the Mecca we used to walk from Leeds. Instead of taking, we had trams in those days, instead of taking the tram we walked. It was about three miles, so it wouldn’t do us any harm to walk.
AM: You’d spent your tram fare though getting into the Mecca?
BG: Yes.
AM: Did you dance with the Americans?
BG: Oh yes. [emphatic] Yes, yes we did. A lot of them. [laughter]
AM: Wonderful.
BG: And actually, this is one thing I never fathomed. There were Russians here as well and I couldn’t understand that.
AM: This is right towards the end? What year are we, will we be in now, early ’45?
BG: Yes. To the end.
AM: So.
BG: I mean I’m no good at –
AM: Early ’45.
BG: Yes. It must have been. But I couldn’t remember, understand why there were Russians there. They were all big and bear like.
AM: If you were born in ’26 what age were you? Sixteen did you say?
BG: Yes, sixteen, seventeen.
AM: Seventeen. Actually, it might have been ’44 then.
BG: Could have been, yes.
AM: So after D-Day, but still quite a chunk of the War, well they’ve still got to get up through France and Belgium and all the rest.
BG: Yes. But then when the War in Europe was over there’s still the War in Japan.
AM: There’s still, absolutely yeah. So, wheeling back to when you did your first day then, on the table.
BG: Yes, yes.
AM: Can you remember it, what did it feel like? And what did you actually have to do?
BG: I was really, actually people were quite scathing about doing things like that, but, because they thought you ought to be doing munition work. But I was quite proud to do that, you know, quite enjoyed it.
AM: Tell me about what you actually did.
BG: Well you had a long pusher, like a rake.
AM: Um.
BG: And you pushed little aeroplanes into sections.
AM: Right, when you say pushed them into sections. How did you know where to push them?
BG: Because you were through on the intercom.
AM: OK.
BG: On the earphones.
AM: You you’d got an earphone and you’d take?
BG: Yes. And you were just told where to put them. ‘Aircraft at twelve something and –
AM: How did you know which aircraft? They might sound like daft questions but I can, I’ve seen the pictures, but I can’t imagine how you knew what to move.
BG: Because the pilot or whoever said. Or whoever was telling you.
AM: Right.
BG: And one pilot sent me a parachute, pure silk parachute. And I had some underwear made, it was lovely.
AM: I bet. So, it was actually, so coming through on the intercom, you’ve actually got the pilots who are telling you about their own aircraft? Or about the enemy aircraft?
BG: Well, it was so that headquarters got an overall plan of how many aircraft and where they were heading.
AM: Right.
BG: Because you see when Coventry was bombed that was dreadful. But they would know by the people, there’s headquarters where we did plotting and then there were people dotted all over the country in little outlets. Like farmers who were in like a bunker and they were out with their binoculars.
AM: Observing?
BG: Yes. And they used to come back.
AM: So you’re getting messages from a variety of people really?
BG: Oh yes, yes.
AM: To say x number of aircraft in that section now?
BG: Yes, yes.
AM: So you girls –
BG: And they could say whether they were Heinkels or whatever. And they would say the Halifax’s when they were ours, Wellingtons and the different things.
AM: And you’re moving them. How many girls would there have been around the table?
BG: There were about ten.
AM: So there was about ten of you?
BG: Um.
AM: All getting the various messages, getting the aircraft?
BG: Yes, yes, yes. But it was over quite a large area of the country.
AM: What area of the country did you cover?
BG: You know I can’t, I was trying to think about this. It was as far down to Lincoln I know. And West Yorkshire, East Yorkshire, it was quite a big area.
AM: Um. So, it was the bombers going out by that time rather than the German bombers coming in? Although there would still be some.
BG: They did mass raids.
AM: Um.
BG: It’s the mass raids that I seem to –
AM: You said you remembered the hundred bombers?
BG: Um. That was when they did a hundred bombers. The Germans sent them over in block.
AM: Um.
BG: But it was quite fun. You’ve got to remember we had little food, very little food. And no transport, or very little transport. Now, I don’t know whether I ought to say, there was really a big black market in food. And all these farmers that were spread around in the villages. I’m saying farmers, they weren’t all farmers. There were different people but the farmers had access to food obviously and we used to be invited by the people, the observers, to parties. Well we’d never known a, we’d never known food like it. It was wonderful. [laughter]
AM: Fresh eggs.
BG: Yes, fresh eggs and ham. Ham, I remember that.
AM: And that was the observers out in the fields?
BG: Yes.
AM: Sending the messages into you?
BG: Yes, yes.
AM: Who did you actually work for? Were you part of the RAF or part of the?
BG: I don’t, I really don’t. [laughter]
AM: It was the Observer Corps.
BG: It was attached to the RAF yes.
AM: Yeah.
BG: I don’t know who started the Observer Corps at all.
AM: We can find out. We’ll Google it Betty.
BG: Yes. I don’t know I’ve never given it a thought. Because I only have that photo. I have got [rustling noise]. That’s my badge.
AM: Oh gosh.
BG: I mean you’re welcome to that if you –
AM: Oh no, we’ll take a photograph of it. Where would you have worn that on your lapel or on your forage cap?
BG: On my tie.
AM: On your tie.
BG: I mean it’s not very good metal but it is nice. But we all got a Defence Medal at the end.
AM: Right.
BG: And we had burglars and mine went which was a shame because I think it was rather nice that we got a Defence Medal. [Rustling of paper] That’s my husband who was a medic.
AM: I’ll ask you about him in a minute, I can see his wings. Um, going back, I want to go back to this plotting table. So, you were all there, pushing your?
BG: Yes, and on the long distance as well.
AM: Aha.
BG: So it was like duplicated. There were all the squares cut up into sections as far as I remember. And there was an observer for one section out on the field.
AM: Aha. And did you have the big board with the lights on, on the wall?
BG: Yes. And they had a special metallic stick that you used to push. You know how that handbag that Val bought me had a metallic fastening and it?
AM: Like a?
BG: Goes zing.
AM: Like a magnetic thing on the end?
BG: Yes, um, yes.
AM: How long did you do that for? How long did you work there?
BG: You know I can’t remember. Because as soon as I could, I was fed up. Not with the Observer Corps, I enjoyed that bit, but I was fed up, being told what to do. At that age, to me I was suffocating. And what I did, my Father had left me a little annuity, so I had money, where other people, where a lot of the girls didn’t have. And I knew a friend who was a physiotherapist and she was Danish. And she used to say ‘Come and see me, come and see me.’ And actually I went to Denmark on –
AM: After the War? It must have been mustn’t it?
BG: Yes, just as the War in Japan had finished. I went to Denmark on a broken down, they’ll probably hate me for saying this there were two vessels in Goole harbour. The Don and The Durn. And I went on The Don to Copenhagen to see Elsa.
AM: You see you just say that so matter of factly but we’re right, just at the end of the War.
BG: Yes, yes.
AM: We’re not talking package holidays and things here.
BG: Oh no, no. [emphatic]
AM: How did you manage to get a ticket and all?
BG: Well, it was the Ellerman Wilson line and they were just beginning to start again. I think Elsa my friend in Denmark, I think she did the booking or whatever it was.
AM: How did you come to have a friend in Denmark?
BG: Well she was a physiotherapist and they get around quite a bit. And she knew a Miss Ebner, Ebner. And I suppose it was because of Miss Ebner that she came to England, and Miss Ebner was the head of the physiotherapists in Leeds. She was a lovely –
AM: So how did you know physiotherapists in Leeds?
BG: How did I know? I haven’t a clue. [laughter]
AM: It just all sounds quite exotic.
BG: I suppose it is. Well, how do I know Val? Because she’s my neighbour. But I can’t remember how I met Elsa, probably it was at the Mecca.
AM: Anyway with the Americans. So, you went off on the boat, 1945 or ’46?
BG: Something like that.
AM: To Denmark?
BG: Yes.
AM: As you do.
BG: And then I, it was so different, and so laid back. And the children, I can remember wakening at Elsa’s in the early morning and hearing all these voices, all these children. And they were at school for eight o’clock, but they finished earlier. And then I thought ‘I’d probably like to stay here.’ And I went backwards and forwards on the Don from Grimsby, from Copenhagen to Grimsby quite a bit. And then I thought ‘I think I shall like a job here.’ So, I went into, they were all English speaking so you didn’t have to worry about the Danish or anything like that, they were very bright. And I went into Magasin du Nord, which was one of the largest store, the largest store, and probably still is in Denmark, I don’t know. And I got a job, but they put me on the boat department and I hadn’t a clue. [chuckles] But I knew every ships chandler in, down the Skagerrat? and the Kattegat?, but not in England. [laughter]
AM: Tell me how long did you stay in Denmark for?
BG: Oh, I can’t remember. Until I was, oh, I came back when I was twenty-eight.
AM: Right, OK.
BG: So it wasn’t that long but it was very memorable.
AM: it sounds it. Well, it sounds just completely different.
BG: Yes.
AM: To what most girls would be doing.
BG: Yes.
AM: At that age just after the end of the War.
BG: Yes, yes.
AM: You escaped loads of the rationing years and –
BG: Yes, but England was getting back.
AM: Yes.
BG: I mean I think we did a very good job getting back to normal. [Rustling noise] I’m just trying to get this little thing out because , oh, now then I’ve dropped the thing.
AM: We’ll find it in a minute. You showed me a picture of your husband.
BG: He’s very handsome.
AM: He is very handsome.
BG: Just going to put this light on.
AM: And ask you, so I’m holding this picture of very handsome gentleman in RAF uniform?
BG: Yes.
AM: Yeah. So, tell me about him then. When did you, where did you meet him and when?
BG: Well, he was just a medic, and went to Canada. Felt very, what is the word I want? Very guilty about being in Canada because he was well fed.
AM: Whilst the War was on?
BG: Yes. You know, training people. He felt very aggrieved that he’s been seconded there.
AM: So he was in one of the operational training units, but training medics?
BG: Yes, yes.
AM: For the RAF?
BG: I would think so. I didn’t know him them.
AM: Well no, where did you meet him then Betty? [laughter] How old were you when you met him? Dare I ask?
BG: In Halifax.
AM: Right.
BG: In Halifax at a friend’s.
AM: He’s very handsome.
BG: Brylcreem boy. [laughter]
AM: He looks it.
BG: That’s what I called him.
AM: Just whizzing back to the War years for the minute. When you were at school, so in the early part of the War. Do you remember being bombed?
BG: Yes.
AM: Do you remember the bombing raids? What was that like?
BG: Yes. Well, Leeds was very lucky. It was bombed but infrequently. It was mostly in the Burmantofts, York Road area. And why that happened, I suppose it was because it was the main junction of the railroad there.
AM: Yeah.
BG: That was probably it.
AM: So railway marshalling yards were quite often a target.
BG: Yes. We were very lucky in Leeds. Very lucky.
AM: It’s. See you think this is just an ordinary story. And I suppose it is an ordinary story isn’t it? But it’s not because we can’t envisage what it would be like.
BG: it is very ordinary. But we didn’t eat much. If you think, the butter ration. I think, I’m thinking in grammes now and it was ounces then. If I recall the butter ration was about two ounces a week. [emphasis on week] Yes, yes.
AM: So you’re talking a little, like the little pats of butter we get now almost?
BG: Yes, but because we had some relatives in Iowa in America they used to send us food parcels. And there was tinned butter in, and oh that was lovely to have tinned butter. [laughter]
AM: It’s amazing isn’t it? Val, have you got any questions? You know Betty more than me, what have I missed?
VD: Well mostly post-War I know, not your pre-War experiences or your wartime experiences.
BG: Well, you see.
VD: Mainly post War that I know about.
AM: Tell me a little bit about what you ended up doing. I know what you ended up doing.
BG: I was only buying for a group of stores that’s all.
VD: A bit more exotic than that.
AM: It was a bit more exotic than just buying. What were you buying?
BG: Furs.
AM: Furs.
BG: Oh, did you see the programme about the fake furs on the television this morning?
AM: No.
BG: It was very, very interesting. About all the furs that are coming in now, trimmed for the coats and things that are trimmed.
AM: Um, right.
BG: And how they’re putting real fur on and saying it’s fake. It was quite an interesting programme.
AM: Where did you go then fur buying?
BG: Um?
AM: Where did you go fur buying?
BG: London, Glasgow, Russia.
AM: Russia?
BG: Later on that was.
AM: I wondered about Russia.
BG: Um.
AM: I’ve got a beautiful black fox hat from Russia. I’m going to switch this 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 Betty Greenwood
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-11-23
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Format
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00:28:53 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AGreenwoodB151123, PGreenwoodBE1502
Language
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Betty Greenwood was born in 1926 in Belton, Lancashire; she attended Princess Mary high school was and privately educated in Paris but returned due to the threat of war. At sixteen she was offered various jobs but decided to join the Royal Observer Corps. She was recruited with training on the job as a long-distance plotter, being connected to the intercom and relaying information to the plotting table displaying radar sightings in the area. Betty discusses social and service life, the Women's Auxiliary Air Force uniform, meeting her husband in Halifax who had served in Canada as a trained medic for the Royal Air Force on operational training units. Concludes discussing a photograph of men who served in the Royal Observer Corps due to disabilities.
Spatial Coverage
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England--Leeds
England--Yorkshire
France
France--Paris
Canada
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia--Halifax
Great Britain
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
ground personnel
love and romance
military living conditions
Operational Training Unit
radar
recruitment
Royal Observer Corps
training
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1205/11778/PWilsonT1502.2.jpg
3d62a4332a9b0bd72728f20e692379b6
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1205/11778/AWilsonG-T150816.1.mp3
893ffee8213621a9225a4ab894319fce
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1205/11778/PWilsonT1501.2.jpg
113ccf78143631dae06533e3008fc9a6
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
Wilson, Tom
T Wilson
Wilson, Gabi
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with Gabi Wilson (b. 1927) and Warrant Officer Tom Wilson (Royal Air Force) and a photograph. Gabi Wilson was a civilian in Germany during the war. Tom flew as a navigator on Wellingtons of 192 Squadron. He was shot down over the Hague and taken prisoner and went to Stalag Luft III.
The collection was 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
2015-08-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Wilson, T-G
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
AM: Ok. What I’m going to do is just introduce us first.
GW: Yeah.
AM: So this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moody and the interviewee is Gabby Wilson.
GW: Yeah.
AM: And the interview is taking place at Mrs Wilson’s home in Coleshill near Birmingham today, the, Sunday the 16th of August 2015.
GW: Yeah, I think people prefer Warwickshire, I’m sorry.
AM: Warwickshire, oh better than Birmingham, ok, a better postal code. So, Gabby tell me a little bit about, your, just a little bit about your childhood.
GW: Right.
AM: And where you were born.
GW: My childhood was unusual because my father had lost his sight. He was a regular army officer in the Prussian Army and he lost his sight in November ’14. Straightway decided to start a new life, went to Berlin University aided by his batman at first, said to the batman, ‘Introduce me to that girl with the beautiful laugh’ and that is my mother who gave up her studies and we had a very happy childhood, four children and I was the youngest of four.
AM: Fabulous, where did, whereabouts did you live Gabby?
GW: Oh Berlin.
AM: In Berlin.
GW: It was yes. It was, yes, Berlin. It was Berlin University and my parents got an apartment in a place founded by Frederick the Great for invalided soldiers and there was, built in 1912, an officer’s apartment halls and a large, large garden. I would think four to six times as large as this.
AM: And this one’s quite big.
GW: Yeah, yes.
AM: Ok and what about school? Where did you go to school?
GW: I went to school, to the local primary school at first and then to the, what’s called, well what would be grammar school and we had to go do a tram ride to get to that one so that was but of course taking my father about, although he was very independent we were well dealt with we knew about traffic, we were fine. I think I took my father across the road, a quiet road but still, when I was three.
AM: Three years old.
GW: Yes. He would say, he was always in command, which was very good. The whole complex was moved out in ’39 just outside Berlin, still Berlin but the absolute edge, which was a blessing of course with the bombing and everything.
AM: Was it moved out because of the —
GW: No.
AM: No.
GW: No, no, it was because the complex in Berlin was being, going to be used for the Military Medical Corps for training and so on. So we were pushed out there, very inconvenient for, particularly for all those with jobs. It was a fifteen to twenty minutes walk to the suburban station and then three quarters of an hour, half an hour, three quarters of an hour into the city, which my father, who had got his degree and was manager of one blind organisation for war wounded and another one for civilians where it was particularly seeing to jobs. That they had jobs, the usual blind jobs but more than that, it was a university with extra courses. My father went into town every day and we bought, in fact, we bought a tandem and learned to be in front with a heavy father at the back. I know my mother and I was, it was not easy at first, later it was fine.
AM: How old were you?
GW: I was then eleven, twelvish.
AM: Eleven.
GW: And it had a little, two little clips and if I had, I had to have my father’s permission. I had to ask him because he would notice it. If it was just a plain road, not up or down, perhaps down a little bit I could put my feet on there and he would do the pedalling himself, [laugh] so that was, that was great. We went swimming every day. When we were in, lived in the centre of the city there were open air swimming pools but then we went and swam in a dead arm of a river.
AM: Ok.
GW: We would cycle half an hour to that spot and there was what was called a dead arm where they stored logs and that’s where we would bathe and my father, incredibly brave, he’d just rely on us for those but yeah he loved that. So for us, really I mean for all of us, this move out which we’d cursed because it was so far out from anything that was going on then was a blessing of course as the war went on. So that was my childhood.
AM: That was your childhood.
GW: With a very, well my mother had given up her studies but very bright, intelligent. It was that lovely, with two older brothers both very bright, one older sister, very happy family life.
AM: Lovely, it sounds lovely.
GW: Yes, yes.
AM: And then the war came.
GW: Well the war at first didn’t touch us one bit, for a long time. We had air raid shelters and we would go down and we had banks in it but nothing happened. We heard the planes follow the S [unclear] line in to Berlin and out and that was it but no, I wasn’t there at the end of the war because we were, I would have reached the last year at the school and we were all sent out to be called up by the, there was the organisation the Arbeitsdienst. It was a Nazi, well, organisation where every girl had to do, I think, a half a year. My sister had to do it but instead of it we were supposed to be called up but they forgot me because, oh yes because of the Berlin schools were evacuated and so my mother sent me to a boarding school in Potsdam which is just outside Berlin.
AM: Yes, yeah.
GW: Which, in a peninsula, paradise.
AM: So your memory of it, apart from hearing the planes, is being in paradise.
GW: Yes.
AM: In Potsdam.
GW: Even we didn’t, that wasn’t in the flight path then but we just had if there had been a long air raid we would have lessons either cut off or later, to get a bit more sleep but that was a very, very lovely time and then we were supposed to be sent home, supposed to be called up. Nobody called for me but I knew that girls were used to train young horses and I’d done a bit of riding, not very much. So I thought that rather than be called up I got into that and my record for falling off was six times one morning.
AM: In one morning, what were the horses being?
GW: Between six and the eleven, well they were very young.
AM: What were they trained for?
GW: They were trained you see but since they weren’t on full rations they were comparatively very mild. They hadn’t got the strength to —
AM: Ok.
GW: To be naughty. [Laughs}
AM: Were you on rations during the war? Your family?
GW: Sorry?
AM: Were your family on limited rations during the war?
GW: Yes but my mother was a very good manager with the garden and things. We didn’t starve, food was a bit boring, the hard time came after the war. Now, it sounds perhaps cruel but my father, now you’d think it’s nothing, he was seventy but he couldn’t, it took three hours to get into Berlin after the war because the Russians had taken tracks back. Don’t think I’m blaming them, they had suffered enough and so the train journey wasn’t smooth. It had to go on to the side to let the other one past, long journey into Berlin but my father still tried to work but it didn’t work and he died, I mean he had got a dicky heart and he died in October ‘45.
AM: ’45.
GW: The winter.
AM: So right at the end of the war then.
GW: The winter would have been, the winter of ‘46 was the worst, ‘46/47 for rations, so he that would have been a very, very hard time.
AM: What happened to your two older brothers?
GW: My oldest brother had, after leaving school they had to do half a year in something called Arbeitsdienst, some organisation.
AM: What does that mean?
GW: Well they had to dig things. It was a sort of supposed to be a bit of Nazi education or what but what did he [pause] well he didn’t, he didn’t work of course, he was good in three languages so he was an interpreter. It was, yes, ’36 Olympics.
AM: Ok.
GW: He walked about with three bands; French, English, Italian [laughs]
AM: How wonderful.
GW: And had a marvellous time.
AM: I would imagine he did.
GW: And the other one was too young, the other one was taken prisoner in March ’45 in, in Russia, in the Soviet Union.
AM: So they were both in the army.
GW: Yes, yes. The older one was a sort of pulled in straight away, the younger one then later when he was old enough and he spent four and a half years in a Soviet prison camp. So that —
AM: Gosh.
GW: But when Tom and he met they talked about prison camps. [laughs]
AM: I can imagine. I don’t know, well —
GW: Well no, the Russian one was worse but both had learned as much as they could, Tom had learned German, my brother had learned all sorts of things. They used their time, there were ways that they learned that but he came home in [pause] ’48 or ‘49 I think.
AM: So he was still in the prisoner of war camp right up to 1949?
GW: Yes.
AM: Gosh.
GW: Yes, yes and if you, well you can always cut out, can’t you? At that time quite a few prisoners were coming home and they were announced who would arrive in Berlin next morning. That was around, announced on the radio at 10 o’clock at night and my mother who then worked for Quakers and we’d moved. Her first job, her first job she ever had but wonderful. Well, my mother just got home at 10 o’clock, turned the wireless on, heard my brother’s name and so didn’t know whether it was hallucination or what was this, a few minutes, a few pebbles at the window, the parson, the local parson had listened in and he came to tell her. Wonderful wasn’t it?
AM: You’re making me cry.
GW: Yes, well wonderful that, I mean, that was great. So now by that time I had been in West Germany but I came home and there he was, wonderful. He tried [pause] yes he tried some social work training and he was [pause] it was far, I mean, he was far too clever for that sort of level the training and then he remembered before he was called up he had done a term or two at the Institute for Dramatic Studies and that counted as having been at university then and so he got in again, because it was still a long, long waiting list to get in to university. So he got in, in his second term he did research and got his doctorate, Professor, Professor of Sociology and quite fantastic, wrote books and —
AM: Wonderful.
GW: Still stayed the nice big brother.
AM: And where —
GW: But he then died. Yes.
AM: Where did you meet Tom?
GW: Tom, I met at this, my mother worked at a Quaker centre run by Americans and they had arranged, they called it a seminar, youngsters from all sorts of countries coming together and having lectures and doing things together. Now Tom had been doing, Tom had got a science degree really but after the war he, he got in to Cambridge doing German and Russian and he’d gone to a seminar in Germany and the Americans, they had education officers because Germany hadn’t got a government or anything.
AM: What year was this Gabby?
GW: I beg your pardon.
AM: What year was this?
GW: That would have been in forty, did he come in ’48 or, yes, ’47 or ’48 and he went. Well, after he’d done a degree in German here first and then went to a seminar because, to get some practice and the American education officer took a shine to him because most of the young Americans on that course went into the woods with the frauleins rather than go to lectures [laughs] So she suggested that he go to Berlin to this seminar. So that’s how we met. Yes, that’s when I had evenings.
AM: So you were there as a student or?
GW: No.
AM: No.
GW: No. I’d done, well my, two of the leaving certificates were supposed to have been given to me because I couldn’t have been going on. So I was doing, had I started at that? I started an apprenticeship at a publishing firm.
AM: Ok.
GW: And my mother was there as, they called her hausmutter. You know, she looked after people at that centre and so that’s how I came to come to those open evenings and as far as I’m concerned it was love at first sight.
AM: Wonderful.
GW: And then my tactful mother gave me a photo of all of them [laughs] when they went and then Tom wrote because he wanted a girlfriend to form a correspondence with some girl but that was a sort of a bit of getting into contact and so we started writing to each other and he came to Berlin at Christmas. Nothing nearly happened because he and my brother who had just come home were comparing notes.
AM: About being prisoners of war.
GW: Yes but it did happen and we got married and I came here in 1950.
AM: And here you are.
GW: So that was —
AM: And you’ve been here ever since.
GW: Yes. Well —
AM: Were people ok with you when you came? You know the fact that you were German, that it was fairly soon after the war.
GW: I was pretty, I was pretty fluent in English.
AM: Ok.
GW: Because for some silly reason because English is easier to start with certainly and it used to be first foreign language French but it had been changed to English so I’d done seven years or six or so years of English. So, no, I was pretty, pretty good at it.
AM: Good.
GW: Yes.
AM: And people were ok.
GW: People were fine, people were fine. There was another German and I and we once had letters, both of us and that was the only thing we’ve ever had.
AM: Nasty letters you mean?
GW: Yes, yes.
AM: Yeah.
GW: No idea what that was. No, people were fine.
AM: Good.
GW: Of course by that time Tom had done two years teaching when we got married, so he was established, that was near London, in Essex. Yes, two years and then he got a headship because of all of his, you know, qualifications and things.
AM: Ok.
GW: They wanted these, it was a grammar school of course, they wanted it to have a technical bias, which he was equipped for with his engineering degree.
AM: Yeah.
GW: And then of course it changed here but we had a very happy time in Coleshill.
AM: In this lovely house.
GW: Well that, of course, that was a widow, we think and of course it’s a relatively big house, we think that they had hoped to have a family and didn’t and we bought it off the widow.
AM: So you bought it.
GW: Which was sad for them because, but wonderful for ours.
AM: I’m going to switch the recording off and get Tom’s story.
GW: Yes.
AM: Of how he met you.
GW: Right.
AM: He got married in ’45.
GW: So your older brother, he was, who was he an interpreter for?
AM: Oh Americans.
GW: Ok.
AM: He was in the American part of Germany, you know, they were —
GW: You said that he spoke the languages.
AM: They were divided in to four parts.
GW: Yes.
AM: And he was in the American part and he married in ’45 and that family they couldn’t imagine him to go on studying and then, no. Having very restricted life with not much money so he didn’t, he didn’t get on, he was an interpreter, had good jobs but nothing compared with the little brother who’d always been in the shadow and then became a well known person so it was a bit hard for him.
GW: Yeah.
AM: So your sister.
GW: Yes, yes, my sister was in Berlin when the Russians came.
AM: Oh.
GW: And the, where we lived was the most northern tip of Berlin. So the first tip that many Russian soldiers got to and you can imagine that they went crazy but my mother, who was very clever managed to hide; my sister, a cousin, our maid and herself, in all sorts of places. So they all escaped the attention of the Russians, it was, it was fantastic.
AM: I’m guessing it was dreadful though.
GW: Oh, terrible yes. I didn’t know anything about them for six months.
AM: Remind me where were you at that time?
GW: I was in West, I was in West Germany you see. I’d gone to my mother’s best friend in the end.
AM: Ok.
GW: There was an uncle but he obviously didn’t want any more in his household because things were short but there was my mother’s best friend and I was absolutely convinced she would take me and I, so I set off to see her. Train journey from Dortmund, which is Cologne area to where she lived, Frankfurt which was only in the middle, took five days.
AM: Five days?
GW: Yeah.
AM: Good Lord.
GW: Mainly on goods trains and things. Now, for a youngster without children to care or old people to care or things see, it wasn’t, it wasn’t such a hardship.
AM: Was it an adventure?
GW: Exactly.
AM: So how old were you then?
GW: Yes, yes.
AM: You would be?
GW: I was seventeen.
AM: Seventeen.
GW: Had I [pause] Or had I, no, I was just eighteen, yes, yes.
AM: Yes.
GW: So I went to this friend in Frankfurt and then there was an exchange of people going from the east to the west in the morning and west to east in the afternoon, something strange, of crowds to let people get home and I did that.
AM: This was before the wall of course, before the wall was built.
GW: Oh yes, before the wall, yes, yes.
AM: But still you had to go across the sectors.
GW: Yes. Oh yes they were. Oh yes they had, you had to have permits for instance to get into the west, in to the American part also. It wasn’t, it wasn’t all open but I got through and I got to Berlin and I went back to school and the headmistress, about that height, had started school again about three weeks after the end of the war, fantastic woman. So, and of course we were all, all hungry. We were all had difficult times and if somebody said, ‘We’re going, I’m sorry I can’t come to school we’re going to try to get some potatoes,’ kind of travelling to that. Everybody said, ‘Good luck.’
AM: Bring us some.
GW: Yes.
AM: Yeah.
GW: Yes, yes. So I then, did I go straight, oh no, I worked for a publishing firm as an apprentice. Germany has always apprentices and exams in anything and I did the apprenticeship and did the exam but by then the university started. The university was the main, the university had been in the east, but freie universitat, free university, started off in the west and I managed to get in to that and started studying there. So that but then I didn’t complete my degree because in Germany you go on and on and on and then when you think you’re ready to go you got to a professor and think, ‘I think I’m ready.’ Quite unorganised [laughs] so I came, we got married and I have got an Open University degree.
AM: Have you now? Wonderful.
GW: Yeah. So I’ve got that.
[recording paused]
GW: I’ve been ‘36 or ’37, ’38 would have been, my father, who used to write a diary said that thirteen boys from my brother’s class were continuing their education abroad and that was in ’33.
AM: In ’33.
GW: And thirteen left.
AM: Crikey, right, right. Your turn, your turn Tom.
[pause]
AM: Can I introduce it first? So this interview is being conducted for the International Bomber Command Centre. The interviewer is Annie Moody and the interviewee is Tom Wilson and the interview is taking place at Tom’s home in Coleshill in Warwickshire on Sunday the 16th of August.
TW: And you’re from the north.
AM: I am, I’m from near Manchester.
TW: Are you?
AM: I am.
TW: See when you got there it was hooome.
AM: Oh right. Hooome hoome.
TW: It hit me [laughs]
AM: Tom, tell me a little bit about where you were born and your childhood. Just a little bit about when you were born and your childhood.
TW: Right, New Zealand parents, both families had emigrated in the 1880s and father went to university in New Zealand and eventually became a Doctor of Science in electrical engineering and that’s important because I’d gone to Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School here. I’d been a sergeant in the OTC and my inclination was join up straight away when the war started. My father was dead against that because he, he’d been an electrical engineer in New Zealand and he’d been whipped off to England in 1915 as a researcher into the German war effort and so I wanted to join up immediately the war started and he said, ‘No fear, Engineers aren’t cheap cannon fodder’ and father had gone on working on German, secret scientific things right, really I suppose until, until the [pause] he was in charge of a big research place belonging to GEC, General Electric Company and they were doing work for Britain. I think, right until he died more or less and so the idea of my joining up in the infantry struck him as being absolutely fantastic stupid.
AM: Right.
TW: And I ought to be working in research or something and in fact, what I’d done was in 1939 I’d started a university course in electrical engineering which was father’s racket and I went on working at that and from time to time on secret things until my, kind of hero at school was killed. He didn’t come home from, he was flying a Spitfire, Spitfires and he didn’t come home from Brest after a big Bomber Command attack on Brest and a on the, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were there then and so that’s what father had been involved in. Whereas my inclination, having been in the OTC, having all the time been infantry, was to join the infantry right against father. At any rate, what happened was, he insisted that I did the engineering course, electrical engineering course at Birmingham University which I did until, one of my, kind of, best friends or heroes from the Corps at Bishop Vesey’s, he didn’t come back from an intelligence. He was flying Spitfires and he didn’t come back from a trip to Brest. Taking photographs there of course of everything that was there and when that happened I immediately went to cycle in to Birmingham from the university and volunteered for the air force and the air force took me on in the first civilian entry of students working on radar.
AM: Ok.
TW: On airborne radar and I stayed working with that until Bob Ayers was killed and I then immediately joined the air force and so I had two years working on manufacture of, and design and everything else of British airborne radar.
AM: Right.
TW: And when I volunteered for that I was trained first of all and then sent off to fly on a special duty squadron in Northern Ireland and having done three months on that I did, went on to a special duty squadron in Scotland and then I was shot down from there.
AM: How many, how many operations did you actually do? Or was it all, was it radar work?
TW: It was radar work.
AM: Ok.
TW: And I did thirteen really, the air force didn’t count the last as ops.
AM: [laughs] If you didn’t get back?
TW: That’s right.
AM: What, what position did you take on the plane? Were you the navigator?
TW: No. I flew as a navigator.
AM: Ok.
TW: But we had a navigator on the planes.
AM: So you were the extra man.
TW: I was the extra chap with a whole, kind of laboratory of apparatus of various clever things, all highly secret and I was shot down, became a prisoner of war. Had two years as a prisoner of war and then came back to this country, in ’45 it was, wasn’t it? That’s right.
AM: Where were you shot down Tom? Can you remember?
TW: Yes, I know where I was shot down, I was shot down in Holland [unclear]
AM: [unclear]
TW: Which is The Hague and so I had two years as a prisoner of war.
AM: Whereabouts? Which camp were you in?
TW: Stalag Luft Drei. Stalag Luft iii.
AM: Three.
TW: Yeah.
AM: What sort of things did you get involved in in the camp? Did you get involved in learning or in any of the shows that they put on or anything like that?
TW: I was in, I was in the orchestra and of course I was also very much involved in escape.
AM: Oh tell me about, tell me about that.
TW: The wooden horse escape. I was asked to join in my first week or so and so that’s the big thing, I’m the oldest survivor of the wooden horse.
AM: Of the wooden horse, so what was your role within that? What did you actually do?
TW: Vaulting over the wooden horse. So, which was —
AM: It was a vault, a gym box.
TW: Yes. That’s right.
AM: And you, you were one of the people who vaulted over it.
TW: That’s right.
AM: While they were tunnelling underneath.
TW: And then eventually it was over and the wooden horse was carried back in to the cantina. I had to take over and make certain that there were no traces left, that everything was cleared up and looked normal.
AM: And what were they doing underneath?
TW: Building a tunnel.
AM: To go under the wire and —
TW: We fixed it, we didn’t put the wooden horse against the barbed wire, that would have been obvious but we had it fairly near and the tunnel was done from under the horse, out and under the wire.
AM: So a lot shorter distance than if they’d been doing it from one of the huts.
TW: That right, not so short that it became immediately suspicious. On the other hand Charlie, that’s the chap who was in charge of German security was very suspicious of the wooden horse all its time and after the wooden horse escape I was of course involved in all kinds of secret things in the camp.
AM: What sort of secret things?
TW: Well, tunnels and I taught German.
AM: To the other, you taught the other prisoners German?
TW: Yeah, yeah, I’d teach, yeah.
AM: Yeah.
TW: And was involved in trying to work out what they were doing the whole time.
AM: Yeah. Gosh. So at the, at the end of the war then were you marched? Were you involved in the marches?
TW: Yes.
AM: Yeah.
TW: At the end of the war we were certainly [pause] I’d managed to fall. I was the breakfast chap in our room so I made breakfast and on some kind of day in, in the autumn I had fallen down carrying two, there must have been three or four gallon boiling water things.
AM: Oh gosh.
TW: And I lost all the skin on this foot.
AM: On your right, right foot?
TW: Yeah, that’s right and so before the big march started I was on a train, on goods wagons. They’re always, when you read books about escaping they write about cattle trucks, they weren’t cattle trucks, it’s only that being goods wagons they had painted on the side forty men or twelve horses and that was information to the German railways that that’s what they could load on the things.
AM: Ok.
TW: In fact we had fifty five on our truck but there it was.
AM: So where was the, where were you going on the train?
TW: We went to Nuremberg. It took from, I think Monday ‘til Friday and we were unloaded at Nuremberg, in the prison camps there and then I was immediately, I’d been teaching German in Luft iii, I was teaching German again and I found the Nuremberg camp was largely American. There was some Royal Air Force but it was largely American people and quite often I would find myself acting as interpreter between American Colonels and German people.
AM: Gosh, and then what happened after? Where did you go next after Nuremberg?
TW: From Nuremberg we marched, beginning on the 4th of April ’46.
AM: ’45.
TW: No it wasn’t in ’46. It was ’48 wasn’t it? The war ended in —
AM: ’45.
TW: In ’45 and this was three years later and we started marching and we marched until we got to the largest camp, the largest prison camp in Germany and we were stuffed into that and while we were there we were liberated by the American army and were put into the, we were kept in to, kept inside the prison camp and eventually we were driven to the nearest aerodrome to be flown home and it didn’t happen from there. We had to march off somewhere else and we met a whole of squadron of Lancs, Lancaster’s and they brought us back here.
AM: Yeah and what was it like when you got back? Deloused, did you have to be deloused?
TW: Yeah, when we were liberated, I think it was somewhere in May ’45.
AM: Yeah.
TW: We were liberated there and then. We were liberated in that our camp was invaded. It became an American camp because it was the Americans that liberated us and then after about, well it was in, in fact it was the end of the war was the 8th of May ’45 and I was loaded on to a Lanc' on the 10th .
AM: Was that your first time on a Lancaster?
TW: Yeah.
AM: Because you’d flown Wellingtons I think?
TW: Wellingtons, yeah.
AM: Yeah.
TW: Yeah.
AM: And back home.
TW: Back home, yeah. That was very quick. Now what had happened, oh yes the camp was being evacuated and they weren’t being evacuated by Lancaster's but by [pause] DC3s weren’t they?
AM: I’m not sure, Dakotas? Maybe, anyway —
TW: What the Americans were using and as we left the camp to drive to the aerodrome in big German transports there were big columns of black smoke to the north of us and this was where one of these DC3s had swung on take-off and it had ploughed into five other DC3s, all loaded with American ex-prisoners and we saw this before we left our camp and when we got there they were just piles of DC3s absolutely full of American ex-prisoners of war and I was told to, it was May the 8th, it was VE day and I was told to take my chaps off in to the town and find them billets and so I found them all billets and was left with two others. That’s right and we were given then a girl’s home. She wasn’t there, where she was I don’t know but I read her knitting magazine and then the next day, that’s right, and we went off to the aerodrome and we found the aerodrome was absolutely empty. It had been, because of the accident the Americans had said it was an impossible aerodrome, it was too small.
AM: Right.
TW: You see, it was in the middle of a wood for one thing and so, at any rate I was sent off to find billets. I had one hundred and eighty five roughly of our prisoners and I had to find billets for them. Whereas the Americans that had been on this aerodrome, they were all on board planes but the smoke I’d seen before we left the prison camp, it was one aircraft had swung on take-off when the pilot had opened up the throttles and he ploughed into five other aircraft and the Americans in result, had immediately said that this aerodrome was impossible, it was too small and the next morning I got up, got all the chaps I’d billeted and marched off to this aerodrome because we’d been told on leaving it that I was to return the next day and there’d be further orders for me. I returned the next day and there were no Americans there at all.
AM: Gone.
TW: They’d all gone and I just got, what we did was we lay on the grass of this aerodrome for three days. There was a German in the forest who had done what Hitler had said, not many did but Hitler had said that when the end of the war came Germans weren’t to hand themselves over as prisoners. They were to hide up somewhere with guns and ammunition and shoot western troops until they were out of ammunition and so one of these characters was in the woods bordering the aerodrome and he couldn’t have had much ammunition. It meant that he fired at us probably about every two or three hours, one shot.
AM: Did he actually get anybody? Did he manage to shoot anybody?
TW: No, no.
AM: Oh good.
TW: Mainly he got his gun tipped down and was catching, firing in to the ground and the bullet was then coming to us on the aerodrome making a hell of a noise but it was hitting the ground and then shooting up and that was that. At any rate I had my, I had a hundred and eighty plus prisoners I was in charge of and having had them billeted on German platz that one night, we just felt so tired we just slept on the aerodrome.
AM: Slept on the ground.
TW: We were lying on the floor so that we weren’t presenting a target for this character that was holed up in the forest and so we’d arrived on the Monday. We were lying on the aerodrome on the Tuesday and the Wednesday, so, 8th, 9th 10th and then nothing. There had been aircraft there when we arrived, they took off absolutely full of Americans and we spent one night. I had found billets in town, no Germans in the billet I was in which was the last one. It had had a German woman in and I read her knitting books.
AM: You read her knitting books.
TW: Yeah and then the next morning I marched all of my hundred and eighty blokes on to the aerodrome again. There was no one there.
AM: They’d all gone.
TW: They’d all gone and we just lay on the ground.
AM: Just laid there.
TW: And slept.
AM: When you got, when you got back home.
TW: Yes.
AM: What happened then? Did you go on leave? Did you come back to Birmingham?
TW: Came back to Birmingham. In fact, what had happened was that we flew from Germany and since it was an American camp, an American evacuation and we’d been liberated by the Americans we went to the American prisoner liberation camps which was in France and I was there two days. No, no Americans around, they’d gone off since this place was now condemned as impossible as an aerodrome and on the Thursday a whole squadron of Dakotas came in. They came in and landed and we got up and ran out to meet them. ‘Where are we?’ they said and so I gave orders to all my blokes to get on board and I said, ‘We’ll tell you when we’re on board’ and they’d flown us to this centre, Liege or somewhere in France and from there the Americans were being taken to a gathering camp, Brittany, where they were waiting for boats and on the other hand we British were told, I was told to report to, the British Embarkation Officer was there and I reported to him and so, immediately I had to produce lists of my hundred and eighty chaps in, enough to fill an aircraft and they weren’t allowed to fly without these lists on board, so that if the aircraft crashed and people were killed they could give us names.
AM: Right.
TW: Or it didn’t happen. At any right, I’d had to write out these lists when I eventually made contact with the Americans and I’d had, on each occasion to write out — I started off with, I think it was twenty five, I started with twenty five prisoners on a Dakota and then the Americans thought they might manage to squeeze thirty on board and then they decided that they might have to just send twenty and so, on each occasion I lost complete sleep that night and I spent the night writing out, they had to be quadruplicates, four copies for each aircraft for a number of aircraft that would take our hundred and eighty and it meant I was writing out these lists all night.
AM: All night.
TW: Yeah.
AM: Where did you, where did they land back in Britain?
TW: We had three days on this airfield or [unclear] airfield. In fact I’d gone back to it, marched back to it and it was condemned as too small but I wouldn’t move and there were no Americans there at all.
AM: No.
TW: And we were there on our own so we just lay on the floor and slept and on the Thursday, why was I staying there? Because I knew that the Thursday was Ascension Day and I thought Ascension Day might be lucky.
AM: Might be lucky for you.
TW: Yeah.
AM: What did you do after the war was over?
TW: I went to Cambridge.
AM: You went to Cambridge and took a degree in —
TW: Took a degree in German and Russian.
AM: In German and Russian.
TW: Yeah.
AM: And then what did you do? What work did you do after that?
TW: I taught German and Russian. I bought two copies, two successive, no, three copies of The Times Educational Supplement and read through them to see what there was in the way of jobs and the first week I found two posts in London, for French teachers and this the third day it was a school in Essex and they wanted someone that would teach German and Russian, so I went there.
AM: So you went there.
TW: Yeah. I immediately applied to the schools that wanted French teachers but I never got a reply from them. On the other hand I got a reply from Essex to their advertisement in The Times Educational Supplement on the third day and I went there.
AM: So you went there. Where did you meet Gabby? How did you meet Gabby after the war?
TW: Right. So we had the end of the war and I decided that I must make certain that my German was faultless and so I looked up advertisements and answered two advertisements wanting language teachers in London and around about there and on the third day it was Essex, Romford.
AM: Yes.
TW: And so I applied to all these advertisements and the Romford Head wrote back straight away and I went for an interview and I got the job.
AM: Got the interview there.
TW: Yeah. There were two others being interviewed with me but they hadn’t got either German or Russian, they’d got French and so I got the job.
AM: Wonderful.
TW: And then I stayed there eight years and the Head advised me it was about time that I was applying for headships and I’d already decided to do that and Coleshill came up and I applied for it and I got it. So it meant that after the war I replied to two, to three advertisements, three different schools and I was offered the post at both of them so I was very lucky.
AM: Yeah, brilliant. I’m going to switch —
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 Tom and Gabi Wilson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Annie Moody
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2015-08-16
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
AWilsonGT150816, PWilsonT1501, PWilsonT1502
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
01:03:27 audio recording
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
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
Description
An account of the resource
Gabi Wilson grew up in Berlin and was a schoolgirl in 1939. She discusses one brother training as an interpreter and another brother returning from Russian prisoner of war camps. She worked as an apprentice at a publisher firm. She met her husband, Tom at university, they married in 1950 and moved to London where he became a head teacher.
Tom Wilson came from an academic family in New Zealand. He studied engineering and worked on radar before volunteering for the Air Force. He flew 13 operations as a navigator before his aircraft was shot down and he became a prisoner of war. He met his wife at a lecture.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Great Britain
New Zealand
Poland
England--London
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Nuremberg
Poland--Żagań
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1939
1945
1946
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Yvonne Walker
bombing
C-47
childhood in wartime
escaping
Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945)
Lancaster
military living conditions
prisoner of war
radar
shelter
shot down
sport
Stalag Luft 3
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45953/SSmithRW425992v10003-0002 copy.1.pdf
2b2498c35c56b9b3f87fd35ee89aa604
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-03-25
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, RW
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Tour of Operations with RAF Bomber Command No XV/15 Squadron Mildenhall
Description
An account of the resource
The third book of memoirs by Bob Smith.
Covers his operational tour and bombing operations.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bob Smith
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Heinsberg (Heinsberg)
France
France--Beauvoir-sur-Mer
Germany--Gelsenkirchen
United States
Michigan--Detroit
Germany--Homberg (Kassel)
France--Châlons-en-Champagne
France--Caen
Germany--Kiel
Germany--Flensburg
Germany--Helgoland
Germany--Sylt
France--Somme
France--Aire-sur-la-Lys
France--Amiens
France--Gironde Estuary
Germany--Dortmund-Ems Canal
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
France--Brest
France--Saint-Nazaire
Germany--Braunschweig
France--Falaise Region
France--Royan
Poland--Szczecin
Great Britain
Scotland--Glasgow
Russia (Federation)--Kaliningrad (Kaliningradskai︠a︡ oblastʹ)
Sweden
Denmark
Sweden--Malmö
Netherlands
Netherlands--Eindhoven
France--Le Havre
Germany--Neuss
Germany--Düsseldorf
France--Calais
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Boulogne-sur-Mer
Europe--Kattegat Region
Norway
Norway--Oslo
Denmark--Frederikshavn
France--Strasbourg
Germany--Kleve (North Rhine-Westphalia)
Germany--Emmerich
Netherlands--Nijmegen
Germany--Duisburg
Germany--Cologne
Belgium
Belgium--Antwerp
Germany--Essen
Netherlands--Vlissingen
Belgium--Charleroi
Germany--Leverkusen
Netherlands--Veere
Germany--Castrop-Rauxel
Germany--Dortmund
Germany--Aachen Region
Germany--Düren (Cologne)
Germany--Jülich
Germany--Fulda
Germany--Bottrop
Germany--Osterfeld
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Australia
Victoria--Melbourne
New South Wales--Sydney
Queensland--Brisbane
Scotland--Inverness
England--Blackpool
England--Colchester
Germany--Merseburg Region
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
Royal Australian Air Force
Royal Canadian 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.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Text. Personal research
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
98 printed pages
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SSmithRW425992v10003-0002 copy
1 Group
115 Squadron
149 Squadron
15 Squadron
186 Squadron
195 Squadron
218 Squadron
3 Group
5 Group
514 Squadron
6 Group
617 Squadron
622 Squadron
75 Squadron
8 Group
90 Squadron
aerial photograph
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
B-24
Battle
Blenheim
bomb aimer
bombing
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Cook’s tour
crewing up
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Medal
Distinguished Service Order
escaping
flight engineer
Gee
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
ground crew
ground personnel
H2S
Harris, Arthur Travers (1892-1984)
Ju 88
killed in action
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
Lancaster Mk 3
Master Bomber
Me 109
mess
mine laying
Mosquito
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Oboe
Operational Training Unit
Pathfinders
pilot
prisoner of war
propaganda
radar
RAF Chedburgh
RAF Feltwell
RAF Honeybourne
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Lakenheath
RAF Lindholme
RAF Mepal
RAF Methwold
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Sealand
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tuddenham
RAF Uxbridge
RAF Waterbeach
RAF Weston Zoyland
RAF Witchford
RAF Wratting Common
RAF Wyton
Spitfire
Stirling
tactical support for Normandy troops
target indicator
target photograph
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
Window
wireless operator
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45959/SSmithRW425992v10004-0002 copy.1.pdf
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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
Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-03-25
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, RW
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Bob Smith's Memoirs Book 4
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bob Smith
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
Scotland--Aberdeen
Scotland--Paisley
England--London
England--Thetford
Norway
Norway--Oslo
Germany
Germany--Oberhausen (Düsseldorf)
Switzerland
Germany--Stuttgart
England--Ely
Germany--Krefeld
Germany--Chemnitz
England--Brighton
Netherlands
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
England--Liverpool
Malta
Egypt
Egypt--Suez Canal
Western Australia--Fremantle
Victoria--Melbourne
New South Wales--Sydney
Queensland--Ipswich Region
Queensland--Maryborough
New South Wales--Cootamundra
Canada
Alberta--Edmonton
Nova Scotia--Halifax
England--Sidmouth
Nova Scotia
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 Australian Air Force
Royal New Zealand Air Force
Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Canadian Air Force
United States Army 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.
Description
An account of the resource
Describes his service after completing his tour and the journey back to Australia.
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Text. Memoir
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
40 printed sheets
Conforms To
An established standard to which the described resource conforms.
Pending text-based transcription
Pending review
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
SSmithRW425992v10004-0002 copy
149 Squadron
15 Squadron
3 Group
617 Squadron
622 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
B-17
B-24
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
Cook’s tour
crash
Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Service Order
Gee
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
ground personnel
H2S
Lancaster
love and romance
mess
mine laying
navigator
Operation Exodus (1945)
Operation Manna (29 Apr – 8 May 1945)
Operational Training Unit
prisoner of war
radar
RAF Desborough
RAF Honington
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Lossiemouth
RAF Mildenhall
RAF Stradishall
RAF Tempsford
RAF West Freugh
Special Operations Executive
sport
V-2
V-weapon
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force
-
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fe29d3fd503662d73507b67c6bdbfaf7
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5489e4b392a8d122939e2a1b5b3877a1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-03-25
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.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, RW
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Operation to Kiel
Description
An account of the resource
Calculations, observations and chart used on an operation to Kiel.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Bob Smith
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-07-23
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Germany
Germany--Kiel
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
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Technical aid
Map. Navigation chart and navigation log
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Two printed sheets and a chart with handwritten annotations
Identifier
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SSmithRW425992v20004-0001, SSmithRW425992v20004-0002, SSmithRW425992v20004-0003
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.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-07-23
15 Squadron
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
Gee
navigator
pilot
radar
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45970/SSmithRW425992v20009-0001.1.jpg
5c2843eb8573915059c0036cef36dfcc
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45970/SSmithRW425992v20009-0002.1.jpg
aaa6a201d9c523f13338f33ef428fe00
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45970/SSmithRW425992v20009-0003.1.jpg
c73f57777cfb5394b435ea46c0418f01
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45970/SSmithRW425992v20009-0004.1.jpg
2f6ce9a4e2598bc9e36d8f5aa6d97c55
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1359/45970/SSmithRW425992v20009-0005.1.jpg
a562ffa4da222c573ecc22c3d8b3f8ad
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Smith, Bob
Robert Wylie Smith
R W Smith
Description
An account of the resource
125 items. An oral history interview with Bob Smith (b. 1924, 425992 Royal Australian Air Force) photographs, documents and navigation logs and charts. He flew operations as a navigator with 15 Squadron at RAF Mildenhall.
The collection was loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Bob Smith and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2019-03-25
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Smith, RW
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Mining operation to Bordeaux
Description
An account of the resource
Calculations, observations and a chart used for an operation to Bordeaux
Creator
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Bob Smith
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1944-08-09
Spatial Coverage
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France
France--Bordeaux (Nouvelle-Aquitaine)
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
Language
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eng
Type
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Technical aid
Map. Navigation chart and navigation log
Format
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Four printed sheets and a chart with handwritten annotations
Identifier
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SSmithRW425992v20009-0001, SSmithRW425992v20009-0002, SSmithRW425992v20009-0003, SSmithRW425992v20009-0004, SSmithRW425992v20009-0005
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944-08-09
15 Squadron
aircrew
mine laying
navigator
pilot
radar
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/486/8370/ABurdinJR170206.1.mp3
110add58ae6a4b4edfbbb17f5230f227
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
Burdin, James
James Roy Burdin
J R Burdin
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Identifier
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Burdin, JR
Description
An account of the resource
Two items. An oral history interview with James Roy Burdin (b. 1920, 1109124 Royal Air Force) and his service and release book. He worked as a radar technician.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-02-06
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Monday the 6th of February 2017 and I’m in Longton near Preston with James Roy Burdin and we’re going to talk about his work in the RAF in the war largely to do with radar. What is your earliest recollection of life Roy?
JRB: Living on our small holding in Longton and helping my dad from a very early age with his, with his work on the small holding.
[pause]
CB: And where did you go to school?
JRB: I started school at five I think I would be. I’d be five when I went to Longton, Longton Primary School. That’s not a very satisfactory [question?] is it? You know, the local village school. Longton Primary School and I was there until I was, I went in for the scholarship examination as we called it then. It was before the eleven plus day and it was virtually the entry to grammar school. Only the ones that the teachers at school thought had a chance were put in for the exam because we had to go to Preston to sit the examination and I passed and was awarded a place at Hutton Grammar School and I studied there for the school, for the, what did they call it in those days? It wasn’t the GCE was it? The equivalent of today’s GCE anyway and I I passed that and got my certificate for that but there was no question in those days, very few people went on to further education after that. For one thing I knew that there wasn’t money in the family to support me to go on to university or anything of that sort even if I’d been eligible for it so I I left school with that qualification and it was at the time of the big Depression in the ‘30s and jobs were very difficult to get but eventually I went to work for a small business in Preston. Radio repair and sales. Just a one man business [at that point?] but that didn’t last very long because the main trouble was that it was I had to use a bus to get into Preston. Although I’d only been with this situation for a short time the proprietor usually had calls to make on his way down to work from his home in Longridge and I was left to open up the shop although very inexperienced at the time and very often he’d be out either delivering or collecting radio sets for repair until quite late at night and the shop hours were very long anyway so my dad thought that I was, shall we say, I don’t know how to put it really. Anyway, my dad thought that I would be better off coming and helping on the, on the small holding so I went to the agricultural, or horticultural rather, training station at Hutton and took their course which was only a short course and I continued working on the holding. We had greenhouses and market garden mostly and orchards and it was quite a pleasant life but not exactly a pot of gold, you know but I was doing that until, until the war started and eventually of course as I said before, I think, I joined, I volunteered for the RAF.
CB: Why did you choose the RAF rather than one of the other forces?
JRB: Well, some of my ex schoolmates discussed it all and we thought that the RAF would be a good unit to, to get into. We thought the conditions were better for one thing and you wouldn’t get involved in the dreadful trench warfare of the previous, previous war which everybody expected might recur again and so it was actually at the time of Dunkirk that I realised, I seemed to have rather a blank in a way about the international situations and that sort of thing and I wasn’t very, very quick to realise the danger that Germany was presenting to the, to the world and when the near disaster occurred at Dunkirk and the Germans were more or less on our frontier I decided it was time to, to join up so that’s when I volunteered for the RAF. When I first went for my interviews for the RAF they said, ‘Well there will be a, a gap. We won’t take you right away. We’ll call you at a bit later date.’ So in the meantime the, what became known as the Home Guard but started off as the Local Defence Volunteers was formed and I joined the local group and we did a bit of rifle practice and general infantry training really and we had a patrol on Longton Marshes. We did a night patrol down there and from there we could see the, the German bombing of Liverpool but of course we were a little country district so we didn’t attract any of the, of the bombs and I I was with that until the RAF called me up and then -
CB: When did they do that?
JRB: I was posted to Blackpool and billeted in one of the boarding houses there. We, we were kitted out and given basic training, foot drill and all that sort of thing on the promenades at Blackpool and the Winter Gardens became a Morse school. It was all fitted out with tables with Morse keys and that was where a lot of the air crew in the RAF got their Morse training. As I mentioned to you my speed didn’t build up satisfactorily on Morse. I could, I could learn the code easy enough but I couldn’t get, I wasn’t confident enough to get any speed up and so they said, well there’s a new branch opening up and since you’ve had experience of radio repair work and actually radio had always been my hobby right from school days so they said, I think they said, ‘Do you know what a supersonic hetrodyne is?’ So I had to tell them that which a lot of people didn’t know and that got me on to the, it was, it was highly secret at the time, nobody would mention the word RDF which was our original name for the, what became known as Radar. It wasn’t until the Americans came in that they started calling it Radar but to us it was RDF which was Radio Detection Finding. So there was some delay in starting the course that I was destined to go on and in the meantime I was sent over to a place called Bircham Newton which was a Coastal Command station on the Norfolk coast and I spent some months there waiting for my course to be organised and there I was just doing ordinary general duties. You know just, it was a sort of a standby position but I saw quite a bit of the, the Coastal Command life and I was there when the, what do you call it? I’m not very good at this I’m afraid. I was there when the Fleet Air Arm, I think they were Gladiators. Would they be Gladiators?
CB: Yeah.
JRB: Or would they be -?
CB: Yeah. No. They’d be Swordfish.
JRB: Swordfish probably. The old, the old biplane.
CB: Swordfish.
JRB: I was there when they dropped in at our station to refuel and have a break and a meal before taking off to bomb the German battleships.
CB: Oh Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
JRB: Yeah. And of course most of them were lost anyway on that raid. So I was there at that time. And then I was sent to London to join a course at Battersea Polytechnic on general radio principles and that type of thing and at the time we were billeted in premises that the RAF had taken over next door to the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square so we had the whole place taken over and converted into RAF billets really. We were taken each day by coach to Battersea to do the course at what later became London University or part of London University. The end of that course I was posted to Yatesbury on Salisbury Plain and that was the first glimpse we got of radar equipment or RDF equipment. They had obviously, they’d got the school all set up there and they’d got the equipment, the transmitters, receivers and ancillary equipment for a radar station and we studied there for several months and on, on passing out there it was practically Christmas time. This would be in ‘41 wouldn’t it?
CB: Ahum.
JRB: So we were all posted to our various units and my friend and I got postings to St Bride’s in the Isle of Man. So we duly arrived at Liverpool expecting to get a sailing across to the Isle of Man but they said, ‘Oh, no more boats sailing until after Christmas. You’d better have Christmas leave.’ So we weren’t displeased about that and went off home. He to Manchester where his home was and I to Longton. And on reporting back again, beginning of January they said, ‘You’re not going to the Isle of Man anymore. You’re going down to a place called Ruislip near London.’ So we went down to Ruislip and reported there to find that it was a small unit that was building up convoys into radar stations. The, the equipment, the transmitters and receivers and other equipment were made by commercial firms obviously such as Metro Vickers, they made transmitters and Cossors and other people made receivers and so on but I think the reason they were scattered about in that way was because they didn’t want the people to know what it all, put together, what it all became when it was assembled together. Anyway, we, that was our job. To, to set up mobile radars ready for going overseas mostly. I seemed to gravitate to, to being on the transmitters which were a very massive piece of equipment made by Metro Vickers of Manchester and they were about two tonnes a piece. Well we had to manhandle those into, into vans which were on the old Crossley vehicles of which the RAF had a lot. Big hefty thumping old, old type vehicles and they, they had bodies specially made at Park Royal body builders and so on at, at London. So we had to receive these by road from the manufacturers and manhandle them with crowbars and and whatever equipment we needed to get them in to place in these vehicles. Then we had to tune them up to the required frequency and check their output and all the functions and alongside us the receivers were being treated in a similar manner. And a convoy would consist of a transmitter vehicle, receiver vehicle, a trailer for the antennae and the wooden towers which they used for the transmitters, for the signal for the aerials for the transmitters so altogether there would be oh and there would be a diesel generator on a, on a separate trailer and all that together would form a radar station and after, after us doing all the tests and cabling all the connections and everything they would be sent off to wherever the army or the RAF wanted them. So I worked on that for quite a while. Do you want me to carry on in this –?
CB: Please do.
JRB: Yes.
CB: What was the crew, the number of people who would be on this crew for the convoy? How many people?
JRB: We never saw the full, we never saw it go out as a full unit. I don’t know how -
CB: Oh so you -
JRB: There would probably be, well you see with radar it would have to work pretty well twenty four hours a day so they’d have enough people to, to form crews to cover the twenty four hours and -
CB: So these were, you were able to move them around but what, what were they used for? Was it for training other people or were they used inland because the chain radar didn’t read inland?
JRB: Oh this, no this was, the chain radar was already in place.
CB: Yes.
JRB: Now the chain radar had heavier equipment still and the transmitters for that were pretty well built on sight, you know. They weren’t moveable really but that was operating because there had already been the Battle of Britain and the chain stations were very active during that time.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: But these were mobile convoys which would go overseas and wherever the theatre of war needed them they’d, they’d go but that didn’t, that didn’t tie up directly with the chain stations because as I say they were a very, a fixed, absolutely fixed installation.
CB: Yeah. And only -
JRB: They used, they used three hundred and sixty foot transmitter towers, steel towers and they used two hundred and forty foot receiver towers. You know, the chain system had fixed antennae which, looking back on it, it seems quite a primitive type of equipment to us but in its day it was the front of technology and we all thought we were very big stuff to be associated with it. But the purpose of the chain was to cover mostly the south and east coast although there were stations further, further afield along the coast. Every so many miles you would have a chain station and they all had to work together.
CB: So those were large and static. You’re using mobile but I thought, what I want -
JRB: These were, these were very static stations.
CB: Yes.
JRB: And of course the chain with these aerials and the frequency they worked on only looked one way.
CB: Yeah. Outwards.
JRB: The transmitter aerials or antennae were a fairly widespread beam. Not the, not the highly directed beam that we associated with higher frequency stations but the, the frequency they were working on was what we would consider very low today but obviously aerials of that sort couldn’t be swivelled around on a gantry. They had to be fixed. The receiver aerials likewise on separate towers were what I refer to as cross dipoles. That means to say that one aerial is north south and the other is east west and by using an instrument known as a Goniometer the operator on the receiver could swivel this knob that was a Goniometer which was graduated in degrees of the compass and could differentiate the direction from which the echo was coming. The whole system of radar of course as you are probably well aware is that you transmit a pulse and you measure the time it takes for that pulse to get back reflected from an aircraft or whatever, it might be a flock of seagulls and when you measure that, that time interval of the return trace you know since electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light you know what the distance is so that’s how we were able to forecast the approach of bombers and the operators were largely recruited from the WAAFs and they became very adept at, at this work. From experience they could tell pretty well how many aircraft were involved. If it was a raid with say fifty aircraft in it they would be able to tell the controllers pretty well the size of the numbers involved in the raid which was very useful of course. So that was operational all during the Battle of Britain time and continued on right through the war actually but other forms of radar came along later on. Higher frequencies as you know with the, with the rotatable antennae. The first one I knew of that type was what we called CHL. That was Chain Low. CHL, Chain Low, because the original chain stations didn’t see the aircraft if it was quite low down so they wanted this other. Now that was on a higher frequency and it could detect aircraft at lower levels and also it used what we call a PPI which was a Planned Position Indicator tube which was a round tube. The original chain station drew a straight trace across the Cathode Ray tube and aircraft caused a downward deflection of that trace so it was like a V would form on the trace. That meant it was picking up a return signal.
CB: On the screen you mean?
JRB: Yeah, on the, on the -
CB: Cathode Ray tube.
JRB: Cathode Ray tube screen. Now the PPI, the aerials rotated and you had the display more like a map. It looked, as it swept around the, the location of your station was the centre point of the, of the tube and the trace would turn about it actually, axially so that you could get the direction and the distance of the incoming echo which was a big improvement really. I don’t think anybody would think of a radar receiver without that facility nowadays because now that we’re on much higher frequencies that is a generally accepted way of displaying it. So back to 4 MU at Ruislip where we were setting up the, the stations which were working on the same principal as the, as the chain station. They had fixed aerials and had the same drawbacks you might say as the, as the chain as the big chain stations but they were supposedly mobile but they were rather clumsy awkward things to, to consider as mobile. Then a lighter equipment called, what did you call them? [pause]. Anyway, it was a sort of a much more mobile and much more, much lighter equipment than the, than the forerunners and they started to arrive at Ruislip for us to set up and so there was a separate flight formed. B flight, which I was put into and we, we used to fit those into fifteen hundred weight trucks or vans and they had, they had a rotating aerial. They ran off a petrol generator which was adapted from a motorcycle engine I believe and then of course there was a receiver vehicle and the, the aerials were mounted up on the top of the same vehicle.
CB: Was the principal of these the same as chain? You weren’t on to parabolic aerials by then were you?
JRB: We’d got, we’d got a step forward on to higher frequency so that’s why we could use rotating aerials.
CB: Right. Rather than parabolic ones.
JRB: Yeah. And the whole equipment was very much lighter and more mobile than the previous one. Well some of these we were fitting into, into these fifteen hundred weight trucks which were very common in the army and the air force in those days and we also had, to accompany them, a jeep with the radio communications equipment so all told that made up a convoy which again were ready for going out to, well again they were used quite regularly in, in the desert and later on in, on the continent.
CB: So they’re main, mainly going to the desert were they in those days.
JRB: Yes.
CB: To North Africa in other words.
JRB: A lot went to North Africa and of course when we invaded D-Day at they went over to the continent with them and that was what I worked on for most my time there.
CB: So you were loading up these vehicles but who were the crews to look after them? Were you training the crews for the equipment or did they -
JRB: No. The crews -
CB: Come already trained?
JRB: The crews were trained at the radar schools, I expect. At Yatesbury and places like that you see. All we did was just put the convoys together and get them ready for operational use.
CB: And were they air force people who were running these radars or army?
JRB: Mostly air force I would say. Yeah. So that’s what we were doing.
CB: So they went to Algeria after the Torch landings and then on to Tunisia and then they were coming from the other end. That’s what you’re saying are you? In other words coming across the desert from Egypt.
JRB: Yes. So wherever radar was needed to follow up the forces. Of course the, being an RAF scheme it would be directing our aircraft where necessary to attack the enemy.
CB: And detecting the German attacks on the British forces.
JRB: Yes.
CB: Now you mentioned the fact that later version could the CHL gave you, gave the lower altitude detection. Was that only on the Gee, on the CH chain or was it on your mobile ones as well?
JRB: No. On the, on the mobiles as well. That was -
[pause]
JRB: Various other equipments came along and they more or less all passed through our hands at Ruislip. I don’t know. I think we’ll have a break.
CB: Ok. We’ll have a break. Thank you.
[recording paused]
JRB: I don’t think I’m doing, completely ready to switch on.
CB: So in those days -
JRB: [When it left us?]
CB: In those days everything was done by using huge valves, well valves anyway, but big, how big were the valves that would be used in your mobile radars?
JRB: In the mobile, in the lighter one they were very much smaller. I should say about six inches tall. Something like that. Probably a bit less than that. More like four inches.
CB: Each valve.
JRB: But -
CB: Was the different, was there a difference in valve size between the transmitting part of the radar and the receiver?
JRB: Oh definitely.
CB: So how big were the transmitter ones?
JRB: Well the transmitter ones I’m talking about really.
CB: Oh right.
JRB: Because I had more to do with the transmitters than the receivers. For some reason I always seemed to be picked to be a transmitter man.
CB: Right.
JRB: And I quite enjoyed working on the transmitters. Of course they were using very high voltages and a lot of people didn’t want to know about them. They were a bit scared of them.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: We’d a, I remember on one occasion at Ruislip we had a, I don’t know what his rank would be but he was, he was Ministry of Defence and he was not exactly like a signals officer but he was, he was, he classed as an officer and he used to come around more or less overseeing what we were doing and one day I believe that he got a bit too near the high voltage and got himself knocked out but he came around again but the transmitting side you’d be talking about two thousand five hundred volts and that sort of thing you know which were really very lethal if you didn’t know what you were doing but anyway that’s -
CB: So what was the process? You mentioned earlier that the equipment was built by different companies so that it wasn’t obvious what the package was.
JRB: What it was going to be when it was all fitted together.
CB: So it arrived with you from the manufacturer. Then what did you and your colleagues do with all these parts?
JRB: Well as I say we fitted them in to the respective vehicles and did all the cabling and necessary inter-connections and tuned then up to the correct frequencies that was designated and that was about it.
CB: And with the convoys was -
JRB: Any, any, any faults we had to correct and put new parts in if necessary.
CB: And each convoy had a generator.
JRB: Each convoy had a generator.
CB: What, what was that and what was its capacity?
JRB: Well, the, the ones for the original mobiles, that is the ones that were very similar to a slightly smaller version of the, of the chain station the, the generator was a, I think it was a three cylinder Lister diesel engine driving a three phase generator. Quite a hefty piece of equipment and these particular diesels, diesel isn’t very easy to turn over by hand anyway but there were no self-starters on them. The only way to start them was by a crank handle and in cold weather in the winter it was very difficult to, to turn that handle around. In fact we resorted to tying ropes to it and having a couple of men on either end of the rope and push pull to get, to get it over the top dead centre of the starting point but that was that. We had to use whatever equipment was sent to us. I think these, like a lot of the wartime equipment I think it had been adapted from some civilian usage but the ones for the lightweight convoys they were much more manageable. They were a two cylinder horizontally opposed engine. I think they were a firm at Coventry called Climax I believe had those.
CB: Again, diesel was it?
JRB: That was, that was a petrol driven generator. It was adapted from a motorbike engine. Now going on from that eventually we, they were stepping up the frequencies anyway. It was always, always trying to find equipment which would work on a higher frequency which was preferable for radar purposes and also it meant that the aerial size was smaller and we were supposedly, the magnetron was developed which would, which would operate where the old, the old type valves wouldn’t and we could, we could use much higher frequencies with that.
CB: So the magnetron was the key to reducing the size of the kit was it?
JRB: That was the key, the key to improving the radar system altogether really.
CB: What was the key point about magnetron? It’s ability to handle high frequency?
JRB: Well it worked, it worked on an entirely new principal.
CB: Right.
JRB: It would be a bit too to difficult to explain [unclear] but it involved especially designed core which had a number of cavities on a cylindrical pattern and by, its difficult to explain really. By subjecting this to a very strong magnetic field you could get, you could develop an oscillation from it whereas an ordinary valve wouldn’t oscillate above a certain, certain frequency so that was, that was much, a big improvement for it.
CB: So that was the key to the centimetre wavelength.
JRB: Yeah.
CB: Now when you go first, fast forward now to D-Day, how was the equipment handled there? Packaged and handled.
JRB: Well, prior to D-Day we had a programme for water proofing equipment and we had to, we had to make up convoys which were swathed in [blue?] fabric and Bostik cement to keep the sea water from getting on to them but they were still in the same vehicles so they could only go in shallow water virtually. They weren’t on a tracked vehicle of any sort but we all got in a horrible mess with all this Bostik and stuff around and it got on to all our tools and you couldn’t pick a screwdriver up without sticking to it [laughs] but that apparently saved them from being damaged on the landings. I don’t say they went in at the very first landings but they’d have probably followed on very shortly afterwards. So that was, that was -
CB: Now -
JRB: D-Day.
CB: Was, were there two sizes of equipment all the time or was it simply that they were being made smaller as time went on? In other words was there a bigger one for longer range and the shorter one was for -
JRB: No.
CB: More tactical use.
JRB: I don’t think so. I don’t. I think I think the original mobiles were sort of gradually phased out. I think we went more on, on to the lighter weight ones. LW. Lightweight Receivers they were called and there was another occasion when we, when we had a special job. At some stage, I think it was before D-Day the Germans started a night bombing campaign which became known as the little blitz. I don’t know whether you’ve ever heard of that.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
JRB: But the little blitz was designed to renew the, the bombing campaign against Britain, against London in particular and the Germans thought that they’d got an advantage because they’d developed a rear, a rear looking radar which they would fit to the tails of the bombers and so they could see our night fighters coming up from behind. ‘Cause as you probably know the object of downing a bomber is to put the rear gunner out of action first and then it’s the bomber’s a sitting duck virtually so with this they thought they could get away with it and come up behind our our aircraft and -
CB: So how did that link in with you?
JRB: Well I was going to say, [pause] just a minute I’ve got something [unclear].
CB: This is interesting because they actually lost -
JRB: Lost something there I think.
CB: They actually lost sixty percent of their aircraft in that mini blitz, so, shot down -
JRB: I’m not talking about our raids on Germany.
CB: No. No. We’re talking about their, their mini blitz.
JRB: Of the German’s raids -
CB: Final fling.
JRB: On this renewed bombing against London. Now -
RB: You were going to say something about Meershum the other day weren’t you? Is that to do with it?
[pause]
CB: Did you get hold of one of these as a result of it being, the aircraft being shot down?
JRB: That was, wait a minute. I’ve got a bit lost I’m afraid.
CB: Ok. We’ll have a break.
RB: I’ll make another cup of –
[recording paused]
CB: So we’re just talking about the mini blitz and the fact that the Germans had got a rear facing radar detector.
JRB: That’s right.
CB: So what came out of that?
JRB: Now then, it turned out that the frequency that their rear, rear radar was working on was quite near to the frequency of our, some of our transmitters so we were asked to retune to get on to the German frequency and to put out a jamming signal which we did by modifying a transmitter so that instead of sending out the usual radar pulses it would send out a continuous noise signal which would block the display of the German rear radar and we always presumed that we were successful with that because we did a [panic?] programme, modifying equipment and setting it up. We went out on fitting parties along stations, the old chain station sites such as Pevensey, Pevensey and along the south coast and we went and fitted up this modified equipment in, in these mobile vans that we were using for the, the radar, anyway but instead of sending, you know that radar sends out a pulse from the transmitter and then it, it shuts off. It’s just a short pulse and you wait for the echo to come back. Well, now we were, we were asked to modify a transmitter so that instead of doing that it would send out a noise signal continuously and we set these stations up, mostly at the existing sites of chain stations and it wasn’t very long before the Germans called off their night raids so we always, we never got any direct feedback on it really but we always claimed that that had, that had influenced them in deciding to call it off and for some reason or other they named that Operation Meershum which of course is the name of a German type of pipe isn’t it?
CB: How is it spelled?
JRB: I think you spell it M E, M E, would it be M E E R S H U M or something like that. Meershum.
CB: Ok. We can look it up. So these mobile transmitters were placed where to achieve this?
JRB: They were sited on -
CB: On the CH stations.
JRB: Mostly the old, the old existing stations, you see.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: We were -
CB: Facing inwards.
JRB: Eh?
CB: Were they facing inwards in to the country these, these mobiles because they were on the back, the German radar was on the tail of their aircraft
JRB: They were -
CB: So to jam them they’d need to have, would they -?
JRB: Do you know I can’t quite remember.
CB: Was the idea to get the Germans before they reached the UK or more -
JRB: No. It was too -
CB: When they were inside.
JRB: After they got inside I believe.
CB: Yeah. So, so the, what I’m asking is if the mobiles were facing inside to be able to do the jamming.
JRB: Well I imagine that -
CB: They must have been mustn’t they?
JRB: The aerial would be sweeping around. On it’s usual -
CB: Ok.
JRB: Every time it came around it would -
CB: Ok.
JRB: Block them out wouldn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
JRB: I’m not quite sure about that but I know that we always thought that we stopped this mini blitz on London anyway.
CB: Right. Right. So there’s an important point here isn’t there? The CH stations only were for the protection and identification of aircraft coming towards Britain. In this particular case we’re talking about aircraft that got through the coastal area and were inside but your aerials were effectively giving a rotating beam whereas the CH stations were only directed out.
JRB: The CH stations were just directed outwards. Yeah because of course the equipment of the CH was, it would be quite impossible to –
CB: Yeah
JRB: Have it rotating anyway.
CB: Yeah. Yeah. I’ll stop there.
[recording paused]
CB: So -
JRB: The landing like Arnhem and that -
CB: They used gliders extensively.
JRB: They used gliders a lot and we, we had a, you’ve heard of the old Hamilcar glider have you?
CB: Yes. A big lifter.
JRB: A big one. Well the manufacturers sent us a dummy body of one of those to our station at Ruislip and the idea was that we were to build equipment which could fit in to this Hamilcar. So the thing was they wanted to make sure it would drive in as opposed to do it on the rule of thumb you might, might say and we had, we had specially set up equipment. These transmitters and other equipment which were in vehicles. I think the, I think the radar, yeah the radar would be in a specially built up body in a fifteen tonne truck and it had to be possible to drive it in and out of the Hamilcar so we, we had those made up locally and we’d one or two, not, not everybody could drive in those days you know.
CB: No.
JRB: And we’d one or two people who were quite good drivers and we trained them up to get these vehicles in and out the Hamilcar car. Well, we made up, I think it was six convoys like that to go with the troops and there was -
CB: That was for Arnhem was it? Or for D-day? D-day was a sea landing.
JRB: No.
CB: Was it for the vehicles.
JRB: It would be the -
CB: For Arnhem?
JRB: The river crossings wouldn’t it? The, like -
CB: Oh ok for crossing the Rhine.
JRB: Arnhem and that type of -
CB: And the Rhine. Yeah.
JRB: Wouldn’t it because that’s where the gliders were mostly used wasn’t they?
CB: Ok. Yeah.
JRB: We had special equipment for that and there was one, there was a station down near Bournemouth, Tarrant Rushton and that was a big depot for the gliders. I suppose quite near the coast to make a fairly short crossing and we took one set down there and there was some snag about it and it was suggested that I and one of my mates would accompany it. They were, they decided to do test flights to about six different stations up and down and one of them was a station near Bedford and we said well we’ll go on that one and there was a fault on it or something. I can’t quite remember just what it was at the time. So we got a trip in the glider which was quite an experience.
CB: To Twinwood Farm.
JRB: And -
CB: Twinwood Farm was the -
JRB: Yeah.
CB: Airfield there.
JRB: But you know when you, when the, when the glider casts off its rope you’re entirely at the mercy of the glider pilot and he knows that there’s no case of going around again and trying again. He’s got to put the thing down somewhere and pretty quick and it was a grass field and he, he had to land on the grass which was a bit, a bit hairy really but anyway.
CB: Were you looking our or did you close your eyes?
JRB: [laughs] No. We were looking out. But I don’t think we were very, very happy about it but of course a lot of the gliders were lost weren’t they? They were shot up and shot down before they ever got there [I reckon?]. That was about the only excitement we got with it really.
CB: What was the purpose of the tests? Was it to see whether the equipment would survive?
JRB: To see if it would be, the operational feasibility to do it, you know.
CB: I was thinking of terms -
JRB: To get out of the, to get the equipment out and rolling and get it set up isn’t it?
CB: I was thinking of the vulnerability of the valves to a heavy landing.
JRB: Well they had to take their chance didn’t they? And also it had to carry goodness knows how many jerry cans of petrol for the generator so it was a thing liable to go up in smoke at any minute sort of thing.
CB: I’ll stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
JRB: The space between D-day and VJ, wait a minute. Not D-day.
CB: Arnhem.
JRB: No. No. I’m moving on.
CB: Oh ok so crossing the Rhine.
JRB: Yeah but after, after VE day.
CB: Oh yes.
JRB: Victory in Europe.
CB: Yes.
JRB: We concentrated on the war in the east of course and we expected that to go on for quite a long time. Now the, we got reports back that the termites were eating all the insulation off the wires and that in the, in the ordinary sets so we had to strip them all down and rebuild them with this new development. PVC wiring. Because apparently they couldn’t eat that and so we had a big job taking all the receivers and transmitters to pieces and rewiring them with this termite proof wire and things like transformers and components of that type, they had to be immersed in a solution of Perspex or something very similar and dried off so that they were coated in a something that the termites wouldn’t eat which of course as you well know the American atomic bombs put a rapid end to that war so these things weren’t really needed much longer than that.
RB: Although I suppose in, would they have termites in Korea after that.
JRB: But we’d, we’d modified quite a few equipments ready to go over there.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: But that was about the end of the war wasn’t it?
CB: So that was August ‘45. Then what did you do?
JRB: Well I stayed on at Ruislip and of course things got very quiet and we didn’t do very much more until the end of the, until getting demobbed but of course as you know we all had to wait our turns for, for demob.
CB: How did they keep you busy during that period? From August ‘45 to when you were demobbed?
JRB: What did I?
CB: How did they keep you busy from that, during that period ‘cause we’re talking about eighteen months?
JRB: I think there were one or two new developments coming out because there was one case where we, it was when the parabolic reflectors started coming out more and we had one or two sessions with developing or testing those of different types. I’ve got a photograph somewhere of, of a team of us setting up one of the parabolic reflectors but I just couldn’t lay my hands on it at the moment. But that was about it really you know just thinking about new equipments coming along and developing for peace time use I suppose. More or less.
CB: So the development of the parabolic aerial. What did that do to the overall size of the convoy.
JRB: Well it wouldn’t make much difference to the convoy but they were gradually getting more into microwave technology and just general, general developments that were coming along, you know but nothing very outstanding as far as I -. The pressure was off, you know. It was -
CB: Yeah.
JRB: But we were getting, going down to TRE and setting up -
CB: So what was TRE?
JRB: Technical Research Establishment I think it was and no, it was just, of course I suppose the modern radars are a big advance on what we were using at the time but we were just experimenting and testing out some new developments during that period.
CB: ‘Cause that was at Malvern at that time wasn’t it? So did you go up there?
JRB: Malvern was a centre for that sort of thing.
CB: How many vehicles were there in these convoys? What were, what were, what were the vehicles?
JRB: Well, the big the original ones. The heavy ones there would be a transmitter, a receiver, a communications, a trailer of the aerial and a trailer for the diesel generator so there would be about five, five items in a convoy really.
CB: And as time went on they did -
JRB: And then of course when we got on to the light, the light warning system
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
JRB: There would more or less be only a transmitter, a receiver and communications vehicle but all all very much smaller vehicles. More manoeuvrable.
CB: And where was the petrol stored when you were travelling? With the generator or in a different trailer? ‘Cause you used a lot of petrol or diesel.
JRB: Well as I say the ones that we did for the airborne landings they’d got to carry the petrol with them in jerry cans. Enough to run for a good time and then I suppose they’d get their supplies through normal channels you know but it wasn’t a good thing to be carrying loads of petrol on board when you’ve got troops in as well on the gliders. But I always think that I had a very easy and comfortable war compared with many, many people.
CB: So what was the accommodation like at Ruislip?
JRB: Our site, it was only a small unit, our site I think we’d two, two billets. Two huts about thirty men to a billet in the middle of a field. No, no heating unless you could scrounge some coke and get the coke stove going. No proper toilet facilities. No, no baths but there again you rely on somebody to keep the, keep the coke fired boiler going to give you hot water and and of course a few toilets but quite basic accommodation really at that place but we, we had to put up with that for several years. When I was promoted up to sergeant I had the choice of going either into, we, we were just across the, the railway tracks from the records office at Ruislip and I could have used the sergeant’s mess there but I elected to take up an option of being billeted with some friends in the area.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: So I finished off being in in billets with these people.
CB: You had to pay them rent.
JRB: Well that was all done automatically through the, through the exchequer, you know.
CB: Right.
JRB: I just had to, I suppose they got, they got sort of postal orders or something like that. They never complained. They always, always seemed to think they’ve been paid alright for it.
CB: They had your ration book.
JRB: They had my ration book yes. They [could draw?] my rations.
CB: So the accommodation for you -
JRB: ‘Cause you see in, in, when you were in RAF billets in the camp you didn’t need ration books anyway. They just -
CB: No.
JRB: You just had a cookhouse.
RB: Were you always segregated in the accommodation?
JRB: Well, eh?
RB: Were you always segregated? I mean, in your hut there would only be radar people or would there be other RAF personnel as well?
JRB: No. Just reckon that we, we were all working together in the radar.
RB: So you were all in the same boat.
JRB: Yeah all -
CB: What was the unit called? MU was it?
JRB: 4 MU.
CB: 4 MU. Yeah.
JRB: 4 MU. 4 MU at Ruislip.
CB: And where did you eat in the daytime?
JRB: We had a little cookhouse and meals were, meals were done there. And we had a NAAFI. Again, just sort of temporary. I think the NAAFI was just a, like a wooden hut but we were only a very small unit altogether you see. So that’s about what I -
CB: Good. Thank you.
[recording paused]
CB: Now yours was mobile radar but the whole concept was based on the original chain radar. So how did that work Roy?
JRB: Well the -
CB: And where was it?
JRB: The British aircraft carried a special piece of equipment which would send out a signal when, when it, when the initial pulse from the transmitter reached the aircraft it triggered this equipment in the aircraft which would send a, a varying signal back and if the, if the echo on the CRDF was pulsing they would know it was, it was this IFF responding.
CB: So what was IFF? Identification -
JRB: Identification Friend or Foe.
CB: Right.
JRB: IFF. So if it was a British aircraft it would be, it would enable it to send out a signal which would cause the echo on the tube to vary and that’s why they would know that it was a friendly.
CB: So where were the chain radar stations?
JRB: Where were the chain stations? Well they were all along the coast. They were at Pevensey. Isle of Wight. You name it there was a whole string of them all along the coast. Every so many miles apart. I can’t tell you -
CB: And what was the purpose of the chain system?
JRB: The purpose was virtually to detect incoming raids. ‘Cause you see there, there were various systems. They realised, when war was pretty imminent they realised that we’d no way of detecting incoming bombers until they were right overhead and they tried various systems. One of them was based on the sound of the aircraft engine. They built, they built a few of these big concrete dishes supposed to pick up the sound of an engine and amplify it and give warning in that way but of course that didn’t work awfully well at all and the principal of radar was well known because it had been used, it had been, been experimented with before the war and one of its uses that they foresaw was that they would be able to measure distance to planets and so on because the same, the same theory applies. If you, if you send out a radio pulse it becomes reflected from anything it hits so if you, if you directed it towards the solar system you could, by measuring the time lapse and converting it from the well known formula of the speed of electromagnetic waves and time you could, you could work out the distance so the scientists of the day were experimenting with that sort of thing and it was just that Watson Watt seemed to get the credit for it but I think that the principal was already known before that and I have always believed that the Germans had quite good radar equipment although we always claimed it was a British invention and it was, it was a big saviour to us. Which, no doubt, it did help a great deal in the Battle of Britain but its main reason for its success was the fact that with our coastline we could form a chain of stations which would detect incoming aircraft. Now the Germans were at a disadvantage because they had such a long and dispersed coastline that they couldn’t very well cover it anyway but I’ve always had in my mind that the Germans knew quite a bit about radar and in fact do you remember we sent over a party, RAF, an RAF flight sergeant I think in charge of it. A secret landing on the French coast to capture equipment from a German station and I’ve no doubt at all that the Germans knew quite a bit more about radar than what we would admit. We were always, always, always claiming that it was an entirely British invention but it was, I think it was common knowledge in the scientific world that a radio transmission would be reflected by a solid object.
CB: What did you do after the war? You were demobbed in ’47 so what did you then do?
JRB: I came back here. My dad had carried on with his little smallholding business all during the war years and I came back fully intending to take over because he was retirement age and becoming less able to do the work and I thought that would be my future which it was for quite a few years wasn’t it Ray? When you were born it was.
RB: About, about ten years wasn’t it?
JRB: About ten years I was, I was running that.
RB: I think it was a combination of -
JRB: And we -
RB: Of cheap imports and fuel prices.
JRB: Yeah. We were, we were producing well a very nice orchard in those days which is now defunct and greenhouses and we were making our living from that. I got married just after the end of the war and my wife came. She was a girl from London but she came up here and threw her lot in with, with me helping on the smallholding and that’s what we did for, as Ray says, about ten years and then there was a time when prices were very bad for produce and unless you’d a lot of capital to develop in a big way the small, the small units were beginning to get faded out. You know, they were getting superseded and I think it was when, we used to sell our produce on the market at Preston you see. Well you could go, you could go and set up your stall on Preston Market and sell your own produce but that all seemed to fade away didn’t it Ray? You know I don’t think they have that your way now do they?
RB: I think supermarkets really -
JRB: And supermarkets.
RB: The nail in the coffin weren’t they?
JRB: Supermarkets were beginning to come along and of course they were only interested in making contracts with the, with the big producers and it just got it wasn’t really a viable thing and of course with having had my wartime experience and knowledge of radio I applied to -
RB: The civil service. Barton Hall.
JRB: I think, there was an air traffic control centre just outside Preston just on the A6 going north from Preston called Barton, Barton Hall and that was, it, there was a Met section and what do you call it Ray? A meteorological section.
RB: Oh yeah. Yeah.
JRB: And there was a civilian section which was connected with Manchester Airport and that was, it had an airline for civilian aircraft coming down from Scotland into Manchester and that was like a first contact point this, this civilian air traffic control and also running alongside it more or less the RAF had got a emergency system. The idea being that we did twenty four hour coverage and but we had what in those days was considered to be state of the art technology which enabled us to position accurately an aircraft anywhere over the north of England virtually which was called auto triangulation. Now the idea being that we had, of course, remember this was entirely before the days of the, of the satellites and the the navigation that they’ve got today. We had a selection of RAF airfields in the area. Woodvale, Bishop’s, what were it? Bishops Court Northern Ireland, one on the Isle of Man, another up on the Cumbrian coast and one or two further inland over the Pennine areas and with this equipment which was put in by Standard Telephones we could get a position from each of these, each of these RAF stations could give you the bearing of on aircraft.
CB: They could triangulate it.
JRB: They could triangulate it by, we had this big, big screen with the map of the area on it and the position of each of our forward relay stations as we called them and if an aircraft, it was, it was designed specifically for aircraft in distress, civilian or RAF and when an aircraft transmitted on the international distress frequency it would draw traces from the various stations on our big map and a cross, well it was never a perfect cross it was always a little bit ambiguous but roughly call it, they called it a cocked hat. It would form a little, maybe like a little five sided area of probability so that you could say, you could, you could call the pilot up again on a forward relay station. You see all this, we’d got land lines, GPO lines to each of these stations so our controller could use, well, say for instance valley in the isle, in the -
CB: Anglesey.
JRB: Anglesey was one of them. We could use their transmitter if the aircraft was in that area.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: Or we could use one of the other transmitters, speak over the landline to that local transmitter and of course you’d get a better signal than if it was coming all the way from Preston and, and we could give him, give him his position pretty accurately and we could say, you know, ask the nature of his emergency and say well fly such and such a vector to such and such an airfield you see and direct him to try and get down.
CB: This is because you were using a big planned position indicator with a map on it aren’t you?
JRB: Yeah.
CB: And when he squawks then the line comes out.
JRB: We used, you know the television, the early television projector sets? They had a little, a little tube which would project on to a bigger screen hadn’t they? Not very distinct I would always thought but anyway we used those same -
CB: Same principal.
JRB: Those same tubes to project on to this big map that we had on our control desk and so it worked very well that did but we, we had to run on it on a watch system because it was covering the twenty four hours.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: And it was the emergency service you see.
CB: So what were you doing there?
JRB: I was maintaining all the equipment.
CB: Right.
JRB: At the Preston end.
CB: Now, you were, you during that period you trans -
JRB: You see, we had to, over our land line we could talk to the people at, at each station and if the, if we suspected that their signals were not quite right we’d have to call them to go and have a look at their equipment on the airfield and check and of course we, we used to have the authority over them to call them out if necessary for that sort of thing but it was quite a, quite a good system really but of course the sat nav type thing has entirely put that into the history books hasn’t it now?
CB: Yeah.
JRB: You’ll have heard of the RAF equipments called CADF and CRDF. Well they were installed on the airfields and each control tower if the, if the aircraft in his area called up his own station could give him his bearing to fly to the station but it couldn’t give him how many miles away it was or anything like that so this would give him a fixed position. So we used to have, thankfully we didn’t have a lot of emergencies, true emergencies but we used to do a lot of test, tests with aircraft in the area. So call, call up on the emergency channel and just check that everything was in order you know. It worked very well I thought.
CB: Now that was a transition. During that period you were, the technology was moving from valves to printed circuits. Well to -
JRB: Only just. This equipment -
CB: Transistors was what I meant to say.
JRB: This equipment was still on valves.
CB: Was it?
JRB: But -
CB: So we’re talking about the fifties and the sixties are we?
JRB: A friend, a friend of mine who served with me in the RAF after the war, this is Terry Parnell, he got a job at Standard Telephones and he, the two direction finding equipment that I mentioned CADF and CRDF they were in use by the RAF using the valve technology and I believe he converted it and brought out the transistorised versions of it and that worked alright for quite a long time.
CB: So when did you retire?
JRB: When did I retire?
RB: Well there was, there was another stage in your career when Barton Hall closed down in the early 70s. You went to Sealand didn’t you and you were working for the civil service at the, on laser, laser guided things.
JRB: Oh that was later on wasn’t it? Yes, of course.
RB: After Barton Hall closed down. So you actually retired from the laser -
JRB: Originally –
RB: Thing.
JRB: Originally we had five control centres. There was Preston, Barton Hall, Uxbridge and one up near the Scottish borders somewhere wasn’t there? Anyway there were about five, five areas. Well gradually they combined them. We took over the Yorkshire stations as well as our western stations and Uxbridge took over from somebody else so it was centralised from five to about three and then eventually it was centralised all on Uxbridge so of course the Barton Hall equipment was superfluous as regards this auto triangulation system. It was all being done collectively through Uxbridge.
RB: That’s when you were transferred to Sealand.
JRB: And that’s when, that’s when I transferred to Sealand which as you know is on, near Chester and I worked there until the end of the war er till the end of the, of my service.
CB: Which was 19 -
JRB: To my retirement and -
CB: 75 was it? 1970’s
RB: ‘85.
JRB: Sixty five wasn’t I?
RB: Yeah but ’85 you were sixty five.
CB: 1985
JRB: Yes I retired at sixty five and the last bit of my time there I was on, 30 MU at Sealand was a big RAF station. It had been a wartime flying station.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: And it became a central maintenance unit for airborne radio for the RAF. Most of the, most of the stations, if they had faulty equipment it would be sent to Sealand to be sorted out at that one place you see instead of each station doing their own repair work.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: It would come to a sensible point which was Sealand. So I worked on that for several years and then the Cossor’s, not Cossor’s, Ferranti’s. Ferranti’s of Edinburgh, they developed a laser equipment.
CB: At Sealand.
JRB: Now laser as you probably know is quite similar to ordinary radar but it’s using a different part of the spectrum.
CB: Infra-red.
JRB: It’s using infra-red and they, I don’t know whether it’s still in use but they fitted it in the Jaguars and I think in the new, the new fighter that replaced, well it was the Jaguar wasn’t it but I can’t remember what that was called but anyway but that was known as, I’m just trying to remember the [pause] Oh mark, laser ranger and marked target seeker. Now that had two purposes. From an aircraft it could, it could detect and range on a target or alternatively somebody on the ground, hopefully a little squaddie with a pack set, could direct this laser on to a bridge say that he wanted eliminating and that would be detected by the aircraft who could then range on that specific target you see so that’s why they called it the marked target seeker. So I worked on that which was a new technology again altogether using, as you said, infra-red instead of -
CB: To illuminate the target.
JRB: Radio waves. And I believe they used that in the Shetlands.
RB: The Falklands.
CB: In the Falklands war.
JRB: In the Falklands. Sorry. In the Falklands and one or two incidents since I believe but I don’t know whether it’s still, you see this, this is, we’re going back now what thirty years Ray. Something like that.
RB: Well yeah it was before Kit was born. Kit’s thirty at the end of this month.
JRB: Yeah.
RB: That’s my son, dad’s grandson.
JRB: Yes. That’s right.
RB: He’s thirty in a few weeks.
JRB: So presumably that equipment is now out of date anyway.
CB: Well just more sophisticated isn’t it?
JRB: It was the start of the, start of the laser usage for this purpose.
CB: Yes. Right. Excellent.
JRB: And then of course that was what I worked on right up to the end of my civil -
RB: Until you retired.
JRB: Service type of thing.
CB: So how many years did you do in the civil service? About thirty I suppose.
JRB: Something like that.
CB: ‘55 to ’85.
JRB: Something like that. Yeah. At, I was up at Barton Hall for quite a number of years wasn’t I Ray and then at Sealand again.
RB: Yeah.
JRB: About thirty years I suppose. Yeah.
CB: Right. We’re stopping there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: As a final point Roy what was the most memorable point about your service in the RAF?
JRB: In the RAF.
[pause]
JRB: I don’t know. It’s hard to say really.
[pause]
CB: Ok. What about in, in, when you, in civilian life? Was there a memorable part of your activities when you became a civil servant with radar, laser and so on?
JRB: No. There was nothing very exciting about it I’m afraid. It was just, just the same humdrum stuff.
CB: And what was your interests in the background in all that time? Were you keen on sport or some other -?
JRB: Never been much of a sportsman but I think, would you say our, our overseas holiday trips? That sort of -?
RB: Yeah. Well you went on foreign language courses didn’t you and did evening schools in various things.
JRB: Yes.
RB: Did you do a maths course? What was that -
JRB: No. I didn’t do a maths course.
RB: You didn’t do maths. Some, some
JRB: You see Peter, Peter -
RB: Sort of, was it a City and Guilds course you did? Something in -
JRB: Yes. Well that was more to do with my service life wasn’t it? The City and Guilds. It was qualification for -
RB: You did sort of later, qualifications in later life didn’t you?
JRB: Yes.
RB: And did you do Italian courses? And French.
JRB: Well I did one or two study courses. Yeah.
CB: Good. Thank you.
[recording paused]
CB: Just clarifying the mini blitz because clearly that was a memorable thing for you. You had to react quickly did you to this situation and so was this a particularly memorable event? The Meershum.
JRB: Yes it was because it was a sudden request that we got and we had to pull the stops out and design a modification to the equipment and get it, get it out to the airfields. We’d quite a hectic time going around and installing it at the various -
CB: At the CH stations.
JRB: Fields.
CB: Was it at airfields or CH stations?
JRB: It was at CH stations.
CB: Right. Thanks.
RB: That the [unclear?] isn’t it?
CB: Yeah.
JRB: Have you got it there?
CB: How long did it take you to do this? Literally a weekend or was it weeks?
JRB: Literally, literally just over a weekend.
CB: Amazing.
JRB: We were going all over the place, split up into different fitting parties and took one, one equipment to each station you see and set it up. So we landed down at Pevensey and that was the one that I was most involved in and the rest of our company did likewise. We were all separate, separate little fitting parties going along the various -
CB: You went by road -
JRB: Stations.
CB: I presume.
JRB: Yes.
CB: Yeah.
JRB: Yes. They laid transport on for us and of course we went, went straight to these stations.
CB: Good.
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 James Burdin
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
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
2017-02-06
Format
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01:51:55 audio recording
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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ABurdinJR170206
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Civilian
Description
An account of the resource
James Burdin went at Hutton Grammar School and worked on radio repair and sales. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force but had to wait and joined the Local Defence Volunteers instead. He did some rifle practice, general infantry training and patrols. James had his initial training at Blackpool where the winter gardens had been converted into a Morse school. Owing his background in radio, he later went to work on radar: he discusses his postings at different training establishments and provides details of radar technical advances, installation, modify and repair, vulnerability and equipment mobility. James served in mobile equipment units in Algeria (Operation Torch), Tunisia, Egypt, Normandy (D-Day landings), crossing of the Rhine, Netherlands (Operation Market Garden), Mauthausen camp (Operation Meerschaum). Discusses the end of the war, continuing to work at 4 Maintenance Unit at RAF Ruislip developing equipment, components and technologies. He then worked at the Technical Research Establishment until demobilised in 1947.
After an unsuccessful attempt to run his family business, he applied for the civil service and worked until 1985 on radar development, auto triangulation, Cathode-Ray Direction Finder, Identification Friend or Foe, infrared devices, laser and chain radar stations.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--London
England--Lancashire
England--Blackpool
Algeria
Austria
Austria--Mauthausen
Egypt
France
Germany
Rhine River
Netherlands
Netherlands--Arnhem
Tunisia
North Africa
Temporal Coverage
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1944
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
civil defence
demobilisation
Gneisenau
Home Guard
military living conditions
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
radar
RAF Bircham Newton
RAF Ruislip
recruitment
sanitation
Scharnhorst
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/706/10104/ABellGW161221.1.mp3
9f6081f87bc9ed1ae80c509b7527e12c
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
Bell, Gerald Walter
G W Bell
Description
An account of the resource
An oral history interview with Corporal Gerald Bell (b. 1921, 185210 Royal Air Force). He served as ground personnel.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-12-21
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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Bell, GW
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 21st of December 2016 and I am with Gerald Bell in Weston near Towcester in Northamptonshire and Gerald worked on the ground throughout the war and we are going to talk about his life and times. So, what’s the first thing you remember about life, Gerald?
GB: Going to school I suppose.
CB: Ok.
GB: At five. Yes.
CB: And where is that?
GB: Hickling. School.
CB: Which was near where? Hickling?
GB: [unclear]
CB: In Norfolk.
GB: Yes.
CB: Yes, in Norfolk. Ok. And what did your father do?
GB: He was getting people.
CB: And how many children?
GB: [unclear]
CB: Did he really? Balance, mixed balance between boys and girls or?
GB: Six girls and four boys.
CB: And where you in the pecking order?
GB: Number seven.
CB: Right [laughs]. And mother had a fulltime job?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Looking after you.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, you went to Hickling school. The primary school. Where did you go for the secondary education?
GB: Never had a secondary education.
CB: Didn’t you?
GB: Left school at fourteen.
CB: Right, ok, and then what did you do?
GB: Me first job was, worked on a poultry farm. That was until I was sixteen.
CB: Yeah.
GB: Then me wages went up and they sacked me [laughs], oh yes, yes, that was quite normal those days. Rather than pay you cause [unclear] I suppose.
CB: Yeah, so then what did you do?
GB: Then I went on the farm. I was the yardman, I did the milking, feed the cattle and the pigs, did the milking.
CB: And how long did you do that for?
GB: Just trying to think.
CB: Well, the war came in 1939, by which time you were eighteen.
GB: I was working, oh, I left the farm
CB: Yeah
GB: Because the governor died
CB: Oh!
GB: And everything was sold off of course and I got a job on a food farm and I was there until I was called up, that was in 1940.
CB: What kind of fruit was it growing?
GB: Well, all sorts. Yeah.
CB: So, when you were called up, where did you go for your attestation?
GB: At Cardington.
CB: After that?
GB: I went back to work of course, I was called up to Stockton
CB: Yeah.
GB: And there I did me basic training, I can’t remember the name of the
CB: This is on the east coast near Whitby.
GB: No, further up
CB: Further up than that. Ok.
GB: Yes, that
CB: Scarborough.
GB: No, no, further up. It’s that place that had the iron things shut, [unclear]
CB: Shutten, no, that’s north west.
GB: Further up.
CB: Yes, up near Middlesbrough. OK, well, we’ll come back to that, yeah.
GB: It’s a seaside
CB: Seaside place.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yes.
GB: Quite well known.
CB: Ok.
GB: It I [unclear] think of it.
CB: Need a map. [laughs] right. How long were you there doing that training?
GB: About six weeks, I think. Then I went to Finningley
CB: Did you?
GB: Yes.
CB: Right. So, you are now, what rank are you?
GB: Ordinary AC plonk.
CB: Yeah, AC plonk. Right. And what did you do at Finningley?
GB: Any general duties.
CB: So, you were a general duties ground staff
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: So, what would that entail?
GB: Any job that wanted doing, cleaning up, anything.
CB: All outside or was some of it office work or what was it?
GB: No, no, it was all outside.
CB: Ok.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, what sort of places would needed to be cleaned up?
GB: Anywhere, the [unclear] or anything like that, you know, anything, general duties,
CB: Ok. So, if there was a fuel spill outside, would you have to go and clean up the fuel spill [unclear] aircraft?
GB: No.
CB: No, you wouldn’t. Was there any gardening to do?
GB: No. [unclear] garden in those days.
CB: No. So, what other things could you remember that you did there?
GB: No, nothing special, really.
CB: And how long were you at Finningley?
GB: I transferred to Balderton, yes, and I suppose I was there about twelve months.
CB: Ok.
GB: And I got posting, overseas posting.
CB: Right.
GB: Yes.
CB: So, before we do that, what did you do at Balderton?
GB: Same thing, general duties. Yes. Nothing special.
CB: Who was, who were you reporting to in that case?
GB: [unclear] in charge, that’s all.
CB: Which section would that be?
GB: I was [unclear] to general duties
CB: The general duties section
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So, did you enjoy being at Balderton or was it boring?
GB: Nothing was boring, no, because I lived in the village, I been far away so everything was new
CB: Yes.
GB: Yes.
CB: So, the bright lights you came to
GB: Yes.
CB: So, what did you do in your time off?
GB: Chasing the women
CB: Did you really?
GB: And drinking of course [laughs], yes.
CB: Was that confined to the station or were you
GB: No, [unclear]
CB: Yeah? How did you travel around from the station to
GB: They had lorries.
CB: Yeah. What was the nearest big town?
GB: Doncaster, yes.
CB: So, that had lots of service people in it?
GB: Oh, quite a few, yes.
CB: Yes.
GB: Lots of people from Finningley went to Doncaster.
CB: Yeah. What sort of time did you have there?
GB: Oh, enjoyed myself of course.
CB: What was the main activity when you went out, apart from drinking and, dancing did you do?
GB: Not a lot of dancing,
CB: No?
GB: I don’t think.
CB: Cinema?
GB: Yes.
CB: So, the lorry would take you and then collect you, bring you back at a certain time.
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: If you missed the lorry, then what?
GB: You had to get back on your own.
CB: How did you do that?
GB: Yeah, walk back [laughs].
CB: How long did that take?
GB: [unclear] Couple of hours, something like that, yes. You had to creep in the camp without anyone knowing [laughs].
CB: What was security like on an airfield?
GB: Pretty good, you used to have to lift up the barbwire and get underneath.
CB: Did you?
GB: Oh yeah [laughs], To get in.
CB: How many times did you get caught?
GB: I didn’t get caught [laughs].
CB: But some people did.
GB: Oh yes, yes.
CB: And then what happened?
GB: I don’t know, I supposed they went before the [unclear] and that was that. Well, you didn’t get away with anything if they caught you.
CB: Who was the person on the station you feared most?
GB: Oh, I suppose, the SWO.
CB: Yes, Station warrant officer.
GB: Yeah.
CB: He had a lot of power, did he?
GB: Yeah [laughs]. Keep out of his way.
CB: Why were people worried about him?
GB: I don’t know, I suppose everybody looked up at him, didn’t they? Yeah.
CB: Even the junior officers were worried
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: So, on the station, what sort of entertainment was there there?
GB: Oh, there was quite a few of the, what was it, not naafi, I forget the name of the people that used to do the
CB: The WVS, was it?
GB: No, it wasn’t, no, it was the [unclear], I suppose they were actors, not professionals.
CB: Oh, ENSA, yes.
GB: Yes. That’s right.
CB: ENSA, yes.
GB: ENSA, yes.
CB: They came and did performances.
GB: Yes.
CB: Where would they do that on the station?
GB: I was just trying to think, it must be one of the hangars.
CB: Ah, right.
GB: Yes. Yes, yes, we didn’t have anywhere else to go, in the winter we used to do roller-skating in the hangars.
CB: Right. How popular was that?
GB: Oh, that was very popular.
CB: So, how did people keep fit during their service in the RAF in the war?
GB: Cause they got us fit when we did the training sort of thing and we never bothered after that really.
CB: And when you were off duty, then you ate in the airmen’s mess, did you?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. And what was the food like?
GB: Not bad, I suppose, yes, yeah. Yes, never heard any complaints.
CB: And to what extent did you link up with the aircrew?
GB: Not much, not really,
CB: What was
GB: Only if we were on guard duty and they come up [laughs]
CB: How often did you have to do guard duty?
GB: I don’t know. One fortnight, something like that.
CB: So, the guard be on a shift system, what were the shifts for that? Certain number of hours on and then and a certain number of hours off.
GB: Yes. Yeah, I think it be about two on and four off, something like that, yeah.
CB: Yeah. So, did you manage to arrest any aircrew who were trying to get in late?
GB: We wouldn’t arrest anyone [laughs], we knew the most of them anyway.
CB: Yeah. But to be effective you had firearms, didn’t you?
GB: Yes, yeah.
CB: And did you have live ammunition?
GB: No.
CB: So, did that have any restriction on the deterrent?
GB: I suppose they knew as well as we knew.
CB: Yeah, yeah. And so Finningley and Balderton, were both Bomber Command organisations, what was going on at those airfields?
GB: What was it, they were just previous to the [unclear] on the bomb.
CB: Yeah.
GB: So,
CB: So they had the operational training unit
GB: Yes, right.
CB: At Balderton, yeah.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
GB: And Finningley.
CB: And Finningley, right, ok. So, what were the planes that they were flying to do that? Do you remember?
GB: I think they were mostly Wellingtons.
CB: Right, yeah. And what were their flying hours day and night,
GB: Yes,
CB: Did they, both day and night? Was it?
GB: Yes.
CB. And what about accidents from the training?
GB: Yes, a few.
CB: Were they? What sort of things went wrong?
GB: I don’t know, they never really let on what has happened to them.
CB: Right. Did any happen on the airfields?
GB: No, no, no,
CB: So when you got, you finished at Balderton, what time of year was that?
GB: I can’t remember all.
CB: So, that’s 1941 anyway.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, you then posted overseas. Where did you go?
GB: We had to go to, oh, blimey.
CB: Did they have an assembly point in Britain before you embarked? Because you had to
GB: I’m just trying to think where we went to, to meet up sort of thing
CB: Yeah.
GB: The whole lot of us, was always [unclear] about fifty of us, on, blimey, I can’t think of the name of the place.
CB: Where is it near?
GB: On the south coast.
CB: Ah, right.
GB: Where they used to control the aircraft.
CB: On the radar stations?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Right.
GB: The main one. But I can’t remember.
CB: But it was on the coast.
GB: Nearly on the coast, yes.
CB: Yeah. And then everybody assembled, who were all these people, were they mixtures of ground and air crew or what were they?
GB: They weren’t aircrew at all, these were all
CB: All ground crew.
GB: All ground.
CB: All ground personnel.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, when you were assembled, then where did you go?
GB: You had to go down to Sidforth for training with the army, the Dorset, was it Dorset?
CB: Yeah.
GB: We had training there.
CB: What type of training were you having?
GB: Army training sort of thing, yeah, we were getting fit and all that sort of thing, yeah, yes.
CB: Yeah. A lot of marching?
GB: Yeah, yeah, quite a good bit of marching.
CB: And then live firing of ammunition?
GB: No, no, we never had any firing at all.
CB: What were they training you up for to do?
GB: They were training us for the, we went to [unclear], it was the 893 AMES Air Ministry Experimental Station, that’s right.
CB: Oh, what did that do then?
GB: That was a mobile radar.
CB: Whereabout?
GB: We did that down in Dorset, there was one there.
CB: Ah, there was one there, was it?
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, were you effectively part of a defence, like airfield defence, is that, was that the job?
GB: No, we had separate people on our course that were for defence
CB: RAF regiment, yes. Right.
GB: RAF regiment sort of thing, yes. Anyway, we went from there to up to Scotland to get on the boat for North Africa.
CB: Right. Where was that? Glasgow?
GB: I think it was Glasgow.
CB: And where did you sail to?
GB: Algiers. On the way there the ship being [unclear] broke down, so we had to leave the convoy and they sailed on, they got it started again, woke up one morning and we were on our own. But we could see the destroyer over the far distance [unclear] far behind that, looked after us, that sort of thing. But we caught up eventually.
CB: Did you?
GB: Yeah.
CB: What went wrong with the ship then?
GB: I don’t know, they didn’t say much, you don’t know, you hear all sorts of things. They said the gaffer or the ship captain got recommendation for getting it going again.
CB: Was this an old holiday liner or was it a special troop ship?
GB: No, [unclear], it was a special troop ship.
CB: Right. How many people on the ship?
GB: Don’t know, I wouldn’t know, there’s no end of them.
CB: Did you get a bunk or a hammock?
GB: Hammock, yeah.
CB: What time of year was this? In the winter or the summer or?
GB: I couldn’t tell you. I can’t even remember the date of the invasion there.
CB: No. North Africa.
GB: Yeah.
CB: 1942.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Ok, so you got to Algeria,
GB: Yes.
CB: Then what?
GB: We had to, wait our turn to get into the port and all that sort of thing cause there was quite a lot there of course, all the Americans were there as well and we had to put up in the, built up a marquee in the zoological gardens in Algeria until we got our kit cause we had to wait about a week or two before we got it.
CB: Then?
GB: Eventually we got our kit, got on the road and we went as far as, into Tunisia I think, I’m just trying to think of the name of the place, Setif, but I don’t think it’s that name now, they’ve changed them, cause they were all French names, weren’t they? Now they’ve changed them all
CB: Right. This was in the back of a truck.
GB: Yes.
CB: How come, where was that?
GB: I got used to that sort of thing. They asked for volunteers to drive them
CB: But you could drive.
GB: I never, I could drive but I never volunteered, cause it was too dodgy,
CB: In what way?
GB: [unclear] you know,part road and all sorts of things. Anyway, we got as far as Setif and whether the Germans had made a push, we had to come back quick, I suppose because they were afraid that we’d get captured and they get all our stuff, cause I don’t think there was any other [unclear] like us about those days.
CB: You were all RAF people, weren’t you?
GB: Yes.
CB: How many, roughly?
GB: Roughly I suppose fifty or sixty.
CB: Yeah, the same fifty, yeah.
GB: Yeah, yeah. Cause we had to offer a day and night sort of thing. Anyway, we went back to Algiers and put up the stuff there, yes, we [unclear] from there.
CB: What were you doing in that time?
GB: You know the aerial, I suppose that
CB: For the radar.
GB: Yeah. Those days to move the aerial you had to turn the handle, that was my job, turn the handle at the aerial.
CB: Was this a constant movement as a sweep?
GB: Oh yes, yes, backwards and forwards, they had a barrel in there where all the kit was and they’d ring it, you carry on, when they ring it again, you turn it back sort of thing and you had to keep doing that until they got the two, I suppose the two planes together sort of thing, yeah. It was quite, you know.
CB: You got quite strong in your muscles, did you, arm muscles. What sort of, how did that work on the shifts for that?
GB: We had three shifts, three eight-hour shifts. And you, you know, you did all the [unclear] shift sort of thing.
CB: So, when you weren’t winding the thing round, what were you doing?
GB: It was a full-time job really.
CB: Oh, it was.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Day and night if there were three shifts.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, what happened next? Was this a portable radar?
GB: I suppose really that was the first mobile radar there was.
CB: Yeah.
GB: Yes.
CB: So
GB: I think the Yanks used to come and visit. You know, [unclear] men come and visit to see what it was all about. But I got [unclear] well, I’d say mood, I got a bad chill and we didn’t have a doctor, we only had a first aid man
CB: Medical orderly
GB: Medical, yeah, and the thought I got pleurisy, cause they [unclear] me into hospital and of course none of the hospital would take because none of them had got the separate
CB: They needed an isolation room to take you
GB: Yes, I think I went nearly [unclear] for a year. Come back to all years now they, I managed to find one
CB: And what had you got? What were you suffering from?
GB: I don’t know, I was there for about a month
CB: Clearly more than a cold.
GB: I don’t think that it was anything more than a cold.
CB: Where did you go next? Back towards Tunisia?
GB: No, no, while I was away, while I was in hospital, they moved, I think they went to Sicily and I don’t know whether it was right or not but I was told that the ship that they were on got bombed, what happened I don’t know after that. But I went back to the, oh, [unclear] forward maintenancy unit.
CB: Ok. What happened there?
GB: Well, we followed the army, you know, into Tunisia.
CB: Yeah.
GB: Until they packed up and I went back to Algiers and finished the tour there.
CB: Doing what?
GB: General duties again.
CB: In, same place in Algeria, was it?
GB: Yes, with the
CB: But you had no radar by then because it had been moved, had it?
GB: Oh yes, they took, the whole lot went.
CB: How busy were you kept during general duties when they took you back to, when they kept you in Algeria? Were you busy or not?
GB: I think I spent most of my time on the sergeant’s mess, being in charge of the sergeant’s mess.
CB: And you had
GB: And we had Italian prisoners there doing [unclear] so we didn’t have to work.
CB: Ah right. So, what rank were you by now?
GB: LAC.
CB: LAC in the sergeant’s mess. So, what were your job then with the Italian prisoners?
GB: To see that they did the work, that was all.
CB: Who spoke Italian?
GB: No one [laughs]
CB: Nobody. So how did you communicate?
GB: I don’t know, we made them understand sort of thing, yeah, [unclear] supposed of you [unclear], no, no, no
CB: And were they willing workers or?
GB: There were some who were a bit dodgy but most of them, you had to watch them though
CB: Why?
GB: They’d nick anything, yeah, I remember one chap I caught, he got the tablecloth wrapped round him, so I discharged [unclear] [laughs]
CB: So, apart from nicking tablecloths, what else did they pinch?
GB: [unclear] as well because you couldn’t, you never had a clue really
CB: Yeah. So, when are we here now, what’s the date we are talking about now, when you are looking after the Italians?
GB: It must have been, I must have been there three years then. I was there three and a half years altogether
CB: Were you?
GB: Yeah. So that’d be towards the end of when I was there. When I got me demobbed from there.
CB: Oh, did you? So, the war was finished, the war finished, did
GB: No, I didn’t. I didn’t get me demobbed from there, we came home, now I went to Leicester East,
CB: Yeah.
GB: They were getting prepared for the victory parade and they had all the cars and lorries and that to do all ready for the victory parade.
CB: So, this is May 1945.
GB: Yes.
CB: So, what did they get you to do?
GB: I was working in the SWO’s office
CB: Were you? And what would you do in there with him?
GB: Paperwork, I suppose, mostly, yeah.
CB: So, how long were you at Leicester East?
GB: Until I was demobbed there.
CB: Yeah. You were demobbed from there?
GB: Yeah.
CB: And when was that?
GB: I haven’t a clue, really. Anyway, I got my demob and I went home, I got another three months leave, you know, two or three months, I don’t know how long it was and there was nothing there for me to do. I could have me job back but I didn’t want it, so I re-joined again and when I re-joined, I got a job, I got a job that they asked me if I wanted, it was behind the bar at the officer’s mess, at the record’s office, Gloucester.
CB: Are ye?
GB: We were stationed at
CB: Innsworth
GB: That’s right, yeah. I was in there for, cause I signed up for four years
CB: Ah, right.
GB: But, the end of the four years, they delayed releases for twelve months, I counted the, what war was on?
CB: The Korean war.
GB: Was it Korea? Yes, that’s right, yeah, they delayed the release so I had to do five years
CB: What rank were you at this stage?
GB: Corporal.
CB: Did you come back in as a corporal?
GB: Yeah.
CB: You left as a corporal, did you, at demob?
GB: No, no, I didn’t,
CB: Ah.
GB: No, I come back as a corporal, yeah.
CB: Right.
GB: And that’s where I met my better half. She was in the officer’s mess service.
CB: At Innsworth?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So you were both behind the bar or what was she doing?
GB: No, she was in the officer’s.
CB: In the administration, was she?
GB: That’s right, yeah.
CB: So, when are we talking about now, 1951?
GB: A bit before that.
CB: ‘50.
GB: Yes, a bit before then, yes. Because I got married, she left the forces and I got married in 1948.
CB: Oh. When you were still in.
GB: I was still in, yes.
CB: Yeah. Ok, so then what?
GB: I was there for five years.
CB: Yeah. But, what about accommodation? Did they give you a quarter or what did they do, they didn’t have any quarters.
GB: They didn’t have any quarters.
CB: No.
GB: The wife stopped at her home.
CB: At. Which was where?
GB: At Eaton, in Wragby, it’s not far from here
CB: Wragby
GB: In Eaton
CB: Yeah. Right.
GB: It’s about five miles from here. Yeah.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Ok. So, you just go and see her at weekends.
GB: Yes, every other weekend I was off, come and see her.
CB: Right, so, how did you manage to travel around? What was the transport arrangement in those days?
GB: Trains, yeah.
CB: Did you get a travel warrant or did you?
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: Cause you were underage, were you? Under twenty-five. No, you weren’t, no. So, you payed for your own travel.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Ok, so you came, you did your full five years because of the extension of one year,
GB: Yeah.
CB: What did you do after that? You didn’t sign on again,
GB: No.
CB: So you went to civilian life.
GB: Well, we got the club, worked in a club at, blimey.
CB: What sort of club?
GB: Working men’s club.
CB: Working men’s, right. Cause your experience behind the bar
GB: Yeah
CB: They found that useful, did they?
GB: Yes.
CB: Right. Whereabouts in the country was that?
GB: I’m just trying and think now, blimey, Jonathan, where was
CB: Was it round here?
GB: No, no, no. You worked with the Oxford, what’s the name? [unclear]
US: [unclear] Green.
GB: No, I don’t think.
CB: Not the place, I tell you.
US: Place or [unclear] company.
CB: I tell you what, let’s do it a different way, you demobbed originally from Leicester East, when you did your four years and added one to make five years, you were demobbed, where were you demobbed from? Cause you were at Innsworth, so, where were you demobbed?
GB: I can’t remember, to be honest.
CB: So I’m thinking that perhaps the demobbed point guided you to certain jobs.
GB: No, no, no.
CB: How did you find this job?
GB: Well, I looked in the, I used to take the daily paper for the pubs.
CB: Oh, right.
GB: So, I found the job. Oh, yeah.
CB: Yeah. So, how long did you work there?
GB: I was there about three years before I got a better job.
CB: Yeah, which was what?
GB: There was another club at Maidstone in Kent.
CB: Maidstone, right.
GB: Yes.
CB: What was that club?
GB: It was originally a liberal club but I think that [unclear] anyone could join
CB: Right. And how long did you work there?
GB: I suppose I was there about four years.
CB: Then what?
GB: Then the wife was expecting so we had to get out and I got a job at Morton in Surrey. Bar manager.
CB: What sort of accommodation did you have? Did they provide accommodation with these jobs or did you have to rent outside?
GB: Well, I first, the pub, the club at Maidstone had a, above the club was house
CB: A flat.
GB: Yeah. But, when I went to Morton, they offered me accommodation, you know, temporary sort of thing until I found somewhere myself, which I did.
CB: Did you buy a house, or did you rent one or what did you do?
GB: No, I bought it,
CB: Right.
GB: [unclear], you know.
CB: Was that your first house?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Yes. So, what sort of job was it, as the manager?
GB: It’s a busy job, cause it’s a big pub. Had a ballroom, you know, they used to do midday lunches and all that sort of thing, parties at night.
CB: How long did you keep going on that job?
GB: Oh, until the boss retired, they had a new pub built down in, blimey, here we go again. On the Thames, what sort of [unclear] I can’t think of the name.
CB: Lots of places on the Thames.
GB: Yeah.
CB: So, how many years do you think you were at Morton roughly? How many years were you there or when did you move [unclear]?
GB: Oh, not long, I wasn’t there very long.
CB: Oh, weren’t you?
GB: Yeah, no.
CB: So, you sold the house and moved somewhere else.
GB: I fell out with the boss, the wife got yellow jaundice and she had to go to hospital and the boss said, I got four children then, you’d have to put the kids in a home, and I said, sod that, I’m not going to put my kids in a home, so I packed the job in and we came over to her, place in Eaton, temporarily and I got a job at Plessey’s in Towcester.
CB: Ah, right. You sold the house at Morton and bought one up here, did you?
GB: Oh yes, yes,
CB: In Eaton.
GB: I sold that and I went to, I can’t think of the name of the [unclear] place, no good at [unclear]
CB: Yeah, ok. And Eadon spelled EYDON. Right? And then you joined Plessey. So, what did you do at Plessey?
GB: Making computers or parts of them
CB: Yeah?
GB: Yeah.
CB: What was your role?
GB: Pardon?
CB: What was your job?
GB: On the machines, machines [unclear], we were operating the machines
CB: So, what were the machines doing, making printed circuits or assembling them?
GB: No, making the
CB: Switch gear?
GB: Making the small, they were like small, very small [unclear] of different, I don’t know what sort, different minerals, they were ground and punched together sort of thing and we had to test them.
CB: Right.
GB: See if they were [unclear] or the machines tested them, we had to run the machines, all massive amount [unclear] into millions
CB: Ah really?
GB: Yeah. Some of them you had to have the telescope to see what was going on, on in the machines sort of thing.
CB: Yeah. So what
GB: I was there about, I was there until Plessey packed up and I had to, I got a job on making rolling tubes, steel tubes
CB: Oh yeah? In Northampton or
GB: No, in Towcester
CB: In Towcester.
GB: Yes. And I stopped there until I retired.
CB: What age did you retire?
GB: Sixty-five.
CB: Right. And when did you move to Weston?
GB: It was before I got my job at Plessey’s.
CB: Oh, was it?
GB: Yeah. It’ll be fifty years ago next month.
CB: That you moved here. This house here, next door?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Then in retirement what did you do?
GB: In the garden [laughs].
CB: Cause you’ve got quite a bit of land. Did you do it all by hand or did you have a rotavator or?
GB: I’ve got a rotavator
CB: Right. And what was your specialty in growing?
GB: [unclear] [laughs] no, all sorts.
CB: Did you have a favourite?
GB: Not really.
CB: Plant or fruit?
GB: No, no.
CB: And after a bit, that got a bit too much, so you got somebody else to do it, did you?
GB: No, no, I’m still doing it.
CB: Oh, you’re still doing it?
GB: Yeah.
CB: Fantastic and you’re ninety-five.
GB: I had to get someone this last summer to do it because I couldn’t do anything. I was so bad that they took me round to see different houses, they wanted to rehome me.
CB: Oh, did they?
GB: Yeah, [unclear] always that sort of thing that I pulled through.
CB: Your hands are not up to it any longer.
GB: No.
CB: No.
CB: Right. Sounds like you’ve done it brilliantly well
GB: [unclear] do it, yeah.
CB: Yeah, amazingly active. That’s what kept you going. So, the final question, what, to what do you attribute your long life at ninety-five?
GB: Just luck, that’s all. Cause my wife was a better woman than I was. And she went quicker. Yes.
CB: Yeah. After the children grew up, did she work herself?
GB: Yes, she did a bit of work, yes, she was at, here we go again, blimey
CB: What sort of job did she do?
GB: Office work.
CB: But she wasn’t also at Plessey with you?
GB: No.
CB: She was somewhere else.
GB: Yes, yes.
CB: Ok. And she died in 2000, sixteen years ago.
GB: Yeah.
CB: Well, Gerald, thank you very much indeed. That was most interesting and the different things. What would you say, actually there is another question, what would you say was the most memorable thing in your role in the RAF? Something that stands out.
GB: I suppose, really was the invasion of Algiers, really. See the working to get us cracking sort of thing.
CB: Good, thank you. [file missing] So, what we didn’t do, what we didn’t do, Gerald, was to find out your return journey from Africa, where you set off from and where you landed and what happened to you.
GB: I haven’t a clue, really.
US: You told me, I remember talking to [unclear]
GB: Coming home, oh yes.
CB: Yes, coming home, which route did you take and what happened?
GB: We travelled by boat from Algiers to Naples, then we’ve come from Naples all up Italy through Switzerland to France, France to [unclear] coast and we landed at, blimey, here we go again,
CB: Newhaven.
GB: Newhaven, yes.
CB: And what was that experience like?
GB: A bit rough [laughs]
CB: Was it? In what way, did it stop at the start or did it?
GB: No, yes, roughly didn’t stop at all sort of thing [laughs]
CB: How did they look after you, was a troop train with, it wasn’t just RAF, was it?
GB: Different stages
CB: Right
GB: They had stops at different stages but
CB: Was it the same train all the time or did you switch?
GB: As far as I know because they changed engines, I don’t know.
CB: So how many days did that take?
GB: It was a fortnight.
CB: So, where did you sleep?
GB: On the train, of course. We will be going night and day sort of thing.
CB: And what about eating?
GB: We used to stop to eating, there were different places, they got, you know, they’d organised places to stop
CB: So, what did they do, pull the train off the main line, into a siding, so that you could eat, where they had some kind of military kitchen?
GB: I suppose that’s what it was, I can’t remember really, I suppose [unclear] more than we rather than things that were going on really.
US: I wondered on that journey you were going through Europe that had been bombed and was war torn, I just wonder what you saw and whether you were surprised at what you saw because you’d been where you were all the time.
GB: Not really, no.
US. And the train kept going, it wasn’t the trains were bombed or destroyed.
GB: Well, it was a bit dodgy, going over the river Po, I think it was, in Italy, it was a bit shaky there, that was the only thing that I remember, really.
US: Were you looking out on ruins at the cities and things?
GB: Not really, no, no,
US: What about France, did that look intact?
GB: No, no, I can’t remember anything but
CB: A fortnight’s a long time to have on a train, what did you with yourselves all that time? Apart from sitting there. Did you play cards? Did you?
GB: No, I never have played cards
CB: Just talked or slept.
GB: Or, oh yeah.
US: Do you remember what your feeling about England was when you got back? Did it look different or did it feel different at all or?
GB: Oh, it felt lovely coming back, how green it was after been out in North Africa, yeah.
CB: And being a country boy, you particularly appreciated that
GB: Yeah, yeah
CB: So, when you got back, then did you go, you can’t have gone straight to Leicester East, where did you go before you went to Leicester East?
GB: [unclear]
CB: What I’m saying is did they have a reception centre for the whole train?
GB: I’m sorry I really can’t remember.
CB: We’ll stop again there, thank you. [file missing] so, when you got back to Britain, and you had the opportunity to see family, how did you feel having been away for so long?
GB: I don’t know, I suppose I expected, I saw what I expected, nothing different really.
US: Were you, when you got home, were you excited or were you very tired or?
GB: No, I don’t think so, no.
US: And were your family asking you a lot about what you’d seen? No?
GB: No, they weren’t that interested, really, I suppose they’d had all the others come back and they heard it all sort of thing, cause all me three brothers, all were in the forces, they’d all come back alright,
CB: That was good.
GB: Yeah.
CB: And did you compare notes with them?
GB: One didn’t want to know anything about it, that was the one that joined the navy, he [unclear] he was with, he was on the HMS Howe I think it was [unclear] in the Far East, he didn’t think much of that. The other brother that was in the [unclear], he went missing and mom had a letter saying he was missing, he turned up alright and he’d never, I’d never heard him say a word about the army or anything, he never mentioned it, the other, the oldest brother was [unclear] on the army service corps, he was full of it, anywhere he went, you know, he enjoyed it sort of thing, he was [unclear] on of those
US: Was there a celebration that you got home safely?
GB: No, no, I didn’t stop at home that long, really
US: Were you already thinking about what you wanted to do with the rest of your life?
GB: I know I wasn’t go to stop at home, [unclear], no. Trouble is, I’d heard so many things from different chaps, how they’d got on, what sort of jobs they’d had, I thought, I must have some of that [laughs]
CB: And then after the war, how often did you speak about the war to other people?
GB: Not a lot, I don’t have much to say about it anyway.
US: Do you, when you look back at the whole of your life, is that, that chapter, the war years, is that very memorable, is that quite a big part of your experience? No?
GB: I forget that, yeah.
CB: So what was the
GB: I really think it was a waste really
CB: A waste of your [unclear] life?
US: Was it not an important part of your life?
GB: No.
US: [unclear]
CB: What would you say was the worst experience you had, during your military service?
GB: I don’t think I had any, of worst experiences, I was just, [unclear] to muddle through sort of thing.
CB: I was thinking, when you got to, you moved from Algeria along the coast to Tunisia, then found the Germans were actually coming back,
GB: Yeah.
CB: How did you feel about that, did that seem dangerous or did they not get close enough to you to?
GB: I don’t think, they didn’t get, they wouldn’t let [unclear] to us
CB: Because of what you’d got
GB: Because what we’d got
CB: You’ve got this radar, yeah.
GB: Yeah.
US: I’ve got one last question, is did you make friends in the RAF that you kept afterwards? Did you keep up with people?
GB: Not for long really, just for a little while, we got, you know, [unclear] the other sort of thing but it soon fell through, yeah.
CB: A number of people in their initial training found friends for life. You didn’t do that, but did you get a good friend who started with your initial training and then moved on with you during their [unclear] service?
GB: No, no, I met several that had done, I’d done the training with, you know, various times sort of thing
CB: Yeah
GB: Trouble is you never knew when you were moving so you couldn’t make too many friends.
US: Ok. I just wondered whether there was ever a moment for you, perhaps at the start, where you knew you were going off fighting for king and country and that meant something to you and was important to you?
GB: No, I’m afraid not, no. No, as I say, I never was ambitious.
US: Did you agree that the war needed to be fought to stop Hitler?
GB: Oh, well, yes, yes, yes.
US: And you agreed that you needed to be part of that, you needed to join up to be part of that fight?
GB: I was trained up, [unclear] called up, yeah, no, I wouldn’t have volunteered, I don’t think.
US: And were you with a lot of people who felt the same way that you were there because you had to be, not because you believed in it?
GB: Yeah, I think a lot of people, yeah, I think a lot of people missed doing what they liked to do sort of thing didn’t understand of doing what they had to do
US: When it came in your life at the start of what would otherwise have been the beginning of your working life
GB: Yeah
US: It got in the way
GB: Yeah. Well, there wasn’t really, even before the war, there wasn’t much to look forward to in that, you know, in that of the country, so, I suppose, really, I was glad it brought me out of it, yes.
CB: What it did was take you out of Norfolk, put you into another part of the country
GB: Yes.
CB: And you’ve always been happy in this area presumably
GB: Yes, yeah, yes. Yes, I’ve been lucky really, I’ve had four good boys, I had a good wife, can’t ask for much more really
CB: Well, no, I think [unclear], extremely good. Did your wife and you speak about the war at all?
GB: No, not really, no, no, I don’t suppose we ever sat and had a talk about it, no.
US: Do you have any idea what her war was like?
GB: Well, I don’t think she moved around much, no.
US: Did she make good friends with the people she worked with?
GB: Oh yes, yes, she is much more friendly than what I am, [unclear]
US: And did she keep those friends after the war?
GB: Yes, I suppose she did, yeah, much more than what I did, mostly because they were all round here sort of thing and she was round here.
CB: Right.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Gerald Walter Bell
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
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
2016-12-21
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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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ABellGW161221
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:09:10 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Description
An account of the resource
Gerald Bell worked on a poultry farm before being called up in the RAF, where he served as ground personnel. He remembers his training at RAF Finningley and RAF Balderton. Tells of his posting to North Africa in 1942, where he initially was working on a mobile radar station. After falling sick and spending a month in hospital, he went back to Algeria, where he was in charge of the sergeant’s mess and had to look after a group of Italian prisoners.
Contributor
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Peter Schulze
Spatial Coverage
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Algeria
Great Britain
North Africa
Tunisia
Algeria--Algiers
England--Dorset
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Yorkshire
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1940
1941
1942
1945
ground personnel
prisoner of war
radar
RAF Balderton
RAF Finningley
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/902/11141/PJeziorskiAFK1705.1.jpg
b0afbe684515684bf5971bdd84c46713
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/902/11141/AJeziorskiAFK170705.2.mp3
19b7a4c29196aeb69bb8636724988644
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
Jeziorski, Andrzej
Andrzej Fragiszek Ksawery Jeziorski
A F K Jeziorski
Description
An account of the resource
25 items. An oral history interview with Colonel Andrzej Fragiszek Ksawery Jeziorski (1922 - 2018 P241 Polskie Siły Powietrzne), his log books and photographs. Originally in the Polish army, he arrived in England from France in 1940. He flew operations as a pilot with 301 Squadron and Coastal Command 1942 - 1946.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Andrzej Jeziorski and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-07-05
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. 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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Jeziorski, AFK
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 5th of July 2017 and it’s half past twelve and I am in Chiswick, Grove Park with Andrzej Jeziorski to talk about his time in the RAF and experiences of getting to Britain. So, what are the earliest recollections you have of life?
AJ: Well, I was, as I said, I was born in Warsaw and first few years I, we lived near Gdansk, in Sopot because my father was an officer in the Polish Navy. My father served during the First World War in the Navy but shortly after I was born, he transferred to the Air Force and he reached rank of Colonel eventually. We, initially we stayed in Sopot in Gdansk then we moved to Warsaw and shortly after that my father was sent to Paris for two years to Ecole Superior [unclear] for further technical studies, he was actually diploma engineer and he was sent there for further studies on airline engines and airframes. On return to Poland, we, my father was initially posted to Deblin, which is the Polish Air Force Academy and we stayed there for four years, that was my sort of first contact with the Air Force. We returned to Warsaw in, round about 1930-31 and I commenced schooling in Warsaw, in Poniatowski Gymnasium [laughs] but that’s not very important. And I, and we stayed in, lived in Warsaw until the outbreak of war, in fact I remember in 1939 I returned from the summer holiday on the 28th of August 1939 and I was getting ready to go back to school when in the morning of the 1st of September I was awakened by the gunfire and sirens. I ran into the garden and I saw the formation of German bombers surrounded by the puffs of explosion from the anti-aircraft guns and that was it, that was the beginning of the war. And my father was recalled back to [unclear], he was already retired and worked as engineer in the [unclear] aviation factory in Warsaw but he was recalled back to service and he was posted to South-Eastern Poland with a group of officers to receive the aircraft that was sent from Britain via Constanta, unfortunately the aircraft only reached Constanta harbour and they were never offloaded because of the advance of, very quick advance of the German forces. Aircraft were Fairey Battle, even that all, that useful to Poland because it was a light bomber, really, and we needed fighters but neither France or Britain could provide fighters, they were rather short themselves. Anyhow, we, my mother on the 5th of September, my mother decided that we follow our father to Lviv, to South-eastern Poland and we left Warsaw for Lviv and we stayed in Lviv for several days and on the 17th of September when Russia attacked Poland we travelled across the border to Romania where we re-joined my father in Romania, he was already across the border. We stayed in Romania for about a month I think and then we travelled via Yugoslavia, Italy [unclear] to Paris, to France. Initially I was a little bit too young to join the forces, so I went back to lycée, back to school. It was a Polish Lycée that existed in Paris for many years before the war. Anyway, I started my school again in Paris. In, one [unclear], I completed the first year of study, was actually lycée for last two years before matriculation. When offensive started, German offensive started, my father agreed that I would join the Army and I was, I passed my, all the tests in Paris and the interviews and I was posted to cadet officer’s school near Orange, I think the name was Bollene but I am not sure, don’t quote me that, I only managed to reach Bollene when France collapsed and school was evacuated via Saint-Jean-de-Luz and to Plymouth and from Plymouth up to Scotland to Crawford in Scotland. In Scotland we continued our training very quickly, it was amazing how quickly everything was organised, initially we were issued with infantry armament but shortly after that [unclear] carriers arrived and Valentine tanks and we trained, completed our training by November 1940, we completed our training and I was made the cadet officer, corporal cadet officer [laughs]. The, shortly after I completed my training, the Polish forces decided that, to be an officer, I must get my matriculation, in other words pass my what is the A level exam the Matura [laughs]. So, I was posted back to the same school that I was in France, that school was evacuated as well to England, to Scotland and it was in Dunalastair House near Pitlochry in Perthshire, very beautiful place [laughs]. Anyway, I was sort of released from the, for six months, from the forces to complete my study and pass my matriculation, well, I only had six months, it was difficult, but I managed and I managed to pass all the exams and I went back to the tank corps, it was 16 Tank Brigade number 2 Battalion of tank corp. Round about that time, I decided that I must try to transfer to the Air Force and I started to applying to be transferred to the Air Force, explaining that I have sort of family links with the Air Force [laughs] and I asked them to consider this and transfer me to the Air Force. Eventually, I managed [laughs] and in beginning of 1942 I commenced my training as a pilot. Training initially was four months of ground training in preparation for flying, then, after short leave, initial flying in Hucknall near Nottingham and from there another four months service flying school at Newton, also near Nottingham. I completed my training, I obtained my wings, and also I obtained my commission [laughs], which was organised [laughs] and I was posted to RAF Manby, which was the first Air Armament School, it’s half, about half way between Peterborough and Grimsby, a line between Peterborough and
CB: It’s in Lincolnshire, yes
AJ: RAF Manby
CB: Manby
AJ: First Air Armament School, pre-war station, the station commander was Group Captain Ivens, First World War pilot, rather severe but we [unclear] [laughs] and [unclear], he had certain sympathy towards us and he was a good station [unclear] and we spend many months flying there and I was flying as a staff pilot, flying Blenheims IV and Blenheim I on mainly bombing training. Well, after many months of that, I was suddenly posted to Squires Gate to a general reconnaissance course which meant that I will be posted to Coastal Command because it was mainly navigation training for flying over the sea. It was just over two months course, rather severe but that course helped me a lot in the future because I obtained second class navigation warrant and that helped me in obtaining my licence later on, civvy licence. Eventually, after completion of training in Squires Gate, I was posted to the squadron, which was based in Chivenor and I started flying as a second pilot. Initially, one had to do at least ten, sometimes more flights as a second pilot before being posted to Operational Training Unit to pick up his own crew. Well, I did my ten operations mainly flying over the Atlantic. The flying was consist of patrols, long ones lasted, patrols lasted for over ten hours, we had special additional fuel tanks in bomb bays, apart from depth charges, aircrafts was Wellington XIV, especially designed for operations in Coastal Command, it was equipped with ASV, Aircraft-to-Surface Vessel which was, although it was a primitive radar, it was a very good radar, we could pick up contacts distance over one hundred and twenty miles, that if contact was large enough [laughs], it was, flying was tiring but I found rather interesting it, weather was not in favour of us particularly when we were based up north in Benbecula the weather was our greatest enemy, flying sometimes in very terrible conditions over the Atlantic and several times we had to be diverted to different fields because weather was closing on, closing the fields on the west coast of Scotland so we had to be posted sometimes to Northern Ireland to Limavady. It was interesting and eventually I was posted to Operational Training Unit to Silloth, RAF Silloth that was 6 OTU Coastal Command to pick up my own crew. We completed our training there, we were posted back to squadron and just as we completed initial sort of training with the squadron, war ended and that was the end of my war, but the squadron was posted to Transport Command and I was posted to Crosby-on-Eden Transport Command Conversion Unit, it was a tough three months course for pilots, getting them ready for operation in Transport Command, it was tough course but again that course helped me in obtaining my civvy licences later on. In, on return from, unfortunately I was due to go to India with my crew, getting ready to be posted to India but unfortunately my navigator failed the last of overseas medical, they discovered that he suffering from anginal heart and I lost my navigator and because of that I was posted back to the squadron, 304 Squadron, which in the meantime, was operating as Transport Squadron from Chedburgh, and that was the squadron operated Warwicks, sort of large Wellington [laughs] transport plane, and operating mainly to Athens with [unclear], we operated via east, Pomigliano near Naples and then Athens and back again [laughs]. And I stayed with the squadron until the end of the existence of Polish Air Force and we were all transferred to Polish resettlement call but I decided to continue flying and I was posted to [unclear] Navigation School and I flew Wellingtons, Wellington X, from Royal Air Force Topcliffe in Yorkshire and I was there for about a year and a half until I was asked to relinquish my commission and I went back to civil life, civilian life, but, as I said, I managed to complete two very important courses in RAF and that helped me quite a bit in passing the exams for airline transport pilot licence. And I, in possibly 1948 when I commenced my flying in civil aviation. Initially, my first employment was in, up in Blackpool and I operated Rapid aircrafts, De Havilland Rapide over the Irish Sea from Blackpool to Ronaldsway and to Dublin and Belfast and Glasgow, for about, for a whole year I was operating over the Irish Sea for Lancashire Aircraft Corporation, that was the firm I was employed with, Lancashire Aircraft Corporation. Lancashire Aircraft Corporation later changed name to Skyways and I stayed with the firm and I was, after a year in Blackpool, I was moved to Bovingdon to join the crew of captain Raymond, very good pilot, to operate Haltons, a transport plane, Halton was a civil version of Halifax 8 C and we used to operate freighting services to, well, yes, we used to fly everywhere, to the Far East, to Singapore, to Island of Mauritius [laughs] on the Indian Ocean, to the, all around the Middle East and but in about, after about a year operating with, flying with Captain Raymond we had a rather, in fact very unpleasant incident. We were due to take eight tons of optical instruments, four tons from UK and then four tons from Hamburg and operate to Hong Kong. We took off early in the morning, must have been seven o’clock in the morning, beautiful day, we climbed to our cruising altitude which, as far as I remember, was nine thousand feet, and I just went down to my navigation cabin to start my navigation, I obtained first pinpoint I remember at [unclear], I’ve written it on my logbook, when fire bell rang. I rushed back to the cockpit and I saw the number one engine on fire, it was not only fire but black smoke, we turned back towards Bovingdon but just at that time, just looking at that engine when the whole engine separated, the engine cracked in second row of cylinders, just cracked, and propeller, reduction gear, cowlings and front part of the engine just separated and took fire [unclear], and propeller just sort of twisted right and hit the leading edge of the aircraft, between the engines and cut through the leading edge and through the oil tank of number one, number two engine and a few moments later engineer had to stop number two engine because of lack, he was losing oil. Anyway, we were still at about eight thousand feet and we flew towards Bovingdon, Bovingdon also of course helping us with QDMs etcetera, help passing all the weather information etcetera and weather, as I said, was absolutely perfect, I could see Bovingdon from great distance I could see the runway and captain Raymond decided that we would land crosswind on as long runway accept crosswind was about ten knots and land direct on a long runway and we made a superb approach, or actually captain Raymond did [laughs] and we landed safely in Bovingdon. The aircraft looked terrible. One engine gone, one engine feathered, the aircraft covered with oil and dirty smoke [laughs], remnants looked absolutely terrible but would you believe, the engineer managed to fix it in three days, they replaced the engine, replaced the tank, replaced the leading edge and three days later aircraft operated to Milan. It was almost unbelievable [laughs]. But anyway, great work on British engineers [laughs]. So that was a rather unpleasant beginning of my long service with civil aviation, would you like me to continue?
CB. We’ll stop just for a minute.
AJ: Sorry?
CB: We’ll stop just for a moment. So, we are talking about Skyways and the incident with captain Raymond,
AJ: Yes
CB: But after that you got, what happened to you, you got your own command?
AJ: After that I started flying as a captain, we converted from Haltons to Avro York. I don’t know if you know the aircraft
CB: I know
AJ: [unclear]
CB: The Lancaster
AJ: And we started to operate mainly to the Middle East
CB: Right
AJ: Mainly to a place called Fayid in Canal Zone, that was of course in military zone of Canal Zone and civilian planes were not allowed to land there because of agreement between Egypt and UK, that only military planes would be landing on Canal Zone so we were all given a complementary commission between Malta and Fayid we operated as RAF crews on RAF markings and everything, we were back in uniform for a little while. The operation to the, there was always something happening when we were there, I remember first sort of international problem was the Iran, the, Mr Mosaddegh trying to get Abadan
CB: The oil field
AJ: [unclear] Abadan
CB: Yes
AJ: So we were all put up in uniforms and transferred to Castle Benito in Libya, later Castle Idris, artillery was loaded on our aircraft and we were all ready to occupy Abadan [laughs] but fortunately nothing happened, Shah returned to Iran and don’t know what’s happened to Mr Mosaddegh, but anyway he disappeared. So that was the first sort of international incident that I have seen and the next one of course was Suez, that was during the premiership of Mr Eden when Nasser, President Nasser decided to nationalise Suez Canal and of course there was a war between Israel and Egypt and Israel occupied Sinai peninsula and we were also involved, immediately involved in transferring flying troops not only to Cyprus to reinforce the Polish British base, there but also to other parts where there was a danger to the British [unclear] in Bahrein, Aden we had to fly troops there, also we had to evacuate British personnel from Castle Benito because of the danger in revolt in Tripoli. There was of course a big row between United States on one part and France and UK on the other but anyway everything slowly settled down and we started to operate via Cyprus to the Far East, mainly on trooping contract again. Cyprus was very pleasant place initially after the war as far as I remember, but slowly EOKA started to operate and things started to get really nasty, well, in fact, we lost one aircraft, EOKA managed to plot to put bomb on, in the gallery of one of our aircraft departing from Nicosia to UK with RAF families. The captain on that flight was I remember captain Cole and they were travelling from the hotel in Kyrenia via through the Kyrenia Mountains they had a puncture and the wheel was damaged, anyway they were delayed about forty five, fifty minutes to arrive at the airport, they were of course in a hurry, immediately [unclear] ran to the aircraft to distribute pillows and get cabin ready for the families to join the aircraft and the engineer was on a wing and captain, captain Cole and his first officer were walking towards the aircraft from the control tower, they were about half way, when bomb exploded in the gallery. The aircraft was immediately on fire, but it was a Sunday, was it Sunday? No, it was, only day but lunchtime and everything was quiet on the airfield, just one aircraft getting ready to departure was our aircraft, well, I mean, firm aircraft not mine [laughs], and the fire tender and all the emergency equipment parked near control tower, they didn’t expect anything, it was a very hot day and the crew of fire tenders had sort of undone their buttons and they were sort of sunning themselves and they didn’t notice that bomb exploded, was just [mimics a detonation] was a very small, small bomb and of course the captain, first officer noticed that, there were explosions and they started to run towards control tower to tell, to call the fire and the controller didn’t know, he was looking at them and sort of, he went on the balcony, he said, what? Aircraft on fire. So he ran back, pressed the button alarm but by the time fire tender alarm, the aircraft was gone
CB: Completely
AJ: Lost an aircraft. No one was hurt, the engine, when bomb exploded this engineer was on a wing, he almost fell off the wing but he didn’t [laughs] fortunately, girls were distributing pills in the cabin so they ran out of the cabin, no one was hurt but aircraft was lost. If you visit Nicosia, visit the museum, there was, there is a place, commemorating EOKA activities and there is a photograph of that aircraft, EOKA sort of proud that they managed to destroy one aircraft but they nearly, the aircraft was, the bomb was so timed to explode at the top of climb, had it not been for the puncture of the car bringing the crew from Kyrenia, the aircraft would have been at top of climb and that would have been it, six, over sixty RAF families, women and children were due to fly back to UK, that was one of the things that
CB: Fascinating, yeah
AJ: I still remember. The, after that, we, after that incident we started to operate trooping contracts to Far East, mainly to Singapore. We changed aircraft from Hermes to Lockheed 749s Constellation and of course it was much beautiful aircraft, lovely aircraft to fly and we initially started operating with troops to the Far East, to Singapore but later this changed into the freighting contract for BOAC to the Far East, that’s operating freight from UK to Hong Kong and to Singapore and I was posted for two years to New Delhi to operate the sector between New Delhi and Hong Kong and Singapore. It was interesting posting, India is an interesting place and it was lovely flying, one week of flying, one flight to Singapore, one flight to Hong Kong in a week and then a week off [laughs], rather pleasant and it was, generally speaking, I remember that as a very pleasant, very pleasant stay in India. As [unclear], when I returned from India, the Skyways decided to finish the operation and all the aircraft and crew were transferred to Euravia and Euravia two years later on obtaining Britannia aircraft changed the name to Britannia Airways.
CB: Ah, right
AJ: So, initially we operated 749s on inclusive tours mainly but later we started to operate Britannias, not only on inclusive tours, we had occasional rather interesting charter flights to various parts of the world. One such, interesting but not very pleasant, was evacuation of British, Belgian population from Leopoldville in
CB: In Congo
AJ: Belgian Congo. The unpleasantness of that was that we had to night stop in Leopoldville and to get to town we had to go through several military checkpoints at night and military checkpoints were of course Congolese military and they all drunk and automatic pistols it was not very pleasant to be stopped by troops, whatever they are, when they are drunk and armed with automatic pistols [laughs]. I remember that I had to stop three times in Leopoldville and every time it was rather, if I may say so, frightening experience [laughs] but anyway we managed to transfer some of the Belgian civilians from Leopoldville and by then we were, as I said, we were operating Britannias and shortly after that with this development of inclusive tours and Britannia decided to buy Boeings and I was posted together with other pilots to Seattle to train on Boeing 737-200 series, very interesting two months, a technical course first in Seattle, then simulator flying and then eventual flying on 737. And that was beginning of operation Boeing 737 which lasted for several years and then there was break because company decided to start operating to the West Coast of United States and to do so they managed to obtain two lovely aircraft, was a Boeing 707-320 Intercontinental, that was the most lovely aircraft I ever flew and we were operating the 707s to the West Coast, mainly to San Francisco, to Los Angeles, to Canada, Vancouver, occasionally to Tokyo via Anchorage, polar route to Anchorage, so always very interesting and also I was, for six months I was transferred to British Caledonian because they ran out of, they were short of crew and I was posted to join them for a few months and rather unpleasant sort of posting because I was operating South American routes, operating to Santiago, to Chile. Now, Chile at that time was run by president Allende, communist, he was elected Communist president but the whole country was trying to get rid of him because the country was in chaos there was, shops were closed, there was shortage of food, in the hotels food was rationing, we had to take some food off the aircraft to reinforce our ration in the hotel and as you know eventually military took over. I was the last aircraft to leave before the revolution, so I remember how the aircraft, how the country looked during President Allende regime, and I was the first one to land after, with military already in command and all of a sudden the country changed completely, all shops were open, plenty of food, wine shops open, the lovely Chilean wine in hotel, everything was in perfect, so I know that British public and particularly British press very much in favour of President Allende and they hated the idea of military takeover but to us who operated [unclear] the difference between what it was like during the Allende regime and later was very noticeable and to be quite honest we were on the side of Mrs Thatcher [laughs], side of Mrs Thatcher. After these few months with British Caledonian, I was getting close to my retiring age and eventually I retired at the age of sixty. My last flight with Britannia was on 22nd of December in 1982. And I was immediately offered the position of ops manager with Air Europe in Gatwick. I started to work there and at the same time a friend of mine, Mike Russell, who was training [unclear] Britannia Airways, he informed me that he bought Rapide aircraft, that was an aircraft that [unclear] operated [unclear] and he asked me if I would like to occasionally fly for him out of Duxford, the Imperial War Museum in Duxford with the passengers to show them how the old airliners used to look and fly before, in 1930s and soon after the war and I agreed and every weekend practically I used to go to Duxford to fly the Rapide for him. So, as you can see, I commenced my civil flying on Rapide aircraft and I completed my last flight, civilian flight was also on a Rapide and that’s, that’s the end of the story.
CB: Amazing, yes. Thank you, we’ll stop for a bit.
AJ: We
CB: We are just taking a step back now to when you arrived in the UK, what happened?
AJ: As soon as we arrived in UK, the courses were arranged by the local authorities to teach us or to commence to teach us English and it was normally arranged but sometimes by military, sometimes by local authorities. In RAF of course it was standard procedure that we had to attend lectures in English practically every day, that’s in RAF, in the army it was sometimes arranged by the local authorities, as far as I remember, but somehow, somehow we managed [laughs] in spite of difficulties, it’s not easy to learn the language when one is over twenty, but we managed somehow
CB: Who were the people who did the training, the courses in English for you? What sort of people, were they schoolmasters or what?
AJ: The, in RAF they were mainly lecturers from Oxford and Cambridge [laughs], mainly young lecturers from Oxford and Cambridge and so, I didn’t pick up the accent but [laughs], but anyway they were very good. They were excellent lecturers. And lectures were all in English
CB: But
AJ: And we managed, but somehow we managed
CB: They were part of the RAF education department
AJ: Yes, commission
CB: Yeah
AJ: Commission area and they were teaching us [laughs]
CB: And
AJ: Mainly very young lecturers
CB: They were, yes. And how did they deal with that because you had two requirements, one was the basic understanding of English, wasn’t it? Then the other one would be technical English for flying, so how did that
AJ: That used to go together with lectures, during lectures of course we, we learned the technical language, how these things are called in English and that was fairly easy and also we had sort of general lectures to improve our ability to express ourselves [laughs]
CB: So, how many of you were on this course?
AJ: Sorry?
CB: How many people were being trained with you at the same time?
AJ: [unclear], about twenty, normally about twenty [unclear]
CB: Right. Were they all Polish or were some Hungarian and Czechoslovakian?
AJ: Only Polish
CB: Right
AJ: No, we, in those days there were no Hungarians, [unclear] only Polish. As I said, our relationship with lecturers were very, very good [laughs]
CB: So, off duty, cause you were all the same age so, off duty what did you do?
AJ: [laughs] So we, we managed somehow
CB: But you would go to the pub, would you, with them, off duty, or what would you do?
AJ: Oh yes, yes, always, nearest one [laughs]. My social life was always pleasant, particularly when I was based in Blackpool for a while, I remember, the social life there was very pleasant because Squires Gates was quite close to St Annes and there were very pleasant girls living in St Annes [laughs], it was, rather pleasant
CB: And were there lots of dances?
AJ: Oh yes, yes, we, dancing was a typical past time during the war [laughs]
CB: And cinema?
AJ: And cinema as well
CB: Did the
AJ: We, in, when we were based in Benbecula, we had a special sort of supply of new Hollywood productions, always first of all they used to arrive us to show us the film that appeared in London about a week later [laughs]
CB: [laughs]
AJ: That was just to try, trying to make our unpleasant life in Benbecula just a little bit more pleasant
CB: Yes
AJ: I assume Benbecula is a dreadful place for weather, sometimes the winds were size eighty miles an hour [laughs] and it was difficult to sleep because of the noise
CB: Oh, really?
AJ: And quite often unfortunately the airfield was closed by the weather
CB: Yeah
AJ: [unclear] divert
CB: This is on an island on the west coast of Scotland. What was the accommodation like?
AJ: Mainly Nissen huts
CB: Right
AJ: I think the only brick house on the station was a squash court [laughs], the rest was all Nissen huts [laughs]. But squash court was brick [laughs]
CB: Now you were used to a different type of food and catering in your youth so how did you adapt to the British diet?
AJ: Oh, there was no problem. Polish diet here, if Polish families was a little bit close to British because food was rather scarce and was difficult to arrange Polish menu [laughs]
CB: Yeah
AJ: Which was rather rich and
CB: Yeah. Now, this business of learning English, so you are learning English for a social conversation but when you came to learn RT, radio telephony, then was it more difficult to deal with English that way?
AJ: No. I think, no, we had no difficulties on the radio, we used standard procedure and standard language
CB: Yes
AJ: Limiting the conversation to absolute minimum, only necessary information absolutely necessary, we were not allowed to run long conversation, before operation of course there was a general arty silence, complete silence before operational flight, we were not allowed to use radio for to get permission for take-off, was all visual
CB: All done with [unclear]
AJ: All visual
CB: Yeah
AJ: Yeah, so not to, you’re doing everything possible to, not to tell the Germans where we were or what we were doing
CB: Yes. Thinking of how the process of training, so you did your initial training on what aeroplane?
AJ: On Tiger Moths
CB: Right. And after the Tiger Moth, what did you?
AJ: Oxford
CB. Onto the Oxford
AJ: Oxford
CB: For your twin engine flying.
AJ: Yes
CB: Then what?
AJ: Oxford and then I, when I was posted to First Air Armament School, it was Blenheim I and IV
CB: Right
AJ: Again we converted, on arrival there we had to pass conversion course, which was run by local training, training officer
CB: Now you said we, does that mean you were all Poles or was there a mixture of people on all these courses? Were you all Polish people on the training, or was there a mixture of nationalities?
AJ: No, mainly all Polish and sometimes some Czechs. But Czechs from different squadrons, we had our Polish squadrons, [unclear] few Czechs served with Polish Air Force. Among them was the highest scoring pilot in the Battle of Britain. He was, his, he was Polish by nationality but he was born Czech
CB: Ah
AJ: So his nationality was actually Czechoslovakian,
CB: Yeah
AJ: But he was Polish
CB: Polish born
AJ: Citizen
CB: Ah, right
AJ: It was flight sergeant Frantisek, he was the highest scoring pilot in the Battle of Britain but we never say he was Polish, he was Czech [laughs]. Unfortunately, he was killed during the battle
CB: So after you were on Blenheims, what did you move to next?
AJ: To Wellingtons
CB: Right
AJ: So, in the RAF, I flew Tiger Moths, Oxfords, Ansons, Blenheim I and IV, Wellington X and XIV, Warwicks and DC-3s. The DC-3 was mainly in Transport Command conversion unit
CB: Right
AJ: That was all. We were due to fly DC-3s in India but
CB: Ah, so you went to conversion unit
AJ: Didn’t happen [laughs]
CB: Now, you were all being trained together, in Bomber Command at the OTU, the various specialities were pilot, navigator and so on, were put in a room and they then made a self-selection of a crew, how was your crew put together as Polish people?
AJ: Mainly by sort of knowing each other and for first few months were lectures so it was easy to know the, to become aware of that particular, he must be a good navigator [laughs], so I used to ask him, would you join my crew [laughs]? As exactly my navigator was a lawyer from Krakow University [laughs] and I thought, oh, he’s a lawyer, he must be good navigator [laughs] and he was, he was, unfortunately he was not very healthy
CB: And the crew of the Wellington with six in Bomber Command, in Coastal Command what was the crew numbers? How many people in the crew in Coastal Command?
AJ: In the crew? Six
CB: Right. So, who ran the ASVE? Who ran the ASV Set?
AJ: Sorry, I didn’t
CB: Yeah, you had the airborne radar, the ASVE
AJ: Yes
CB: Who’s job was it to run that?
AJ: Who, radar?
CB: Yeah
AJ: Well, all three radio navigators were trained gunners, radio officers, and radar operators and during the operational flight, they changed every two hours
CB: Right
AJ: They changed rotation, one, two hours in the rear turret, two hours at the radar and two hours at radio station,
CB: And you said that when you went on ops, then they were long and you had extra tanks, what was the nature of the sortie? Would you drive, fly to a long, the farthest point and then do a square search or what did you do?
AJ: We managed to go to the patrol area and then we patrol, mainly box patrol in a certain area, sort of and there was one aircraft operating this sector, the next aircraft, several aircraft was sort of blocking say Western approaches
CB: Right. And what height would you be flying?
AJ: Fifteen hundred feet
CB: Right
AJ: We were flying at fifteen hundred feet mainly
CB: So, how often did you use your armament when you were on ops?
AJ: Well, [unclear] we didn’t have, we didn’t attack submarine [unclear] but what you’re trying to do is to try to keep submarines submerged and several times we picked up a good contact but as soon as we started flying towards it the contact disappeared because they could see us on their radar or could hear us
CB: Cause they had a radar detector didn’t they?
AJ: And they of course submerged very quickly and changed course. So it was very difficult to. In 1943 the Germans decided to not to dive but to accept and fight and they armed the submarines, it was a very heavy armament and it was extremely dangerous to attack submarine because of heavy anti-aircraft armament on the submarine and the attack was normally from between fifty and one hundred feet, we had electrical altimeter
CB: Ah, right
AJ: To get down to a very low altitude [unclear] and we had to illuminate the target with Leigh light, the aircraft was equipped with a very heavy reflector which used to be lowered hydraulically and the navigator, just about a mile from the target used to illuminate and he could control the reflector to pick up the target first standing above him were the [unclear] machine guns and of course as soon as he saw the target he used to open up to the front guns, a very high rate of fire, Browning machine guns, they were like automatic pistols, mainly anti-personnel guns
CB: Yeah
AJ: And very high rate of fire, very close to one thousand five hundred rounds a minute so and that was type, the radar operator was to sort of directing the aircraft towards the target until it was about a mile from the target, about a mile from the target the navigator used to illuminate the target
CB: Where was the Leigh light mounted in the aircraft?
AJ: Sorry?
CB: Whereabouts in the aircraft was the Leigh light?
AJ: It was in the middle of the fuselage
CB: Pardon?
AJ: Middle of the fuselage, underneath
CB: Ah, middle of, right
AJ: Used to be
CB: Ahead of the bomb bay, was it?
AJ: And that’s why ditching on Wellington XIV was never successful because the fuselage used to break just where the Leigh light was so there was never, not one Wellington XIV ditched successfully
CB: Really? Yes
AJ: Cause was the weak point
CB: Yeah
AJ: In the fuselage, so
CB: Now
AJ: General, general sort of method of attack which we trained of course all the time was to, as soon as the target was picked up by radar, to obey the instructions from radar operator to direct the aircraft towards the target [unclear] come down to about a hundred feet, sometimes even lower, and about a mile from the target illuminate the target [unclear] and attack six depth charges, it was a stick of six depth charges so if that was the target [unclear] six [unclear]
CB: Was the method of attack
AJ: That was the method of attack
CB: To the side of the submarine or head on?
AJ: No, we used to drop the depth charges trying to in front of it so that the submarine ran into them but it, as I said, it was not easy, you can imagine at night submarine firing back at you [laughs] and to aim six depth charges to drop in front of the submarine in the direction the submarine was heading, it’s, it required quite a lot of courage to
CB: I can imagine. What about the other members of the squadron? How many of those attacked submarines?
AJ: I can’t tell you exactly but aircraft, we had some success but not during the time when I was in the squadron because then German submarines were equipped with [unclear] and they could stay submerged for a very long time, in fact the only time, the only possibility of finding the submarine was to observe the sea and to see the smoke coming, providing wind was not too strong, it was possible to see the smoke just like smoke of the train going through the depression
CB: From the diesel engine
AJ: You could see the, you could see the puffs of smoke coming out from sea [unclear] that was the submarine and
CB: Because
AJ: It was to attack, but of course submarine dived before that [laughs] because they were on the periscope all the time and they could see the aircraft approaching so they would crash land, crash dive
CB: Yeah. So the period that you were with the squadron on these anti-submarine duties was quite short. Did you feel disappointed that you hadn’t had enough time?
AJ: Yes
CB: How did you feel?
AJ: Sorry?
CB: How did you feel?
AJ: I felt that the war avoided me [laughs]
CB: Yeah
AJ: That was my feeling. I wanted, you know, I thought that I’d do at least one tour in Coastal Command and then I would, that I would go back to Bomber Command, but it never happened,
CB: No
AJ: War ended
CB: So, as a Pole in England, in Britain, did you feel a particular sense of urgency to do something about Germans?
AJ: About?
CB: The Germans and submarines. Did you feel you really wanted to make a mark?
AJ: Sorry, I didn’t quite
CB: Well, as a Pole, in view of what the Germans did to Poland, did you feel, putting it a different way, that you really wanted to pay them back?
AJ: Well, that was a general thing that you wanted to, as you know the, towards the end of the war we realised that we in Poland is the only country had lost the war
CB: Because of Yalta
AJ: We knew that sooner or later Germans will be supported by United States not only because of the power of Russia but because of industrial power that it represented and what can we say, it was few rather unpleasant years, we were absolutely certain that there will be friction between the West and East but we also knew that it will not be a major war because of the danger of atomic power but you knew that there will be some small wars like Korea and others. Nowadays we are on reasonably good terms with the Germans but memories last for a long time
CB: Yes. And after the war, what was the general feeling of Polish people, that war had finished and how did the Polish people feel about it?
AJ: Well, we were all, as you know, we were all very disappointed, everyone was trying to organise himselves to get back to normal life, in spite of the fact that it will be away from Poland. We were all sort of rather disappointed but somehow we sticked together, we managed to stick together in our organisation and we knew that sooner or later something will happen but unfortunately it lasted for over fifty years
CB: Yes. But in the time after the war, in the fifties, there was the Hungarian and the Czechoslovak uprising, so how did the Polish people react to those?
AJ: You know, there was a very strong reaction in Poland although the Polish government was, then Polish government, Communist government was very much with the Russian policy, the general opinion of Poland, of Polish population was very much pro Czechoslovakia, later on pro Hungary and eventually problems, troubles started in Poland, we started [laughs], Solidarity, this, we knew that sooner or later something will happen, but we were not certain how long it would take
CB: Just finally going back to when you came to Britain
AJ: Mh?
CB: When you first came to Britain, what was the reaction of the population?
AJ: Initially, it was very friendly, very friendly indeed, particularly that was time of Battle of Britain and was well known fact that Polish fighters were fighting together with RAF, Polish Navy was still in action, together with Royal navy, Polish forces defended, together with Australians defended Tobruk, they distinguished themselves in Norway before that, in Narvik [laughs], so there as, Poland was popular initially, but towards the end of the war, change, everything changed completely
CB: Did it?
AJ: Russia was the great ally and we, we were the troublemakers, we tried to create trouble between the West and Russia, that was the general opinion
CB: Was it? Really?
AJ: But of course change, things have changed very slowly, changed again because Russia begin to show their power and there was of course Berlin airlift and all those difficulties created by Russia and we all knew about it, this is part of the Russian policy to establish Communist regime everywhere
CB: Right, we’ll stop there a mo. Now, after the war, then a lot of squadrons and the Air Forces created associations, so, the RAF had squadron associations and there was a Polish Air Force association
AJ: Yes, Polish association was established very soon after the war, initially as soon as war over it started to become but the year it was established actually in 1945, 1945 and initially it was created by Polish Air Force senior officers, junior officers and other ranks were sort of more interested in getting themselves organised initially but later on everyone sort of joined in and the Polish Air Force Association was one of the biggest organisations, Polish organisations in UK. We all, the Polish Air Force Association was helped by the Royal Air Force association and we established a very good contact with the RAF, Royal Air Force Association, several clubs were formed very quickly, clubs one in London and one in Blackpool, one in Nottingham, Derby and so on, and generally speaking it was
CB: Just a couple of minutes
AJ: Generally speaking, it was very sort of organisation, which was very active, very active socially
CB: Yes
AJ: And of course, initially was also helping the former members of Polish Air Force to establish themselves here or in other countries, United States, Canada, Argentina even [laughs]
CB: Yeah
AJ: So
CB: And then the memorial, so a memorial was established, built at Northolt
AJ: Yes, the Polish Air Force memorial was built rather early, soon after the war. It was unveiled by Lord Tedder and later on it was enlarged and now it just exists [unclear] we have ceremony there every year
CB: Yeah
AJ: Was a tradition to have one, wreath laying ceremony in September every year. And another memorial was built in Warsaw, giving the, with names of all the aircrew that had lost their lives during the war. If you are in Warsaw, you go and see that memorial, it is one of the nicest memorials in Warsaw.
CB: Now, after the war you were busy flying airliners so, to what extent did you get involved with the Polish Air Force association?
AJ: Well, initially when I was flying, it was rather difficult because I was busy all the time but towards the end, when I started working in Gatwick as ops manager, I started to work for the Polish Air Force association, initially as chairman of London branch, and then as honorary secretary, vice chairman [laughs], gradually I went up in a position in Polish Air Force Association, in a
CB: And you became the chairman
AJ: Sorry?
CB: And you became the chairman
AJ: Well, chairman of Polish Air Force Association charitable trust
CB: Right
AJ: That was at the end of existence of Polish Air Force Association. Polish Air Force Association organised trust from all the remaining [unclear] the organiser trust
CB: Yeah
AJ: Which was very active for several years and
CB: And that then lead to the Polish Airmen’s Association
AJ: [unclear] what [unclear] is now Polish Airmen’s Association
CB: Yeah
AJ: Mainly sort of consisting of families, families [laughs]
CB: Yeah
AJ; But there are still a few of us
CB: You’re active in that still, aren’t you?
AJ: Few of us remaining [laughs]
CB: Thank you
AJ: 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 Andrzej Jeziorski
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
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
2017-07-05
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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AJeziorskiAFK170705
Conforms To
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Pending review
Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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01:19:38 audio recording
Language
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eng
pol
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Royal Air Force. Coastal Command
Polskie Siły Powietrzne
Spatial Coverage
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France
Great Britain
Poland
Singapore
England--Lincolnshire
France--Paris
Poland--Warsaw
Temporal Coverage
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1939-08-28
1939-09-01
1940
1942
1943
1945
Description
An account of the resource
Andrzej Jeziorski was born in Poland and, when war broke out, fled to Britain, where he flew as a pilot with 304 Squadron. Remembers the 1st of September 1939. Talks about his father, a Navy officer who served in the First World War. Mentions his first contact with the Air Force when he and his family moved to Deblin. Tells of his escape from Poland to France, his further education there and his evacuation to Britain. Initially, he was posted to Scotland and trained to join the 16th Tank Brigade. He then decided to transfer to the Air Force and in 1942 started training as a pilot. Was posted to 304 Squadron on various stations. Tells of his career in civilian aviation after the war: operating flights for Skyways and Britannia all over the world, until his retirement in 1982. Talks about his life in Britain during the war and mentions various episodes: being taught English by university lecturers and socialising with them. Tells of being assigned with going on patrols, locating and attacking enemy submarines. Expresses his views on Poland’s situation after the war. Talks about the Polish Air Force Association in Britain, his involvement in it and the memorials to Polish aircrews.
301 Squadron
304 Squadron
aircrew
Blenheim
memorial
pilot
radar
RAF Chivenor
RAF Manby
submarine
Wellington
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1023/11394/AMatherR171229.1.mp3
ed4181335c0bd7c49d58457351627ba9
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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Mather, Ronald
R Mather
Description
An account of the resource
Six items. An oral history interview with Warrant Officer Ron Mather (1817930 Royal Air Force), and five photographs. He flew operations as a wireless operator with 49 Squadron.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Ron Mather and Darren Middleton and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-12-29
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Mather, R
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 29th of December 2017 and we’re in Nottingham talking to Ron Mather who was a signaller about his life and times. So, Ron what’s the earliest recollections you have of your life?
RM: I went to Radford Boulevard Junior School and we had quite a few, it was a good school and it was a very good educational school. And I went from there to Forster Street and then from Forster Street my mother and father moved to Aspley. And I went from there to William Crane School. I passed my eleven plus and I could have gone to Secondary School but my mother said no. From there I went to [pause] when I left school at fourteen I went to a pawnbroker and I was a couple of years as a pawnbroker’s assistant and I used to write about a thousand pledges on a Monday with people coming in from the Windmill Road which was a poor selection, section of Nottingham and it ruined my handwriting I’ve no doubt [laughs] And then from there my mother got me a job at the butcher’s shop opposite where we lived in Aspley and I stayed there as a butcher until I volunteered for the RAF.
CB: What did your father do as a job?
RM: He was a baker.
CB: So why —
RM: A good baker.
CB: Why —
RM: One of the best in Nottingham.
CB: Right. So why didn’t you go into his business?
RM: Because my mother got me a job. In them days your mother, your mother told you what you was doing. And it was rather convenient because I was here and the butcher’s shop was just across the road. So as I say I stayed there until I volunteered for the RAF.
CB: So, what prompted you to volunteer for the RAF?
RM: I volunteered for the RAF because my brother volunteered for the RAF and he became a wireless operator air gunner. And unfortunately, he was killed after, on his second op.
CB: So what was he like?
RM: Took some, he was brilliant. He was very very very clever. When he left school he went to work at Pickford’s and they made him the manager after he’d only been there for four months.
CB: And he was —
RM: So that was the sort of thing I had to, I’m not saying that I am not intelligent because I am reasonably intelligent but nothing like he was. And then of course I joined the RAF at eighteen in April the 5th 1943.
CB: Ok. And where was that?
RM: I joined at St Johns Wood in London.
CB: And what happened when you were there? What did you do?
RM: Well, it was just a reception area and from there I went to ITW for training. Military training and discipline. Learning the discipline and then from there I went to Radio School in Yatesbury in Wiltshire.
CB: So what sort of things did you do in your initial training?
RM: Morse Code. Fortunately, I was very good at Morse Code and I could do up to thirty words a minute. So I thought that when I was, when I left the RAF I was going to take that as a job but I didn’t. I went as a baker.
CB: Ok.
RM: So I got to work with my father [laughs]
CB: Yeah.
RM: When I left the RAF.
CB: Secure job.
RM: Yeah. I went to, he was canteen manager at Chilwell COD and he worked the canteen. He was in charge of the canteen. So I became the baker.
CB: Right.
RM: And I went to radio, to the school, the University at Nottingham and got my City and Guilds in Food Technology.
CB: Right.
RM: And became a manager.
CB: Right.
RM: Later on.
CB: So back to your early days in the RAF.
RM: Yeah.
CB: You did your initial training at ITW.
RM: Yes. And then —
CB: And you did Morse Code there. What other things would you have to do?
RM: Well, it was more or less discipline than anything and keep getting you fit. It’s teaching you discipline and fitness which I was pretty, well because I played football [laughs] so I was pretty fit anyway and of course I wanted to be as good as my brother which I suppose I succeeded in the end. Better than him because I managed to survive.
CB: What influence do you think your brother had on you?
RM: Pardon?
CB: What influence did your brother have on you?
RM: He had a hell of an influence. I wanted to be him. He was very, as I said he was very clever so I wanted to be clever. I wasn’t. I was nowhere near as clever as him but I wanted to be like him. Yeah. So of course, when he got killed, when he went in the RAF I volunteered and I was lucky enough to get in the RAF because they wanted them at that time, aircrew at that time because that’s when they really started to build up the Bomber Command.
CB: So what, when was he killed on his second op? When was that?
RM: Just a minute.
[pause]
CB: I’ll just pause for a mo.
[recording paused]
RM: Same as —
CB: I think I think an interesting point if I may just go back to it is this. You said that both your brother and you —
RM: Yeah.
CB: Passed the eleven plus.
RM: Yeah.
CB: But your mother didn’t want you to go on to further —
RM: No. No. We didn’t go to either.
CB: The next level of education. Why was that?
RM: Because she wanted the money. She was a, she was like that I’m afraid. Very much so.
CB: So how did your brother and you feel about not going on to the next level of education?
RM: Not very happy actually. Especially him. But then again he went to Pickford’s and within a month —
CB: This is the removals people.
RM: Yeah, it’s a removals firm. They realised how clever he was and they made him a manager at about he must have been only about sixteen.
CB: Yeah. Right.
RM: I wasn’t as lucky [laughs] I was a butcher. But nevertheless I went to and got City and Guilds in Food Technology.
CB: Later on.
RM: And art as well.
CB: Yeah. So just exploring the family situation here your father was a baker.
RM: Correct.
CB: He had his own business from baking?
RM: No. No.
CB: He worked for other people.
RM: He worked, he went as in charge of the bakery at the COD Chilwell.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then when I came out the RAF the firm wanted to send me out of Nottingham as a baker.
CB: Yes.
RM: So my dad turned around to me and he said, ‘You come and work for me. With me in Chilwell COD.’ So I went and I worked seven and half years in Chilwell COD and while I was there as I say I went to Technical College and Art College and got my degrees.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then I became manager of the firms.
CB: And what did COD stand for? Ordnance depot was it?
RM: Yes. Ordnance. Civilian Ordnance Depot.
CB: Ordnance Depot. Right. So the family house. What was that? Was it detached?
RM: Similar to this.
CB: In a terrace or —
RM: No. Similar to this.
CB: Similar to this. Semi-detached.
RM: Yes. It was, it’s just up the road. Not far up the road.
CB: Right.
RM: It was a similar house to that.
CB: To the ones over there.
RM: You see that.
CB: With tile hung on the walls.
RM: Yeah. It’s like this, yeah.
CB: What, what sort of facilities did you have in the house?
RM: Everything.
CB: Except?
RM: Everything.
CB: Was the toilet in the house or in the garden?
RM: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
CB: It was.
RM: We had everything there.
CB: So you had everything there.
RM: Don’t forget now we’re talking about 1946.
CB: I’m talking about, I’m talking about when you were at school.
RM: When I was at school we lived in a terrace house and the toilet was outside. And it was the gasman cometh. And as I said we had the radio on the floor and the family that lived just near the bottom of us was Sillitoe. The writer. And as I say I went to Radford Boulevard. Then I went to [unclear] Street then from there I went up to this one.
CB: To the one at the top of the road.
RM: Right.
CB: You said the radio was on the floor.
RM: In the basin.
CB: Yes. So why was that?
RM: Because it was 1924.
CB: Right.
RM: There weren’t such a thing as radios then. This [laughs] this was a radio with a —
CB: Sort of —
RM: What do you call it? A battery.
CB: A crystal set.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: And the effect of putting it in a steel basin was to amplify the sound.
RM: Yeah. And we sat around it.
CB: Right.
RM: That was the way it went.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Not for long of course because then of course the old-fashioned wireless came out.
CB: Ok. So that’s really useful for background. Thank you very much. We’ve talked about you joining the RAF. You went to the Radio School at Yatesbury.
RM: Yeah.
CB: What did you, what was the training at Yatesbury? What did it comprise?
RM: Well, they taught us the Morse Code. Taught us to operate that thing.
CB: Which is a radio.
RM: The 1155.
CB: Radio. Yes.
RM: And the 1154 which was a transmitter. And discipline of course to a certain extent. Not a lot. It was, it was quite good as well. I really enjoyed Radio School.
CB: What were the other people like who were with you?
RM: Very good. They were all, we were all mates. Of course, when I passed out at Radio School I became a sergeant then.
CB: While you were training you were what rank?
RM: Cadet. I just had that. Same as that photograph of Reg.
CB: Yes.
RM: With a white —
CB: So a forage cap with a white flash.
RM: I had a forage cap with a white thing in it that showed that I was trainee aircrew.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Yeah. It was marvellous when I went to the Palais de Dance. I could get some women I’ll tell you. Being a short ass it didn’t help matters but being aircrew in Nottingham it was something because they had Syerston and we had an awful lot of airmen come in to Nottingham in the 1940s.
CB: So what, the code for short ass —
RM: Yeah.
CB: Means vertically challenged.
RM: [laughs] Yeah. Yeah.
CB: In other words you were shorter than some people.
RM: Five foot one I was when I went into the RAF.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Five foot one. And I’ve got a grandson that’s six foot five. How does that happen?
CB: Obviously been fed well in his early years. So, at the Radio School then what sort of opportunities were they telling you you would have next? So you were being trained as aircrew.
RM: We were being trained by Morse Code and how to signal, how to take signals, how to transmit, how to receive and how to look after, to a certain extent the 1155 and the 1154.
CB: We’ve got one of those in the room with us. That’s why we raised it.
RM: I know you have. I saw it. It’s in the [toilet]. Yeah.
CB: Just for the tape. This is the early days of radar so to what extent did you touch on that? H2S I’m thinking of particularly.
RM: We, I’m just trying to think when we started Monica. That didn’t come ‘til later.
CB: So Monica is a tail warning radar receiver.
RM: Yeah. That’s right. And that was at OTU.
CB: Right.
RM: So we didn’t get that at Yatesbury because it wasn’t even invented.
CB: No. So you come to the end of the course at Yatesbury which was how long roughly?
RM: Well [pause] I joined in April the 5th. I went to what’s the name and then I went there so it must be about six months I would say.
CB: Yeah. And what was the passing out parade like?
RM: We didn’t have one. It was Christmas. We never had a passing out parade. But we did get the brevet.
CB: So who put the brevet on?
RM: And now we were the first ones to have the S brevet because normally all they had was the sparks on here and an AG badge.
CB: Yes.
RM: But I didn’t take firing a —
CB: You didn’t do gunnery at all.
RM: I didn’t do gunnery at all.
CB: No.
RM: Because they’d started this radar system.
CB: And it —
RM: And they knew we was going to come in to that and have to operate the radar system [unclear]
CB: They expanded the syllabus.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: They expanded the syllabus to take on these other items.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right. Ok. So how did, how did your course end in terms of putting the brevet on to your tunic? Was there any formalised putting that on or —
RM: No.
CB: You sewed it on yourself.
RM: I came in. We came back from a meal and it was underneath. You know how you used to have your blankets?
CB: Yeah.
RM: All set out.
CB: Yeah. Yeah.
RM: Then your hat. My brevet was underneath my hat. That’s how I got it.
CB: Right.
RM: Because of course it was Boxing, it was Christmas Day.
CB: Just coming up. Yeah.
RM: Yeah. So they were more bothered about Christmas than that.
CB: Of course. What about your sergeant’s stripes? Were they also there?
RM: That was there. They were with it.
CB: In the pile as well.
RM: That’s it. That’s how I got. I didn’t get presented.
CB: Right.
RM: We didn’t have a passing out parade.
CB: No.
RM: No.
CB: And at what stage did you know your posting? Did they tell you there or did they get it later?
RM: No. No. They said I could go on four weeks leave [pause] on a fortnights leave, I beg your pardon and we would be notified as to where I was going.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then we got notification that I was going to Bishops Court in Northern Ireland and that I had to make my way up to Lossiemouth in Scotland. And you can imagine a eighteen and a half year old man going up there on his own. Somewhere he’d never even been and my, let’s put it this way. My travels were limited. I went to Skegness perhaps once or twice. So it was quite, and then to go across to Ireland and then getting in Ireland and then going to Bishops Court where I hadn’t even got a clue where it was. But it, was an education.
CB: What did you mean about Lossiemouth because that’s in Scotland so how did you come to go there?
RM: Well, we had to. I had to go up to Lossiemouth in Scotland.
CB: First.
RM: Go over to Belfast on the ferry. And then from the ferry at Belfast go to Bishops Court.
CB: Ok. I think, ok, we need to clarify the geography on that. Yeah. Right. Ok. So Bishops Court. What were you doing there? It’s an OTU.
RM: That’s when we started flying.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And in Proctors I think.
CB: Oh right. How did you feel?
RM: Eh?
CB: How did you feel about that?
RM: Marvellous. I did. Thought it was marvellous. But then there’s only one trouble is that at that time there was trouble with the, the Irish factions.
CB: Yeah. The IRA.
RM: The IRA.
CB: Yeah.
RM: So there was places we couldn’t go in.
CB: Right.
RM: Because if you went in there we’d get beat up.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Because there was, and that’s how it was at that time.
CB: So what was the nearest big town to Bishops Court?
RM: Oh, God. What was it?
CB: Was it up by Londonderry?
RM: Oh dear. I don’t, I can’t remember the name.
CB: Ok.
RM: But we used to go in the pub and I had, my mate was six foot two so he’d go in first. And the bar was long like that. RAF, ordinary Irish and IRA. This is true. And before the night was finished one lot was fighting the other. Sometimes it was the IRA and the RAF or sometimes it was the IRA and their own people but that’s how it was in them days believe it or not.
CB: And you kept going back because you liked the action.
RM: Oh of course. He used to carry me on his shoulders [laughs] He was a Scotsman. MacMillan his name was.
CB: Macmillan. Yeah.
RM: As I say he was about six foot two he was, and I was five foot one don’t forget [laughs] And then we went from there to, when I was at Bishops Court we was flying over the Atlantic. No. Over the Irish Sea. We were in a Proctor which is a smaller, a real small —
CB: A single engine. Yeah. Gipsy engine.
RM: And all of a sudden we had anti-aircraft fire all around us and we looked down and there was the Queen Mary and we was getting too near it so they fired at us. Yeah. When you come to think of it it’s, you can understand why because I mean they didn’t have anything did they?
CB: No.
RM: They had a couple of guns on one end of it.
CB: Yeah. Well, it relied on speed.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And that’s if you got too near. They didn’t aim at you.
CB: Right.
RM: But they did fire at, fire and let you know you’re too close.
CB: The shells were bursting.
RM: But of course, there would be thousand of troops in that. In the Queen Mary.
CB: Right. So Bishops Court was flying these small Proctors.
RM: Smaller aircraft. Yeah.
CB: And from there —?
RM: We went to Husbands Bosworth.
CB: Yeah.
RM: In Warwickshire. And there we went in to the Blenheims.
CB: Right.
RM: No. Anson.
CB: Right.
RM: Ansons. Not Blenheims. Ansons. Two. Two engines.
CB: Small. Yeah.
RM: From there we learned to send signals.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And receive signals.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Then you had to pass out there. I managed to pass out first there.
CB: Right. So did they have, did you go to a bigger aircraft there or did you have to move somewhere else?
RM: As I say went to a two engine Anson.
CB: No. No. From the Anson.
RM: From the Anson we went to —
CB: Did you go to Wellingtons there or did you go to somewhere else?
RM: No. We went to Wellingtons.
CB: Yes. Was it on that?
RM: Husbands Bosworth.
CB: It was at the same place.
RM: No. It was a subsidiary of Husbands Bosworth.
CB: Right.
RM: You know. There was two.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then we went on to Wellingtons where we got straight into the 1154 and the 1155.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then from the Wellingtons we went to Newark to go on to the Stirling.
CB: To Winthorpe.
RM: And then from Stirlings we went to Number 5 Radio School at Syerston to go from Stirlings to the Lancaster.
CB: Yes. On the Lancaster Finishing School.
RM: It was —
CB: How did you feel about that?
RM: Fantastic. It was marvellous. It was. It was. I went, I can always remember the first time when they had these air shows. The starting of the air shows. So I went. I was probably fifty at the time and I thought God how big that is and yet I hadn’t thought it was big when I was flying in it.
CB: Yeah. Years later you’re talking about.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: So from the Lancaster Finishing School at Syerston.
RM: We went to a place. To Scampton —
CB: Right.
RM: For a fortnight while we was designated our squadrons.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then it was either 44 Squadron which was a Rhodesian squadron or 49 Squadron which was the one I went to at a place called, was it Snitterfield?
CB: Right.
RM: I can’t remember. Then we went there and within two days we was on ops.
CB: So going back to Winthorpe, sorry to Husbands Bosworth you’re then crewing up. So you’ve done your specialist training in the smaller planes.
RM: Oh yes.
CB: The Anson.
RM: I beg your pardon. At Husbands Bosworth we crewed up.
CB: Right.
RM: Right.
CB: So how did that work?
RM: This fella, I was operating a set, you know and this fella walks in. He said, ‘Would you like to belong to my crew?’ So I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Righto. Ok.’ And that’s how, that’s how it happened. And then later on of course we met the whole crew.
CB: So he was the pilot was he? The captain.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Who came in.
RM: Yes. He was the pilot. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Willie. Willie.
CB: Yeah. Right. So he, Willie Williams, yeah he had —
RM: Jay. Jay. His name. His name must have been John I think but we called him Willie. Everybody called him Willie. So —
CB: And he was a flight lieutenant at that time.
RM: He was. Yeah.
CB: So he’d already been around a bit.
RM: No. I think —
CB: Was he?
RM: No. He was, he was a flying officer.
CB: Right.
RM: He got his flight lieutenant when we was actually on the squadron at Fiskerton.
CB: Right. Ok. At Fiskerton.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Right.
RM: That’s where we started our ops. Fiskerton.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And from Fiskerton we went to Fulbeck. And then from Fulbeck we went to Syerston and I finished my tour at Syerston.
CB: Ok. So what did you do after your tour ended?
RM: They said, right, I went to a place near Stratford upon Avon as the station warrant officer which was the absolute it was, it was nothing because it’s only a little one. It was all German prisoners of war and things like that. So that’s what I was looking after. And I stayed there until I left.
CB: When? When were you demobbed?
RM: December. Everything [laughs] everything finished up in December.
CB: Fantastic.
RM: Yeah.
CB: ‘45 or ’46?
RM: December ’45. And I got three months leave.
CB: But it was your demob.
RM: That was my demob. I did sign on. I thought about signing on actually because they said that we’d be able to continue flying. But they’d got too many so I didn’t get it.
CB: Oh. You applied but they didn’t select you.
RM: Oh yeah. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: I didn’t get it because there was too many lordships around and there was, that was definitely a fact. That if you were an ordinary person the officers got preference.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Naturally. Because that was the RAF in the old days wasn’t it? And I suppose it still is now. I don’t know.
CB: So you were the SWO at the prisoner of war camp. Just to explain that.
RM: Yeah.
CB: SWO is the Station Warrant Officer.
RM: Station warrant officer. Yeah.
CB: At what point had you been appointed to warrant officer?
RM: Every year I got higher.
CB: Yeah. It was a staged process.
RM: It was a staged process. I went from sergeant. And then sergeant to flight sergeant. And then from flight sergeant to warrant officer.
CB: Right.
RM: And then while I was at [pause] SWO.
CB: Yeah. At Stratford upon Avon.
RM: I became a sergeant. They demoted me to sergeant and I finished up as a sergeant.
CB: Because it was —
RM: That was the way they did it.
CB: In practise as far as they were concerned you were acting warrant officer.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: But you were working —
RM: I went from station warrant officer to looking after these POWs.
CB: Yeah.
RM: That’s when I was demobbed.
CB: Demoted. Yeah.
RM: Demoted.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Because they said I couldn’t have that authority. No.
CB: Was this prison, a German prisoner of war camp, or a prisoner of war camp of Germans on an airfield or was it somewhere separate from that?
RM: Oh yeah. It was on an airfield. Yeah.
CB: At Marston was it? Or —
RM: No. I can’t remember what it was called. I know it was about four miles outside Stratford on Avon.
CB: Ok. Well, we’ll come to it.
RM: Because we used to go to Stratford a lot.
CB: Yeah. Ok. So, let’s go back to your operations.
RM: Yeah.
CB: So, your first operation. Where, what was that? Was that an exciting experience?
RM: My first one was Handorf. Handorf. And then I know where the second one was because it was a place called Karlsruhe which was in right the north. In Norway I think it was. Karlsruhe, it was.
CB: In Germany.
RM: Yeah. It’s in Germany but right at the top.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And the battlefield, the German battlefield.
CB: Battleships.
RM: The ships were there so we went and bombed it.
CB: That was Kiel wasn’t it?
RM: No. Karlsruhe.
CB: Yes, but —
RM: Then we went, my next one was Kaiser, no Kaiserslautern. That was up north of Germany as well. We got picked out because it was a good crew. And then from there I went to Düren. Then Gravenhorst. The Urft Dam. That was after the, it was a similar sort of thing as the Dambusters.
CB: Yeah.
RM: [laughs] things. It didn’t get the publicity of that, of course.
CB: No.
RM: And then I went to Munich. That was nine hours.
CB: What was Munich like?
RM: We went three times to Munich. It was one hell of a long trip and coming back from one, and this is true I phoned the skipper up. I said, ‘Skipper, where are we?’ He said, ‘We’re just over the Alps.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve just seen someone walk past my turret.’ And I swear to this day that I saw somebody walk by my, I do really.
CB: Whereabouts?
RM: In the Alps. We were flying over the Alps.
CB: No, yeah but where were they walking?
RM: They just walked past the window.
CB: Right.
RM: So that was fanciful I suppose. And that was Munich. Gravenhorst. I went there again. I think I only went to the what’s the name where all the things were. What did they used to call it? Where all the munitions and that was made. The area.
CB: What? The Ruhr?
RM: Yeah.
CB: The Ruhr.
RM: I only went to the Ruhr about, I went to [Gardena]
CB: In Italy.
RM: Yeah. Yeah. That was in Italy. They were all nine hour trips, you know.
CB: So, going. Taking the Italian trips did you do Spezia as well?
RM: Pardon?
CB: Did you do Spezia? Spezia or, anyway going to Italy.
RM: Yeah.
CB: You had to fly through the Alps did you?
RM: Yeah.
CB: So what was —
RM: We went over —
CB: What was that like?
RM: We went over Switzerland.
CB: Yes. Oh, you did.
RM: It was tiring. I can tell you that. And I went to Karlsruhe again. Ladbergen. That was in the Ruhr again isn’t it? Yeah. And then the one.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Dresden.
CB: Go on.
RM: I went to Dresden. I have never seen [pause] we went to a place called Rositz the day after which was an oil refinery a hundred miles from Dresden and we could see the flames of Dresden a hundred miles away. We were told to drop the bombs indiscriminately. Well, that’s where I, that’s what the bomb aimer said. So that’s what we did,
CB: As a crew when you were on the Dresden raid how did you actually handle that yourselves? What did you think about it on that day?
RM: Not very much. Not a lot. It’s a thousand bomber raid don’t forget. So you’d got aircraft all over and you could see some of them being hit and all you could see was the aeroplane just exploding in a ball of flame.
CB: Right.
RM: And that was nine people gone. Or seven people gone. So we made our run and then my skipper [pause] went down to five hundred feet and went down so low he said because people, fighters couldn’t follow us down there. So he knew what he was doing. He was a clever man. A clever man. We got, we got attacked three times. We got shot at three times but we were lucky. We thought we had a direct hit on one but you couldn’t, you couldn’t tell really. But the next one, not Berlin, I beg your pardon. Lutzendorf. Where is it? Where’s [pause]. Berlin. No. Where is it? Oh, it must be the last one. When they crossed the Rhine we bombed the German on the other side. And as we were going around to settle up all of a sudden de de de and the bullets, I’m glad I was only five foot because the bullets went all the way across.
CB: Through the fuselage.
RM: One of the chaps was testing his guns. He didn’t test them. He bloody well fired them and it went straight across my head and just missed my head. So that’s why I consider I’m a lucky person.
CB: So are you talking about somebody else’s gunner or your gunner?
RM: No. Somebody else’s gunner.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Checking his guns. But where was I? Wesel. Wesel.
CB: Ok.
RM: That was where that was. Wessel. Mid-upper gunner [unclear] [laughs] So we must have had a what’s the name because of course he finished his tour early.
CB: What do you mean happened?
RM: Pardon?
CB: What do you mean? Must have had a what?
RM: Well, he only did about twenty with us.
CB: And then he left.
RM: Yeah.
CB: So are we talking about LMF?
RM: Oh no. No. No. No. No [pause] No. No.
CB: What did you mean then about the mid-upper gunner?
RM: I think you did thirty the first one and twenty the second one. I’m not sure.
CB: Oh right. So he came to the end of his tour.
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Right.
RM: And he disappeared. So I got a phone call from my mum. She said, ‘Do you know Crawshaw is here?’ And he come and stopped at our house for a month. He was like that. He was really. [unclear]
CB: He’d run out of women had he?
RM: Oh boy, did he have some women. [pause] That’s funny.
CB: Ron’s looking through the squadron record for these ops. What was your last op then?
RM: The 4th of May. Now that’s, that’s wrong because what’s the name as I said we was just coming back from a training flight and Mr Williams nearly hit the bank so they stopped him and I went. And a Mr Philipson Stow [talking to someone outside room] and we went to a crew called Philipson Stow and I’m sure I took a couple or three with him.
CB: Three ops with them.
RM: Yeah. But it was only just going across and bombing German troops.
CB: Right.
RM: That was all.
CB: So what are we talking about. This was early ’45 was it?
RM: Yeah. Early ’45.
CB: Right. And daylight or in the dark?
RM: Both.
CB: Right. We’ll just pause there for a mo.
[recording paused]
Other: Did you get on with him?
RM: He was good looking and knew it but he could just go and see a woman and he’d be with her.
CB: This is Crawshaw.
RM: Yeah.
CB: A lothario you’d say.
RM: A real lothario. Yeah.
Other: He had plenty of that.
RM: Yeah. Different to me [laughs]
CB: Yeah [laughs] Yeah. So how did the other crew feel about that?
RM: Oh.
CB: Envious?
RM: Let’s put it this way. The officers were the officers and the sergeants were the sergeants. My mid-upper —
CB: What, your rear gunner? Anderson.
RM: I’m just trying to, the bomb aimer.
CB: Oh yes.
RM: Came as a sergeant.
CB: Bert Crowther.
RM: He got offered his commission.
CB: Right.
RM: So he went with, the navigator was a flying officer and so the officers were the officers. We didn’t mix.
CB: Not even socially.
RM: No.
CB: At all.
RM: No. No.
CB: So what was your main entertainment when you were off duty?
RM: Women [laughs]
CB: On the airfield?
RM: Well, we just did the normal things that we did. You know what I mean is the sergeants were altogether.
CB: In the sergeant’s mess.
RM: Yeah. In the sergeant’s mess. And we used to have. When I come to think of it I don’t drink now. We used to have a five star special which was whisky, rum and three more shorts all together.
CB: In a pint glass.
RM: And the beer was Dublin. What was it called? Guinness.
CB: Guinness. Right.
RM: So we had that and a Guinness and we’d have about five of them. Well, who knows what tomorrow was bringing? We didn’t, we never knew whether we was going back did we? And we had some nice girlfriends as well [laughs] But we had a hell of a life. I had a good life in the RAF. Yeah.
CB: What I was looking for was where the socialising took place because it was limited on the airfield.
RM: Yeah.
CB: So did you —
RM: No. Didn’t.
CB: Did they have dances at all on the airfield?
RM: Oh, we had dances.
CB: But not drinking.
RM: In the sergeant’s mess and the officer’s mess. We didn’t mix.
CB: Right.
RM: The officers didn’t mix.
CB: So —
RM: We, when we got in the crew, when we got together we was one. Soon as we got in that aircraft we were one. The whole lot. When they left the air force, the aircraft we had our own lives. My skipper as I say owned a whisky distillery in Southern Ireland and he’d got a ruddy great car and he had his girlfriend come from Ireland and stop in Newark. So all he was bothered about was whipping off in his car and that. I had a motorbike. I remember that. But that was the way it was. But we had a good life. I think so. I had, I had a magnificent time in the RAF.
CB: And going out to the local pubs was there enough beer there or did they run out sometimes?
RM: I only drank in the sergeant’s mess. When we went out all I had was a couple of pints. That was all. But when we were in the sergeant’s mess because we knew they could stagger back across into our billet which were just across the parade ground. Yes. I did have a wonderful time really. I got hit in the back of the head with a flare from a verey pistol.
CB: When? Oh, on a night out.
RM: In Syerston. Yeah. I was walking to the sergeant’s mess and this chap fired this. Fired it and it hit me on the back of the head.
CB: No lasting damage.
RM: I don’t know [laughs]. My wife said yes there was lasting damage.
CB: Made your head rattle didn’t it?
RM: Oh yes. It did. It did. Yes. I had a good life really. I did really.
CB: So going to the operations.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Then you said Munich was really difficult going nine hours three times.
RM: Yeah. Yeah. Because we had to go over the Alps and come back.
CB: So you took the route over the Alps did you?
RM: Over the Alps to the top of Italy and then come back.
CB: Oh, did you really?
RM: Yeah. Yeah. That was the worst one.
CB: What was the most difficult? Why was it bad?
RM: Then again they were only our squadron. It wasn’t like the others. Like Dresden and what’s the name because they were thousand bomber raids so you got the aircraft all around you there whereas when you went to Dresden err what’s the name?
CB: Munich.
RM: Munich. You was on your own. Just the squadron.
CB: Right.
RM: Yeah.
CB: So flying through the mountains was that the most difficult? Is that what you meant was made them difficult?
RM: Yeah. And the fact that it was so long. Don’t forget when you sit up there in a confined space for about, I think it was seven and a half hours or nine hours. Something like that. It might say it in there. How long it took.
CB: Yeah. The Munich one is nine hours isn’t it?
RM: Yeah.
CB: Because of the distance.
RM: Yeah.
CB: And then you didn’t —
RM: And all you do is just call the crew every so often to see. I had to call the crew to see whether they were alright. And then of course towards the latter end we had what was called [pause] fitted to the aircraft.
CB: Monica?
RM: Monica.
CB: Or H2S?
RM: H2S. We had H2S anyway.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then we had Monica.
CB: Right.
RM: Halfway through our tour.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Where I directed the, I had a screen in front of me.
CB: Right.
RM: And I directed, and I directed the tail bomber.
CB: Yeah.
RM: As to where he was and I was telling him I’d looked at the screen and I told him where the fighter was.
CB: So it wasn’t just showing there was a fighter behind. You could actually see.
RM: Oh, I could see it from the —
CB: Whether it left, right or up and down.
RM: Yeah. And they were, and I guided. I guided the, but not the mid-upper turret.
CB: No.
RM: Curiously enough.
CB: So, and did he engage those planes or did he ever shoot at them?
RM: Oh yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Yeah. Yes. Yes.
CB: And how many did he shoot down?
RM: Well, we think one. We think one definite.
CB: Because it disappeared from your screen did it?
RM: Yeah. Yeah. We think we hit, definitely but don’t forget my rear gunner was a pilot.
CB: Oh, was he? And what had happened to him?
RM: Nothing. They made the pilot, you know when Monica first came out they thought that rear gunners weren’t intelligent enough. This is the RAF. I mean, thought they weren’t intelligent so they took these twelve pilots and made them rear gunners. And my, my rear gunner was a pilot. So when the people saw him they’d said, ‘But you’ve got a pilot. What’s the pilot?’ I said, ‘That’s where we back the plane up.’ And they believed it. It’s true. It’s true. He was a short ass the same as me.
CB: Yeah. How did he feel about being the rear gunner?
RM: Pardon?
CB: How did he feel as a pilot about having that role?
RM: Aye, it was something we took for granted. Everything we did was for a purpose.
CB: Yeah.
RM: We had a, we had a good bonhomie if you understand for the crew. Everybody. As I say we called the skipper Willie.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Never —
CB: Flight lieutenant —
RM: Squadron leader.
CB: Yeah.
RM: As he became squadron leader.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And he became flight commander later on. But he was Willie to us and the other officers, the bomb aimer and I we were friends. He was there but of course when he first came on the crew he was a sergeant and then he got his commission while he was flying with us and we used to go out together. But the officers kept themselves to themselves in their amusement because of course we couldn’t go in the officer’s mess. We could go in the sergeant’s mess but —
CB: So as a group of sergeants although there was flight sergeant and you became a warrant officer how did you feel about the crew from a social point of view working separately?
RM: We didn’t consider it separate. What we, we had two lives. We had flying and we had leisure and they were two separate parts. Two separate items if you understand. We went our way and they went, as soon as we finished flying and that they went their way. That was the officer’s mess and we went to the sergeant’s mess. That was the way but there was, there was no disagreement. We never had an argument. We had a fantastic attitude. All of us. You know, we were really tremendous. But [laughs] as regards you were saying what we thought about the RAF I thought that the RAF was officers and airmen. There was just that was it. You were either an officer or you were an airman and they didn’t mix. We mixed in the plane because we weren’t officer and airman. We were skipper and wireless operator if you understand. That’s how we had a fantastic feeling in the crew.
CB: And on the professional side you’re talking about then to what extent was there an interchangeability of skills in the aircraft? In other words could the bomb aimer fly the aeroplane?
RM: Yes. And the, the bomb aimer and the engineer could fly the plane. They were the only two that had lessons if you like.
CB: They’d had training on flying before.
RM: They could take over the flying.
CB: Right.
RM: The rest of us, we couldn’t because we were lower crew.
CB: And the navigator?
RM: He didn’t. No. Because his job was getting us there and getting us back which he was very, he was brilliant at. The way he’d ask me. I used to take positionals. Tell him where we was as regards from the RAF, from the radio I’d get a fix as to where we were and that would confirm where he was on his maps.
CB: Right.
RM: Yes. Well as regards to doing our job in the aircraft we were different if you understand what I mean.
CB: Completely different approach. Yeah.
RM: Yeah. You did.
CB: In your direction finding your position gaining position. What was the process of finding out the, making the fix? In other words this was —
RM: I used to phone a certain number and I’d press my key and they’d take a direction finding on me and then tell me where we were and then I’d tell the what’s the name. And then I had that job and I also later on I had, this is why they made signallers because of the —
CB: Monica.
RM: Monica.
CB: And H2S.
RM: Yeah. Yeah, and I had that as well.
CB: And did you operate the H2S or was that not used a lot?
RM: No. That was —
CB: The mapping radar effectively.
RM: Yeah. I told them that. I informed this, the navigator exactly where we were and what but yeah. I did.
CB: So when you said you phoned them up you would, how would you actually get the position because you’d normally have radio silence would you not?
RM: It was radio silence over the, over the bomb.
CB: Right.
RM: When we was, you had radio silence as soon as you reached the target.
CB: On the run in.
RM: That was it.
CB: The run in to the target.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: But then again you see as soon as you come out the skipper had because he, he was a bugger. Straight down. I don’t know whether the others did. That was what they did. What we did. Straight down. And he’d be flying over rooftops more or less.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then the fighters couldn’t see you because they couldn’t make an attack.
CB: But you said on one occasion you had three attacks.
RM: Oh yeah. Oh yes. We did.
CB: How was, how did that help?
RM: That was coming back.
CB: Yes.
RM: Going back we had to be in the bomber stream.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And you’d have what fifty or sixty fighters come and attack the bomber stream because we was all going together. I mean we’d have planes what fifty, fifty feet each side.
CB: In the daylight.
RM: Yeah. In daylight. Well, we did —
CB: At night you had a bigger spacing wouldn’t you?
RM: Quite a few daylight ops.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Yeah. But when we went to Munich and Dresden and the oil refineries and when we bombed the German battlefleet we bombed them. We got, the skipper got a DFC I think for getting a direct hit on the Prince Eugen.
CB: Prinz Eugen. Prinz Eugen.
RM: In Gdynia harbour.
CB: Yeah.
RM: But as I say the crew was the crew. When you went in to that aircraft you were, I was the wireless operator.
CB: Right.
RM: If you can understand what [pause] when we came out it was different again because we didn’t mix.
CB: No.
RM: Because he’d go to the officer’s mess and I’d go to the sergeant’s mess. And I suppose we had the same reaction with the ground crew.
CB: So tell us about the ground crew. How did you liaise with them?
RM: We had a fantastic ground crew. We had the same ground crew for the whole of our tour and Nobby Smith he was the man in charge and he was just the job. He was really. He knew what we wanted and he made sure that everything was right. We never went in that aircraft, never without it wasn’t perfect.
CB: And who was the person or people who liaised with Nobby about after the flight and beforehand?
RM: Well —
CB: Would you all —
RM: Before. Before the flight.
CB: Yeah.
RM: You’d go in to a room and you’d be told exactly where you were going.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And everything. And then when you came back you went in and you was interviewed by the personnel.
CB: The intelligence officer.
RM: Telling you, you know what had happened. You know, whether anything had happened at that.
TCB: So each member of the crew would be debriefed.
RM: Oh yes.
CB: By the intelligence officer.
RM: By yeah. Their own individual officer.
CB: Yeah.
RM: But you were told en masse where you were going. But when you came back you just went to your section commander.
CB: So after the squadron briefing what did the individual crews do?
RM: Went their way. We went for a good piss up or [laughs]
CB: No. After the briefing, before take-off what was the procedure?
RM: Oh, straight to, straight to your aircraft.
CB: Right. But the —
RM: Oh yes.
CB: The navigator would have to draw in his information wouldn’t he?
RM: Well, we went to our own. We had the big briefing.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Telling us. They showed us where we were going.
CB: Yeah.
RM: What was, what was happening. Whether it was a squadron raid or whether it was a thousand bomber or a two fifty. I hated thousand bomber raids.
CB: Why?
RM: It was too dangerous.
CB: What? For collision?
RM: There were some real stupid buggers they used to come right up over us and touch the wing some of them. I suppose I was frightened really. But as I say coming back we went our own way [laughs] straight down and he weren’t with the cruise or anything. He weren’t with the stream. He was a good man.
CB: So you had the major briefing. Then you dispersed.
RM: Yeah.
CB: To your specialities.
RM: Yes, to your specials and then —
CB: From a signallers point of view what was the next briefing for you before going to the aircraft after the main briefing? Was it to do with radar?
RM: No.
CB: Signals or —
RM: No. No.
CB: What was your briefing before you went.
RM: No. No. We’d already had that in the afternoon.
CB: Right.
RM: Then we went to the briefing.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then we went to the aircraft.
CB: Ok. So this chap, Nobby Smith.
RM: Nobby Clark.
CB: Nobby Clark.
RM: I don’t know why all Clarks are Nobbies.
CB: Yeah.
RM: They are.
CB: So he, would he be receiving effectively handing over the aircraft to the captain or to the navigator, to the engineer or what?
RM: Well, we had a crew. I think [pause] I think there was four in our aircraft.
CB: Well, there were seven crew.
RM: We had the same. We went straight to the same place.
CB: You had four ground crew.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: We had about four or five ground crew and each one was, he’d come up and tell me. Especially when we went on the whatever you called it. Monica.
CB: Yes.
RM: He’d come in and just see whether it was operating.
CB: Whether it was working alright.
RM: Yeah. But no. Just walked in. Went in and took off. Come back. Went to bed and that was it. That was your life.
CB: Did the crew have any rituals before getting on board?
RM: No.
CB: Like watering the —
RM: No. No.
CB: Stinging nettles.
RM: No. Not really. We each one had a knife down there for protection which when you come to think of it is a load of crap really.
CB: Did you carry a firearm?
RM: We wouldn’t have been able to use it. We didn’t carry firearms. No.
CB: No.
RM: Then you, every so often you’d go for training. You’d go to these bloody great where every station had this what’s the name of water? What did you call them? For the firemen.
CB: Oh yes.
RM: You know.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And you’d go in there and jump in.
CB: This was your dinghy drill was it?
RM: Yeah. Dinghy drill. Yeah.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Yeah. We’d do that.
CB: Then you had to dry it all out.
RM: Hey?
CB: Then you had to dry it out.
RM: No. No. No. No. No. No. It was there permanent.
CB: No, you [pause] for firefighters.
RM: For the firefighters.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Yeah, but instead of going to the nearest park they always took us in there because they said the water in the ocean isn’t warmed [laughs] So we had to go in, do our saving kits, you know.
CB: Life saving yeah.
RM: Have a —
CB: The dinghy drill.
RM: Test as to how we were going on.
CB: So you come to the end of the tour.
RM: Yeah.
CB: How many ops had you done at the end of the tour?
RM: I think it was twenty nine or thirty one because I didn’t think we went when we was on OTU we went dropping leaflets in France and some people counted that as an op. I didn’t. So I would say I did twenty nine. A full tour.
CB: After you left the RAF or the squadron, the crew disbanded. To what extent did you get together afterwards?
RM: We didn’t.
CB: Ever?
RM: No. I [pause] I tell a lie. The bomb aimer, Bert Crann and I we went together for about three or four years contact with one another and we went on holiday to Brighton and the Isle of Wight together but he got married so, and I didn’t so I went to Ireland of course.
CB: Never looked —
RM: So that was that.
CB: Never looked back.
RM: No. No, I didn’t.
CB: So you’ve no idea what happened to Crawshaw after his huge expenditure of energy —
RM: Oh God, no. No.
CB: On women.
RM: He’s probably in jail [laughs] He had his own way of looking at life.
CB: Yeah.
RM: He if he wanted to do anything he did it. He says, ‘I might be dead tomorrow.’ But none of the other crew had that attitude curiously enough but he did.
CB: One other thing we touched on earlier to what extent were you aware of the LMF system? Lacking moral fibre.
RM: We had one or two. Especially when we got to the OTU with the, when we went on to Wellingtons. I don’t know. I wasn’t frightened. No. I was never frightened.
CB: No.
RM: No. Mind you lets get this to understand I haven’t a lot of personal feelings. If you understand what I mean.
CB: Sure.
RM: I’m odd altered to a certain extent and I was then.
CB: Resilient.
RM: It was probably that that taught me to be that way and my son is exactly the same. My daughter isn’t though. She takes after my wife. She can’t understand why I haven’t got feelings sort of business.
CB: So you said you knew one or two. These were in other crews are they you’re talking about?
RM: Yeah. Yeah.
CB: Yeah. So what was the situation and what did they do about it?
RM: Well, you had a feeling. You knew that they were frightened so you tried to buoy them up you know. Say, ‘Oh you’re alright. We’re coming back. You’ve been there haven’t you? You’ve come back. So there you go.’ Yeah. And they’d say to me, they’d turn around and say, ‘But Jim didn’t.’ So that was their attitude. They had different attitudes. You could, you can’t say really. I found that with my crew. They were all like me. Hadn’t got an awful lot of feelings. I don’t know whether I’m saying this wrong or not. I have got feelings of course but I’m not as [pause] the same as a lot of others.
CB: No.
RM: I look at a thing basically.
CB: So all these other ones were any of them removed?
RM: Oh yes.
CB: As a result. They were —
RM: Oh yes. You couldn’t afford to have people like that and you knew. Or I, you know, you knew instinctively they’re never going to make this and you did know because they were frightened. They just [pause] I never thought I was going to get killed. I knew I was always coming back. A load of bullshit really but still that was it. But then again you got some that, that my brother was the same. He was taciturn. The same as me. I don’t know.
CB: We’ll just stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
RM: Right.
CB: Now we’re restarting.
RM: It was too heavy.
CB: Well —
RM: Too big. I was only five foot one.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Don’t forget. When I went in the RAF. That’s two inches lower than I am now. I’m five foot three.
CB: Right.
RM: So —
CB: You had a stretch.
RM: Yeah.
CB: We’re —
RM: What [laughs] did you say?
CB: We’re restarting because I had to change the batteries.
RM: Yeah. Ok.
CB: I’m not quite sure how far we’d got.
RM: Yeah.
CB: But if we could pick up on some of the things we talked about.
RM: Yeah.
CB: The first one is what rituals did the crew have before getting into the aircraft like the tail wheel.
RM: Not really. I used to pee on the wheel.
CB: Right. The tail wheel.
RM: What did the others do?
CB: I didn’t notice. They probably had their own idiosyncrasies.
RM: Yeah.
CB: But I didn’t notice them. The skipper. He wouldn’t. Everything had to be so with Willie. The only one thing is when he handed me the empty bloody bottle and I had to go down, walk down to the chute and drop, drop the empty bottle. So he’d drink the bottle whisky on a raid.
RM: Would he really?
CB: His own whisky.
CB: That he, yes, his distillery. This is the Irish skipper.
RM: Yeah.
CB: What age was he?
RM: Oh —
CB: Old meaning twenty five.
RM: Thirty.
CB: Thirty. Oh right.
RM: No. Don’t forget I was only eighteen.
CB: Yes. Had he been in the RAF —
RM: He had gone, no. Don’t forget he came from Southern Ireland.
CB: Yes.
RM: I don’t know how he got in the RAF I’m sure. But he came from Tullamore in Southern Ireland. I never did find out how he came to be —
CB: Well, there were a lot of Southern Irish people.
RM: A lot of Southern Irish. Yeah. Yeah.
CB: In the British forces and regiments that were —
RM: Yeah.
CB: Made up of Southern Irish people.
RM: He was taciturn.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Very quiet. Very.
CB: But professional.
RM: But professional. Oh, definitely professional. If he spoke to you he spoke to you as the skipper and you listened to what he said and you did what he said. I think probably that is why we were such a good crew because everybody was the same. If the, what’s the name was doing something that appertained to him so say the rear gunner was talking about what’s the name you listened to him. He was in charge and that’s, that’s how we were. And then of course when we get, ‘Have you seen your new air gunner?’ ‘No. Where is he?’ This little chap. He was about the same size as me. About five foot. He comes walking up the road. He’d got bloody —
CB: Pilot’s wings.
RM: Pilot’s wings on here. So that’s where we used to get a lot of fun out of saying this, ‘Oh, we’ve got a pilot both ends.’ Because if we want to go backwards he does it and they believed us. Believe it or not they believed us.
CB: Going back to the rituals.
RM: Yeah.
CB: People have done all sorts of different things and some would have a lucky charm.
RM: Oh yeah. They’d probably have their own rituals when they got to their areas but don’t forget you see they were up there.
CB: Up at the front you mean. Yeah. So the wireless operator —
RM: I was —
CB: Your position.
RM: I was about halfway down the boat.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Down the plane.
CB: Yes.
RM: In a little area with a what’s the name and two things there so I didn’t see what the majority of them were doing.
CB: No.
RM: I was similar to the rear gunner. The mid-upper gunner you know you’re isolated.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And all you have in contact is the headphones. The skipper was, ‘Righto, we’re ready.’ Or what’s the name or the navigator turning around, ‘Oh we’ve got, we’ve got to take a turn.’ So you knew that in the next minute the plane was going to turn right or left. So we did talk a lot on the, you weren’t supposed to really.
CB: On the intercom.
RM: No. But we did talk on the intercom.
CB: In the event of fighter attack then what would the pilot do?
RM: Well, the, all I did was just sit there because it was all to do with you kept quiet because you’d got the skipper talking to the rear gunner or the mid-upper gunner. He was in charge and that was it so I, and they did do a, ‘Corkscrew port. Go.’ And you know.
CB: So the corkscrew manoeuvre was —
RM: Yeah. Until later on when the Monica come on of course and I’d be telling. I’d be looking at the thing and telling the rear gunner —
CB: The screen.
RM: Where the opposing aircraft was coming. So that changed halfway through our tour really.
CB: And did they procedures change when it became clear that the German night fighter could lock on to Monica?
RM: Yeah.
CB: So what happened then?
RM: They still used it. And we, we had one what was called fish, fish —
CB: Fishpond.
RM: Fishpond. We had fishpond. That was it. A ruddy great thing on the bottom of that and that was to help the, I think it was to help the navigator because that sent signals down and told him where we were and that. But as I say all I was interested in was I did very little sending messages.
CB: What was your role? As the signaller what was your, what was the regular task you had to do?
RM: The majority was taking messages from headquarters. If they’d sent as I say all of a sudden there was a big load of fighters coming, they’d tell me and then I’d inform the skipper. That wasn’t until later on of course. Not, not in the early times because they hadn’t got that.
CB: And when you were going on an op to what extent did you feel you needed to psyche yourself up and what did you do?
RM: I didn’t do anything because as I say I was [pause] I hadn’t got a lot of emotion.
CB: No.
RM: If you understand what I mean?
CB: But did you talk to yourself?
RM: So [pause] No. I never talked to myself. No. I didn’t. No. I never did talk to myself. No.
CB: And as you walked to your position —
RM: No.
CB: Did you —
RM: I’d just go and when I got there just did the job that I was supposed to but I never did talk to myself.
No. You said you kicked the box on the way.
RM: Oh, you used to hit it.
CB: Hit it on the way —
RM: Yeah.
CB: To the seat.
RM: I don’t know why but as I was going up bang. And then you think to yourself what did I do that for?
CB: Yeah.
RM: You know. But it’s something I did.
CB: Now when you were on the raids. On the ops, and you’re closing on the target then the aircraft is being steadied straight and level for the last —
RM: Yeah.
CB: So how did that work and how did you feel about that?
RM: Well, I was here. That’s the window and there’s a window there.
CB: Next to you. Yeah.
RM: Yeah. And I looked out the window. I’d look out the window and see. I couldn’t see an awful lot [laughs] I could see the other planes. Especially when we were on a thousand bomber raid. You could see all these bloody planes and then you could see others being attacked. You could see that and think, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake don’t come over here,’ sort of business, you’d say to yourself. I don’t know really. As I say I wasn’t very emotional.
CB: But it’s slightly nerve wracking to have to do straight and level.
RM: The worst part was coming home. Especially when you’d been to Dresden. Not Dresden. Munich.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And you were coming back over the Alps and you felt very lonely then because it was such a long time. So you’d done your target. Everything’s gone smashing. Well, you couldn’t come down so much. So he’d have to go with the flow and, but when you was coming home it was so lonely. And I think that was when the loneliness turned around and that’s when I said I saw that chap walking by my window. But I swear to this day I saw a man walk past my window. I swore to it.
CB: Is he walking on air? Walking on the wing?
RM: Yeah.
CB: Or walking on the mountain?
RM: Just walking. Just walked past.
CB: Right.
RM: So it must have been imagination of course.
CB: Atmospherics.
RM: Yeah. I don’t know what it was.
CB: And thinking of atmospherics how did you deal with the temperatures? Because what is the temperatures at, you’re flying at what height?
RM: It was normally twenty five, thirty. Thirty thousand.
CB: And what was, what did it feel like in temperature?
RM: Well, you got your flying suit and everything so I was never cold. Never cold.
CB: What about the others? Did they feel the cold?
RM: I don’t know [laughs] I didn’t ask them.
CB: Were they —
RM: That was the thing that never, we knew what the temperature were. We knew. We knew we were cold.
CB: Well, it’s minus forty.
RM: It wasn’t something that we talked, curiously enough there was very little talking. Very little talking. The skipper and the mid-upper gunner talked more than anybody because he could see. He could see more because he could see all the way around so they had more talk. All I had was talk with the navigator telling him whether, if he wanted a fix from somewhere. Apart from that I didn’t have any communication with the others.
CB: Would you say you were quite busy on a flight?
RM: Coming back, no. Coming back it was bloody, it was boring. That’s why I say coming back it was boring. Going it wasn’t because you’d got, they attacked us more going. Although I tell a lie there because we got attacked on our aerodrome when we were landing three times and we got shot at. Shot at when we were landing.
CB: On the same occasion or different occasions you were shot at?
RM: Three different times.
CB: Yeah.
RM: We got shot at.
CB: And did they hit you?
RM: Didn’t hit me [laughs]
CB: No, did you get —
RM: I don’t know. They did. They did hit the wings and things like that but we didn’t get anything serious. As I said the only serious thing was when that bod, when we were going to Wessel he was testing his guns and our own air gunner and it just went straight across. That was the only time that I got really [pause] That was the nearest time any bombs came to me err bullets came near to me. We didn’t get hit. The plane didn’t get hit at all.
CB: It didn’t. Right.
No. No. The rear gunner got very near hit. It went to the side of him. But apart from that we never got hit. Somebody was looking after us.
CB: Yeah.
RM: No. We never got hit.
CB: So when you were returning from an op you come, you’re coming back and there are lots and lots of airfields. Literally hundreds of airfields. How did you find your own airfield?
RM: I was stationed at Fiskerton.
CB: In Lincolnshire.
RM: Which had FIDO.
CB: Right.
RM: So we knew. You see sometimes when you was coming back you’d be, we finished up in Scotland. You’d be diverted to land at Scotland because the weather conditions on your own aircraft weren’t, weren’t good. So we finished up at Lossiemouth and that’s the farthest you can get in Scotland and, but as I say when I was at Fiskerton we had this FIDO and you could see. When you was coming in you could see the flames at the side of you. You knew exactly where to be.
CB: This was the fog dispersal.
RM: Where you were landing.
CB: Yeah. But under normal circumstances how would you pick out your airfield as opposed to the others?
RM: I didn’t. He did [laughs]
CB: Ok. So how was that done?
RM: Well —
CB: Because there was a beacon flashing was there?
RM: I think there was. Yeah. Now, of course that was the pilot’s job.
CB: Yeah.
RM: He did that. He knew what he was doing.
CB: But —
RM: The navigator would tell him to go, to a certain extent where to go and I didn’t. I didn’t talk to the skipper about where we were. I talked to the navigator and the navigator talked to the pilot.
CB: But there was no radio signal coming out.
RM: No.
CB: For you to —
RM: No. No.
CB: Focus on. And what about the situations where some airfields had searchlights shining up?
RM: It didn’t make any difference.
CB: No. Did that, did that happen on, was that a —
RM: No. I don’t.
CB: At Fiskerton.
RM: No. We [pause] where did we have that? You remember me telling you that incident about the Queen Mary?
CB: Yeah.
RM: That’s the only time we were ever illuminated with searchlights and they definitely put it on the aircraft and they definitely shot up. They weren’t near us but, bloody get off. Away.
CB: Right. What would you say was the most memorable event in your experience in the RAF?
RM: Dresden.
CB: What was it about that that was, was it the next day or that actual day itself.
RM: The next day we went to Rositz.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Which was a hundred mile away.
CB: Yeah.
RM: But we could see the flames a hundred mile away and then we had to go very near and when I saw that Dresden you have never seen anything like it in your life. When people turn around and said there was what thirty thousand people killed in that one night and you think that you contributed to it. That’s the biggest thing that I’ve ever thought about actually is the fact [pause] none of the others meant anything but Dresden to me was a terrible terrible thing.
CB: Was, was that at the time or in retrospect?
RM: At the time. Even when we were bombing it because it was the first time that we said, ‘Drop your bombs on the town.’ So we knew what we were doing and we did. And coming back as we banked to go away I saw Dresden.
CB: Yeah.
RM: You’ve never seen anything like it. Flames was absolutely everywhere and I’m not talking about isolated incidents. The whole town was all on fire.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Oh, and the flames were terrific. There’s no describing it. Honestly. No describing it. It was the most awful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
CB: What was the best recollection you had of the Air Force?
RM: Looking under my hat and seeing the sergeant’s stripes and the S brevet. That was the best thing I ever had.
CB: Achievement.
RM: Oh yeah because I knew I’d done it, you see because I knew I was going to do it because I’d come top. So, but when you lifted it up and you saw the S brevet and the first, I thought what the hell is this S? What does that stand for? And we had to go and ask because we thought we were going to get an AG.
CB: Because it used to be a wireless operator/air gunner.
RM: Yeah.
CB: Which —
RM: We’d got, we’d got the thing there. The sparks.
CB: The brevet.
RM: That you put —
CB: Yeah.
RM: On your arm.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And then you got your brevet with AG but what, what’s that S? So we told everybody it was the shithouse [laughs] because we didn’t know.
CB: No.
RM: We didn’t know that it was signaller. We always said, if it was anybody asked the S stand for? Steward. We always used to say it was steward. Not signaller. No. And then of course they became regular. Everybody had them but we were the first.
CB: You said early on about your inspiration to join the RAF or motivation was the loss of your brother.
RM: That was the reason.
CB: And —
RM: No. I went, when Reg went in the Air Force I joined the Cadets.
CB: The Air Training Corps.
RM: The Air Training Corps. That’s why I was, when I went in the RAF I could do thirty words a minute already.
CB: Right.
RM: That’s why I was always coming top because I’d studied it in the five years that I had from fourteen to eighteen. Four years at the Cadet Corps.
CB: Yeah.
RM: And so wherever I went I was competent if you understand what I mean. So I never had any thoughts that I was going to fail. I knew damned well that I was going to pass and I was going to get it.
CB: Right.
RM: The only other experience was we didn’t bomb, we were a specialist squadron and we didn’t bomb the Ruhr an awful lot but my brother died bombing the Ruhr. So the one time that we did bomb it I was able to say, ‘That’s for Reg.’ And that was the only other time that I thought like that. Thought like that. I’d done my bit. I’d bloody well dropped bombs on [pause] Now, of course, my son, my grandson’s married to a German and she didn’t know. She don’t know that I bombed Germany or anything like that because we don’t discuss it and of course she come through one of the places that I went to originally. Was that somebody knocking?
CB: No. We’ll stop there for a mo.
[recording paused]
CB: So, let me just ask you the question.
RM: Yeah.
CB: We talked an awful lot about what you’ve been doing but what about people close to you? You didn’t meet your wife until after the war but to what extent did you ever discuss your experiences with your wife?
RM: I didn’t. I did not.
CB: And why was that?
RM: I don’t know. That was, it wasn’t part of my life with her. My life was [pause] was with Mary and my Mary was fantastic to me. We got married sixty three years and she’s, she’s fantastic. She was. She was really.
CB: Did she ever ask you?
RM: No. No. That’s, you see how can I put it? She was Irish and it was the Irish that was her life.
CB: Northern Irish.
RM: Northern Ireland. Yeah. So, the fact that I had been in the RAF, she knew I’d been in the RAF and she knew that I’d [pause] it didn’t mean anything to her that I’d done thirty ops. I went and joined the —
CB: RAF Association.
RM: RAF Association.
CB: Yes.
RM: At our local pub.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Which, well it isn’t local it’s up. And the things that I did with the what’s the name she would see to it that that was part of what I wanted and so it never, it never interfered. I could do what I liked with the RAF as long as the RAF was with me.
CB: Didn’t come home.
RM: You follow what, you understand what I mean.
CB: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
RM: Yeah.
CB: What about your boys? To what extent did they want to know?
RM: My younger boy, he died when he was eleven he was more interested than my eldest son. As I said my eldest son is like me. Very much like me if you understand what I mean.
CB: Stoic.
RM: Yeah. He’s more interested in his family and, you know the fact that I would bomb Germany in the war didn’t mean anything to him. He knew I was in the RAF. Yeah. Whereas my younger son they both went to High Pavement. They both went to High Pavement and he took it more if you understand what I mean but neither of them took it to an extreme. They knew that if they went to the RAF, ‘Oh he was in the RAF.’ And that’s it. I was in the RAF but what is this if different to that?
CB: What made, what made you join the RAF Association?
RM: Because I thought, with not discussing it with anybody else I simply thought I wouldn’t mind. And not only that but one of our next door neighbours was a rabid RAF Association and you know he was really RAF and he got me in to it sort of business. But no the, they never thought of anything like that. He’s in the RAF. He’s going to be RAF. Yeah.
CB: When you look back at your experience in the RAF how do you feel about it? Do you feel a sense of pride?
RM: Yes.
CB: Do you feel any —
RM: Yes.
CB: Reservation about your experiences?
RM: I thought it had to be done. As I said the only reservation I ever had was when I saw Dresden. I didn’t appreciate that. I knew that it had to be done. Well, I thought about it later on. In actual fact it didn’t ought to have been done because all it was doing was making the English get to Berlin before the Russians. That was my idea. And I think that’s what it was for. Because I didn’t think that it was necessary.
CB: Did you ever —
RM: Never thought it was necessary.
CB: Did you ever meet people in the RAF Association who’d been involved in the Hamburg raids?
RM: Never. Oh, I went to Hamburg, I think. Yes. I did one trip down to Hamburg I think. Because that’s the time I said, ‘That’s for my brother.’
CB: Right.
RM: When I went to Hamburg because that was in the Ruhr, wasn’t it?
CB: Well, it’s outside the Ruhr but it’s North Germany.
RM: Yeah. No. As I say Dresden altered my opinion I think. That it was not entirely [pause] Not until a long time after that when I was, people started talking about Dresden and the implications of what happened then. About, I think it was about twenty or thirty year ago weren’t it? Dresden suddenly came into being didn’t it? I hadn’t thought the implications of it as to why it was done and that and now I realise that that’s what it was about. That it was to stop, to get to Berlin before the Russians did. And that’s my opinion. That’s why it was done.
CB: It seems curious in a way that the RAF and Britain take the flak as it were and the emotional flak for Dresden.
RM: Yes.
CB: When the RAF did the first, the night bomb then the Americans did the day bomb.
RM: That’s right. They followed.
CB: The Americans never get any adverse comment.
RM: No.
CB: Why do you think that is?
RM: They don’t do they.
CB: Why do you think that is?
RM: I think the reason is that there was so much damage done on the first raids that when the Americans did all they were doing was just adding to it. Do you follow what I mean? Because if you’d have seen when I looked out that window and saw Dresden it makes me shudder now. True. I can see it now. And then to go the next night to Rositz which is only about a hundred miles away from it and to realise that the flames that I kept seeing was Dresden. And I thought oh God. That’s awful.
CB: Well, because the RAF bombed the second night as well.
RM: But that’s it. Apart from that my life in the RAF was brilliant. It was the four and a half years the best part of my life.
CB: And you —
RM: Apart from the sixty four years that I had with my wife.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Or sixty three years I had with her.
CB: Yeah. So Ron Mather thank you very much for a really fascinating conversation.
RM: Well, I hope I’ve satisfied your—
CB: It’s really good.
RM: What’s the name? Your memory sometimes goes and you can’t think of it.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Taking everything in the what’s the name I thought my life in the RAF was absolutely fantastic. It was really. I couldn’t half get [laughs] some women.
CB: But even on a serious note you gave a payback for your brother.
RM: Yes. Yes. I went to, very near the same place and yes, I think that it was it was a good thing. It was a good life.
CB: Thank you.
[recording paused]
RM: It was my attitude I think. I think it was enjoy yourself. I enjoyed myself. I never got serious with a girl though until I was thirty. Until I got married. But I was never seriously attached to a girl. I went out with many but they were, I’ve got here sort of business. No. I wasn’t, it wasn’t like that but you could pull women with a, if you were in the RAF and in Nottingham.
CB: Yeah.
RM: Because there were so many. You went to the Palais de Danse and three quarters of the people at the Palais de Danse were airmen. All the rest were women. So I mean it didn’t help matters the fact that you were but it did help if you’d got sergeant’s stripes and a brevet [laughs]
CB: Yes. The ground crew weren’t so keen on that particular aspect of —
RM: Yeah [laughs]
CB: Service life [laughs]
RM: I’ll tell you something. I used to go, we used to go when, when I was stationed at Syerston I’d come home regularly of course and we’d go at 8 o’clock or 7 o’clock on a Saturday morning at Trent Bridge thumbing a lift and I’m talking about twenty or thirty people. All RAF men thumbing a lift to get back to camp. And we got plenty of lifts.
CB: Did you?
RM: People stopped.
CB: Yeah.
RM: They did.
CB: Lorries as well? Trucks?
RM: Lorries. Everything. They all stopped because well the RAF were good weren’t they? Conceited [unclear] aren’t I?
CB: We’ve met your type before.
RM: I know. I know. Mind you I will say I have never used my RAF career to help me in any way. I hadn’t thought it was necessary. I’ve got a skill. I was a baker and one of the best in Nottingham as it happens. And I was a manager so I was happy enough.
CB: On the flip side of that though after the war did you ever get an adverse reaction to the fact that you had been flying in Bomber Command?
RM: Not really. No. No. I’ve never mentioned it you see. I mentioned it to his, people like his dad and him.
CB: Darren, yes.
RM: But I wouldn’t, I never mentioned it to anybody else.
CB: No.
RM: That was just something I’d done.
CB: Yeah. A long time ago.
RM: A long time ago. I was just thinking I didn’t go into the RAF until I was eighteen/nineteen in the last year of the war so anybody that’s bombed during the war has got to be ninety three. So there isn’t many of them is there? Although people are living a lot longer now, aren’t they?
CB: I’ve interviewed —
RM: I think so.
CB: I’ve interviewed four people aged one hundred.
RM: Yeah. I’m not surprised.
CB: You keep going Ron.
RM: You have to be a hundred to be in the war at the beginning wouldn’t you?
CB: Absolutely.
RM: Yes. They would. And that’s what I was thinking the other day and I was thinking when we went to, where was it we went down south?
CB: Duxford. Flying legends.
RM: The only people in the RAF suits was the soldiers and me. So and I thought to myself there can’t be many of us left then.
CB: No. No.
RM: Yeah. No. I never talked to my wife about it at all.
CB: You didn’t feel the urge to do so?
RM: With her being not only that but with her being Northern Irish and we’d go to Northern Ireland and we’d get trouble there. When I first went to, when I first went there we landed at Belfast and a chap with a rifle had a look at my luggage. So that’s how the situation was at that time there. And also, the fact that the two people Catholic and the Protestant were so different to one another. I mean nowadays when you go it’s as different again. You don’t notice. I know it’s started up again hasn’t it but up to when I went about four years ago it was, it was lovely. Religion meant nothing or anything. It’s just got a bit nasty just lately I notice.
CB: Well, let’s have a look at your pictures and things.
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Interview with Ronald Mather
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Chris Brockbank
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IBCC Digital Archive
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2017-12-29
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
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AMatherR171229
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01:58:30 audio recording
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eng
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Description
An account of the resource
Upon leaving school, Ronald was employed first as a pawnbrokers assistant, followed by butchers assistant. In 1943, upon reaching the age of 18 he followed his brothers footsteps and enlisted in the Royal Air Force. After initial training, he attended radio school at RAF Yatesbury where he was taught Morse code and the 1154/1155 radio. Flying training was carried out in a Proctor aircraft operating from RAF Bishops Court in Northern Ireland. On one occasion, flying over the Irish Sea, they were shot at from the Queen Mary. Following qualification, further experience was gained at RAF Husbands Bosworth on Ansons, at RAF Winthorpe on Stirlings, before completing his training at No. 5 Lancaster Finishing School, RAF Syerston on Lancasters. Posted to 49 Squadron, Ronald operated from RAF Fiskerton, RAF Fulbeck and finally RAF Syerston, completing his tour of 30 operations just before the end of the war. He describes the concern he used to feel on the 1000 bomber operations because of the closeness of surrounding aircraft. On one occasion a nearby gunner accidentally strafed his aircraft when carrying out a gun test, the bullets passing inches above his head. He recalls one experience when atmospherics of flying over the Alps affected him to the extent he firmly believed that the figure of a person walked past the outside of his window. Having taken part in the Dresden bombing, he describes how he felt and also witnessing the flames from Dresden still being visible the night following when they were on a operation some 100 miles away. Following the completion of his tour, Ronald was posted to an airfield near Stratford Upon Avon as station warrant officer where German prisoners of war were being billeted. He was finally demobbed in December 1945.
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Great Britain
England--Leicestershire
England--Lincolnshire
England--Nottinghamshire
England--Wiltshire
Northern Ireland--Down (County)
Germany
Germany--Dresden
Great Britain
Atlantic Ocean--Irish Sea
Poland
Poland--Gdynia
Italy
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1943-04-05
1945-12
Contributor
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Ian Whapplington
Julie Williams
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
49 Squadron
air gunner
aircrew
Anson
anti-aircraft fire
bombing
bombing of Dresden (13 - 15 February 1945)
Lancaster
Lancaster Finishing School
Morse-keyed wireless telegraphy
perception of bombing war
Proctor
radar
RAF Bishops Court
RAF Fiskerton
RAF Fulbeck
RAF Husbands Bosworth
RAF Syerston
RAF Winthorpe
RAF Yatesbury
Stirling
superstition
training
wireless operator
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1141/11697/AStapleyVA160802.1.mp3
342968355055f3de6511be564331e0d9
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
Stapley, Victor
Victor Arthur Stapley
V A Stapley
Description
An account of the resource
Three items. An oral history interview with Wing Commander Victor Stapley OBE, DFC (b. 1922, 1801888, 175092 Royal Air Force), his log book and a portrait. He served in the RAF from 1941 to 1977. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 166 squadron. Post war he served in Singapore, Malta, and at Christmas Island.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Victor Stapley 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
2016-08-02
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Stapley, VA
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is Tuesday the 2nd of August 2016. I’m with Wing Commander Victor Stapley in Dersingham near Kings Lynn to talk about his times in the RAF. What are your earliest recollections Victor?
VS: Well I, I was born in Ilford in Essex. And my first recollections would be going to school very close to myself and a very large recreation ground, which I rather liked, and that came into my life very much later on. I was at — my, my father was an accountant with Brettles in London, at Wood Street, next to St Pauls and it was bombed. Fortunately St Pauls escaped, so he left there and went to another firm in East London, Old Street, where he was also an accountant, and I come back to the school days when I remember playing cricket at quite a young age and liking it very much, and all sport, and I ended up as captain of the school, chief, head prefect and playing cricket for the school, and soccer and playing cricket for my town boys, Ilford and Essex and London boys, and being very sad when I left school at fifteen and had no more cricket, because there was a wide gap between schoolboy cricket and professional cricket, and I was just getting involved with Ilford Town cricket when war was declared in 1939 [pause]. I left school at the age of fifteen. I was at a, a central modern school where we left at fifteen, and grammar schools left at fifteen as well, and I joined the [unclear] tobacco company, who marketed [unclear]cigarettes and [unclear] cork tip [unclear] I should think about a hundred different patent names of cigarettes and that’s how I was, I could say weaned on cigarettes, which was a very bad thing, and wasn’t able to throw off cigarettes until about 1965 when I, I took everything off my desk at North Luffenham, when I was CO of the radar station there, and just put them away and stopped smoking there and then. That was the best thing I did, I think, medically for myself. Coming back to [unclear] was a management trainee and went through home orders, home selling, secretaries department, export selling which I loved very much, and as the slightly older chaps left, so I was being trained quickly on this, that and the other as they left, and I then became, I rose to assistant shipping manager and I remember vividly trying, travelling from where my family had moved to. It’s a point I’ve just missed out, come back in a moment. I was at Romford in those days, travelling up to Liverpool Street and of course, we had many raids, air raids and we stopped, the trains stopped and all this sort of thing, and we, we had some near misses. I used to then walk up the back exit of Liverpool Street, over the bridge heading for Moorgate and Finsbury Square, where [unclear] tobacco company had 15-51. Now how the devil I remember that, that was the actual address 15-51. It was a long industrial complex and offices at the end, which were very plush and, and I remember vividly coming across firemen sleeping in doorways, their hoses all over the roads, and brick bat everywhere and quite a calamity, and being shipping, assistant shipping , shipping manager, my task was to marry orders to shipping space I could obtain, and it was very, very difficult to obtain this shipping space, and I found that when I got in the office, all the telephones were out of order so I had to collect lots of coins for the post, the actual boxes on the street. It was a hard job to find one that worked, and I eventually did, and that’s the way I managed to contact shipping brokers, and find out whether I could find space. Dash back to the office, call a meeting with the factory manager in order to say what orders I wanted doing within twenty-four hours, to get them to the docks and off into the shipping space that I’d booked in advance. Yes, I mentioned earlier that I, I travelled from Romford, I say I didn’t really cover the move that we had from Ilford to Romford, and it was most notable because we moved to a bungalow at Romford only a week before war was declared, on the 3rd of September thirty-nine, and I remember laying lino down in, in the bathroom that very morning. I was on my hands and knees when Chamberlain declared war at eleven hundred hours so that’s how I was travelling from Ilford, from Romford instead of Ilford. It was on the same line of course, in, in Essex. The obvious reason why it was shortage of shipping space, was because of the Atlantic convoys, and the submarines having a devastating effect on, on our supplies both ways, exports and imports. So that was a real problem that lasted quite a long time. Well of course, it was five years, wasn’t it, the overall war. It was during this time that I went to the ministry to volunteer for the Royal Air Force as a flyer, and my whole idea was that I think I’d rather prefer to be blown up in the air, and not know much about it, rather than being crippled on the ground. I didn’t fancy infantry work or submarines underwater, although I had a relation that was a, on the single sub, submarines and I thought he was a very brave chap as you can imagine. So that’s the reason I went there and they accepted me as pilot navigator, but then we go on from there. Nothing happened, wasn’t called, wondering what’s going to, happening, why not, and unbeknown to me, and it didn’t come out until I was in the Air Force, I found out what had happened. That my firm, without consulting me, had made me a reserved occupation, applied to retain me beyond my call up time and, so that’s the reason why I was just wondering what the devil was going on. But eventually I got a letter which said that they’d got many people now ready to start training as pilot or navigator, but they had a real urgent need for flight engineers, because the actual problem was to do with the fuel consumption, and management of the fuel consumption, and lots of pilots falling foul of this and running out of fuel. And we lost quite a number and they were thinking, also of the building up, they’d already planned to build up with as many four engine bomber aircraft as possible, like the, not only the Lancaster, the Halifax, the Sterling and so on, the different marks of these. And so I thought, well I’ve been waiting and waiting and I, I volunteered, I said yes. So I think that hastened my being brought, taken in by the Air Force and I had to go, I was one of the early boys, so I had to go through the training of ground mechanic and straight onto a ground fitter and then out, out onto squadrons doing maintenance work in hangars, on Mustangs with 2 Squadron at Sawbridgeworth. The years I’m not too sure about, but on from there to [pause], onto Gravesend and, where we still had Mustangs and the, the engines were American Allison inline engines. Similar design to the Merlin but nowhere near as good. We had so much trouble with those [laughs] because when we did an engine change, that’s obviously what I was on being a fitter, we’d do all the covering up and everything else, and then we’d fire them up, and there was misfiring on this cylinder, that cylinder, you know, and it was a hard job to find out which were misfiring, which cylinder was misfiring. So what we did then was to pack up, have a, and go off for a cup of tea and go back when it was dark and restart, we could see from the exhaust which was misfiring, etcetera. There was all that trouble, and changing the whole magneto, and all the wiring and plugs and so forth. Sometimes that didn’t work. Anyway we managed to get it done in the end. The magneto drop was huge in comparison. The acceptable magneto drop was huge in comparison with the Merlin. Anyway we — after all this, we’d then double check on the oil filter, because so many times we took it off and found white metal in the oil filter. So that meant that we had to change the whole caboodle again, the whole engine and, and restart again so it was a terrible business and their, their supercharger was no good and they, they were good for ground strafing and all that sort of thing, up to about ten thousand feet, but they were no good above that because of supercharger being very, very inefficient. So directly, and that what happened then, of course, was after I’d left them that, they’d fit them with Rolls Royce engines and they made all the difference and turned them into a good aircraft. By then I’d been called on training for a flight mechanic, and also to go straight onto as a fitter. So I was at Blackpool for a time, running up and down the sands at 6am in the morning to get fit, and did a mechanics course, and then short leave and then onto Innsworth for the fitter training. So then, that’s going back up to the running, following that, out into the field to as a fitter. Eventually I go to St Athan for the flight engineers finishing course and passed that, and was recommended for commissioning, straight on from there to a heavy conversion unit, where I linked up with the crew at Lindholme, and because I got married at that stage, I was the last flight engineer to arrive. All the others had been sorted out their crews and there was only one crew left and that was Wiggins, Albert Wiggins, a Royal Australian Air Force ex-farmer from Torquay, near the gold mining area in Victoria and I found him a good stalwart, you couldn’t — he was steady as you would expect with a farmer, nothing would phase him, and we had a, an Australian navigator, Jack Sparks from Melbourne, he may have been from Canberra earlier on because he was a civil servant. So anyway he, he was a great one as well so we had a, a jolly good crew. The mid upper gunner was only just about eighteen, and just beginning to shave. He was a Manchester, very slow talking lad, again didn’t get excited so he was just the right type you wanted for a gunner, but the rear gunner was a chap named Fraser, a Scotsman, and we had a hard job to cool him off all the time, he wanted to jabber, jabber, jabber and he was the complete opposite of the Manchester lad in the mid upper turret and the wireless operator was a chap named Bell, and he was the son of a couple of variety people on the stage in some musical capacity and he was a wonderful pianist, absolutely wonderful and a delight to be with. Well after we’d finished and going on to cover, meanwhile it was the same case, after we’d finished their first eight operations, after that you went on a five days leave, and poor old Bell failed to come back because he was stuck with some disease, and so we never saw him again, and the next thing is, he’s been sent to another squadron as their new wireless operator with some other crew and we, of course had another one given to us who was a very nice fella, and I think he, was Trotter, and I think that later on, he went onto a second tour and unfortunately never came back from one of them, and his name his listed in the Lincoln Cathedral. So now, coming onto the operations, our first operations. Our first two were to Stuttgart and they, we thought they were quite nasty operations. Well of course, we would do, I suppose, being the first ones but they were in essence. Their defences, we decided in the end, overall defences of their major areas in Germany were a jolly sight better than over London. We thought London was pretty good but we were nowhere near. So we always took quite a beating in the sense, in, in the — in the feel that you had for the place, that you would likely get a real big banger on your wings or something. The predicted flak was so very good, directly you, you were coned. You had to dive and climb, and turn yourself upside down, so to speak, in order to get out. You were lucky if you got out. That early part you then had predicted flak, with big red balls coming quite close to your wings and that, so you had to move fast and that was — Stuttgart was one of those where searchlights and defences were very good. So the first two ops were Stuttgart. We didn’t think very much of them and Frankfurt was about the same, we had two operations there, so that was four of them. [pause]
CB: Right.
VS: Yes. The next operation which filled us with dismay because of what we’d heard about the actual target, and that was Berlin, and it was the last of the, the big bangs, you might say, against Berlin because prior to that there had been lots of operations on Berlin, night after night, whenever the weather was suitable, and this to my mind was the last one, we weren’t to know that but it was one of the last of this stretch of operations and that, that was a tough one. Because unfortunately our, our navigator was disconnected from his oxygen supply, unbeknown to us, until he was calling his projector all the names under the sun, ‘where is it, where is it, [banging on table] where is it?’ You heard this on the intercom and, ‘what’s the matter, Jack?’ So I said to the bomb aimer, ‘check his oxygen is connected please, Jack, erm, Pilly’. That’s Ted, Ted Pilly, the bomb aimer, ‘check that he’s connected’. He came back, ‘he is’, twice I asked and in the end, I got fed up with it and went back myself and found it wasn’t connected and that’s why he was all over the place. So we were slightly off track because of that, and we got into a little bit of trouble with the flak, er, in some other area on route, and then we saw the TIs go down and we went heading straight for them. It was like driving into Piccadilly Circus lit up at night. You were completely lit up, that’s how we felt and that’s what it looked like. Whether that was individual coning, I wouldn’t be able to say, because the impression I had with it — my pilot and myself, I was helping him with the actual controls, and we were diving and climbing all over the place. Thinking we were in individual searchlights, but we, we never got out of them but we got away with it, straightened up, levelled up and got on the heading that the bomb aimer wanted. Dropped our bombs on the target and that was when we experienced the [unclear] for the first time, I think it was, as master bomber and, and got away. We had various interludes going there and coming back, of fighters having a go at us, but we managed to dive and get out of that, so we were very lucky. Lucky and well trained, I think, and disciplined. And then, of course, we had the Ruhr, so we had a taste of all these places very quickly, spread over the first seven or eight operations, and that was to Essen, and that was happy valley, and amazing the actual Ack Ack searchlights. Ack Ack in particular and, but there you are we, we got through that and went on the worst one of all and that was Nuremberg, and it was a moonlight night, which we didn’t like as you can imagine. We had nowhere, no cloud to get into and cover ourselves, so we were open targets and unfortunately, in addition to that, apparently the — for some reason or other, luck or intelligence slipup, their fighters rendezvoused in our track. We wondered what was going on because it — reaching German territory, territory it was silent, no guns, nothing, no searchlights and then suddenly - boom, boom - four Lancaster’s around us, our friends [pause]. And we logged at twenty-five, twenty-five in the early part of the run to Nuremberg over Germany [coughs], and we had to give up recording to keep the intercom open. We had one or two advances by fighters, but we managed to get away somehow or other by diving into contrails. We hoped there wasn’t a hard centre, and we had that sort of thing for about two thirds of the run to Nuremberg, and then it’s all quiet, and we got to Dornburg and we bombed and it was all quiet, and came back, two or three fighter episodes and managed to get away with it. And came back and landed, and we were all discussing it with the intelligence boys and that, and debriefing, and they asked me how many I reckoned, and I said, ‘well we saw twenty-five, and on that basis, I think you’ve got to multiply it by four’, and it came out I understand, the following day, ninety-six, ninety-six other aircraft were shot down [long pause]. After that raid on Nuremberg, we were all pleased to go on holiday for about five days and, and come back in the early days of April, where we resumed operations. We then went on Achern, which we had to abandon for some reason or other. I think we were recalled. I’ve got it, mission abandoned and I’ve got no reason, I’m pretty sure that we got recalled on that. Things went on and then we went on Cologne and that was quite a target as well [coughs], all lit up, and we had one or two attacks but not very many. We got away with it again, thank goodness, and the following one was Düsseldorf where, of course, that was back to the Ruhr and that was a shocker and, er, but we managed to bomb our target and come back safely. A few days off and we then went on mining in the Baltic. Where we took off and had to fly, as we got close to Denmark islands, we had to drop down to a hundred feet to go under the radar cover, which was quite a dangerous thing to do because of obstructions that you could hit, so we had to be wide awake. And came out, of course, heading for Sweden and we just touched on the coast of Sweden because navigational point, and they were very unkind by firing up a few tracer, but they were too low. They couldn’t get us and we went, went off from that on a, on a timed course, er, to a point where we dropped our mines and came back in a similar way but avoiding Sweden this time. Coming straight over Denmark and at a very low level still, so that we didn’t disturb anyone, except perhaps a few farmers and villagers and got back but they were rather dangerous. We all had to take our turn at mining and that — quite a number of chaps that didn’t come back from those efforts. We were then again on Essen, in the Ruhr, and that was a similar one, story to the others. You always got fighters and searchlights and Ack Ack and so forth, but never the same as Berlin and the, the Stuttgarts that we had. A few other things and then we had ammunition dump at Rouen, R, O, U, E,N and that was quite an experience. We were told to fly fairly low [coughs] to make sure we got the target but not too low so you got the effects of the actual target blowing up under your belly. So we were about four thousand feet and we got the target all right, because we felt it, and we got the rumbles, but came back safely, thank goodness [pause]. We’re now in the beginning of the bombing of France, so leading up to D-Day on the 6th of June. [bleep]
CB: So, we’re just talking about how, in the early days of the war, a flight engineer wasn’t an established position and how they came to adapt the training from people who were trained as ground engineers, riggers or whatever, to then fly as flight engineers, because the Lancasters and Stirlings and Halifaxes didn’t really come along till forty-two. So you were part of this transition weren’t you?
VS: I was yes. Yes, I was invited to, to join at the early stage. There weren’t all that number of flight engineers like me [coughs], because when I got to St Athan on the flight engineers finishing course, I’m pretty sure the, all ready, we had at St Athan the start of direct entry training which, which was something like eight months.
CB: That means people who hadn’t, that worked on the ground first?
VS: That’s right. They were direct entry and so they had to adapt everything and, and not take things for granted that they had in, in previous training. They weren’t so well trained, there’s no doubt about that, they weren’t so well trained but they filled a, a need and quickly. We, we couldn’t wait for, to go through all the training that we went through. Quite sure of that. Yes, I don’t, I don’t think. I think that my squadron was first formed in the early part of forty-three, maybe late forty-two, I think. Anyway the first Lancs didn’t arrive there until forty-three that’s for sure. They had a few Manchesters [clears throat]. One of the interesting things is, of course, the, the chaps that flew Wellingtons. They, they thought the Wellington was absolutely terrific. It was. It would take a hell of a bat, battering. The, it wasn’t a firm alloy construction and so it was fabric and it could take a lot to shoot it up. Holes didn’t make any difference to it [laughs] [unclear] the, the vital part that was the hit ,you know, of the actual aircraft and I knew two chaps that are now dead, now that died this, this year. One is a fellow at Fakenham, who is in the heavy transport business and got another place up north and he flew Wellingtons, a lovely fellow who has just died, but the other one ,that I, you know, is the, now what’s, oh dear, it’s the fella that flew the ultra giro in the bomb fields.
CB: Oh, Barnes Wallis, Barnes Wallis?
VS: No, no.
CB: No, no, no, Wing Commander Wallis?
VS: No.
CB: Wasn’t it?
VS: It was — no.
CB: Not Barnes Wallis but Wing Commander Wallis?
VS: Yes, yes. What’s his Christian name?
CB: I can’t remember. Barnes Wallis did the —
VS: I entertained him twice.
CB: Did you?
VS: Yes and his wife was a Stapley.
CB: Oh.
VS: And so we had something in common, but then we didn’t. When we checked on everything, there was no connection at all.
CB: Oh right.
VS: But I think there must be because she, she came from down south in Southampton. Test, test area, Testwood. But Ken Wallis.
CB: Ken Wallis. That’s it.
VS: And I entertained him twice as president of the RAFA, we have two dinners a year and I entertained him this year, I think it was.
CB: Did you?
VS: Yes, or late last year, it was as recent as that. He was a terrific engineer, you know. He brought along, on one occasion, something he’d actually [unclear] made himself. Terrific, absolutely terrific. He was, for a long time [coughs], he was at Boscombe Down on the research side. And I think, I think it’s actually dreadful that he wasn’t acknowledged, wasn’t made a Sir or something like that, cause he was so good for the Air Force and the country. Lovely fella. But he, he’s got a museum at Dereham.
CB: Oh, has he?
VS: Um, um.
CB: My mistake, Barnes Wallis designed the Wellington.
VS: You put me off there. That shot me down, took me a fortnight to get to Kent.
CB: Well you did well, but Barnes Wallis designed the Wellington with its geodetic construction.
VS: Well Barnes Wallis was the one that —
CB: With the bombs.
VS: That’s right and, and there’s — he’s, he’s number two, we had his wife up here, she died. She was, she was a friend of a lot of us. Yeah. Yes. Are you gonna switch off now?
CB: OK.
VS: Switch on now something else has come to me.
CB: OK.
VS: This springs to mind that on my eightieth birthday, the family were very keen to take me out somewhere. It was going to be a surprise. So I was thinking, where the devil are they going to take me. So we set off in about three cars and we head for Lincolnshire, so directly I was going to Lincolnshire. I thought there’s only one place and that is to the two farmers that have got a Lanc at, at Kirkby.
CB: East Kirkby.
VS: Yes, Kirkby, sorry.
CB: Yes.
VS: East Kirkby. They were both alive then, one’s since died and their brother, there’s another brother who was a flight engineer and died. And they opened specially for my gang on a Sunday afternoon, weekend. It was jolly good.
CB: Fantastic.
VS: And they, the thing that I remember, one of two things, um, was the, they’d still got the control tower and I, I was most amused to find that, that the toilet was still there and it was the most clean toilet I’d ever seen in my life. It was lovely to see. Ought to be on exhibition [laughs] but they do a good job.
CB: Yeah.
VS: But unfortunately, of course, they, they, it was a runway in, in war time but they’d cleared one part of it about a third of it for farming and I think they regretted it when they got this Lanc because then that stopped them taking off.
CB: Um.
VS: They did get eventually a, a certificate of air worthiness from the Civil Aviation Authority which would have allowed them to take off and, er all they could do was taxi and give the people a thrill that way. But it was a lovely little area there.
CB: Yeah. This is the former Scampton Gate Guardian and, um, they were —
VS: Oh, it was that one was it?
CB: They restored the aircraft and they call it “Just Jane”.
VS: Yes.
CB: And there is some film of them doing high speed taxi runs with the tail up for a film, a little while ago.
VS: Yeah, well the runway that’s left must be a fair, fair length.
CB: It is.
VS: For them to get the tail up.
CB: Yeah. But it’s an amazingly restored site.
VS: They want to make sure their breaks are good in order to pull up if short [laughs]
CB: Yeah.
VS: Otherwise they’ll be, be into, into the potato patch [laughs]
CB: Or their chickens [laughs]
VS: Oh dear, dear, dear.
CB: We’re restarting on some of the points from early on. So you’re talking about south of the river?
VS: Yes, I was very friendly with a caretakers son at my old school and we used to go to each other’s houses at weekends [coughs], and this was the early part of the war and at night time, at the weekend, we used to go down to the underground cellars of the school and we used to play bridge, and I shall never forget that when the sirens went, so we had to get up and keep our eyes open outside in case some incendiaries fell, and sure enough they did and one, one or two lodged in the roof of the school. They weren’t causing much damage and [coughs] the caretaker dived for his bucket and Stirrup pump, and there he was trying to get a spurt of water, two storeys up into the roof [laughs], with a Stirrup pump, that’s all he had waiting for the fire service to come. That’s a silly, a silly story really, absolutely barmy, but I enjoyed those times underground and at the weekend, because you felt reasonably safe and we were playing bridge and I love bridge, it was fine, absolutely great. What was the other thing?
CB: So, tell us about the land mines.
VS: Oh yes. So this chaps sisters married this fella, I got to know him quite well and they went to live south, south of the river, and I can’t tell you any more than that, but anyway he was on ARP duty and there, there was a parachute coming down and something dangling on the end, and he was running towards it because he thought it was a chap on the end of the parachute that had bailed out. He suddenly realised that it wasn’t and he ran for his dear life, and this was a land mine, he got away with it. He was quite close really, well, he must have been for him to be able to identify it in darkness. There’s another story about those. The, when I was reminiscing with someone recently, yes, it was my son, he’d gone on the internet and he, you can get a record of all the land mines that were dropped in Barking and Ilford, and a terrific number, so lots of places were absolutely flattened really. There was total destruction within a mile radius and then surface, surface blasts you know these were taking out windows and everything else. Very, very destructive. They were a shocker. People were sometimes the, the youngsters talk about the V Bombs and so forth, what were they?
CB: Well the V-1 was the flying bomb.
VS: Yeah, yeah, yeah and that’s just a bang wasn’t it? That’s all you knew?
CB: Well, the land mine was destructive because it exploded above ground level, so that had a huge blast effect.
VS: That’s right.
CB: The V-1, because it came in at a shallow angle, that also had a big blast effect. The V-2, because it landed vertically, had less blast but a bigger hole.
VS: Um, um. Yes. Lots of people were, were worried about these [coughs] at our cottage we didn’t worry too much about that, we’d seen enough.
CB: Yeah.
VS: We either got it or we didn’t [laughs]
CB: Of that era, because the land mines you are talking about the early part. Which areas were hit most by land mines?
VS: Barking, no doubt. I’ve got the map of the, the landings.
CB: Right.
VS: They, they were definitely hit the most, the second a very close second was Ilford. It just shows you that it wasn’t only us that had a problem of hitting targets from above. The inaccuracy of bombing. They were trying to bomb the docks. There’s no doubt about that. Mind you, I think they didn’t mind them going astray, eventually became a target didn’t it. All built up areas became the target, but in the early days, they were trying to hit the docks and they hit Barking and Ilford.
CB: So going back to Ilford, and the family being there, and the sanitary arrangements.
VS: [laughs] well, that was an outside toilet, it was, that’s — I was brought up in this three bed roomed house with outside toilet, which wasn’t very convenient to say the least, but we, we moved out to Romford on the 3rd September and I think I told this story. And thank goodness we did, because later on we found out that Henley Road at Ilford was bombed, and flattened and so we wouldn’t be here, perhaps but you never know we might have been out shopping and got away with it [laughs] [coughs], they expanded their, their targets.
CB: The Germans did?
VS: Yes, Germans. Expanded their targets to cover well, well populated areas because they’d failed, they’d tried hitting aerodromes and the Air Force generally and they didn’t succeed. They tried hitting the docks accurately and they didn’t really put us out of business, fortunately, and they widened their targets then. Anybody was fair game as far as they were concerned. So they started that in a big way and then later on the, the public started accusing Bomber Harris of doing a deadly thing and killing people, the population, this big town and city, etcetera, etcetera [telephone rings].
CB: Your phones are calling you.
VS: I can hear it. Ok.
CB: So we’ve been talking about a variety of things. One is we’ve covered the Nuremberg raid, which was a very heavy loss rate, but in general, what was the loss rate and how many planes would you put up at a time?
VS: I remember that our maximum we put up was about twenty-two and, like on the Cologne raid and Nuremberg raid and Berlin. But some of the others we dropped, I should say to about fourteen, eighteen something like that. Of course, then they had the individual mining, one aircraft off and or two aircraft off and so forth, the odd little titbit on the side. But the main efforts I should think we averaged something like eighteen, sixteen, eighteen.
CB: And the loss rate?
VS: No more than, I remember, than about four. Which people thought at that time was heavy but it wasn’t really, when you think in terms of Nuremberg, where I think we only had about eight hundred of it, it wasn’t a thousand bomber raid like the Cologne special one, where we put everything in, including the kitchen sink, and Wimpys and so forth, even Ansons I think, in order to make a bit of a publicity stunt out of it, a thousand and no, four was quite good, I reckon.
CB: Right.
VS: Considering what we were doing.
CB: So we’ve just moved a bit earlier on to bombing France in anticipation of D-Day . So after Roeun, where did you go?
VS: [shuffling of papers] Oh yes. That was the, the ammunition dump and [pause] we went to Leon, that’s right, which was quite an easy one. The one thing [laughs], we were on fighter affiliation afterwards, none of our operation. just a bit of fun. Then we went to another dump at Aubinges, I don’t remember much about that, except that we had to be very careful we didn’t blow ourselves up by being too low. Nothing in particular. But then we had one which was Margny-lès-Compiègne, and lots been written about that and it’s a bit of a mixture. Because we had, we had Lancs on it, Halifaxes on it, Mosquitos on it, and I think basically there could have been two targets. One was the ammunition dump, and the story goes that the Panzers were there with their tanks and we only had that opportunity that night to try and flatten them, and that’s where the Lancs came in. So we were briefed to orbit a, a marker, and running on that track to the target. We didn’t like that, experienced people like us, by then we were quite experienced, we didn’t like orbiting anything, you were asking for trouble from the fighters to get it, they’re not silly and sure enough they did, and we, we breezed off and orbited elsewhere so we got away with that operation, and we did apparently do a good job, and the locals, later on, after the war, came out loud and clear that they were so glad that we managed to do that. But the other side of it, I think, was another target, and I never got down to the brass tacks of this, maybe all your experiences, you might be able to come up with the answer. But I think that the Mosquitoes were on a separate target, though mighty close in the same town or whatever it was at Margny-lès-Compiègne, and a books been written about this, and I haven’t got that and I don’t know how to go about finding out any more. Martin Cook or something like that I think, has written a book about it [coughs] and that is, it was a prison [coughs] and a lot of our chaps were prisoned there and something was going to happen there and they were likely to be marched off or get shot for some reason or other [coughs]. Pardon me. So it was decided to attack, and they had to be very careful what we were doing with the — what these Mosquitos was doing was to try and break the outside crust of the building to give the prisoners a chance of escaping, and I think a lot had been written about this, which I don’t know.
CB: That’s the Amiens raid.
VS: That’s the Amiens?
CB: Yes, with Pickard. Yes.
VS: Oh, was it?
CB: Yeah. It was a different —
VS: It was a different raid. Right.
CB: Yes.
VS: Oh, oh. I don’t know where I got tied up with that one. But [coughs]
CB: But there might have been something similar.
VS: Um.
CB: What was your next operation?
VS: So where we went from there was off Dunkirk for some reason. All these were fairly easy jobs, and then the next one was Hasselt, how you pronounce that, I don’t know, and then we went mining again in the Ulm, quite a lengthy run. And next one was Aachen, got no recollection for that. So it was reasonably straight forward. So then we, I think we had a rest and then we really got sucked into the real preparation for D-Day [coughs]. We were on Calais, which is just slipping in on the coast, and then Boulogne, and then on the night of the fifth, in other words D-Day, coming up after midnight we were charged with trying to put out of action, the big gun emplacement at Le Havre. And the wonderful thing there to talk about is coming back from Le Havre, the early hours of the morning, and seeing all this flotilla, this mass of shipping and boats and galore all over the channel. I, I only hope that they, they took some aerial views of all this because it was absolutely fantastic [coughs], and we passed Channel Islands on our starboard side, and really could see all this mass heading for the French coast, and you can bet we were wishing them well, and we came home to hear the confirmation, of course, on radio. So we got back onto the mainland that morning, without a shadow of doubt as you all know, and then from then on it was really straight forward as we were concerned. Small little ops. Achery, I’ve got no recollection of anything terrible there. Gelsenkirchen was one [unclear] was another one that was one of the bigger ops, I think. Then there was a place Bernapre - b, e, r, n, a, p, r, e - and Domleger, Domleger, which was the first daylight raid that we did. And then there was another one at, where is it, Gissey, Gissey-le-Vieil, Gissey-le-Vieil a daylight one. And I think that [pause] was the last one that we did. All very quiet been —. Oh there was one more, oh I said that, we went back to Domleger, Domleger. On the 2nd of July and that was our end.
CB: OK. So what did you do after that? So you’ve ended ops but you didn’t do thirty for some reason.
VS: No, no because —
CB: So why didn’t you do thirty?
VS: Well the reason for that was rather funny. You mention people having a hoot because the pilot and myself we, we shared a room, and we’d come back from an op, and the following morning there we are in our, doing our abolitions as they called it in those days, and he said to me, he said ‘you’ve got spots all over your back’, and I said, ‘thank you very much and I’ve got one up on you at last’, and so off, he said, ‘you’d better go and see the docs with that’. Which I did [coughs], and he laughed his head off, the squadron doc, I said, ‘well, what the devil are you laughing about, doc’, ‘you’ve got German measles’, ‘oh my god, all the boys are going to have a laugh about that one’, which they did. So I was packed up, with my small kit, to go to the isolation hospital at Scunthorpe. So along comes a five hundred weight truck, just the ambulance, and a WAAF driver, and I said, ‘have you ever had German measles before’, and she said, ‘no’, and I said, ‘well, I’ve got it, but do you mind taking a chance so I can sit in front, I don’t want to sit in the back there, it’s a bit uncomfortable’, so I sat in front and as we were driving down the main street of Scunthorpe, the crews had been stood down, and I recognised a few and they recognised me, so we were waving to one another as I went to Scunthorpe isolation hospital and when I was there, it was a bit of a hoot. I had ten days there, my crew did two ops. That’s how I lost the two on them. And thankfully, I joined up with them again when I got back. But I was there about ten or eleven days [coughs], and my, I was, I had a room of my own, very nice set up, to the right of the entrance and the, the toilet was to the left of the entrance. So I had to go past the entrance to the toilet, coming back, there’s another room, of course, opposite the toilet, and there was a young lady sitting up in bed, I naturally went there to have a chat, and I was sitting on the corner of the bed chatting, and along came the matron, ‘oh you shouldn’t be here, you should be in isolation in your room’ [laughs], so that was a big hoot. The next thing is, I’m allowed out, of course it was just an infection. So I felt good enough, and they said, ‘if you feel good enough, would you like to come and make four at tennis’. I said ‘yes, fine’. So I went off and played tennis. I’d run out of cigarettes and the matron throws down twenty packet to the court where I was, and we carried on playing and had a good game. I went back, had a shower, sat up in bed and there I was, eating dinner. Very good dinner, and along came the doc, who said ‘I’ve come to see whether you’re fit enough to go back to your squadron’. I said, ‘well, I reckon having played tennis and eaten a good meal and sitting up in bed like this, I should say yes, can I go tomorrow morning?’ ‘Yes’. So off I went, found out the crew were on leave, waiting for me to come back to them and so I went off about two days, came back and we finished our operations. That was the story there.
CB: Amazing how many people actually had their careers disrupted by disease. So, we’ve had a scarlet fever man on the, on the, caught it on a boat going to Canada, somebody else with something similar because, of course, there weren’t the antibiotics or —
VS: No, no.
CB: Or other cleanliness steps.
VS: As a youngster I remember vividly I, I, I got, get fed up with the, the look of anything red. Why? Because my brother caught diphtheria, and in those days, they used to come to your home and pick up all the mattresses and, I don’t know, some, some heat treatment and they came back, but they baked them, that’s right, baked them, the mattresses, they were no good, it wasn’t worthwhile. Hopeless, so that was one lot of red blankets that coming to the door, and the next thing is, he gets, he gets through that, next thing is, he gets scarlet fever, so again, all the blankets and bedding and that were all baked and they were useless when they came back, and then he, he was ill again and he could barely swallow and, I’ve forgotten the term, but it was the throat, it was closing, he could hardly breath and the doctor was still saying, ‘you can’t get, you can’t have diphtheria twice, mum, you can’t’. He was determined to stick to this right to the end, of course, he put scarlet fever, it was diphtheria though, which was the worst of the two things, between that and scarlet fever. He took a long time to recover, he was on the critical list for a long time. So that’s why I don’t like red, red things.
CB: Amazing. Stop there a mo.
VS: Oh, ok, well —
CB: So —
VS: And sorry, then I, I was allowed to go, yes, so now, right.
CB: So recuperating.
VS: Yes, so we’re back now in, in Kirmington, having been released from the isolation hospital, to find the, the crew are on a short leave waiting for me to come back to join them. So I was off for two days, so I came back at the same time as they did, and we were back on operations. So we, we’ve finished the operations now, haven’t we?
CB: Well, we just got to you being German measles, so
VS: Yes I know but we, prior to that —
CB: Did you go back to operations, yes, prior to that.
VS: Prior to that we did finish.
CB: Yeah.
VS: We did finish on the 2nd of July.
CB: Right
VS: It was one, where are we.
CB: That’s because you became ill.
VS: Yes. On the 2nd of July we finished up with a daylight operations for a second time on Domleger.
CB: Yeah.
VS: OK. So that was the end of our tour. So off, off we went and I came back a day later than the crew, only to find to my dismay that the, the crew had left the previous day and they’d had pictures around the aircraft and all this, with the ground crew and so forth, and I was missing and wasn’t in that, so I didn’t see them off, but, of course I, I managed to link up again at the OA, but later on, I linked up with them, but not before staying on, being kept on at, at Kirmington as the flight engineer leader. Attending briefings, main briefings and at night time, on operations, joining up with the ground engineer in the control tower, well before start up time for operations. Start up of the Lanc engines out in dispersals, directly that happened, of course, we got the odd call from dispersal that, one, they were having trouble starting up somewhere or other in this dispersal, that dispersal, so the engineer and myself flew out in the five hundred weight truck and I got in the cockpit and he got on the starter machine, the acc - acc.
CB: Trolley acc.
VS: Trolley acc, that’s right, and most times we succeeded. I gave it a good thorough thumping and tried all sorts of things, and eventually got it going. I found that very, very interesting and rewarding really. I enjoyed that period. How long it lasted, I’m not too sure. I should think, maybe, six weeks, two months, two months I would think, and I found that jolly good because I didn’t get much sleep those nights obviously, it wasn’t worthwhile getting into bed, you know, and so I went to the Mess and had a jug, and then went to my room and just sat in a chair, and then went back to the Mess and sat in the chair, and then I knew it was time to receive them back again. I used to de-brief all the flight engineers, it was very, very interesting indeed. One of the things that had to be watched very closely with new crews, although I’m sure that they had this belted into their brains much earlier, but we didn’t, we couldn’t afford to guess that they had retained the, or realised the importance. We, we went onto from SU carburettors to [pause], oh dear.
CB: Bendix?
VS: You’ve got it, which was jet injection and so you had an idle cut off switch. The American design was a lever [unclear] where you revved up an engine, you tried to start an engine, sorry, and you turned and you had it in cold, cold position, the mixture control, it went up from nil to auto rich, try and catch it and it was that type of idle cut off that was on a switch in a Lanc. It was tied to the pneumatic system, break system and the, these idle cut off switches, they didn’t operate unless you had a minimum of eighty pounds per square inch pressure on, on the gauge, the pneumatic gauge with covered your breaks. So if you, you could start the engines with the idle cut off switches in the off position when the break pressure was less than eighty, and then when you got up to eighty plus, the engines would just stop. The idle cut off switch was off, so we had to make sure that the newcomers had that firmly in their mind, because that was a shocker if that happened. And such things like that, anything I got up in briefing and made sure that they knew.
CB: Now on a raid, the flight engineers had to keep a log, so when you did the de-brief, what did you do with the log?
VS: Well let’s put it this way. We didn’t have to keep a log, not just on the raid. All we had to do was to keep a log of our fuel consumption, that’s all, so that we didn’t get into trouble. So we were no more responsible for the keeping of a log of what happened on the raid than any other member of the crew. So it was general, we didn’t log everything in black and white. The chap that had the option of doing that sort of thing was, of course, the chap sitting at the desk, the navigator, and I remember the navigator thinking he’d come out and have a look at the, what it was like to be over a target on one operation. He came out in the front, behind me and had a look, came out from behind the curtain, had a good look, frightened him to death and he went back again and he never came back again [laughs], he never came out of his curtain on any of the following raids. It was laughable. He saw the funny side of it, of course, but so from then on, he was in his little shroud.
CB: We, we’re talking about what you did after operations, but actually, that’s back on it and another question, what, how often did the gunners have to fire their guns in defence of the aircraft?
VS: Oh, that’s a hard one. Many times, many times they gave a spurt, whether that primed off the fight or not, I don’t know. You, you had to remember that when a fighter gets into a bomber stream, he can have a poop at one, he misses, carries on, he finds somebody else and has a poop at them. In other words, they don’t have to go back on themselves. If you, if you just two or three, then perhaps they do or they think they’ve really got you running, you know, their winning, they’ve got, they’ve maimed you slightly and might comeback. I couldn’t answer it.
CB: How much did you know about scarecrows?
VS: Oh, we didn’t worry about them. We realised that they were scarecrows and not the real thing. I don’t know whether they, a few entangled your props with one, I don’t know. I don’t think they were dangerous at all. Have you got reason to believe they were?
CB: No, no. I’m talking about the, the description of the big explosions that the RAF turned scarecrow.
VS: They, they weren’t big explosions they, they were skeletons to frighten you.
CB: Oh right.
VS: You know, like, like, like just the bones of a human being.
CB: Right.
VS: That type of thing, just floating in, in the air.
CB: Right.
VS: I, I don’t know what happened if you got near them.
CB: Did you see any other bombers exploding?
VS: Oh yes, I already related that in the Nuremberg raid, of course.
CB: So, twenty-five you saw shot down?
VS: Twenty-five we recorded.
CB: But how many ¬–
VS: But we saw others after that.
CB: Yes.
VS: But we didn’t record them, so I, I guess afterwards if we were on a track where only about a quarter or a third of the actual outward bound track and lost – we saw twenty, twenty-five explode, it had to be three or four times that number.
CB: I was differentiating between shot down and actually exploding.
VS: These were exploding, these twenty-five.
CB: Right. So do you know why they exploded rather than just go down?
VS: Well I, I, I’ve got an idea because of what’s been written since in intelligence side that the fighters were colliding with something what they call some music or other.
CB: Schrage Musik.
VS: Yes, which is neither here nor there. It was an upward firing gun and they came underneath the bomber and that’s why we were rocking to and fro, so our mid upper gunner had a chance of seeing underneath. Besides the rear gunner.
CB: Oh right, right. Um. So we’re after the war, back to that and you’re, no sorry, after your operations, still in the war, you’re debriefing the engineers.
VS: Yes, yes.
CB: What sort of things would come up there that would be worthy of note after an operation?
VS: Nothing very much. The real, information that came up was given by the pilot and the, the gunners that were seeing everything. The, it was left to them mainly. The engineer came up with one or two things which, with regard, not regard to the operation itself, it was management of the aircraft that he would deal with and stick to that and only come up and talk about other things that the others hadn’t seen or –
CB: You mentioned earlier that one of the tasks of engineers was to manage the fuel consumption.
VS: Yes.
CB: So how critical was it to rebalance the tanks during a raid?
VS: I don’t think it, it was really critical, I don’t think it was really critical.
CB: Because there was a sequence?
VS: I would call it a routine thing to balance the tanks and to – we took off with all pumps on, on the tanks, so that if there was something wrong with one tank, the other one would still be pressurising the fuel system [clears throat], we started off with number one tanks with all pumps on, the others as well, and then we eventually went over to two, and we started on one, it was rather important because the overloading from the siphoning off and that goes on in the system, went into one of the tanks, number one I think it was. So we went onto that initially, and then went onto two and then from then on, as we got down on, on the two, we brought the others coming in so that they were in the centre of the aircraft more, instead of on the wings.
CB: So number one tank is where?
VS: They’re the two close either side of the fuselage.
CB: Right. So the numbers go up.
VS: No two, and then three.
CB: So the numbers go up as you go further out in the wing?
VS: Yes, that’s right and its two thousand one hundred and fifty-four gallons.
CB: In total?
VS: Maximum.
CB: Right.
VS: So obviously, dependent on your bomb load, so dependent on how much in fuel you had. The – all that weight for take-off initially, was about sixty-three thousand net, including everything, and that went up to about sixty-five with the mark 3s, I think. Eventually of course, we pushed and pushed and went up to about seventy thousand with the big bomb.
CB: How did the calculation for fuel requirements emerge? Who, who did the calculation on the fuel needed for loading for a raid?
VS: That was done by the, by the operations side of your, before take-off. The intelligence came through and they knew where the target was, then they worked out the distance, how long it would take and so forth, and so they knew, and a reserve of about two hundred gallons for diversion or something like that.
CB: OK.
VS: That determined the actual – how many gallons.
CB: So as the station flight engineer, did you do the calculation for the crews?
VS: No, no, wasn’t asked to, it was all done through the operations side and the ground engineers.
CB: Right. So after doing that, so you finished operations, you’re the, the man at the station, as the station flight engineer. How long did that go on?
VS: For about two months I should think about two months.
CB: OK.
VS: No more, and then I was posted to the heavy conversion, conversion unit at Blyton, where I took up instruction duties which I found not very rewarding, because I didn’t have much to do. The, there were many other instructors there, and as far as I was concerned, they were doing a reasonable job and I was really there to pass the time away, I felt.
CB: Yes.
VS: And it proved that way because they then sent me on a flight engineers leaders course at St Athan, and I found that a very good course because it was bordering on ground engineers training. It was very, very detailed and we, we had physical fitness half way through the, each day and it was about a two month course, and we had to detail, in drawings and words, something like two engines, two carburettors, two cooling systems, two oil systems and all this sort of thing and it was very, very good indeed. And I came out with an A, an A2, not an A1, so I just missed out on eighty percent. I was about seventy-eight point five or something which annoyed me [laughs] intensely, because I always think that I am experienced in marking papers and a lot depends on just how you feel at the time, you know, you, you can’t be accurate.
CB: Right.
VS: It’s impossible.
CB: OK
VS: I think you may be inaccurate by about two or three percent, if not five. Anyway, so then they posted me back there permanently, instructing on the flight engineers course, overall course of training and by then, they were well organised on the type training, it was straight through about eight, eight months.
CB: OK. So after eight months then what did you do?
VS: Well during that eight months what happened was, the war ended.
CB: Um hm.
VS: And the, the squadron leader, the engineer in charge of that training was posted, left the flight lieutenant and the flight lieutenant engineer was posted, and then I was in charge of type training as a flying officer. That lasted about two months but I got the shock of my life when I realised that there I was, in charge of training with Lancs, Halifaxes, Liberators, Sunderlands, Stirlings, at least that number if not more, and I ended up in the hospital with bronchitis because I’d frozen to death in the hangers in winter. This was all after the war and I remember that we were down – people had bread supplies one day because I was in hospital, and it was a time when we were flying – dropping food to the Dutch.
CB: Operation Manna?
VS: Yes, that’s right. And [coughs] what happened then was a visit, my pilot found out where I was and came to see me in the hospital. And there I was in bed and saying he wanted me to join him, flying to and fro to Australia, taking people back to Australia, would I join him. And I said yes, ‘I’ll, I’ll go with that’, but what happened was, my wife was expecting a child and I had to pull out and so that was me more or less finished, and the training finished. Oh, I remember before the training finished, we had surplus pilots coming through for engineer training, especially Canadians. Canadian pilots came to us for engineer training, and that was the last bit that was going on. The last little do that was going on before we closed down the actual training there. From then on, I was asked if I would like to stay in the Air Force and then I said no, but I knew what would happen if I’d said yes, I would have gone straight onto admin and been a flight commander or something, which didn’t appeal to me one bit. So I just left it and left it and then decided that I’d like to stay on, that was rather too late for the people that really knew me, so it took me some time before I managed to get a PC. But I transferred to the air traffic control branch, aircraft control branch as we called it, GD Aircraft Control, to stay with aircraft, sort of thing, and went out to Singapore and I was a joint sort of worker, operations room for HQ Malaya at Changi, at Block 36, and was in the operations room there and their job was air traffic control centre and operations, and we were briefing on radio as Spitfires and so forth, were flying north attacking [pause] the communists in the jungle. So I went out, first of all, when I went there I went up to north, to Kuala Lumpur, to meet up with the advanced headquarters and I was going to be in touch with telecommunications, getting the information that they required from the actual jungle, from the Army patrols asking for assistance. And that was interesting stuff and learnt a lot on that, and we were, the responsibility, I had a number of aircraft go in the sea. A number, I say, just a few. So we had search and rescue to do as well. We’d get out all the maps so we would see and [unclear] touch for search and rescue, and came away after about three years there, and went onto radar training, ground control approach radar at RAF Whitton and from then on, I really was in my element of, back really, in touch with aircraft and talking them down in bad weather and that was rewarding when you knew that if you didn’t do it, then they would be in real trouble. And [clears throat] from there, I was in charge of the, I was at, sent to Marham, with a new type GCA called CPN4 in, arghh, now, what year? Fifty, fifty-two. About fifty-three I went up to Marham with the new CPN4 GCA, and I was there until late fifty, fifty-six, fifty-six, that’s right. And during that time, we had a, a real terrible tragedy in the Air Force, we had the fighter leaders course at a neighbouring station, just ten miles from us at West Raynham, fighter leaders course and it came out quite clearly, behind the scenes, that their motto was, the last chap in, into dispersals, was the winner. In other words and also, unless you ran out of petrol by the time you got to dispersal, you were a chicken, sort of thing, and that was their motto. The last drop, it was actually crazy and that’s what happened to them one day, when they had, they put up eight aircraft, eight Hunters, and during that time my CPN4 GCA was ordered to go to West Raynham, and for their old, old the original, old fashioned and less efficient radar, GCA MPN1 was ordered back to me, so it was a swap and because the CNC had ordered the – he didn’t want his fighters by the squadrons without the best GCA, never mind about the fact that we, at Marham, were the master diversion airfield and took in, eventually it was turned round and realised what a mistake that was, but it was too late. Because they — what happened was that CPN4 GCA needed a contract with OTA Engineering at Kings Lynn to rebore them and keep them in decent condition. They’re a higher revving diesel electric generator sets because you couldn’t use mains, UK mains. It was American equipment requiring sixty cycles instead of fifty cycles.
CB: Yeah.
VS: And so, you had to run with the diesel electric generator sets until somebody came up with transformers and so they went, the equipment at, was now at Raynham, needed to go in for an overhaul, because they were wearing out again and on that day, they didn’t have a GCA, and they the weather was clamping, said to be clamping, but they still allowed them to go up and actually do their exercise in the water beach area. And then they came back and manning the control tower was acting wing commander flying, wing commander flying proper was out shopping with his wife, and he eventually ordered them to be let down [clears throat], knowing that Marham must be clamping exactly the same as Raynham, they were only ten miles away. Cloud was nearly on the deck and it was by the time the actual happening occurred [clears throat], and so he allowed them to come down, which is absolutely the worst thing you could do, unless you are sure of being able to land them because they didn’t have enough fuel to go anywhere else. So they let down and they were all diverted to Marham, ten miles away, with PEs around the airfield at Marham, going out to ten miles. So we couldn’t see the aircraft, whereas the other air, GCA, he could raise the antenna to get rid of the ground returns and still see the aircraft and we could have done something about it. But even then, it would have been too late, because as these were let down and in touch with Marham, Marham was sending them down wind for the GCA and they were running out of fuel, and four went in. The squadron leader on the course from Hong Kong with thirteen way in, underneath the cloud about twelve miles away on runway 24, and he went in to the deck and four others managed to, well should have been, three others managed to just stick their nose down and hope that they would see the ground before they hit the ground, and they managed to get in, and the others bailed out and that was the calamity of the day. And, of course, the board of enquiry came along very quickly, all group captains and the air vice marshal president [clears throat], I was OC to GCA and fortunately for me, which gave me a freehand, I wasn’t on duty, so I was confronted with this very quickly after it happening, and I was in a married quarter on the station [coughs], and Scottie the SATCO was a good one as well, and we told the truth as we saw it from Marham’s view point, even then. The following morning, I had a group captain come along from the board of enquiry before they actually left, having a look at our radar and that, and wanted to know what I thought of things. Pretty pictures made of the radar to take to the board of enquiry when I was interviewed, and I remember being asked [laughs] the question, and I was in the middle of answering it and one of the group captains didn’t like my answer, he asked the president whether he could change the wording of the question and he allowed him to do so and they said, would you carry on, and I said, ‘no way sir, the question’s been changed, the answer is totally different and so I wish the record to be expunged’, and so he agreed. The group captain said, ‘no, no, no’. Thank goodness the president was can, canny and realised what was happening and it was expunged and the truth was told, and a few people got black marks on that one but it, it was terrible, terrible management, terrible story for the Air Force.
CB: The, the squadron commander, the squadron leader, he stayed in his aircraft did he, he didn’t get out?
VS: Oh no, that’s right he went straight in, ‘cause he was floating underneath and when you make the mistake at that speed, if you touch the deck, you’re in.
CB: But he didn’t bang out, because he didn’t have a zero zero seat?
VS: No.
CB: And what happened to the planes that – where they did eject?
VS: They, they got away with it.
CB: The aircraft didn’t hit anything?
VS: No, fields, that’s right. Funnily enough, it turned out that, sorry, it’s ok, thank you, it turned out as, my pilot, Wiggins, had a daughter, or a sister, no a sister, had a sister who was married to a naval fleet air arm, funnily enough, strangely enough, she was married to the fleet air arm pilot that was on this course, the fighter leaders course and he was one of those that bailed out over Marham, and he told me in this house, when he visited for the first time, that he had no alternative to stick his nose down and hover as much as he could, and being directed to pull up rather sharply, which he did when he could see the ground. He was very nearly going in and he pulled up, screamed up high, ran out of fuel, bailed out, he got away with it.
CB: Amazing.
VS: He’s still alive now, at Chelmsford. Another story.
CB: Yes.
VS: Terrible story for the Air Force. I think it, I don’t think that will be on record [laughs]
CB: What happened in the aftermath of that?
VS: Well, one or two people had black marks, didn’t they?
CB: I was, I was thinking on equipment. Did they get proper equipment for both airfields then?
VS: Sorry.
CB: Did they get proper equipment for both airfields then?
VS: Oh yes.
CB: ‘Cause, if it had, if Marham had still got its CPN4, they could of got in on a GCA.
VS: No.
CB: Oh they couldn’t?
VS: No. The old one might have done, but their fuel was so short that they were running out as they were coming into Marham strip range. As I said to you, one was going down wind and he ran out so maybe the odd one or two on a thimble full of petrol might have been taken in, because with the CPN4, he would raise the antenna and obliterate a lot of the PEs, enough to see the aircraft to be able to take them into your precision talk down.
CB: The PEs being the ground returns?
VS: That right.
CB: Right. OK. We’ll pause there for a mo.
VS: You going to leave that in? Now, where are we?
CB: Right, so we’ve just done about the disaster at Marham. So what happened after that?
VS: Well.
CB: Where did you go?
VS: Soon after that, that’s right, we had, we had the Suez do.
CB: 1956.
VS: Fifty-six. And there I was on duty at night time, on the radar at Marham, got a phone call from Bomber Command, oh dear, great friend of mine, the names gone, anyway, they said ‘Vic, you’re urgently required at Malta, because no one knows quite how to fix the new MPN11 GCA that’s been delivered and been sited, but they’re not too sure about whether it’s been sited correctly and frightened that it might well break down, because its closer to the runway than the minimum distance laid down in the manual’ [coughs]. And so there I am, at one o’clock in the morning, in the married quarter, delving into my camphor chest for my car key and that, at eight o’clock, I was in a dispersal quite close to my married quarter in a Canberra, heading for Malta. Landed there at twelve o’clock, met up with my dear old SATCO, who’d been sent out earlier on, and he showed me around and had a quick, quick half and a sandwich and went out with CO Wright, checking the siting and the reflectors on the touchdown point approach and so on. And so managed to satisfy myself on one or two things, and it was a silly old type of war because civil aircraft was still landing and taking off there. The airlines and I talked a number of those down to prove that everything was ok and was able to report to the, dear old station commander at Marham, who was out there as the, the actual sortie commander, lovely fella, forgotten his name now. Anyway [clears throat], so went back to the Mess and had a meal, and off go seventy, four engine, no seventy aircraft, about forty, forty Avro Canberras and a smaller number of Valiants. Right. Valiants were just coming into use at RAF Marham at that stage. Thank you. And never the twain shall meet on the let down system, one catches up the other because they are not the same speeds for letdown. Anyway –
CB: This is the first of the V Bombers?
VS: Yes. So the seventy came back from a hit on Cairo and there again, Cairo was still open to civil aircraft. What a crazy war that was. Anyway, they came back and there was an absolute terrible thunder storm, and Scottie had devised a scheme, which was good, and he worked it good. He was the actual marshaller on radio and he was on a different frequency to me, on this three position GCA, and so I had two chaps that are detailed for actually marshalling and sequencing them, separating them and feeding into my own talk down, and he was fortunate that the actual returns, cloud returns, on our search part of our radar were in such a position that it helped. It didn’t hinder too much because that one was catching up with another, they went round the cloud and that showing on the search screen and that marshalling and then managed to sequence them very well, it worked very well . Forty went down the chute to me, Scottie put forty down to me and thirty to Hal Far, the naval base there and forty, they had a CPN4 GCA, so they were ok as well, and they all come, got down. But they were jolly lucky because the control tower didn’t see the aircraft until they were, just before landing.
CB: This is at Luqa? This is at Luqa?
VS: At Luqa.
CB: Yes. Right, we’ll pause there for a mo.
VS: [unclear] we were good, and -
CB: At Marham?
VS: Yes, at Marham. We were there, the weather was blooming awful and that night was our ball, the officers Mess ball and so I knew that we wouldn’t be very popular, the situation at Marham wouldn’t be very popular to have to get the admin side and all that all sorted out before two loads of aircraft with passengers, full of passengers.
CB: Civilian aircraft, yeah.
VS: Yes, civilian aircraft. So getting the customs in and that, and transport and all this sort of a thing, with a ball coming up and it was laughable afterwards, but it was serious stuff and the thing I had to impress on both pilots, and they took this very well, was that we were [pause] we, we were aviation red they called it, our airfield was, the — Marham was occupied by the Americans for a time. Then we took it back again and we had a funnel of aviation red lights, a funnel. In the meantime, others had progressed to other approach lighting and that lighting was said to line and bar, so I had to impress on these two airline pilots, if you see a light, don’t dive for it.
CB: When you —
VS: They’re either left of you or right of you, dependent where you are in relation to the centre line. It is not centre line and bar, it’s a funnel, a funnel of lights, they’d be either side of you and that’s where you want them, so don’t start diving for your lights because you’d be going away and in trouble. So follow my instruction, so I did that in the briefing I had before, and they took it and I talked them right down to touch down, but not very popular with the administrators [laughing] and all those, although all had a good laugh in the end. With all the passengers to deal with.
CB: So Marham was actually a master airfield, which it still is.
VS: Definitely, yeah.
CB: Was it used for any other airline emergencies?
VS: Well, yes, no doubt but I don’t recall them, not in my time. That’s the one I recall.
CB: Yes.
VS: Obviously, yes.
CB: When was that? It was in the fifties again?
VS: Yeah.
CB: Before fifty-six?
VS: I, I reckon that was, I had — in a married quarter at Marham and my wife caught TB, and she went into a sanatorium in [pause] fifty-four, fifty-five, she was there for fifteen months and it was quite a, a traumatic fifteen months, because I had two young children. So my mother and father came up from Worthing, who were quite old then, to keep house and I had a batman and given extra help and it worked very well indeed, and so I had worked extra shifts during the week day in order to have weekends off to get to see the wife. Now where is this leading? You asked me what?
CB: No, it was just when that was? So we know that.
VS: When that was, yes.
CB: Yes.
VS: So that was, that must have been around about early part of fifty-six
CB: OK.
VS: Because it was soon after that that I was whipped out to Malta.
CB: Because Suez was fifty-six. After that where, where were you posted?
VS: Oh excuse me, I’ve got cramp. Where did I go? I went somewhere that I wasn’t very happy about, but because I was GD, general duties, they’d never had one on, on, the, the calibration flight for radar and they wanted me to be the first one. So I was there for about a year, flying around in [unclear] and Canberra’s and being dropped off and jumping into radar positions and control towers and whatever, checking out their radar efficiency.
CB: Where was your parent unit?
VS: Watton, sorry.
CB: Watton, yes.
VS: Watton and — so I had, I was asked later on by air vice marshal [coughs] in charge of Task Force Grapple in London, how many hours flying I had had in the last year, and when I told him three hundred and seventy hours, he very nearly fell off his chair [laughs], and that was through chasing round in aircraft, calibrating radars and so I was a year on that and I was promoted, and I joined Task Force Grapple as a GATCO SATCO, and I was then in the underground vaults where Churchill was at Whitehall, we didn’t see daylight until we came up again during the day. Ferreting through files and what happened with previous testing , nuclear testing, I forget which went on and mainly in Australia before then, but there was one, one other, one initial operation that on Christmas Island called X-ray, in late, late, late, late, late fifty-seven or was it fifty-eight, I don’t know [pause] no, late fifty-seven because it was January fifty-eight, no hang on, hang on, fifty-six, fifty-seven, yes it was it was January fifty-eight when I joined them, that’s right, when I joined Task Force Grapple in London as SATCO GATCO. And I — going through files and that, and I was there for two or three days and along came the security officer, I think it was more like ten days, and asked if I’d been passed for top secret documents. I said, ‘no, no’, and there I was, with top secret documents in front of me. And so I thought that, that was a terrific check, you know, that says — Have you ever gone through that?
CB: Positive vetting?
VS: Yes, yes.
CB: Yeah.
VS: That, it, it’s just about three, three sheets together isn’t it? Lead to another, now if you’ve said something here and its put in another way, the other side, it shows up that you’ve told an untruth or —
CB: Yeah, yeah that you’re a fraud.
VS: Or a mistake. Yes, that’s right. It’s a very important check, there’s no doubt about that. Of course, there are some tricky people that will get away with it.
CB: Yeah
VS: But that was quite an experience because I had to ferret out what was there, all there on the air traffic control side, and did I need anything else, and if you wanted something to be sent out there for the first operation, which was for me Yankee, which was the first actual H-bomb test.
CB: Right
VS: The others were not H-bomb. And that was called Yankee, the 1st of April, so I had to get out there fairly early, but I had to get myself briefed, self briefed in London headquarters. Once out there, what did I need, and if I needed anything, get it on the ship because it would cost a fortune to send it out by air. It’s halfway round world, ten thousand miles. And so this went on and I, I went out there. I suppose from about February, March, I should think, late Feb, and gave me time to sort it, myself out from then on, on air traffic control before the first big one.
CB: We’re talking about nuclear weapon testing, Operation Grapple.
VS: That’s right, that’s right. Yeah [clears throat]. Oh I call him Dave. Air vice marshal was the chief in charge of that and he was the one that very nearly fell off his seat when he asked me the question, how many miles, how many air miles have you got in, and I said three hundred and seventy odd hours [unclear], three hundred and seventy hours and he fell off his chair. He— later on I met quite briefly at some special event attended by the Queen on parade. At, at Marham, I wasn’t there, I was, I think I was retired. Anyway, yes I was, I was retired but Grandy was there in a wheelchair, poor old chap, yes he was, he wasn’t too good. Anyway coming, coming back now.
CB: So we’ve gone through Grapple, then where did you go?
VS: Grapple, it would be, I, it was then, arghh, came back to London we were asked to say, yes we had Yankee and we had Mike, and Mike had two air drops and two balloon drops and that was the end. We came back, the Prime Minister had said we’re stopping all nuclear testing, that’s from the 1st of April, the 1st of October fifty, fifty-eight, that’s right. And so we came back, we all [unclear] in the specialisation to write a paper saying what should happen to our equipment we left there, bearing in mind, we might go, want to go back later but not at the moment and all that sort of thing. So myself and the group, navigation officer finished that and they were happy for us, just whilst, bide our time till we were posted. So where shall we go, Hank and myself. I said well what about the Parliament, I’ve never been in, in Parliament and I want to see something. So we went in and we asked a policeman what to do to get in, and he said, well you go over there, you fill up a [unclear] chit and if your member of Parliament is in the house, they’ll come out and take you in to the, this thing, the Strangers Gallery. So this we did and I said to Hank,’ I don’t know my MP, for goodness sake, I’ve got a house in [unclear] I don’t know the MP’, I said, ‘well what, what are you going to put down’, he said. Well it was the big chubby lady MP, I’ll think of it in a moment, she was a follower of amateur boxing and that sort of thing, funny remembering that.
PP: Bessie Braddock.
VS: That’s right, Bessie Braddock. You, we give him a clue and he comes up with the answers, there you are. And so Bessie Braddock came out and took us into this thing. I’m in Committee I’ve got to go, all of us are in Committee I’ve got to go an I’ll come back later on. And she did, dear old soul, anyway whilst we were there, in came Churchill, chubby faced, red complexion and of course, it was his latter few years, near his death really.
CB: Um.
VS: It was lovely to see. Lovely to see. And so what happened then? Yes. So then, ‘cause I was well known as being the radar boy I was posted to [pause] posted to the CNATS, National Air Traffic Services which was combined joint civil military headquarters for the whole base.
CB: West Drayton?
VS: No, no at [pause] London, London, Shell House at The Strand, just at the back near Charing Cross Station.
CB: OK.
VS: And I was [clears throat] C Ops 4, one down from a group captain, in charge of all the radar, area radar organisations. Now I think I’ve got that wrong. I knew there was something wrong. Before I went there, that, that comes out that later on. From the Task Force Grapple, I went on the area radar trials at London Airport, which was pre setting up an area radar service for air traffic control right across the whole of the UK, and it was radar that was used by 11 Group to control the aircraft on flights, flight paths over London for the Queen and various special occasions, and we, we took [coughs] this radar and did trials to, the whole essence behind it was that Group Captain Robinson, who was one of the leading lights of the air traffic control, managed to get a D Pack agreement with civil aviation that we could take aircraft through airways structure in this county on radar, maintaining a certain separation, without reference to civil controllers and that was a break through because that was essential, because at that time, the airways structure dropped, it increased their top limit of an airway became twenty-five thousand instead of eleven thousand and it was due to the introduction of the Comet. They raised the height of the airways.
CB: Right.
VS: And so our fighters couldn’t get through quickly unless something was done and done quickly. Because my experience showed that the GCI controllers were jolly good at looking, bringing two aircraft together, but they weren’t at separating them, they weren’t very good at that and they, they didn’t really keep an accurate line, on a, of the whereabouts of airways, they were very rough on radar on that one, between you and I.
CB: Um.
VS: Anyway that’s what proved that my trials. I was then sent down to Sopley to set up a radar service, that’s near Christchurch in Bournemouth, and the old GCI station which was still operating, so I had to pinch radar consoles from the GCI, they were all very reasonable about it and eventually took over the whole station and modified it to my requirements, and at the same time one was being, had been taken over at Hack Green near, in Cheshire and, of course, the, the [unclear] of radar on London airport, which was the start of things trials that was Heathrow, so we had three area radars covering the Southern part of the airways structures.
CB: Um.
VS: As good start. And I was taking aircraft off from [pause], what was the beacon and, in France and the French coast and was taking them off Comets, taking them off from there and straightening and aligning them. That was one of the first indications of, to our people that it was worthwhile. And taking the aircraft through airways and they could see how good that was.
CB: And the airways were amber 1 and amber 25?
VS: That right, green 1, amber 1.
CB: Amber 25?
VS: Yeah.
CB: OK.
VS: So that expanded all over the country.
CB: Right. Then what?
VS: So I left, I left, left there, I was posted to Heckle at NATO, which was field headquarters for the area radar field system at Stanmore, and a big country house outside Stanmore, RAF Stanmore [coughs], and there I was, the operations man and planning, helping to plan radar units throughout the country. In other words, taking old GCI sites or getting in on the sites already there whilst they were still operating and we took over three type eighty-two radar stations at Lindholme, Watton and North Luffenham.
CB: North Luffenham.
VS: Yeah. And so that was the situation. It was then that no one had my experience, so I was goaded to going to Singapore in Christmas of [coughs]of sixty-three and — to the, as CO of the air traffic control centre and building into that an 80CRU, in other words a radar unit, area radar unit and helping the civil aviation authority, the chief to set up and join me, in the radar consoles and set up in an operations, joint operations room. That took me something like eighteen months, and I came back as a wing commander and posted to take over one of the units I’d planned, mainly at North Luffenham.
CB: That was your last posting was it?
VS: No [laughs] then [coughs] I was posted to national air traffic services, that I went into too early with you, at Shell, Shell House, Shell Mex House no Shell House, The Strand and I was there as the C Ops 4 in charge of the military side of area radar and, and then I was posted back to NATO for a short period and then back again to C Ops 4 at, that’s now retired.
CB: When did you retire?
VS: It was really, well officially, early seventy-seven.
CB: OK. I think we’ve done really well. Thank you very much.
VS: [laughs]
CB: That’s really good, getting up to your retirement, but when was it first possible to keep tabs on the movements of aircraft over the whole of the UK on radar?
VS: Radar in a limited form was just a matter of thrashing on a screen to the layman. That was what [unclear] had in wartime during the Battle of Britain. It then became a precision, a cathode ray tube on which targets were shown, as blips that moved. And, so you can say that the first time that came in wasn’t for air traffic control it was for GCI, Ground Control approach.
CB: Interception.
VS: Interception rather. So it wasn’t until around about [long pause] the seventies, sixty-eight onwards or something like that.
CB: Um.
VS: That we, at ATCR, ATCRU, air traffic control side had access to some of the GCI radars for air traffic control purposes. It was only then that we really had, say three quarters of cover of the, the UK.
CB: I was thinking of when was it possible from the military perspective?
VS: Um.
CB: To watch the whole of the country?
VS: Never, never. And we’ve never had that and it’s possible we’re not completely covered now, we’re not far off it, we’re not far off it. We, we set up, set up a unit at Bishops Court in Northern Ireland, to try and cover over that side, the western side, but there’s always an area where you can’t see much.
CB: Um.
VS: There always is, there always will be with radar.
CB: OK. [bleep] We’re just going to do a few extra items for Wing Commander Stapley of Dersingham about his civilian activities after leaving the RAF.
VS: Quickly, I hope.
CB: So after you retired, Victor, from the Royal Air Force, you’ve done a lot of other things so what are they?
VS: Well I was taking stock to see the best thing for me to do and I thought in terms of, do I stay at Penn where I was living, which was a nice village but if I do, what do I do and I thought I’d be living on the golf course. And I thought that’s no good, I’d just taken up golf and I didn’t like it all very much and I always said I wouldn’t take up golf until I’d stopped playing cricket and of course, it was too late to take up golf. So I decided to move away, and we had the daughter down in Colchester and the son up at Newcastle, so we worked our way north from Colchester and came up with a house at the village of Ringstead, and that was in mid seventy-seven. And took over this old house and I was working on it when the, I was approached by the local representative of the council, would I put up at the next election of April seventy-nine for the District Council, not the Parish Council but that it included to be on the Parish Council as well, but the main thing was the West Norfolk Council was a District Council. And I thought, well that’s interesting because basically, I’d been a bit of a politician for a long, long time now, I’d been on NATs twice and having to go to see the Secretary of State for different things to do with military money, and I thought, well, yes, I think that’s a good thing, I’ll have a go. I was in the middle of replenishing, renewing various things on this country mansion, but I still took it up and I won and I, it was in the days of Thatcher taking office as well on the, in April seventy-nine and within a couple of years, I was chairman of housing, I was chairman of housing for about eight years out of the twelve years I was on the Council. I ended up as mayor of West Norfolk in my last year of 1990 to ninety-one, April to April, and retired as West Norfolk, West Norfolk mayor, mayor of West Norfolk. I then left the Council within months they made me a, an honorary alderman of the borough and here I have and had another decoration to a certain extent, I’m allowed to do different things within the borough, but that doesn’t mean a thing. Like a freedom of the borough. The aldermen were extinct, made extinct a long time ago. It’s just an honorary rank of appreciation. Now where did we go? From there, during my period on the Council, I had a doctor approach me from Heacham, I was councillor voted in, in the Heacham District here in Norfolk, and he approached me with regard to setting up a hospice. That was in 1983, whilst I was still on the council, he wanted my help. What I could do for him on the council. This I did, I joined him and I worked from eighty-three to ninety, no 2004, twenty-one years or something like that, as a Director of the hospice and Vice Chairman, I couldn’t take on the chairmanship because I had too much on my plate with other work things. I managed to get somebody to take over as chairman and we worked well together. Then I, when I left the council, also I had one or two organisations coming to me for, would I take over as this or that and the other, and one of course, that was dear to my heart was the chair, President of the local RAF Association, RAFA, Royal Air Force Association and I still am President and every year, I lay on a dinner in April and another dinner in September, and preside over the Battle of Britain memorial services at Tower Gardens in Kings Lynn, and various other aspects like that. The one for the [pause] Burma Star Association, they became extinct here as a branch and we took over that responsibility from them. We promised to do that, we still do that and of course, remembrance services and everything remembrance and such like. In addition being an honorary alderman, I get invited to all functions on the civic side, which are very nice to attend and see everybody again at each year and that is just about it, other than the RAFA. I preside over two dinners a year and also every other year, I lay on a big band concert, RAF the big band at the Corn Exchange at Kings Lynn. And that’s just about it.
CB: I don’t know how you have time to have your meals.
VS: I’ve finished [laughs]
CB: [laughs] Thank you very much indeed.
VS: You’ve, you’ve taken it all way.
CB: Wing Commander Stapley.
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 Victor Stapley
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Chris Brockbank
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-08-02
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AStapleyVA160802
Format
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02:20:10 audio recording
Language
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eng
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Essex
England--Yorkshire
England--Norfolk
England--Rutland
France
France--Le Havre
Germany
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Essen
Germany--Frankfurt am Main
Germany--Nuremberg
Germany--Stuttgart
Christmas Island
Egypt
Malta
Singapore
Malaysia
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1942
1943
1956
1957
1944-03-30
1944-03-31
1944-06-05
1944-06-06
Description
An account of the resource
Victor Stapley was born in Ilford in Essex, where he was fond of playing cricket. He left school at fifteen and worked at a tobacco company. Then Victor became a shipping manager, a job in which he had to book shipping spaces whilst not having any telephones in his office. He joined the Royal Air Force at the start of the Second World War. After his training Victor became an engineer and went to work on the Mustangs of 2 Squadron based at RAF Sawbridgeworth. He tells of his first experiences with the Allison engine and Rolls Royce Merlin engines. After completing a flight mechanic course and becoming a fitter, he remustered as a flight engineer He crewed up at the Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Lindholme.
Victor completed 28 operations, including Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Cologne, Essen and Frankfurt, but he missed out on his 30 operations when he contracted rubella. He tells of his experiences on his operations, and supporting the D-Day operations when he and his crew were sent to attack the gun emplacement at Le Havre. He mentions how he saw all the ships heading for the beaches. Victor also recalls being put in charge of training with Lancasters, Halifaxes, Sunderlands and Stirlings, before heading out to Malaya to work on supporting the Army.
He served during the Suez Crisis helping with issues concerning radar. Back home he served at multiple stations before becoming commanding officer at RAF North Luffenham. He mentions an incident at RAF Marham and joining Task Force Grapple which was involved with nuclear testing.
Victor retired in 1977 and then he became a parish councillor for West Norfolk Council, before becoming mayor of West Norfolk from 1990 to 1991. At the local Royal Air Force Association he takes part in events helping to organise the acts of Remembrance every year.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Vivienne Tincombe
aircrew
B-24
bombing
bombing of Nuremberg (30 / 31 March 1944)
bombing of the Normandy coastal batteries (5/6 June 1944)
crewing up
fitter engine
flight engineer
ground crew
ground personnel
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Lancaster
mechanics engine
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
P-51
radar
RAF Lindholme
RAF Marham
RAF North Luffenham
RAF St Athan
Stirling
Sunderland
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/882/11709/PHorshamES1602.2.jpg
67e67ad73fa2fc212dac0e588fd3a172
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/882/11709/ASymondsHorshamE170105.2.mp3
7d055b8f4144ed6db659e469c9e75ac0
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
Horsham, Eric
Eric Symonds Horsham
E S Horsham
Description
An account of the resource
14 items. An oral history interview with Eric Horsham (b. 1923), 9 photographs, and his memoirs. He flew operations as a flight engineer with 102 Squadron from RAF Pocklington.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Eric Horsham and catalogued by Barry Hunter.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-01-05
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
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Horsham, ES
Access Rights
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Permission granted for commercial projects
Transcribed audio recording
A resource consisting primarily of recorded human voice.
Transcription
Text transcribed from audio recording or document
CB: My name is Chris Brockbank and today is the 5th of January 2017 and I’m with Eric Horsham down in Warminster and he was a flight engineer. And he is going to talk about his experiences in life but particularly with the RAF. So, Eric what are you earliest recollections of life?
ESH: Well, every year we went off to Devon for a holiday at relations because my people came from Plymouth and Devonport and this was held good right up until my teenage years. But early memories really, I suppose began at the age of about, serious memories, seven when we heard a very strange noise on one occasion and we all rushed out to see what it was. And do you know what? It was the R101 which was on its way to London and of course guided by the River Thames because that’s where we lived. In Plumstead. So it was logical. In fact the best view from Plumstead was the Ford Motor Works which had four big white chimneys and so that was a landmark. And following on from there it wasn’t until I was [pause] well I suppose fourteen really because that’s when I left school and they said, ‘Well, there’s a couple of jobs and one is — would you like to be a messenger in the Royal Ordnance factory?’ Which was right adjacent to Plumstead at Woolwich, you see and also the headquarters of the Royal Engineers. So that’s what I did for six months because it was destined that I should take the Railway Clerical Examination and join the rest of the family working on the railway. So that’s subsequent to that they sent me to train as a booking clerk. But I didn’t show up very brightly so they said, ‘No. We’ll send you to a goods depot.’ Which was rather like being banished, you know [laughs] because, can I be humorous at this point and say, well yes I was sent to a depot call Nine Hills which was in Vauxhall near Waterloo and on one side I had the Brand’s Essence and Pickle factory churning out pickle. And looking the other way we had horses because everything was delivered, delivered by horses, and drays at that. And on the other side we had the gaslight and coke company pushing out fumes so that was my early memory on the railway and then a friend of mine said [pause] well I told the friend of mine in the railway business that I was very unhappy there. So, indeed the friend said, ‘Well, we’ll try and rectify that,’ and apparently I didn’t shine as a booking clerk either. So they sent me to the estate office of the Southern Railway which was way out in the country at Chislehurst, but I digress because previous to — I mean we, talking about the year 1937. As you’ll appreciate if I was ’23 — born ‘23. ‘33, ‘37 that’s thirteen or fourteen years and 1939 came along. We can verify those dates and we had to join anything organised. All young people. So, but I think maybe I’m a bit previous to that because I went along to the Air Defence Cadet Corps. This would be somewhere about 1937 at least. So from there of course we went on to the Air Training Corps which was very much in evidence at Woolwich because we were, had the run of the Woolwich Polytechnic, and the chief there was indeed given the rank of wing commander in the Air Training Corps. Wing Commander Halliwell. So, that’s where I first got my, sort of my aircraft experience and of course it was a very good base for workshop practice. We all started off wanting to be flight — to be aircraft fitters. Fitters and turners. And the very basic things that we did were of course in connection with Tiger Moths where you really had the history of aircraft from very early days, and we had to learn all about turn buckles and things which kept the wings in place. But of course as time went by, here we are in ’39 and we were getting heavy bombers coming in, and if you’d, you had to decide, you know, really what you wanted to do because you were going to be called up for sure. And state a preference. So of course I did. And that was to be a flight engineer. Now, as an aside to this, engineers in the Air Force — flying, got twelve shillings a day. Now, you, you know seven twelves is eighty four. That’s four pound forty a week which is not to be, not to be sniffed at. But of course we also had to join something anyway. So, off I went to, to be called up but unfortunately there was a problem because I’d had a medical earlier for call up and the doctor discovered that one leg, ankle or calf, was slightly different to the other one. And of course yes it would be so because when I was born it was in a splint up until a year, eighteen months which straightened it out but it never did quite catch up with the other leg. Anyway, they said, ‘No. You’re grade three. We don’t want you.’ So off I went back to the estate office and soldiered on. Filing I think was our main job then because the railway had a vast estate. However, ok, come twelve months I was getting pretty fed up so I went up to the local recruiting office and said, ‘You know, I’m available. And I’m partly trained as an engineer. I want to join the Air Force,’ and they said, ‘Well that’s alright. You’re in the Air Training Corps. You should be alright.’ So they sent me off to Cardington and, for a medical. Went to Henlow actually. Adjacent. Just down the road from Cardington. Saw the top brass and he said, ‘Well, jump up and down there,’ and so I did. And he said, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, off you go.’ So back to an interview at Cardington. The very, very modern method of identifying people. You had all these puzzles in a book, and you went through the book. A hundred puzzles and things like a bit of algebra, you know. And I knew a little bit. Anyway, I got the question right and I was the only one in that class who got it. So the squadron leader who was interviewing, and he was loaded with gongs, of course to a young man I couldn’t take my eyes of these gongs. Anyway, he put me through all the paces and he had a civilian officer too, with him, in the interview. And in his room he had every kind of aircraft and I was to — aircraft recognition. So I did very well at that because we were well trained in the Air Training Corps. So off I went then back to civilian life and then a little while later got called up for Aircrew Reception Centre at Lord’s. So we had a, we were very honoured because we had to be kitted out in the Long Room which was famous as you know. We had drill on the famous turf. Now, that lasted about three weeks by which time we were fully kitted up and said, ‘Right. Off to Torquay you go.’ We thought that was jolly good because Torquay was a lovely holiday centre wasn’t it? Anyway, we did, I did eight weeks there altogether. And we learned administration and the law of the RAF and the time came when they said, well, you know, off to the squadron — no. Off to the big training centre you go. And I remember I slept the night on Bristol Temple Meads Station because that was it. We were going to St Athan in Wales. And the train service being what it was we did arrive at St Athan with two kit bags by the time we got there. And humped them all the way up to the camp which we thought rather naughty. Anyway, we went through twenty six weeks, I think it was, of training throughout every facet of aircraft construction and the essential things that one would have needed to know. Like you had to be au fait with a very complicated system of petrol tanks. Now, each wing of a Halifax had six tanks. And this had to be in flying whittled down from, so that your main petrol was in the mid-section, in tanks one and three. Funny enough on the test training board they said, ‘No, you really ought to have another think about this. Go back and think for another week.’ So, then I passed out and they put a little white flash in my cap and they gave me papers for the Number 1652 Conversion Unit which was that Marston Moor.
[Telephone ringing. Recording paused]
CB: So we’re just re-starting now with St Athan and the rest of the things that you were doing in training there.
ESH: Yes. I’ll go straight into leaving St Athan.
CB: What else did you do in St Athan? Hydraulics. What else?
ESH: Is that running?
CB: Yes.
ESH: Well, yes, you had your petrol system. You had the other power that was likely to be in aircraft which were accumulators. Now, not as you would think an electricity accumulator but this was liquid in a cylinder. Oil actually I think it was. And air was pumped in giving it a pressure and on selecting undercarriage down the accumulator would push it down. This is in the case of a Halifax which was either hydraulic or pneumatic. So the way to get services to operate was by his accumulator. But not only that of course because you did have [pause] now let me think. You had the port inner engine on a Halifax is the one that supplies power to your services and —
CB: Electrical power.
ESH: Yes. Some of it would have been electrical power.
CB: But also hydraulic.
ESH: And hydraulics had to be learned. Flaps were hydraulic. The other services control are foot and pedals by the pilot on the fin and rudder. And the elevators — well they would be hydraulic you see running a pipeline out. And flaps for instance. Fairly high pressure, well two and a half pounds I think were the standard pressure in the system but it was enough to push a big flap down against the airstream. And so electrics — you had to be au fait with the electrical services, and therefore you had to mug up on Ohm’s Law if you like in order to appreciate the power that you could get from electric motors. So, and then of course you had to know the different gauges of the stressed skin of the alclad which was a compound of the aluminium NG7. You see, the mind gets very hazy when it comes to the complete structure but you were able, by the end of six months, to walk through a mock-up of an aircraft with your eyes closed. You could have bandaged the flight engineer. He was the one who moved around and you were perfectly au fait with where the main spar came across so you could sort of jump over that. And of course the controls for your petrol were underneath the, what’s called the rest position which was a little sort of bunk for resting people. We didn’t go to sleep there actually but it was very useful. And then in the front of the aircraft of course you had the pilot with the wireless op immediately underneath him. And the navigator and the bombardier in the nose proper. So they, we were pretty well genned up by the time we left there. We could go anywhere blind folded within the air craft there and operate switches without thinking about it. So then they said, ‘Right. Here’s, here’s your ticket.’ You’re on your on your way,’ to a place called Pocklington — no. Sorry. Marston Moor. The sight of the famous battle actually was just down the road. And this was number 1652 Conversion Unit where all the crews got together as and made up as crews. Now, I hadn’t met our crew before then but we were very late. The mid-upper gunners and the flight engineers only met the crew, the other crew of four who’d come along from EFTS and their various ‘dromes where they had been instructed, to make up a crew. And it was strange because we assembled in the hall and the flight engineers and the gunners — mid-upper gunners, would be sitting in chairs and then in came the existing crews because they’d been flying Wellingtons which only required five people. And then — how do you find a pilot? They said, ‘Join up with somebody,’ so eventually, I think we were down to about two flight engineers and a chappie came along and said, ‘I need a flight engineer. You’ll be my flight engineer won’t you?’ And it turned out that he was a very very competent pilot. His name actually was, he was a Pilot Officer Francis then, who came from a village near where we are now called Stoke St Michael near Shepton Mallet. Anyway, he was quite stern. He always said that he’d seen our records but I don’t think he had. Anyway, he brought the crew along and said, ‘This is our flight engineer. Do you think he’ll be alright?’ So that was it. That was our crew. And so then we started training on the next day on circuits and bumps because this aircraft was totally new to our pilot. And while we’re on the subject of crew we had a very important chap in the crew who is of course the navigator. Now, we had actually in retrospect, having had thirty odd ops to prove himself, and we wouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t have been for Oscar Shirley, who was our navigator, because you could turn him upside down. You could have umpteen course changes. He knew exactly where he was. Because it could be very, I mean I heard of crews who had navigators that weren’t too good and that was curtains. However, we won’t dwell on that. But, and while we’re on crew our bombardier was fresh from the first few months of a teacher training course. He was called Johnny Morris but not to be confused with the comedian. And Alan Shepherd was our wireless operator. Now, Alan Shepherd came from Ringwood, off a smallholding. Wonderful chap really. Did a lot of good work after the war. Who else have we got to account for? Oh rear gunner. Yes. Rear gunner, another Londoner. I’m just desperately trying to remember his name. You wouldn’t believe it would you? [pause] I’ll remember it in a moment. We’ll come back to that. Now, who haven’t we accounted for? Mid-upper gunner. Jimmy Finney from Hull. Lovely lad who later got shot up on one operation and had to pack it in.
CB: And your bomb aimer?
ESH: Ron Alderton was the name of the rear gunner by the way. He is still with us as far as I know but when I phoned him the other day he said, ‘I’m losing my marbles. I can’t come and see you.’ So, there we were. Crew set up. And then of course we all had our bicycles with us. Off in the van and off we went to — I think we went by train from Green Hammerton to York. And then York out to Pocklington, and the station yard was just gravel in those days. And then of course we walked over to the ‘drome which was quite close. Each of us had two kit bags and a bicycle. But we knew we were going to Pocklington and it didn’t have a very savoury sort of record. In fact they said, ‘Now you’re here you’ll be lucky if you last three weeks.’ Which was a throwback from — 1943 was a desperate year and here we are in January or February was it of ’44, at the Conversion Unit. And Pocklington had, sorry not the Conversion Unit. Pocklington — the actual RAF station and there was definitely a pervading sort of sense that this was a bit dodgy, you know. However, we were led into operations in around about, just before D-Day. We’d done all our circuits and bumps and cross country’s and they let us down very gently on short trips to France. I mean the first trip we did was to a place called [unclear] which was a P-plane place. P planes were coming in thick and fast so Churchill had said to our boss Air Chief Marshall Harris, ‘Look get your lads on this. I want it stamped out.’ Because they knew the 6th of June was coming up. So we continued to do that until right through until well after D-Day. To various places which you wouldn’t be able to find on the map because they don’t give, you won’t find them as places like Foret de Dieppe. Which is unheard of, I mean, but there you are. And then we started ops didn’t we? And of course our accent was on night bombing. Can you imagine having a sheet of aluminium stood up against the wall and you gathered up in your hand and [pause] gravel? Now, you threw the gravel at the aluminium. Now that’s just what it’s like when you’re being shot. If you’re near a shot. Because all the shrapnel comes and hits the aircraft like that and that is getting just a bit too close for comfort. However, they were nights. Now, what you don’t, what you can’t see you don’t worry about do you? Even though it was seven or eight hours sometimes. Or five or six to the Ruhr. Because we were concentrating on the Ruhr. I mean Essen after we’d been there and some of the other lads had been there previously there wasn’t one brick standing on another. And that’s where Krupps the armament works were ruined, you know — finished. Because we were mainly at that time after [pause] I mean our targets were decided by the Ministry of Economic Warfare. And they said, ‘Right. Wipe out Germany’s oil and that will end the war.’ So that’s what we did. We went to all sorts of obscure places trying, in bulk, to wipe out an oil plant. Because, I mean, you’re looking at a complex in the middle of a small area of a village. Now it took a lot of aircraft to plaster it so we did a lot of this up and down the Ruhr. I mean there were so many places I won’t bore you with that. But that’s what we did. But also we went to one or two further places like Brunswick. Way across east to Berlin. And then Hanover, Soest, Osnabruck and they were very well defended. And of course the night fighters hadn’t quite been been nullified as they were a little later. So we had, I suppose a charmed existence. And one of the deadly things the Germans did was to position a gun at a fixed angle — called a shrage gun and it would come out and go straight for the port inner. Once you got the port inner — well that’s where your services came from. And there’s no way really you could put a fire out. You’d try by diving [pause] but no really we had a charmed existence I suppose. And then D-Day came along and in preparation for that the squadron was busy but we didn’t actually get over Normandy until, I think it was July the 18th 1944 when it was, there were troop concentrations around Cannes. Now, if you remember Montgomery couldn’t shift them and everyone was looking to him and saying, you know, ‘You’re going to be a failure aren’t you? You can’t. You’re army can’t do it.’ So they whistled up the Air Force east of Cannes where Tigers tanks had dug in in expectation of a bombing raid. and of course we were there 5 o’clock in the morning and it soon became obscured by dust and smoke. And really it was pretty terrible for the Germans I’m sure because they staggered out of their bunkers and that, having been bombed by I think it was a thousand aircraft. Not all at once but over a period of about half an hour. Your concentration was so great yes you could time them and of course this was, in effect, an army cooperation. We had to be very careful because the army had to lay down a yellow barrier of flares with a given margin which they decided was safe so — and I do remember on that occasion I think as we were coming — as we were going out on that raid as you’ll realise Cannes isn’t that far from England. They were coming back. So, quite amazing you know to see these aircraft coming back and you hadn’t got there. Now, this was daylight of course because they switched us from night after a time because we went on to daylight because of course if you can see something it should be, you should be more accurate. Now, we did go on right through the summer. We went to one P-plane place seven days running. Foret de Dieppe. If you can find it on the map. Because one operation was preceded by Mosquito. Now the Mosquito could — it was planned he would be on a fixed from England on the exact spot. So we were trundling away there getting towards — and the secret was when he dropped his bombs everyone else would do theirs. And of course unfortunately we got up near the target and one aircraft opened its bomb doors and dropped the bombs and of course everybody else did the same. So really that was — the idea was good but it didn’t work in practice. Whether the Air Ministry would like you to know that I don’t know. But yes, it was so. So, we were largely on P-plane bases but then we went on, as I say, to daylight. Oil installations. Because at that time it was really beginning to show that the Germans couldn’t really put enough in the field because they hadn’t got the petrol. So, mainly of course we were up at the Ruhr at places like Gelsenkirchen where there were oil installations and that more or less saw the summer out. But one operation did stand out for us and that was army cooperation with the Americans who were trying to push into the Ruhr and we hadn’t yet, they hadn’t yet done it but there were three towns. Julich, Duren and Eschweiler, and I think they are adjacent to the [pause] now what was the name of the forest?
CB: Ardennes.
ESH: The Ardennes, yes. Indeed. The Ardennes and these Germans had all their batteries concentrated in that area and they could dig in these Tiger tanks and they were very difficult. I mean they were very difficult to move. And the crews also were dug in and ready to come into action as soon as the raid had passed over. Anyway, we went through the target and on our way out and we must have wandered. At that time of course to nullify guns you dropped out metallic strip, Window, which really foxed the German radar. And they were pretty good on this radar. And we did wander around to one side on the way out. Out of radar — out of the Window cover and you could see. I was lucky I had a little dome and I could look out as a flight engineer to the rear and you could see these black dots coming up, but you didn’t know whether that one was going to follow that one but it did. And there was an almighty bang and so skipper Francis knew what that was so immediately put it into a dive. Now we were about fifteen thousand feet I think and we ended up diving and ended up at eight thousand feet hoping that the Germans wouldn’t be able to follow us down but the place was full of smoke and cordite. The smell of cordite. If you’ve opened up a firework or let it off you’ll smell cordite and that’s what, that’s what was filling up the aircraft. So you couldn’t communicate. Everyone had gone deaf so you had to wait for your hearing to come back. But being a flight engineer I was able to walk around because we were at level flight by that time. Previous to that we’d been pinned in our stations. The G-effect being such. And so the first thing I saw — the aircraft looked like a pepper pot on one side, the starboard side, and daylight was streaming out. No flaps. And unfortunately Jim Finney in the mid-upper turret was pointing to his leg and the shrapnel had gone through at the thigh which rendered him, his control of his foot etcetera to be nullified. So wireless op and bombardier got him out of the turret and laid him down in the fuselage, bandaged him up and they cut his trousers first in order to find out where the where he’s bleeding. And they did a good job on him because you know if a chap’s losing blood he’s losing life blood. So, anyway, the skipper said to navigator, ‘Give me a course for home.’ He gave him a course irrespective of what we were flying over and he pointed the nose in the right direction and off we went and we were soon back. I suppose at — oh yes it was awkward because there was a mist coming up and a fog but we were pointed towards Orfordness and the aerodrome there which had FIDO. Fog Dispersal [pause] Fog Incandescent Dispersal Organisation. So we were able to fly around once firing off all the red flares that we had so they should know down below that we hadn’t got radio, we hadn’t got brakes. But it’s a long runway and it was called [pause] There were two — one was at Carnaby further up the coast. This was Woodbridge. Straight in off the sea straight on the ‘drome. So it was getting pretty misty and it was closing in. November is a bad month isn’t it? Anyway, we got down didn’t we? And we managed to take up the full length of the runway, ended up on the grass at the end. But nevertheless we were off out of trouble. And along came, well they knew full well that this aircraft was damaged. Couldn’t talk to us. So they sent out the wagon and dear Jim was soon in hospital. And we, along with a couple, quite a few dozen others descended on the cookhouse for a supper, you know. Which we did eventually get because they didn’t expected all these people to come in 5 o’clock in the afternoon. And so what do you do? We’re down at Orfordness there in the east coast of Essex. They gave us tickets back to London and then back to York which was an excuse for everybody to spend the night in London. But I was lucky because I could get an electric train just down to Woolwich as it were and back home. We never got pulled up. None of us had hats. Well, I think, I think the skipper did because he was very particular about carrying his nice peak cap, you know. However — yeah, so we, but that’s only one of about six different aircraft that we had on the tour. Some of the numbers are in the logbook. But where we had different problems — for instance on one occasion we had a seagull in the engine nacelle which put that out of action. So of course you didn’t use that aeroplane the next day. We had so many we could have a new one every day if necessary. As I say, we had about seven. We got the undercart. That went down alright otherwise we wouldn’t be here would we? But it could be things like that which would be, could be very dodgy. And we eventually finished our tour on oil installations. Let’s see [pause] towards the end. Towards the end. Towards the [pause] October. October. Through Christmas. Probably about January or February of ‘45 and that was the end of our tour. And we had done twenty daylights and about thirteen night trips which clocked up something like four hundred, five hundred hours flying. Full stop.
CB: We’ll stop there for a —
[recording paused]
CB: So we’re just, we’re just doing a recap now which is on the damage on the aircraft.
ESH: Yes.
CB: So starting at the point of the big explosion. Then what happened and what was the effect?
ESH: Well I hope I can remember.
CB: That’s alright.
[pause]
ESH: Well we left the target area and unfortunately we may have erred to one side of the Window cover which of course blocks out their radar and nullifies their accuracy. But nevertheless they caught us up and in a flash there was an almighty bang and our hearing disappeared straight away and the skipper put it into a dive, And down we went. Down. Down. Down. Something like eight thousand feet I suppose before we levelled out and that was a relief but we were then, I was then able, as a flight engineer to move around and observe any damage and by jingo there was. Looking out the port side — the starboard side the flaps had disappeared. One important, very important thing. The whole side of the aircraft was peppered and daylight was, it was more or less a window. And our mid-upper gunner, now our hearing had come back and our visibility was quite goon— pointed to his leg and indeed he had caught, been caught by shrapnel right through his thigh from his turret. So that very shortly after our wireless operator and our bombardier came out and got him out of the turret and cut his trouser and stopped the flow of his blood. And we realised it was very urgent to get back to England because, fortunately our four engines are still turning over in spite of losing some major control of the aircraft, so on arriving at Woodbridge which was a mighty long ‘drome a mighty long runway and very wide too we had to circle. We had to tell the ground what was happening. And so there we were flying, running off red verey lights in case there were other aircraft in the circuit, but there was no issue. We did one. One circuit around the flying control and straight in to the funnel of the runway. Without — without radio we felt pretty helpless. The fog had closed in on the aerodrome now at this time but he was an A1 skipper and as I say one of his things that he was so good at was flying blind, he could fly in any condition. He got us down and we got Jimmy into the transport and away to the nearest hospital.
[pause]
CB: Was there any fire on the aircraft?
ESH: No. Fortunately we didn’t have fire. Which is a pretty terrible thing.
CB: So you had no, no hydraulics and you had no electrics. How did you get the undercarriage down?
ESH: Well, it’s heavy, it’s a very heavy undercarriage. Massive wheels on a Halifax. Six foot high nearly. If I remember rightly the hydraulics had gone which serves flaps, bomb doors, undercarriage and, actually what happened is [pause] there is another precaution because if your —
[pause]
CB: You could wind it down could you?
ESH: No. There was a precaution against it falling down which is called withdrawing the uplocks. This is a job that the flight engineer had to do. He would go down to what the rest position which is where our mid-upper gunner was. And there are two D rings. One each side protruding from the fuselage. The cable obviously comes through the back of the wing because the undercarriage would have been beneath the wing, and it was a simple system. Ok. You pulled the D ring which pulled a cable which released a sort of a gate bolt. This bolt, if you can imagine a gate bolt, held up the undercarriage. So the undercarriage would automatically fall down. So that’s obviously what the, as flight engineer, I did on approaching. We were fortunate in as much as that was all intact. I mean if the aircraft had lost its undercarriage earlier you not only would it have caused a lot more loss of fuel flying with an undercarriage down, total drag. But in this case no. The uplocks worked. Irrespective of any hydraulic system. And of course your warning lights came on here and there.
CB: Ok.
ESH: We covered that have we?
CB: You have. Yeah.
ESH: So therefore we got — we were on the ground, Jimmy’s off to hospital and we are left to go and find our supper again with another hundred bods as we used to call ourselves. The next morning we were given a pass to go back to Pocklington via London so everyone had a night in London if they couldn’t get home. We all seemed to arrive the next morning for the 10 o’clock up to King’s Cross, up to York and that was the end of that sticky situation.
CB: When you had a night in London where did you stay?
ESH: Well I was able to go back. Once we got to London I was able to go back to Plumstead to my folks, and one or two of the other crew had friends that they could call on. Or relations. In fact Skipper Francis had some relations down in Slough way. Now, Ron Alderton, the rear gunner, had Canadian friends temporary and he did a night of the rounds of whatever pubs he could find and night clubs. He had quite a roaring time. I mean we didn’t need to get a train before 11 o’clock from Kings Cross to get back to York. So, on the train back we were, you know, reminiscing. And I always remember I’d tried to write out something for the, for the skipper at the time when all our hearing had gone and it was an absolute shambles. Unfortunately, you couldn’t hear anything and I found I couldn’t even spell the word fuselage. What I should have done was “Jim hit.” Two words would have conveyed that but instead of that — in the event you do not act logically and you would find that you had difficulty in getting to grips with language. You could move about and you knew exactly what you should do but you couldn’t think it through. But we were all in the same boat weren’t we? We all lost our hearing for quite a time.
CB: So you —
ESH: But we got back. That was the thing.
CB: You experienced the initial shock. When did the secondary shock hit you and what was that like?
ESH: Well, we had a night’s sleep, as you will appreciate, in London and I suppose we were rehearsing the events in the train for five hours. But we well appreciated that we were very lucky. But I don’t think at that time that that sort of event had too much effect on a crew. We were all together weren’t we? Jimmy was unfortunate but he wasn’t killed. That would have been a terrible disaster. So therefore I think we’d already been used to five years of war. I mean I’m talking about ’39 onwards, you’ve already had four years and you became inured to stress, in effect. So although we went back over the ground again but we were as a crew, we were complete. We were very lucky.
CB: How long before jimmy rejoined you?
ESH: Jimmy, unfortunately was off to hospital in Oswestry and he was ruled out forever more as a flyer and we received then a young gentleman from Scotland called Onderson. He was very broad and I think mostly we didn’t call him Ian, I think we just called him Jock and he was quite happy with that. And he finished up something like five or six operations with us. He became one of us obviously.
[pause]
CB: Now, you were saying that you did thirty. In your tour there were thirty ops, twenty of them were daylight. How many of those were to do with the V weapons and what happened?
ESH: Well, as we said the V weapons and the P-planes. The V weapon was of course outside our control. It’s a rocket and you don’t hear it coming, you don’t know it’s left the ground even. And if you were anywhere near it then it could destroy half a dozen houses at one time. So we were mainly concentrating on P plane sites because you could flatten them. Until they put them on lorries and then of course you couldn’t find them. So, yes.
CB: So you were, you were in daylight but how easy or difficult was it to find the V1 initially and then V2 sites?
ESH: Well, I don’t think that we could ever find — the V1 for instance was secreted in the middle of a forest and certainly fighters could eventually have a go because they could see them and once we’d identified, or the Air Ministry had identified the location they knew what they were looking for on lorries. They would shoot them up but of course V2 was purely a mobile rocket. But once it was off it was off and it would perform a perambular and no one knew it had gone and no one knew it was coming. And there was just a terrible explosion and five houses could be — disappear.
CB: But the V1 sites, as you said, in forests — how effective would you say your endeavours were in dealing with those?
ESH: Well you want the truth. A question like where would you find the P- plane sites in a forest? All we had to go on really was what came back from our agents by wireless. That there was this activity in a certain place which the Air Ministry would identify, or the sight would be identified and it would be marked on our maps, as I say, as a very obscure village in Pas-de-Calais. The only thing we could do was mass bombing. In fact I don’t remember a site which wasn’t bombed on each occasion with less than three hundred aircraft. So that you hoped that within that aiming point you would destroy it. And I think we did a lot but not all.
CB: Saturation bombing.
ESH: Yes. That was the idea. Saturation bombing [pause] Stop.
CB: Ok.
[recording paused]
CB: Now, some of your endeavours at bombing these V1 sites perhaps were more effective than others. Was there one site you went to several times?
ESH: What? A V1?
CB: Yeah. In Dieppe.
ESH: Yeah. Foret de Dieppe. Did I not mention earlier?
CB: No. So, just, just cover that can you? The fact you went several times.
ESH: Oh yes indeed.
CB: Why did you go to that several times?
ESH: Yes. In order to mitigate this nuisance of the V2, V1s of which many thousands were being aimed at England at the time on a fixed track. One morning, in fact five or six mornings continuously we searched out a fixed ramp in a forest called Foret de Nieppe. Which of course is in the Pas-de-Calais, if you can find it. And it took thousands of tonnes, must have done, to obliterate that site. But it was, it wasn’t able to fire off these V1s in rapid succession because, you know the Germans were very thorough and got it to a high state of proficiency but we did concentrate for many weeks and months on finishing off these P-planes because it was aimed at civilian population.
CB: How many times did you actually see V1s flying towards Britain on your way to the target?
ESH: Well fighter pilots did of course but not, not us.
CB: You were too high up, were you, to see them?
ESH: Yes. I mean they didn’t, they came in at about two thousand feet so I can’t say I saw one. But I saw the damage and I experienced a V2 standing on Albany Park Station which was on the, what’s called the Dartford loop line. Bexley Heath, Barnehurst and down there. And I was standing on the station and this thing dropped a quarter of a mile away and I had to ask the station staff what that was. I mean, you know, I didn’t see it. If I’d have gone along I’d have seen a row of houses demolished but that. No.
CB: And what was their reaction to your question?
ESH: Who?
CB: The railway people.
ESH: Well he sort of said, ‘Where have you been?’ Because it was — this is not live is it? Well he wondered where I’d been not to know that London was being plastered with P-planes bombs. That sounded by the way like a common 6oo cc motorcycle engine.
CB: And you weren’t able to tell them what you were doing to counter this. You weren’t able to explain what you were doing, to the people in London.
ESH: No. Well they could see —
CB: Bombing.
ESH: They could see I was in uniform.
CB: Yes.
ESH: But they were so busy with their ordinary lives that I was just one of two million servicemen. It didn’t rate more highly than that.
CB: Right. Ok.
ESH: Pause?
CB: Yeah.
[recording paused]
CB: So what other events were noteworthy.
ESH: Ah well, now what comes to mind straightaway is on the way in to a target to see an actual aircraft hit. And you must remember this has got a full bomb load of what ten [pause] what had we got — five twenty thousand pounds of TNT going up as well as the fire bombs, and it’s the most horrifying experience. But I do remember that occasion when — and the skipper was quick to point out that the Germans did send up what they called Scarecrows. But I’m sure this would be more than that because the whole sky around that aircraft was just bits, black bits in the sky. Now, you see a Scarecrow couldn’t put up that much material could it? I don’t think so. I think this was a very salutary experience but you didn’t dwell on it because, well, you know, it could be happening at night time and you never knew anything about it.
CB: So we’re talking about night time now are we?
ESH: No. Night time, other than someone standing and throwing grit at your aeroplane that was the only indication you would have had that there were some shells very close by, but you see what the eye doesn’t see the heart doesn’t grieve. Although you might feel the effect of it, especially if you’d another aircraft in front of you you’d be perhaps very difficult as a pilot to maintain your position because you’re right in his slipstream. And there’s a slipstream of four engines just in front of you. I mean there were so many aircraft in the sky that it’s a wonder and in fact we lost a lot of aircraft because of collision. Indeed we did if the truth is known. No, there’s a bit of variation. We also had some trips with mine laying. Now, what happens? Mine laying. Well we had a chap from the navy came up and showed us exactly what’s going to happen because these things are quite weighty. I think they weighed about a matter of hundred weights and I think the maximum we could carry would be two. But there would be a whole squadron perhaps, or a lot of aircraft from other stations, all on the same business, and so off we went out across the North Sea and in to the Baltic. We had to pass over an island called Bornholm. Now, how far it is into the Baltic I don’t know, not very far perhaps because we were after this shipping route between Swedish oil coming down to feed the German factories. But I do remember dear old Bornholm put up some ack-ack you know [laughs] as though they could catch us with it. One little gun you know. It was a bit of humour in a not too humorous event. But that made a change from flying over the Ruhr because actually the first time I saw the Ruhr at night, well you’d never believe it. We came into the south of Ruhr and there was a bank of searchlights for the next fifty miles. Up and curving around. And, you know, when the chaps had said you’ve got to avoid searchlights I can understand because once you get pinned or —
[Mobile ring tone. Recording paused]
CB: So we’re talking about in the Ruhr and the way they would have, the place was defended.
ESH: Yes. Right.
CB: And how they were able, in the dark to track where people were going.
ESH: Well if I describe the scene.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: The first time you saw these early night trips that we did it took a bit of getting used to. And the first time I saw searchlights. Now, if you can imagine Kiel up in North Germany. Right around and come down through the rest of the Ruhr down to [pause] what town would be the south of the Ruhr?
CB: Stuttgart. Stuttgart.
ESH: Stuttgart. And Nuremberg. That is something like fifty miles isn’t it? Or more.
CB: More.
ESH: A solid ring of thousands of searchlights, it was like day. And it curved actually from the north right down. Facing England to the south. Stuttgart. Nuremberg. And even further south than that I think. A solid — banks of hundreds. And if, if you got near one they had one particular, in groups, they had one particular searchlight which was extra powerful and it used to show up blue, and, well we did get coned on one occasion. We were lucky because very often you couldn’t get out of it. There were so many and they could sort of follow your track and there was this master searchlight and everybody else was following. And what we did, we managed to get out by just diving and weaving. And I suppose we lost a few hundred feet and you had to make that up because you had a flight plan. You know, you didn’t depart from that flight plan. You just didn’t go off on your own doing your own thing. That was certain, certain tragedy that would be because you had whole squadrons of night fighters still and they were still able to fly. Although, they couldn’t do the training because they hadn’t got the petrol, so the petrol bombardment was beginning to show. I mean we’re talking now about mid-’45 aren’t we, you see? Sorry —
CB: ’44.
ESH: ’44. From ’44 to the end of ’44 it was gradually having an effect on German oil production, synthetic oil. And of course being as they were small patches they were very difficult to find. I mean, you might have one oil refinery and its ten miles from the nearest town. Now, you’ve got to be very accurate to get anything delivered to that site and — if you could get there, you know. But of course the German fighter production was going down so fast that I think we had a charmed existence from nineteen — from June ‘45 really to, or September ’45 to the end of [pause] ’44 to the end of ’44. I mean we were very busy D-Day time for the next three months, and then it sort of slackened off because you were limited to what you could do in the way of army cooperation. In fact the army didn’t want the Air Force to take full credit for having liberated Germany. So [pause] but raids were still being, operations were still being carried out by the squadron right through to mid-‘45. Or ‘til D-Day.
CB: You talked about the intensity of searchlights. What effect did that have on the air bomber’s ability to identify the target?
ESH: Well, searchlights. Yes. But you had visual and of course later in — from D-Day onwards the squadrons were equipped with H2S which was radar with the ability to show up features on the ground. To be able to distinguish between water and land. Now, if an oil refinery was situated just off a river that aiming point would certainly be able to be calculated and it left an aiming point for a whole squadron of aircraft marked by Pathfinders. You didn’t go on your own. It was, at that time, after D-Day, everything was Pathfinders and they would blaze the trail and you’d have a Master Bomber and he would come through your RT. I remember one occasion when the Main Force was given a name so it would come out rather like this. ‘Widow 1, Widow 1 to Main Force. Bomb the red TIs.’ And then a minute later, ‘Widow 1 to Main Force. Bomb the yellow TIs.’ Because of bomb creep.
CB: TI being target indicator.
ESH: Target indicator. Yes. So you had a whole spectrum of colours. Red. Green. Blue. Yellow. And they could be changed rapidly by RT from the master bomber to the main force so that he kept, you kept pace with bomb creep and you became more effective with that. In fact very effective in the end. I mean such people as Wing Commander Cheshire as he was then would be up the front there giving the, giving that RT direction.
CB: Would you like to just explain what is bomb creep? Bomb creep. What is it?
ESH: Bomb creep. Yes. What happens is that [pause] it creeps back rather than on to the target. How it happens — I suppose if you’ve got a conflagration then bombardiers could think that that was where you should be aiming. So a lot of aircraft, I mean, don’t forget there are five hundred aircraft on this job so that some of them would think that was the target. But, so the Master Bomber had to keep reminding people that it was creeping back and it shouldn’t do. He’s got to go on to his new target indicators. And he changed the colour of course. So you knew what to look for. Otherwise your bomb load was nullified.
CB: Ok.
ESH: Go on to [pause]
CB: Yeah go on. So we’ll stop there for a mo.
ESH: Yeah then —
[recording paused]
ESH: I said Cora’s mum and dad yes.
CB: Yes. On a slightly lighter note clearly as a crew you had your, and personally you had your social side. So what did the crew do, and what did you do individually?
ESH: Well, that’s what I did individually and didn’t take any part in any social activities with the crew.
CB: Right. So what did you do?
ESH: I didn’t go drinking, you see.
CB: No. So what did you do?
ESH: I spent most of my time in York.
CB: Right. And what did you find there?
ESH: This family.
CB: Right.
ESH: And I was made like a son.
CB: Were you?
ESH: So I didn’t — we all went as a family to the theatre one evening and we saw the famous lady who had just started acting. She was in, “Last of the Summer Wine.” Very famous. You chaps have got memories haven’t you?
CB: We’ll latch on to her later. So, but but the family —
ESH: I’d better jot her name down while I think of it.
CB: Ok. Yeah. So you —
ESH: Thora Hird.
CB: Yeah. So the family was in York. What did the father do?
ESH: He was invalided. He couldn’t do anything because of the start of silicosis.
CB: Right, but what was his trade?
ESH: That was — he was in charge. He had his own firm of plasterers.
CB: Right.
ESH: So I’ll go on to that. I’ll just make a quick note, Thora Hird.
CB: And they had a son and a daughter.
ESH: Yeah. Yeah. Famous restaurant in the middle of York. Still there.
CB: But you’d go to that as well would you?
ESH: Yeah. I’ve got it. Yes.
CB: Go on.
ESH: Ok.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: Live?
CB: Yes.
ESH: We were talking about the social life on the squadron. Well, as I say I think I was eighteen when I, nineteen when I arrived there, and went out into York and I met this delightful young lady called Cora. And she said, ‘Well, if I’m going out with you my people want to see you.’ So I went along and they became my mum and dad for that time. And her dad was a, had a plastering firm but he was suffering then from, I think, the start of silicosis and he couldn’t work but nevertheless they went out of their way to look after me, and of course the extra attraction was of course la belle Cora. And at that time there was a show going in York and who should be a young actress was Thora Hird. But I don’t think she remembers that herself now, bless her. She’s passed on hasn’t she? But Mr Parker’s claim to fame as a plasterer was the ceilings, for instance, in Betty’s Bar. Now Betty’s Bar is very well known in York and it’s still there. And if you go down into the basement you will find a mirror which is now cut up into three parts. And pretty well every famous flyer has got his signature on the glass having done with a diamond ring. And they’re all there. I think you’ll find Group Captain Cheshire left his mark there. And quite a lot of others passed through but they’re all on this mirror. So that’s down in the basement of Betty’s Bar. It’s worth going down to see. There’s history galore down there. So they looked after me like a mother and father, not withstanding the fact they had a son in the Middle East. With the 8th Army I think it was. But of course being really a dangerous occupation I had no business stringing this girl along. I mean I was her first boyfriend and you know the effect that has on young ladies. So, the crew were very good. They didn’t question me as to where I was spending all this time you see. Which brings us to —
CB: How you broke it off.
ESH: How we —?
CB: Broke it off.
ESH: Oh yes. I mean, we used to have, our famous perambulation was around the wall of York. And, you know it took quite a time so, and broke her heart I’m sure, but it had to finish. It would had been too traumatic otherwise. And we were then left to finish our tour which, there again was mainly oil installations. But come September of ’44 the CO called us all into the briefing room and said, ‘Now we’re all going to France tomorrow. We are bringing petrol to the army.’ The army was fighting at Eindhoven and so they said, ‘You are going to be loaded up with petrol,’ which they did. Each aircraft. Two hundred and fifty, five gallon cans stacked along the fuselage and tied in so they didn’t bounce around. Off we went to a German field which they’d laid out what’s called Sommerfield tracking to stop an aircraft or aircraft and vehicles bogging down in a puddle. So that was rather jolly. I mean there we were — flew a hundred feet all the way. And really that’s one of the nicest things to do, you know. Flying low level where we’d see haystacks with pigs on top because Jerry had pulled the plug on the dyke. Very naughty of course but you know it really devastated thousands of acres. And we had to fly over that into Brussels. Well into an area of Brussels called Melsbroek which was just a grass field. And it was very enjoyable. We landed there and fresh air and went to the village and do you know what? There were grapes growing on the trees. Oh grapes. Well, I mean who wants to leave there? Anyway, this so happens, you know that we tried to get off the next day, I’m sure it was the next day. So soon you could be accused of organising this. But we oiled up the plugs trying to get out of a big puddle and there’s no way you’re going to get out of it because what the wheels do and they’re big, they just churn a great gap, pit in the soil. So therefore that was, we were stuck there until you get a fitter out with a set of plugs to put it right, and I think all four engines were oiled up. Anyway, that meant that we had three days in Brussels. So what did we do? The first day we piled into a local tram and went into Brussels where we stayed at the Gare de Nord Hotel. And I was the only one who had any money [laughs] you know, because they said now any money you’ve got to change it. You’ve got to, sorry we had to change it for the currency that was wartime currency. And so of course our money was soon gone staying at hotels. And we went in to one, oh yes we, I must tell you a little story here. We went in to one hotel and up to the second floor and it was a night club with an amphitheatre and a stage and events, you know. Acts taking place. But on the way up the staircase in a corner there were two six foot six American sergeants and they had a lovely carton of cigarettes, a big carton. And they were presumably flogging them off. I mean if they could get another carton like that they’d make a fortune because there were no cigarettes in Europe. In fact, people would give you their gold watch for a packet of cigarettes but that — now our rear gunner being a sort of international type said, ‘No,’ we must find, he’d come from Canada on, he was trained for something else in Canada because he talked about Montreal. And he said, ‘We must see an exhibition.’ And actually it wasn’t what I fancied but anyway we didn’t get that far because there was no exhibition. So we met this old boy in the road and Ron says, ‘Exhibition?’ So, he didn’t speak French perfectly. The chap was quite happy. This old boy. ‘Come with me. Come with me.’ And off we went with this chap down the main thoroughfare and down some back entrances, back places, back roads, alleyways to a pub. And this pub was run by this aged lady who sat at the high stool and dished up what went, passed as beer. And there were us. We were all sitting around on stool, a continuous stool like in a queue. And I mean, you know, it was alright. A bit of light fare. And the skipper was there of course and he hadn’t taken his hat off that time. And in comes all th ese girls in bathing costumes. I mean, to eighteen year olds you know this is seventh heaven isn’t it? What’s next then? And they were sitting on our knees and some of them very shapely. And the skipper suddenly caught on, he said ‘Right. Here’s the gun. Out you lot.’ And we had to leave because it was a brothel wasn’t it? And he wasn’t, he wasn’t having his crew sullied by such goings on. So, that was, that was Brussels for me.
CB: So you got two black eyes and you couldn’t hear anything either.
ESH: [laughs] So. No. We had to make apologies to these young ladies and disappear. We would have liked to pass on perhaps a bar of chocolate.
CB: Of course.
ESH: But we didn’t go prepared. But it’s a pity. But Ron did — he went to a private family that night. I don’t know what the attraction was but anyway he did — no. Johnny Morris this is, ex schoolteacher. He obviously thought about it because he brought a bag of coffee back next time and made arrangements for it to be delivered to a particular curie. A priest at the local church who he had met somehow. But that’s the best we could do really. Normally you went in with your two hundred and fifty gallons. The army came up with a truck, unloaded [pause] and there we went off again. The next day with another load. So we were really kept busy bringing in something like two thousand gallons at a time for the army to use up at Eindhoven. Because they were six hundred miles from the port at that stage and just couldn’t keep going, you know. I thought I saw somebody moving out there but maybe I’m wrong.
CB: So did you carry, did you then later deliver any other kind of goods or was it only petrol?
ESH: Only petrol. But I believe later. Very soon. Our squadrons were engaged on dropping supplies to Amsterdam and it made a great impression on our Dutch friends.
CB: That was food. Operation Manna.
ESH: Yes.
CB: Yes.
ESH: We weren’t engaged on that but rather carried on with the last few trips into Europe.
CB: So when you come to the end of your tour what happened then to the crew?
ESH: Ah yes. Well, do you know on the aerodrome was an experimental department run by a squadron leader. And they, one of the problems with the Halifax was coring of the oil in the oil tank. Super cooling. And it was called coring. And every effort was being made, well funny enough in my tour I never came, never had the problem. I dare say we never flew in an icing. What you call an icing.
CB: Weather condition.
ESH: Yeah. You get icing conditions at certain heights and if you stayed in it it was very bad for the oil coolers but we managed to keep out of that. But a lot of experimental work was being done because a lot of the aircraft did — was affected. And so they, we worked for the experimental department there which was set up at Pocklington. Going on cross country’s with modified aircraft that in effect would fly through anything up to Scotland and back in the hope that we would be able to pinpoint the procedures to cure it. But unfortunately we had an aircraft, an aircraft engine go over speed for some reason so that rather folded up at that time.
CB: Which kind of engine was that?
ESH: Well, Halifax — a Bristol Hercules 100. That was the latest. But coring was a very difficult thing. So of course what was happening was that everyone was now asking us to be re-mustered. There was nothing for us to do except hang around. So —
CB: Was there an option of going on another tour?
ESH: Oh yes, that was always an option, yes indeed. But — and a lot of the chaps did but I think I was more anxious to go back to civilian life. But I was ‘Duration of Present Emergency.’ Or I was D of P E.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: And of course they were not giving out any commissions at that time. So there wouldn’t have been a lot of future in staying so I applied to be re-mustered.
CB: And what happened?
ESH: And then left Pocklington.
CB: Ok.
ESH: Being posted to whatever came up in the Air Ministry I suppose. And off we went then re-mustering at a famous station for the army in north Cornwall — north [pause] Catterick. Now, there was a little RAF station for re-mustering at Catterick in an ex-mine working. Anyway, my number came up eventually but in the meantime we were sent on indefinite leave. Now, I didn’t want to have to pay to go to the skipper’s wedding because train fare was quite expensive. But I gave his address on my 48. My seven day pass as it were. Or indefinite leave. The consequence of that will be explained a bit later.
CB: Right.
ESH: But from there I got a letter a little later being posted to the Isle of Man as an airfield controller. But it just so happened that my papers actually never got to my home. They got to the skipper’s address. Now, you can have a bit of a laugh if you’ve been in the service because this was six weeks later, or rather that was alright but it was the last seven days. I was absent without leave. But I turned up. I was on my way to the Isle of Man. Well, I got to the Isle of Man alright. Yes. And having got to the Isle of Man you got off at Douglas and, you know, looked at the local restaurant. Two eggs, steak and chips, that’s marvellous. Have some of that. So immediately dived in and had a good nosh as we used to say. And then you got a little local narrow gauge train up to the Isle of Man up to the north. Because I was going to be stationed at a little place called Jurby which was a good hopping off point for anybody going to or coming from Reykjavic. Which, I would then put three searchlights up to guide them in. But it was more disastrous from my point of view because what could the CO do? He has a chap seven days adrift. The first — I went to the guardroom and he said, ‘We’ve been looking for you. You’re seven days adrift.’ So, go up before the CO. Very nice chap. By the way first of all you have to be vetted by the station WO and he actually said, ‘Do you know I’m awfully sorry to have to do this but you’re up before the CO tomorrow.’ So, you march in, in the usual way with the, you know, left right left right left. Turn right. ‘So young man. What do you want to do? A court martial or do you want my punishment?’ ‘Well your punishment sir. Thank you.’ ‘Right. Seven days loss of pay.’ And do you know what? You can imagine the scene can’t you? Pay parade. And you announce yourself before the cashier’s table, ‘1869854 Horsham. Sir.’ And he would say, ‘Three and sixpence.’ This went on for weeks at three and six pence a week it takes quite a time to get to four pounds forty. Seven days pay you see. You can clue that if you like but its [pause] but indeed I think because we had a chap at High Wycombe and he was called Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Harris and of course they did think twice before they shoved the book at one of Bomber Harris’s boys. And I think I was saved by that because it’s a heinous crime in the air force to be AWOL anywhere. Anyway, we carry on from there because I enjoyed the time on the Isle of Man. Being in charge of the airfield. Not a lot went on but we did [pause] we were a home for stray aircraft and of course the station was very busy training the rest of The Empire Air Scheme for training navigators. And we would use, or they would use Ansons. So of course we had a squadron of Ansons to fulfil the contract. And of course my job, one of the jobs, mine and my crew — I had a crew by then of Scots lads that were setting up a parking area with glim lamps every day, because they were doing night flying, and these glim lights were fuelled by accumulators and shone a red light. And you had to put them in a certain order because then the aircraft on the way back knew where they were to park. And they used to get it in the neck if they ran over a glim lamp. Other than that when we wasn’t flying we were all in flying control and we used to do a shift where we had two and a half days off. They still do that in the police force apparently, here. Afternoon, next morning or night, off the next day and the next day and the following morning. So that enabled you to go and see the local sights. Peel Castle on the Isle of Man. And of course we did get busy aircraft and they would come in some awful times from Reykjavik and sometimes I was, what did they call it? Duty officer? Duty. Yeah. Duty officer. And I had to find them accommodation so I had to lay the law down. Pull rank on whoever was in charge of the blanket store so that these chaps had a night’s sleep and could get, we would — the cookhouse would provide a supper for them. That broke up your time. So, in effect, eventually they sent us back to the mainland. To top — I was stationed at Topcliffe which was an ex-Canadian station and underneath every table and ever chair was chewing gum [laughs] That’s how I remember the Canadians. But there was no flying going on which was a shame because we [pause] I was only thinking these chaps had applied for discharge and therefore I was in charge of an airfield with no aircraft. We kept the grass nice and tidy. But as I say we could go into, no, we couldn’t go in to Topcliffe for two eggs, steak and chips. It was unheard of. But what you could do is you could go to a local village called Topwith . Now, there are two brewers in Tadcaster. One is Sam Smith and one is John Smith. Now, you’ll know John Smith because his beer is everywhere but what we ought to have down here is Sam Smith’s which was thick and black. And it was as black as your coat. Black as night and it was the next best thing today to Mackesons. But you could get quite squeamish, not squeamish — quite drunk on it. So then you met up with a lot of other interesting aircrew and you absorbed their experiences, and then gradually, one by one, they disappeared. As I did one day. On the 2nd of January 1947, in the bleak midwinter. It was very bleak down south anyway and there had been a lot of snow around. One interesting side now, talking about cold. We were very cold in Pocklington so we could burn, burn bicycle tyres in the hut. But old Jim said, ‘Do you know what,’ Jim Finney that was then [pause] now wait a minute I’m wrong. Jim has already had that shrapnel in his leg. But anyway, there was another member in the crew. It must have been Alan Shepherd, the wireless op. He said, ‘I know. There’s a bottle of petrol over there.’ And somewhere someone had left a bottle of petrol. And it was a hundred octane. So he said, ‘Stick it in the stove to get it nice and warm.’ And it did. It blew the whole thing apart [laughs] Which wasn’t very clever was it? Anyway, we’ve left. We’re at Topcliffe aren’t we? And then, sooner or later, ok the 7th of January or thereabouts I found myself out on my ear having been discharged at, somewhere near Preston. And we asked for a taxi and do you know that’s the only time in my life so far that I ever have driven in a Rolls Royce. There was a very famous place near Preston. If it wasn’t Preston it was Southport where there was a big demob place. Anyway, that’s where we ended up, in a taxi going to Preston Station. And home on indefinite leave still. Well, no a fortnight wasn’t it then? Fourteen days and that was it finished. Now, the thing is then going back to the old firm. Now, I found myself in the railway estate office before long but they didn’t really want me I don’t think. They said, ‘You can go up to Victoria Station and go to the archives.’ Temporarily. So that was a fill-in job. Going back through papers going back to 1900 where people had to pay for a sort of fly privilege to bring a pony and trap on to the station property and they had to enter into an agreement. Time goes by awfully quickly doesn’t it when you’re demobbed? So I stuck with the estates office for [pause] until 1957. And I didn’t seem to be going anywhere much so I went out into the big bad commercial world. And went to a builder’s merchants called Roberts Adlard who were quite famous in the southern counties. Their headquarters were Southampton. I had this friend of mine who was a rep and that’s how I got there. But, and mind you I’d left London so it was a big change to go to work in Rochester Cathedral, Rochester, the ancient town on the Medway. Rochester Cathedral. Yes. And this builder’s merchants wasn’t going anywhere so Horsham said to himself, ‘Look. Hadn’t you better find a job with a pension?’ So I had experience in the estate office which was very similar to the housing department of Rochester City Council. And applied and got the job as a rent collector of all things. Going around collecting. They had five thousand houses all broken up in to thirty different schemes or so. So that enabled a transition from that to a more permanent sphere. And of course the only way you can get up the scale in local government is either by passing a lot of examinations or becoming a professional man, like, I don’t know, an accountant which is a good solid five years work. But no there we were at Rochester with several other ex-service people especially from the navy, being next to Chatham. And so we said, you know, ‘What about a rise?’ They said, ‘Oh no. No. No. We can’t give you that but if you take a certain examination there will be money in it for you.’ So the one I took was the simple one. It was the clerical division of local government. That is talking about local and central government. Writing an essay etcetera. And after six months we took the exam and we all passed. So we thought go and see the governor again now. A different kind of governor. And for passing the examination I think — I was paid five ninety in those days. So he said, ‘Yes. Well, you can go up to five ninety five.’ A five pound a year increase. So we’ve got to do better than this. So you had lists of jobs you see, circulated. And the next port of call was Maidstone Borough Council as a senior rentable assistant in charge of five rent collectors and proving the books every weekend. Now Rochester City was a purely written system. Now I got to Maidstone and it was all done by a machine called a Powers - Samas punch card accounting. And a dreadful business because my collectors used to go out with a run off. The rent for various properties. And they would put X Y Z here and they wouldn’t put anything on their sheet. So, immediately you were what –? Two pound fifty out. I used to be there at half past nine, 10 o’clock at night on a Friday balancing the books because you had, in effect, over thirty different schemes so you had to sit down and balance these schemes to find out where the error was. Which was good training wasn’t it?
CB: Amazing. Yes.
ESH: I remember the deputy who we worked under. You never saw the treasurer. He was the high and mighty. The holy of holies. But I saw the treasurer on one occasion. He said, ‘Horsham,’ he said, ‘How is it that you spent all this overtime?’ Four hours on a Friday night, you know. I said, ‘Well you know. The chaps put one thing on the sheet and then put another in the book.’ He said, ‘Horsham you really should consider the propriety of asking for overtime.’ It’s not much of a thing to a chap who’s just put four hours extra sweating his guts out. Anyway, that’s another aside isn’t it? Next thing is of course to get promotion isn’t it? And where did I go from there? Yes. I applied for a job in the County Council’s office, in the planning department. Which is where I ended up in 1978. Yeah. 1978. And then took a sort of early retirement.
CB: How old? How old were you when you took early retirement?
ESH: In ‘78. I was born in 1923.
CB: Oh right.
ESH: ’23.
CB: Fifty five.
ESH: Just short of sixty. Oh there’s a bit more to come isn’t there?
CB: Go on then.
ESH: Yeah. Well then [pause] I go back, to retrack a little bit. Going back to my days at Maidstone Borough. Wasn’t getting much anywhere and a friend of mine, who lived adjacent to us said, ‘Why don’t you come into the poultry business with me?’ He said, ‘We could then step the production.’ Because he was, he was managing single handed two thousand layers. So we promptly put some new housing up and I put all my wealth into it and we ended up with eight thousand head of poultry. Not quite as big as JB Eastwood who came along and said, ‘Look you chaps. I don’t care, I’ve got millions of birds. And I don’t care if I only get a farthing a head. I shall still make a profit.’ Which was quite true but it was disastrous for us because we couldn’t compete with that although we did very well. I mean we had a neighbour a few miles away and he was able to keep five thousand which was less than we had. And he could work in the mornings and take all the afternoons off and play golf. That’s what he did. We thought that’s a good idea. But we were saddled with our eight thousand and with fowl pest in the offing if we didn’t look after it then we’d be sunk. Nobody else was going to look after it. So you put in a fairly, a fairly full day. Eight till five minimum. But it was very good experience because it sort of taught me that come what may I could always get a job because you’ve got some skills. Especially you’d be very valuable to a poultry farmer if you could go in and say, ‘I can go in and look after ten thousand.’ He’d say, ‘Well, you know, I’m like Mr JB Eastwood. I’ve got millions.’ But nevertheless it was the same principal. So we didn’t make a fortune but we didn’t lose our shirt. I say we being collective. And then what did I do next? Well, I went back to the old firm didn’t I? Back to local government. Into the planning department this time, of the County Council. And my draughtsmanship experience came in very handy because we dealt with maps all day long. And so in 1974 I got the most marvellous job because the ministries were all on to local governments and County Councils to find out how many, what land have you got. You don’t even know what you’ve got to build houses on. And he said, ‘Well Horsham. The job’s yours. And we will depict it on a twenty five hundred scale ordnance survey sheets,’ which was a bit better than what you get on your deeds, you know. You could even show a rainwater pipe on a twenty five hundred scale. And Kent had forty seven, forty eight District Councils which I had to visit one after the other because if you didn’t carry the local authority with you you’d be sunk. They hated County Council. And they hated them because they put extra on their rates didn’t they? So that was a very enjoyable job. So thirty nine, forty, forty one, forty two [pause] No. What do I say? 1974 — 5 — 6 — 7 - 8. It took four years to do but at the end of the time we could show in the planning department that we had fifty two thousand units of accommodation each housing three people. That was your capacity then but of course a lot of it was land that you wouldn’t want to release straight away. I mean there was something like fifteen, twenty acres at Folkestone on the golf course. I know because I lived looking over these lovely green fields but you couldn’t release it all at once but that was my job.
CB: And you enjoyed it.
ESH: I enjoyed that. I never — it’s a time when I was glad to go to work because it was so, it was my job and it was interesting and I had to fulfil this promise made to the governor that it would be finished in a certain time, you know. And then we, we retired officially.
CB: When?
ESH: In 1978. 1978. Yes. Yes and went off to live in Cornwall for seven years. Froze the pension which was the thing to do. So I froze mine for another eight years so I had to go and get a job to keep the wolf from the door.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: Which I did. In Cornwall.
CB: Doing what?
ESH: Well, I saw an advert in the paper to the effect that, “Handyman wanted,” and they gave the telephone number and it turned to be at what was the Ritz Cinema which is now a bingo hall. And the idea was that I was going to look after all the maintenance. Well, it was rather nice to do something different if you’ve done the other jobs for forty years, you know. So I did that for two or three years. The firm was called Mecca. You’ll know Mecca. They’ve got them everywhere of course. All your Ritz cinemas now have gone to bingo halls. I had to do many things. Change all the lights and there was a lot of lighting. Also you had an emergency system on what was it? Ten volt accumulators which you had to cut in if your mains failed you had your own generator as well. So you had that system and you had emergency lighting if all else failed. So I enjoyed that job really.
CB: ‘Til when?
ESH: About three years later. Right up until about 1981. In that time my and a crew of two or three lads we painted the whole of the inside of the cinema including the ceiling. Which pleased the powers that be because they said, ‘Well done Horsham. We will send you to Tenerife for a fortnight for you to recover,’ [laughs] So that was something that came out of the blue. Yes. You see every year they have competitions and whoever wins the competition probably wins a place to summer holiday. And this time it was Tenerife. So there were about a hundred of us went off to Tenerife. All found, you know. Very nice indeed. Now, you wouldn’t get bonuses like that in local government of course. Since then I haven’t done much of anything have I?
CB: Throughout this time you were —
ESH: Hmmn?
CB: Throughout this time you were supported by this lovely lady. Ellen.
ESH: Yes.
CB: Where did you meet her?
ESH: I met her the first day I went to work for the railway. She was going on the same train. There is a station south of London called New Cross. So that people from further down went up to New Cross on the train and then down to where the estate office was evacuated. It was at Chislehurst. Now there was a big house at Chislehurst called [Sidcup?]. And it was on an elevated position and there’s the railway coming up and there’s the tunnel. Elmstead Woods Tunnel. So that’s, I met her in the train and she was busy there with her needles and you know sticking her little fingers stuck up like that click click click. And so that’s how it started. Her and her friend actually. Her friend was called Winnie Glover and I suppose she thought, ‘Well, she’s done alright for herself,’ [laughs] And that’s, we’ve been going ever since.
CB: When did you marry?
ESH: 25th of May 1946.
CB: And how many children have you had?
ESH: Two girls.
CB: So one’s called Gillian.
ESH: One’s Gillian. Yes.
CB: Yeah.
ESH: And she trained and became a teacher and married a headmaster. And then she went, they went off to Hong Kong and taught for seven years. And now she lives in an old mill on the Vienne River just outside Chauvigny. Whereas Alison trained as a nurse here and she trained in Weymouth and Dorchester and then went on to the hospital at Warminster. Hence the reason that we’ve came somewhere near her in old age.
CB: And she married a —
ESH: She married a —
CB: A doctor?
ESH: A sergeant in the MOD police. A young sergeant who is now or rather shocking really some year ago he went in one Monday morning and they said, and he has twenty five years’ experience as a policeman and by that time as I say, he was a sergeant. No. She didn’t marry a sergeant then but he became a sergeant. And they said, ‘We don’t want you anymore.’ Made him redundant, just like that. So, but funnily enough he still works as an instructor for the police. Driver. He trains their drivers and that’s what he’s doing today. Alison’s just finishing up her last eighteen months as a nurse.
CB: Well I think many many thanks, Eric.
ESH: Pardon?
CB: Many thanks, Eric for two and a half hours of interview. And absolutely fascinating.
ESH: Well it’s one man’s experience isn’t it?
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Eric Horsham
Creator
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Chris Brockbank
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-01-05
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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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ASymondsHorshamE170105, PHorshamES1602
Conforms To
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Pending revision of OH transcription
Format
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02:07:40 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Eric Horsham was born in East London in 1923. Leaving school at 14 he was a messenger at the Royal Ordnance Factory before working for the railways. In 1937 he joined the Air Training Corps and learned about aircraft maintenance. On his first attempt to join the Royal Air Force he failed the medical but a year later was accepted for flight engineer training.
Eric describes his basic training in London and Torbay then recollects his technical training at RAF St. Athan. He then went to 1652 Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Marston Moor and joined his Halifax crew. In 1944 they were posted to 102 Squadron at RAF Pocklington where there were told that they wouldn't last three weeks.
Eric and his crew carried out a vast range of strategic bombings including daylight operations on V-1 sites, night operations on The Ruhr and Essen, night and daylight operations to oil targets, minelaying in the Baltic. They also provided tactical support in support of Allied troops near Caen and in the Ardennes, where they were badly damaged by a fighter and the mid-upper gunner received serious injuries. After landing at RAF Woodbridge in fog using FIDO he was hospitalised and did not fly again. The crew also supplied petrol to troops in Belgium, enjoying the low-level flying on these trips
Eric describes the sound of shrapnel hitting the aircraft, recalls a bomber exploding in flight, but dismisses the Scarecrow theory. He describes the use of Schräge Musik against the bombers; how search lights in the Ruhr operated, the use of H2S and how the master bomber controlled the rest of the formation.
At the end of his tour Eric remustered and was posted at RAF Jurby as airfield controller. From there he went to RAF Topcliffe and was demobbed in January 1947. Eric went back to the railways for ten years before working in local government. He retired in 1978, moving to Cornwall. While at RAF Pocklington he dated Cora noting that her parents made feel like a son. But he then ended the relationship because, with his own life in such jeopardy, he thought it was unfair on her. After the war he married Ellen, who he had met when starting his first job with the railways.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Julie Williams
Andy Fitter
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--London
England--Bedfordshire
England--Devon
England--Suffolk
England--Yorkshire
Great Britain Miscellaneous Island Dependencies--Isle of Man
Wales
Wales--Vale of Glamorgan
France
France--Ardennes
France--Caen
France--Pas-de-Calais
France--Nieppe Forest
Germany
Germany--Essen
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean--Baltic Sea
Denmark
Denmark--Bornholm
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1923
1937
1939
1940
1944-01
1944-02
1944-07-25
1944-09
1945
1946-05-25
1947-01-02
1957
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1981
102 Squadron
1652 HCU
Absent Without Leave
air gunner
aircrew
anti-aircraft fire
bomb aimer
bombing
crewing up
demobilisation
FIDO
flight engineer
forced landing
H2S
Halifax
Heavy Conversion Unit
Initial Training Wing
love and romance
Master Bomber
military living conditions
mine laying
Mosquito
navigator
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
Pathfinders
pilot
radar
RAF Pocklington
RAF St Athan
RAF Topcliffe
RAF Woodbridge
recruitment
runway
searchlight
tactical support for Normandy troops
target indicator
training
V-1
V-2
V-weapon
Wellington
Window
wireless operator
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https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/1164/11723/ATownsendE170207.1.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Townsend, Ernest
E Townsend
Description
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An oral history interview with Ernest Townsend (1925 -2020, 1812237 Royal Air Force).
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2017-02-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Identifier
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Townsend, E
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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CJ: This is Chris Johnson and I’m interviewing Ernest Townsend today for the International Bomber Command Centres digital archive. We’re at Ernest’s home in Sittingbourne, in Kent and it’s Tuesday the 7th February 2017. Thank you very much, Ernest, for agreeing to talk to me today. Also present at the interview are Ernest’s wife June and daughter June. So thanks very much for chatting to us today, perhaps we could start with your early life, would you like to tell us where and when you were born and what Mum and Dad did?
ET: Yes certainly. I was born in Marylebone, London, er, we lived in Chelsea, and then after a while, we moved to Wandsworth. And then I went to school, er, Eltringham Street School and that was the only school I ever went to.
CJ: And what did your Dad do, was he working?
ET: My Dad was working as a milk roundsman, but he had this – well I admit he was ill – he had this feeling that if he didn’t go to work, if he went sick, he’d get the sack. So what used to happen sometimes, which I used to dread, I wasn’t all that old, I must have been about eleven, twelve, [background noises] my Mum used to wake me up and say ‘your Dad’s ill, er, you’re needed, you’re needed today, would you meet him’, and I – you don’t know in London, I don’t s’pose – ‘meet, meet your Dad, he wants you to help him’. So I used to get up and go all the way over to Everidges, about three miles, on me own, that was about four o’clock in the morning and then we used to, I [emphasis] used to drop the milk off outside the doors and he was a horse and cart job, yeah.
CJ: And didn’t he have some illness because of a problem during the war? First war?
ET: I think he mainly, yeah, his illness was, in the first war he was a Marine, but him and his friend got posted on to er, I think it was a trawler, I think, but he got, he got sunk anyway and he was, he was in the water for three, three days and I think that didn’t do him a lot of good. But I loved me Mum and I loved me Dad.
CJ: And what about school, what did you, what were you good at there?
ET: Oh I was alright at school, yeah, er, but it wasn’t a top-class school. This chap always used to come in front of me first, James his name was and I used to be second and I couldn’t, I could not [emphasis] beat him, don’t matter what I done, so I kept trying but that was how it was. Nah, I thought I was alright, very intelligent. And then the, the war came, and in the end I went and volunteered.
CJ: So did you have a job after leaving school? Before –
ET: Yeah.
CJ: You went to the RAF?
ET: Oh yeah, I had a job as a butcher’s boy and that was up, I don’t, that was in Shepherds Market and that’s got a reputation, nah, better not say what the reputation is, but it’s not very nice, the girls there. Anyway [pause] it was er, I worked there and then I wanted to go in the Air Force so I went and volunteered.
CJ: So why did you volunteer for the Air Force rather than one of the other services?
ET: Because that’s what I wanted to do, I wanted to fly. Yeah [pause], I thought it was special really and I got, I got called up and I was asked to attend St John’s Wood, er, you know where that is don’t you?
CJ: Yes.
ET: And I was there a few weeks and then I went to, er, where had I gone to [pause], I can’t remember where I went to really.
CJ: So, was St John’s Wood the initial training?
ET: Er, St John’s Wood, not really, they just held you there for a while, while they posted you. And they posted me to, everybody got posted somewhere different, ‘s’, began with ‘s’, it did, it’s [pause] anyway.
CJ: So Ernest, before you joined up, I think you were in the Air Training Corps? Was that correct?
ET: I was in the Air Training Corps, yes. Er, the reason I was in the Air Training Corps, they were having a competition and, what’s his name, Blackwood, he was a Scottish international footballer, he heard of my reputation so he wanted me to play for the team, because they were having a competition in London. And of course, I played and [emphasis] we won. The whole of London! Yeah. Yeah, I s’pose my life was based on bloody football.
CJ: [Laughs] so did the Air Training Corps lead you to joining up in the RAF rather than another service?
ET: Oh yeah, you go up and have your interview up there, where was it, up in Euston I think it was, where I went and, yeah, strict. You have, you have interviews and lot of things you have, but I passed, so it was alright.
CJ: So then you said you went to St John’s Wood
ET: [coughing]
CJ: And then after that, I think you said it was Stratford-on-Avon?
ET: Yeah, I went to er, Stratford-on-Avon ITU. Stratford-on-Avon.
CJ: And so what were you doing there?
ET: Whatever people – it’s like school really, you was tuning yourself up to get better education really, that’s what it was.
CJ: So was this initial training?
ET: Yes
CJ: Umm hmm. So what did that consist of?
ET: Well, Mathematics and English and lots of things, write out something, some type of story or something like that. It was, it was interesting.
CJ: And where were you posted to after that, do you remember?
ET: Yeah, I went to Worcester, I was gonna be a pilot. We went down there and started flying Tiger Moths, but I was unlucky. The bloke who was my test, well I s’pose he was a test pilot, he was like that [pause], but he used to sit in it and just about get in the doing and I couldn’t see nothing! That was the worst of it and when we used to – alright getting up but when I come down to land, I was leaning right over, right out, oh my gawd, right over, leaning right over, yes, so [laughs] that’s what happened.
CJ: So he was so big that he was in the seat in front of you and you couldn’t see past him, is that it?
ET: I’ll prove the point, he went off for a few days and a young bloke who’d been Battle of Britain bloke, really young, small bloke, and he was there, I was right as rain. Yeah, so, we done, you do twelve of those, twelve flights. Anyway, after that I, where’d I go?
CJ: So what, so you weren’t qualified as a pilot, you didn’t pass out as a pilot?
ET: I didn’t pass out as a pilot, no, but then, er, where’d I go? Worcester? [pause] No.
CJ: So you said you were in Worcester, erm, and then were did you go after that? That was after the flying training?
ET: Yeah, I got a feeling I went up to, er, Manchester. Oh no, have I missed one out? Don’t know. No I don’t think so. I went up to Manchester.
CJ: So had you been selected as a bomb aimer then, how did that happen?
ET: Once I got up to, once I got up to there and er, just waiting to be posted somewhere else, and I got posted to the Isle of Man.
CJ: Umm hmm.
ET: That’s where you kind of train, the final training and they judge you then, that’s when I got picked as a bomb aimer there.
CJ: So how did you come to be selected as bomb aimer, did you have a particular skill they were looking for or did they just say you, you and you?
ET: Right, a particular skill. I did, I was really good at things like that, yeah, and you got, you become a sergeant, yeah, and then you came back again and went to OTU. And when you’re in the OTU, you went in a great big hanger, huge, and er, you had pilot, the pilots were in more or less one corner, navigators the other side, bomb aimers there and then they just walk away and say, ‘sort yourselves out and make crews out of you lot, will ya’. And I done well, I had this er, Australian bloke Bluey Lacuda, he was a wonderful bloke, Bluey Lacuda. Why was he Bluey? Because he had ginger hair [laughter], yeah. Yeah, he was a good bloke, he was a good pilot, yeah.
CJ: So how did, Bluey and the rest of you, pick the rest of the crew? You had to make a crew of seven, is that right?
ET: Yeah, first of all what he picked, he picked Jock Simpson, he was a Scotsman come from Dundee, and then those two picked me and then we picked, I think, I forget who we picked then.
CJ: Was it the gunners?
ET: No, before that, they had the –
CJ: Engineer?
ET: Yeah, there was the engineer and then there was also the, the person who was the –
CJ: Wireless operator?
ET: Yes, seven people in the crew, yeah.
CJ: And so did you train as a crew there or did you go somewhere else?
ET: Er, we went, trained, yeah, we did train there I think, yeah. Yeah, we trained there.
CJ: And this was Moreton in the Marsh, you said?
ET: Yeah.
CJ: And how did it come about for you to be posted to a squadron once you’d completed the training?
ET: I don’t know who told, who posted us there, but we went there. We could have gone, nah, I think they gave us the option, you could go to 50 or 61, because there was two of those on that airfield, so we went to 61. No, my pilot was a wonderful bloke. Only a little bloke but he was a good pilot. I mean, he said to me, ‘you’ve got the knack of flying, you better have a few practice flights’, and I did. Wonderful, wonderful. Yeah. I should, I should have been a pilot.
CJ: And what was the Lancaster like to fly?
ET: Er, once you got it in the air [laughter], it was alright, but I took off the first time and I went there, and I went there, and I went there, and old Bluey said, ‘put your foot down, the left foot down on that metal bar will you please and get back’, [laughter] and we got back again and we got in the air and he took over [laughter].
CJ: And how long was it then, before you went on your first operation?
ET: About, oh, about two months I reckon. Yeah, I think the first one we went to was Cologne, but on one occasion, we got a hit coming back and old Bluey said, ‘I don’t know whether we’ll get back to Skellingthorpe, do you?’ I said, ‘I know we won’t, but I do know somewhere we can go’. We went down to Kent, so we landed there. Big, long runway.
CJ: Was that Manston?
ET: Yeah, yes, that was it.
CJ: So what condition was the aircraft in then when you landed?
ET: Er, two engines had gone, well they could repair them I s’pose, but they was gone. He could’ve, I reckon he might’ve got up there, I don’t know, it wasn’t worth taking the chance if we could land there at Manston, yeah.
CJ: And do you remember any other particular raids that you went on?
ET: Er, went to Hamburg – nasty. Alright, we’re saying how we caught it all alight, but er, no they gave us a hammering, they did. No, a lot of them gave us a hammering, and I was in the front.
CJ: So what was it like when you were on an operation then, for a bomb aimer, do you want to talk us through it? From, like, how you found out where you were going and how you prepared for it?
ET: Yeah, we met usually in the morning or afternoon, and they told you where you were gonna go, and er, told you quite a lot about the town you’re gonna go to, or the place you’re gonna go to, and that was it. Then, alright I never went to Berlin, but I know a bloke who did, a crew who did, they bailed out over Berlin, and this one bloke, I knew him, he was in another plane and he bailed out. He got to the ground, he didn’t see his mates in the crew, but they got hold of him, all the people like, people in London, and they were gonna hang him to a lamp-post. And he said a policeman came along with a gun and herded the people out and just arrested me, type of thing, so he saved his life. Yeah, but don’t care what you say, we was all afraid.
CJ: Mm. So then you found out, in the afternoon, where you were going, how was it decided what bomb load you carried?
ET: Er, I used to talk to the person who was the, who did I say, before?
CJ: The armourer?
ET: Yeah. We used to have a chat and we’d decide. Mostly it’s fourteen thousand, yeah, so -
CJ: What, there were different bomb loads, different mixtures of bombs that you carried?
ET: Oh yeah, yeah, there were different types. We used to work it out.
CJ: So you usually carried what, a four thousand pound cookie? A big one?
ET: Yeah
CJ: And –
ET: Ten, we used to carry ten. Ten one thousand pounders, yeah. I’ll tell you what I didn’t like though, really, one of the – I did know him – he was flying, I think he was an air gunner, he was flying this other plane and we were going on this raid, I forget which raid it was. And he just said, ‘oh no, I’m not going’, and he just stepped down. He said ‘I’m not going’, I said, ‘you are, get in’, he said ‘I’m not going’, and he wouldn’t go! So I said, ‘fair enough, you can go LMF then’, lack of moral fibre. Yeah, so that’s what happened to him, and I didn’t like that ‘cause they was all volunteers. Yeah.
CJ: So how many operations did you go on?
ET: Eleven. No, it’s a matter of luck. Luck, luck, luck.
CJ: And after the eleventh then, how come you didn’t do any more after that?
ET: Because the war stopped, it stopped. When was it, that it stopped. We was, er, they told old Bluey, ‘you’re gonna go over to Australia, taking your crew with you, because the war is still on out there, against those’. So we was getting all ready to go, and we was all ready to go, and they dropped the atom bomb, didn’t they, and that was the end of that.
CJ: So what was life like on the base, what was the food like and what did you get up to when you were between operations?
ET: Kicking a ball about [laughter], no, I thought I was good at football but I had a rude awakening. Old Jock Simpson, a Scotsman, we were kicking the ball about and he come over, he took over, he was a bloody good player, he was. He said he played for Dundee [laughter], he was good, yeah. Me and him didn’t get on though.
CJ: And did you socialise much with the other crews, or did you –
ET: Oh yeah –
CJ: - keep to yourselves?
ET: Oh no, they had WAAFs there [laughter], yeah, oh yeah.
CJ: So how much time did you have? I suppose it depended on the weather, the time between the operations?
ET: Yeah, that’s how it was really.
CJ: Umm hmm.
ET: Time between the operations, yeah.
CJ: So then the war ended, the bomb was dropped –
ET: When was it, when did the war end, was it the eighth of April, or – yeah, that’s when it stopped.
CJ: So were you demobbed straight after that?
ET: No
CJ: Or did you stay in the Air Force for a while?
ET: No I stayed in the Air Force. I didn’t get demobbed ‘til eighty-seven.
CJ: Forty-seven.
ET: Forty-seven, yeah.
CJ: So what were you doing then after, between the end of the war and up to forty-seven?
ET: I was going round all the radar stations, taking them on the range and showing them how to fire a rifle. Then I went round Norfolk, went all the way round to – first of all to the Isle of Wight, but then I came back to this place down here.
CJ: Somewhere in Kent is it, Lid –
ET: Datling.
CJ: Datling, Maidstone, ok. Sorry, I think I missed a bit out because we went off on another track. Can I just come back to the bit about where you’re going on an operation, and you’ve found out where you’re going, and you’ve been told what your bomb load would be. Can you tell me how you went on from there, to actually going on the raid and how your job, er –
ET: My job –
CJ: – was carried out on the operation.
ET: To check everything, if it was loaded properly but er, always used to be alright.
CJ: So, you checked with the armourers on the ground that the bombs were correctly loaded and shackled.
ET: Yeah [pause], but I’ve got to say, I was scared, no good saying anything different.
CJ: So, once you’d got up in the air then, what was your job before you got to the target?
ET: Map reading, not sitting right in the front of the aircraft, then when we come up, I used to more or less take over. [pause] Sometimes, depends where we was going we used to chuck stuff out of the, you’ve heard of it, window?
CJ: Window, is it the aluminium strips to fool the radar?
ET: Yeah, we had a load of blinds up there. I used to do that, but once we got up near the target I used to take over.
CJ: So can you describe what you actually did then, as you were running up to the target?
ET: I’d say, ‘Skipper, I’ve got the target in sight. Right, steady [pause], steady, left, left, steady’, oh, I forgot to open bomb doors! [laughter]
CJ: So you, yeah, you’ve already got the bomb doors open, hopefully [laughter]
ET: Yeah
CJ: So how did you sight on the target then, you had a bomb sight to work with?
ET: Oh yeah. When you’re training, you’ve got a bomb sight mark nine. When you’re actually flying on operation, you’re at mark fourteen. Very good bomb sight. Yeah, I used to be pretty good really.
CJ: So how did you actually identify the target and then decide when to drop the bombs?
ET: Well they used to give the bomb aimer a little map beforehand and that’s when he sorted it all out. And yeah, it was alright.
CJ: So, did they drop markers ahead of you, on the target for you?
ET: Oh yeah, it was all marked when we saw it, had markers.
CJ: So, then you’re running up to the target, and through the bomb sight, and then how do you decide exactly when you release the bombs?
ET: It is down to the bomb aimer, he decides I should hit it from here and then he releases it, and I believe I hit it on most occasions, yeah.
CJ: So were you able to see the bombs hitting to know where they’d gone?
ET: The rear gunner used to. Used to ask him and he’d tell us.
CJ: And did you have to take photographs?
ET: Oh yeah.
CJ: Umm. So, then what, after you’d dropped bombs, what were you up to before you got back to base?
ET: Well I used to sit there, sit in the front, and just more or less keep an eye on map reading, because I didn’t have confidence in the navigator [laughter], I didn’t. I said, ‘Jock, you know we’re going alright?’ he said, ‘’course we are’, ‘I know we’re not!’ And he oh, he really had the arse on then.
CJ: So, once you got back to base, then what, did you have to have a debriefing?
ET: Oh yeah. Once you got back you had a debriefing and they told you then, they knew more or less, they told you exactly what it was all about. Yeah, so you thought ‘oh, that’s all over’, but it could happen again the next day, it could, but it only happened once. But that’s the thing.
CJ: So, then you said you were demobbed in forty-seven, so what were you doing after that, did you manage to find a job straight away?
ET: Yep, well, butcher’s boy [laughter], that was alright. Nah, I was gonna go and be a postman. I went up there to take this test, I took it, I done alright and then my Dad said, ‘I’ve got a job for you’. Oh yeah, one of his clients you know, he said he reckoned he could do with a boy like me [laughter], I couldn’t say nothing, that was it.
CJ: So, whereabouts was the butcher’s?
ET: Shepherds Market.
CJ: Yes.
ET: Now you musn’t say you ever been to Shepherds Market, people will get the wrong idea. [laughter]
CJ: And did you have anybody well-known that came to the shop?
ET: Oh yeah, she’s told you already.
CJ: Do you want to tell us?
ET: What, come in the shop?
CJ: Any famous people?
ET: David Niven came, he was one of our customers. Er, what’s her name, what’s her name? [whispered]
CJ: I think somebody mentioned Anna Neagle?
ET: Yeah, Anna Neagle, yeah. I used to deliver to her, she lived in Park Lane. I used to deliver, she was on about the third floor and on one of the walls, like, out there she had her picture, yeah.
CJ: So were you still playing football at this time?
ET: Yep.
CJ: Who were you playing for?
ET: Battersea United
CJ: And what league were they in and how well did they get on?
ET: They were a good team. Because I became the captain [laughter] and they had to be a good team. Ask her, June?
CJ: So how long did you go on playing football for?
ET: Oh, [background noise] about a couple of years I s’pose
CJ: And what about the butchering, how long did you stick with that for?
ET: I was there when I was 14, 17, three and a half years, I think.
CJ: And so, what were you doing after that?
ET: Well I went, started going in the Air Force.
CJ: Yeah, sorry, after the war when you, in forty-seven, you said you were demobbed, so were you back to butchering then?
ET: No, I went and worked at London Transport.
CJ: Ok, and what were you doing there?
ET: They was advertising, well you’ve seen them, bills across the track, y’know, and up the escalator, on the trains and all that. And anyway, I always wanted to be the boss so, I became the boss. [laughs]
CJ: And how long did you stay with London Transport?
ET: Only forty years.
CJ: Only forty years.
ET: Yeah.
CJ: So was that up to retirement?
ET: Yes.
CJ: Ok, and what about the rest of the crew that you flew with, did you keep in touch with them after the war?
ET: I did in the beginning. We went to, he become a, a quarter master, yeah, he got made up, old Bluey. He was a flight sergeant but he become a [pause], he was pushed up to the next one anyway. Quarter – what they call them? Was it quarter master?
CJ: So what, he stayed in the Air Force, or he was –
ET: He went back to, he went back to, er, Australia. But we went to Australia, didn’t we June? [background noise]
CJ: So, this work at London Transport, I think there was some link with football, is that right?
ET: Correct, yes. Yep.
CJ: And what was it?
ET: Well, they wanted you to play football, and you kind of get a bit of a reputation in front of you, and people come, come after you, they do.
CJ: But I think you were working nights at London Transport, is that right? Was there a link with the football?
ET: No, that was alright. It wasn’t really but, I thought, if you’re on nights, you get more money.
CJ: And you said you’d been playing for a local team, did you have any trials with any big teams?
ET: Yep. Fulham.
CJ: And how did that work out?
ET: They wanted me, they signed me on.
CJ: So, you were playing for Fulham?
ET: I played for Fulham for a while, yeah, yep, but I realised I wasn’t as good as I thought I was when I got mixed up with them. They were really good, yeah.
CJ: And, er, how old were you when you stopped playing football, do you remember?
ET: Thirty, yeah.
CJ: So, after all these years at London Transport, did you retire after that or did you go to another job?
ET: No, I went part-time job, didn’t I? I was looking for, I was still looking for work, yeah, driver.
CJ: And what company were you driving for, what were you driving?
ET: I went and got a job, you told me, didn’t you? She said, ‘Dad, I’ve seen an advert in the paper, they want a taxi driver down at [pause], down at Eastchurch. So, I went down there and the bloke, it was only a small place, he said, ‘oh yeah’, he said, ‘do you know London?’ I said, ‘yeah, of course I do’. He said, ‘well I don’t like it, I don’t like going to London’, he said, ‘you’ll be ideal then for it’. He said, ‘and also, we’ve got a contract to take these naughty people up to the prison, or up to the court’. Used to take them, well they’ve got three prisons down there now, but they had two then. But yeah, it was alright. [pause] I know – [background noise]
CJ: So how did you come to meet your lovely wife, Ernest, was that through football as well?
ET: No, this time it was through cricket. I didn’t realise she was, took a liking to me, so she decided she liked me so, er, that’s how it happened.
CJ: And how long have you been married now?
ET: Sixty-two years. Yeah.
CJ: And –
ET: It don’t seem a day too long.
CJ: [laughs] As the song goes. So, coming back to Bomber Command, how do you think you, and other people who were in Bomber Command, were treated after the war?
ET: Not very good [pause] no, not very good
CJ: Do you want to expand on that?
ET: Well, we was all made more or less redundant and then, er, they gave – you’ve got to do something while you’re in the RAF and I thought this is a chance for me, I couldn’t drive and I thought this is a chance, I’ll get to learn to drive. When I got there, being interviewed, they said what would you like to do. ‘I’d like to be a driver’, they said, ‘sorry, all those places are taken, you can be a –‘ [pause], [laughs], I forget what they said after I got back. But, er –
CJ: And what about recognition of Bomber Command now, I think you said that you’d been up to the new memorial in London?
ET: Yeah, I think more of it now. Oh yeah.
CJ: And did you just visit the memorial, or were you there for the opening?
ET: We was there for the opening.
CJ: So I gather you had a presentation yesterday, of the Légion d’Honneur. Can you tell me about how you were picked for that, and how you were told about it, and where the presentation was?
ET: We had the presentation in Sittingbourne, in a great big hall down there and it was very enjoyable. The person who, er, gave me it was the mayor, the mayoress really, and yeah it was alright. Lot of people, a lot of people, I was surprised. A lot of people went there who, well I don’t know, I’m more popular than I thought! [laughs] Yeah, so I don’t know why they picked me out, I don’t know, but they did pick me out, so I must have been doing alright [background noise] Pardon?
CJ: So, who do you think nominated you then for this, this award?
ET: Well I assume it was the British Legion. I was surprised.
CJ: And were any other people being given the same award or was it just for you, yesterday?
ET: Just for me yesterday.
CJ: Well, congratulations on that. Ok, well thank you very much for talking to us today Ernest, it’s been a real pleasure.
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 Ernset Townsend
Creator
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Chris Johnson
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
2017-02-07
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Type
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Sound
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ATownsendE170207
PTownsendE1702
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00:42:49 audio recording
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Ernest was born in Marylebone, London. He tells of his childhood, how he helped his father on his milk round and became a butcher's boy at Shepherds Market before serving in the Air Training Corps. He joined the Royal Air Force at the age of 17 and a half. He tells of his joy at flying Tiger Moths, and his wish to be a pilot, and his posting to 61 Squadron flying in Lancasters. Ernest mentions Lack of Moral Fibre, and recounts the experience of another crewman who bailed out over Berlin, where he was arrested before he could be hanged by the local villagers. Ernest completed 11 operations, including Cologne and Hamburg. He also tells of what preparations were made for bombing runs, and how he did his job as a bomb aimer. Before being demobbed in 1947, Ernest spent time going around all the radar stations, doing rifle training. He then tells of his love of football, including playing opposite a former Dundee United Player and how, after the war, he signed for Fulham, playing only briefly, driving prisoners to court or prison and then working for London Transport for forty years. Ernset Townsend was awarded the Legion d’Honneur in 2017.
Please note: The veracity of this interview has been called into question. We advise that corroborative research is undertaken to establish the accuracy of some of the details mentioned and events witnessed.
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force. Bomber Command
Temporal Coverage
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1947
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
Germany
Germany--Cologne
Germany--Hamburg
Germany--Berlin
Germany--Ruhr (Region)
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Vivienne Tincombe
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eng
61 Squadron
aircrew
bale out
bomb aimer
bombing
fear
lack of moral fibre
Lancaster
lynching
radar
sport
Tiger Moth
training
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/117/46467/SHarriganD[Ser -DoB]v330002.mp3
4ef11453b1a2f73ed4f05a602afc89ac
Dublin Core
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Title
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Cook, Kenneth
Kenneth Cook
Kenneth H Cook
Ken Cook
K H Cook
K Cook
Description
An account of the resource
Two oral history interviews with Wing Commander Kenneth Howell Cook DFC (b. 1923, 151017 Royal Air Force). Kenneth Cook flew 45 operations with 97 Squadron, Pathfinders.
The collection was catalogued by IBCC Digital Archive staff.
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2016-08-04
2016-07-25
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. Some items have not been published in order to protect the privacy of third parties, to comply with intellectual property regulations, or have been assessed as medium or low priority according to the IBCC Digital Archive collection policy and will therefore be published at a later stage. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collection-policy.
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Cook, KHH
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Title
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Interview with Wing Commander Kenneth Cook DFC
1039-Cooke, Kenneth
Identifier
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SHarriganD[Ser#-DoB]v33
Coverage
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Royal Air Force
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eng
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Sound
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00:15:10 audio recording
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Pending OH transcription. Allocated
Pending OH summary. Allocated C Campbell
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Claire Bennett
This Interview was recorded by Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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This item is being used for TOU9156 teaching. Do not publish transcription until June 2024.
Interviewer: Ok, Ken.
KC: Ok. Hello. This is Wing Commander Ken Cook DFC. I joined the Royal Air Force in October 1941, U/T air crew and after training in Canada I came, returned back to the UK, commissioned as a young pilot officer air bomber and went through various conversion training courses in the UK and eventually joined up with a crew. And our first squadron was Number 9 Squadron at Bardney in Lincolnshire flying Lancasters in Number 5 Group of Bomber Command. After about ten ops with 9 Squadron we were as a crew recruited by the Pathfinder Force which was based in Cambridgeshire and so we were as a crew posted to do additional specialised training as at that time new radar equipment was being brought in and introduced to Bomber Command and in my case it was my job to learn the gadgets known as H2S, Gee and Loran. So, my role changed from being a straightforward air bomber to becoming a radar navigator and air bomber and so it was my job particularly to work the H2S which had a capability for uses in airborne navigation device. And of course, also it’s main role with the Pathfinders was, was identifying German targets and it enabled the Pathfinder crews to find the German targets and to mark them with target indicators so that the main force crews of Bomber Command coming in behind us could identify where the target was and very often bombing on our markers. So we had to be very accurate how we dropped them and where we dropped them and I did this, I ended up doing a total of forty five ops, thirty five of those was as a member of a Pathfinder crew. We eventually having started out with the Pathfinders at Bourn in Cambridgeshire my squadron were then deployed in about April of ’44 to Coningsby in Lincolnshire to join with Number 83 Squadron that had been posted up there from Wyton. And our job was to work with the special force under Wing Commander Leonard Cheshire who was devising a system of finding the targets where the Germans where assembling V weapons on the French coast and in Belgium. And our job was to illuminate the target with parachute flares so that he trained a special force of Mosquito dive bombers that could lay the target markers in these tunnels so that our main force crews from 5 Group and other Groups could come over and do area or intensive accurate bombing as well on these targets. And I completed my forty fifth op in 1944 and was posted to RAF Fiskerton in Lincolnshire as the station radar nav officer. My job was to, we had two squadrons there, 49 and 189 and my job was to fly with these crews and check them out on their ability to use their radar equipment because now the main force were getting the same sort of radar gear that the Pathfinders had had for some time. And so it was my job to make sure the air crew when they, before they went on ops could operate their new radar equipment. And I stayed there for a year or two and eventually was posted to Headquarters, Number 1 Group at Bawtry as the Group radar navigation officer. My job was to oversee all the squadrons, all the Lancaster squadrons in 1 Group to ensure that the crews were properly trained in operating their radar equipment. Can I stop there? Right. Let’s carry on then.
[pause]
On some of the incidents that come to mind one in particular because the Lancaster bomber we all wear warm clothing because the, in the middle of winter the temperatures in the aircraft could become extremely low and in fact if you had to use the elsan at the back of the aircraft it would be extremely low and freezing. And on one occasion I was forced to go back there and use the elsan and I discovered the temperature was minus fifty three degrees Celsius and of course, in having to use the elsan and lower the clothing etcetera I found that my bottom was sticking to the seat to a little bit when I tried to stand up. But I had to stand up because at that time the skipper was calling me, ‘Come on, Ken. We’re only ten miles from the target.’ So I had to hurry up and get back. But in doing so I experienced a little a bit of pain [laughs] in certain lower regions. The other, some of the other aspects of my career was at having completed forty five ops I was then sent off to do jobs as I mentioned with other stations and other squadrons and taking me to the end of the war I applied for a Short Service Commission and this was granted. And after a couple of years the Air Ministry offered me a peacetime Permanent Commission which I accepted and I was down the rank of flight lieutenant and so I then was asked to move out from Bomber Command and become trained with peacetime navigation courses and I thought well, perhaps I’m going to shoot now into somewhere like Transport Command but none of it. Having completed my peacetime navigation course I was then asked by Air Ministry to go through the night fighter OCU at Leeming where I was then trained again to become a navigator radar operator with the AI equipment on night fighters. And so after the appropriate course at Leeming I was then posted to 23 Squadron at Coltishall on Mosquito Mark 36s and I flew with them for about two and a half years until one day I was told that I was to go back to Leeming as a squadron leader to set up the ground school for the introduction of the first jet night fighters. The Meteor NF11 was coming in and I was to head up the ground school with the expansion of the RAFs night fighter force both in the UK and Germany and also the odd squadron in Malta and Cyprus. And so I did that job for about two years and eventually was posted to RAF Newton which was then the headquarters of 12 Fighter Group as the Group navigation officer. And I did the staff duties there but also managed to keep on flying with some of the squadrons in 12 Group, night fighter squadrons until eventually one day the AOC asked me would I like to go back on a squadron as a flight commander. And so the AOC of 12 Group had me posted back to West Malling where I became a flight commander on number 85 Squadron as a navigator which was an unusual post which I enjoyed. And I did that for just over a year and one day the AOC of 11 Group sent for me and said, ‘Cook, do you think you could command a night fighter squadron?’ I said, 'Yes sir.’ He said, ‘Well, you’ve got one tomorrow. ‘You’re going to become a wing commander.’ And so I did that and I became the CO of one of the other squadrons at West Malling called 153 and I was made an acting wing commander and only had that job for about a couple of months when they decided to close the airfield because our flights were getting involved with civil aircraft flying in from the continent, particularly at night. And so they closed the airfield at West Malling and I, and I took 153 Squadron up to Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire and stayed with them for a while and eventually we changed our number to become 25 Squadron. And I completed my two years with the 25 squadron, 153/25 squadron and then one day I was told, ‘You’re going to the staff college.’ And I thought oh I’m going to learn to read and write again. But I did a one year course at the Staff College at Bracknell and after that the Air Ministry in their wisdom said, ‘You’ve done enough flying you’ve got to do an admin job.’ So they posted me and my wife to Aden as a wing commander in the organization branch which was concerned with improving the airfields throughout the Aden Protectorate and then up in the Gulf. So I did that for about two years and then I came back. I’m not quite sure what to do after that but I eventually did a job as the staff officer to the Home Commander, Home Defence Forces which was an organisation which has now been set up to deal with what would happen if there was a nuclear attack on Britain and what would the Air Force be doing to help out. And one of my jobs was to get involved with working out plans on that. And things have gradually moved along until eventually I decided to take early retirement and I left the RAF after twenty six years service in 1947.
Interviewer: And to go back to your, your Bomber Command days it’s always very interesting how the crews got together I think. Now, were you, how did you? I know you go into a sort of a hangar sort of thing and you mill around. There’s no organisation. Were you expecting that or, and did you know somebody? How did your crew come together?
KC: Well, when you got in the early stages of training you started to think about crewing up when you were flying on Wellingtons. You went, in my case I went to Cottesmore which was number 14 OTU and there you meet up with pilots, the wireless operator, straight navigator, air gunners. They were all brought in there and you’d chat with them and eventually you agreed to form a crew. And that’s what we did.
Interviewer: And it proved satisfactory.
KC: Yeah.
Interviewer: Didn’t it?
KC: For instance my skipper was an Australian.
Interviewer: Ah.
KC: Yeah. I was a West Country Gloucestershire man. The other navigator was a Yorkshire man. The mid-upper gunner was a Canadian. The wireless operator was a Londoner and the tail gunner was a Scotsman. That was my crew.
Interviewer: League of Nations.
KC: Yeah.
Interviewer: And you obviously all got on and you all gelled.
KC: We gelled. Yes. Yes. We stayed together for forty five trips. Yeah.
Interviewer: And you’ve mentioned Leonard Cheshire. Did you have much to do with him?
KC: Well, now Leonard Cheshire was based at Woodhall Spa but once we started and once my squadron had come up from 8 Group and we were now at Coningsby with alongside 83, the Pathfinder Squadron when we had briefings on a pre-briefing on a raid Cheshire would come in to see, hear to the breifing. But he particularly once we’d done the raid he would come back because often he would go on the raid himself. He would come back and listen to the debriefing and if things were not coming out clear from the debriefing of the crews he would cut in to explain what was going on where he was concerned in the air. To sort out any, so the intelligence people doing the debriefing could get a more accurate story of what was happening over the other side.
Interviewer: Did you form any opinions of him as a —
KC: Oh, he was the top boy really. Yes. He was, he had tremendous respect from all the all the, all the aircrew like myself.
Interviewer: Yes, so —
KC: What he was and what he did and of course he did a hundred ops, didn’t he?
Interviewer: He did.
KC: Yeah. Can I stop now?
Interviewer: Yeah [laughs] That was Wing Commander Kenneth Cook DFC, retired RAF Bomber Command talking at Thorpe Camp on the 24th Of September about his wartime experiences. Thank you, Wing Commander.
Ken Cook joined the RAF in 1941 and trained as a bomb aimer. He was posted to 9 Squadron at RAF Bardney. After approximately ten ops the crew were posted to the Pathfinder Force at RAF Bourn where he became radar navigator and air bomber. They were then posted to RAF Coningsby with 83 Squadron with the role of seeking V weapon launch sites. After forty five operations he was posted to RAF Fiskerton as station radar navigation officer. He then joined the HQ at RAF Bawtry as Group radar navigation officer. The 23 Squadron at Coltishall on Mosquitoes before being asked to form a ground school at RAF Leeming.
Temporal Coverage
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1941
1944
Spatial Coverage
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Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Contributor
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Julie Williams
23 Squadron
83 Squadron
9 Squadron
aircrew
bomb aimer
bombing
Cheshire, Geoffrey Leonard (1917-1992)
Lancaster
military living conditions
military service conditions
Mosquito
Pathfinders
radar
RAF Bardney
RAF Bawtry
RAF Bourn
RAF Coningsby
RAF Fiskerton
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/2221/38715/MB CR 3 B.2.mp3
a309bc7115a9b3c8b6d46fcf4635e0e9
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Title
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ISRPt. Survivors of the 1943-1944 Pistoia bombings
Description
An account of the resource
12 interviste a testimoni dei bombardamenti alleati di Pistoia, realizzate da Claudio Rosati tra il 1983 e il 1984 con l'intento di comprendere e studiare gli effetti che le incursioni aeree hanno avuto sulla popolazione civile tra il 1943 e il 1944. Gli esiti della ricerca furono esposti al convegno internazionale di studi “Linea Gotica. Eserciti, popolazioni, partigiani” svoltosi a Pesaro il 27/28/29 settembre 1984 e pubblicati nella rivista Farestoria n. 1/1985, edita dall'Istituto storico della Resistenza di Pistoia. L’istituto, dove le cassette sono state in seguito depositate, ha gentilemente concesso all’IBCC di digitalizzarle e di pubblicarle in licenza. Le interviste conservano la struttura originale, che può essere diversa dal modo in cui le interviste dell’IBCC Digital Archive sono di solito realizzate. La digitalizzazione rispecchia fedelmente le caratteristiche delle registrazioni originali, con minimi interventi. In base agli accordi con il licenziatario, i sunti delle interviste sono dati in italiano ed inglese.
12 oral history interviews with survivors of the Pistoia bombings, originally taped by Claudio Rosati between 1983 and 1984 with the aim to understand the fallout of the 1943-1944 operations on civilians. The findings were presented at the international symposium “Linea Gotica. Eserciti, popolazioni, partigiani” (Pesaro, 27/28/29 September 1984) and then published on 'Farestoria' n. 1/1985, published by the Istituto storico della Resistenza di Pistoia. The Istituto, where the tapes were later deposited, has kindly granted permission to the IBCC Digital Archive to digitise and publish them. Interviews published here retain their original format, which may differ from the way IBCC Digital Archive ones are normally conducted. The digitisation captures faithfully the characteristics of the original recordings with minimal editing only. According to the stipulations with the licensor, summaries are provided in Italian and English.
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IBCC Digital Archive
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
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Transcription
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CR: Ecco, il primo bombardamento che si – il primo bombardamento di Pistoia se lo ricorda? O è stato il primo bombardamento –
Aldo Galardini: Sì, me lo ricordo bene perché fu una esperienza – la prima esperienza del genere e episodi drammatici non si dimenticano e eravamo lì nella casa paterna in Via Bastione Mediceo e accanto a noi c’era una fabbrica, una fabbrica di – una conceria e a un certo momento è suonato l’allarme come sempre e che quella sera era un po’ diverso del solito si capì che cominciarono a buttare i bengala, questo era verso mezzanotte e mezzo, l’una.
CR: Perché c’erano stati altri allarmi?
Aldo Galardini: Sì, altri – passavano sempre questi stormi giorno e notte, però Pistoia era la prima volta.
Annalia Galardini: Ma la sirena suonava per l’allarme?
Aldo Galardini: Perbacco se suonava l’allarme, sì, sì, suonava e naturalmente fummo presi tutti alla sprovvista, perché a quell’ora lì, all’una, mezzanotte – all’una di notte, dal suono del – dall’allarme passarono sette, otto minuti, sicché prima ci fu il lancio dei bengala, gli apparecchi che lanciavano questi bengala, quando poi la città fu completamente illuminata cominciarono – dietro lo stormo era a distanza, girava, cominciò il bombardamento e –
CR: Voi eravate in casa?
Aldo Galardini: E noi eravamo in casa e naturalmente il babbo diceva che lui aveva fatto la guerra ’15-‘18 e che tanto se ne intendeva un po’ di quelle cose, no, pertanto il consiglio che ci dette fu quello di nascondersi sotto il letto e tutti, il babbo, la mamma e i tre fratelli siamo andati sotto il letto. Talmente c’avevo due fratelli, Mario e Raffaello, che erano molto alti e con le gambe rimanevano fuori del letto, no, quelle non erano protette e allora abbiamo trovato anche un po’ il sistema di parlare su questo particolare, però era tanta la paura specialmente nel mio fratello Mario, era terrorizzato quando – lui reagiva in una maniera del tutto particolare insomma, lui proprio perdeva un po’ – perdeva la calma, perdeva – insomma, mancava di lucidità, ecco, diventava un po’ irrazionale e allora abbiamo subito passivamente questo bombardamento che è durato – che è durato molto [enfasi] tempo, insomma, a noi è sembrato un’eternità, ma è durato dai venticinque ai trenta minuti, perché sono state diverse ondate che hanno fatto e le prime [enfasi] bombe cadute su Pistoia sono cadute proprio sulla conceria [enfasi], proprio quella accanto a noi che è andata completamente distrutta.
CR: Quindi l’avete sentito in modo particolare?
Aldo Galardini: Proprio accanto [enfasi], alla distanza – in linea d’aria, venticinque, trenta metri non di più, soltanto abbiamo avuto fortuna che c’era un grande [enfasi] muro, un muro di notevoli dimensioni che divideva appunto questa conceria dalla nostra – da dove abitavamo noi [pausa] oh, questo fu il primo bombardamento poi ripeto –
CR: Ecco ma fisicamente cosa si sente?
Aldo Galardini: Fisicamente niente –
CR: Quando s’aspetta la bomba –
Aldo Galardini: Perché – perché lì si avverte proprio la nostra impotenza. No, non è che siamo di fronte a un pericolo al quale in qualche modo possiamo reagire o fronteggiare o dominare, lì no, lì si aspetta e basta, lì non so, chi ha fede prega, ma in quel momento lì si prega tutti, prega anche chi non ha fede, intendiamoci, perché la fede viene in quel momento lì.
CR: Ecco, ma stavate tutti zitti lì sotto il letto?
Aldo Galardini: Zitti, sì, si sentiva soltanto il cuore di mio fratello Mario che batteva, era una cosa tremenda [enfasi] come gli batteva il cuore. Bene, e il babbo reduce della Grande Guerra, in effetti, aveva una grande – perché era il più consapevole, ecco, delle – io allora ero un ragazzino, avevo diciott’anni e sicché, insomma – ma non è che fossi incosciente, però un po’ – forse un po’ irresponsabile, forse ancora non valutavo e abbiamo aspettato che finisse, così.
CR: Ma non ve l’aspettavate che Pistoia sarebbe stata bombardata?
Aldo Galardini: No, assolutamente no, perché non era previsto, nel senso che non aveva niente di particolare, no, forse l’unica cosa era questa che siccome a Pistoia era allora in efficienza la Porrettana, la Pistoia Porretta Bologna, loro bloccando – paralizzando la direttissima e bloccandola la Porrettana praticamente tagliavano sotto il profilo ferroviario il Nord dal Sud, era completamente – avrebbero completamente paralizzato ogni tipo di trasporto. Sa’, allora non c’erano i mezzi e gli auto mezzi di oggi giorno, insomma, allora era il treno che era un po’ determinante insomma nella guerra di allora e però quella prima volta lì la stazione – ci sono stati un sacco di morti – ci sono stati un sacco di morti, perché il primo bombardamento fu terribile, insomma, e la stazione il primo bombardamento non è che ne risentisse molto, qualche danno ma lieve, poi ci sono stati tanti altri bombardamenti e hanno centrato in pieno la stazione, specialmente gli scambi, gli scambi estremi, il punto più nevralgico della stazione, no, la prima volta – tornando ora un momentino sulla prima volta, allora questa attesa, questo sibilo – insomma, si cominciava un po’ già a fare il conto da quando si udiva il sibilo e cade la bomba al momento dello scoppio, no, e ogni volta che si sentiva lo scoppio si diceva ‘È andata, è andata’.
CR: Facevate proprio il conto.
Aldo Galardini: Eh [enfasi], per farlo poi si rimane lì, non so, forse un sesto senso che insomma fa un po’ questi calcoli, fa un po’ queste cose, questo è stato il primo bombardamento che fortunatamente noi ne uscimmo tutti indenni sia come casa sia come noi, però fu un’esperienza io direi drammatica. Drammatica perché, insomma, stare lì – perché sa’, uno è in una trincea, in una galleria, in qualche cosa che è creato apposta, ma in una casetta lì a un solo piano c’era – insomma, fu drammatica, ecco.
CR: Ma d’allora tutte le notti successive stette un po’ più in pensiero?
Aldo Galardini: Sì, poi si cominciò a prendere in considerazione anche la faccenda di sfollare, no, infatti siamo andati siamo andati in cima a un monte, lì, chiamato San Quirico al oltre il Pontenuovo, una località che c’è tra Pistoia e Agliana, a tre o quattro chilometri da Pistoia e c’enno diverse case coloniche che ospitavano tutta questa gente che insomma scappava dalle città per trovare un – inizialmente andò tutto bene, poi fintanto che non arrivarono i tedeschi, allora, ma questo fu molto più tardi. No, un altro episodio particolare io l’ho vissuto proprio in prima persona, diversi bombardamenti – vale a dire, noi eravamo in servizio alla stazione di Pistoia, noi, cioè a dire io e mio padre eravamo in servizio alla stazione Pistoia, no, entrambi ferrovieri e mentre però le persone d’una certa età in qualche modo trovavano il sistema di stare a casa o insomma era un po’ più giustificato, noi giovani, che tra l’altro eravamo entrati in ferrovia come avventizi e per tanto ci premeva magari creare presupposti per poi conservare il posto, noi si stava lì, si stava lì col rischio della vita, poi [enfasi] i tedeschi, anzi il governo fascista di allora istituì un premio speciale per i ferrovieri per chi rimaneva in servizio. Bene, purtroppo, sa’, quando si ha che fare con interessi si dimentica anche un pochino – questa è la cosa, è un aspetto veramente tragico, diciamo così, dell’aspetto umano, no, cioè, a dire ‘Io ti do cinquanta lire’ davano cinquanta lire ‘se tu rimani in servizio, non scappare se non scappi, a fine sciopero – a fine, pardon, a fine bombardamento ti presenti dal capostazione titolare’ va bene ‘e tu prendi cinquanta lire’.
CR: Ah, dopo ogni bombardamento c’era questa –
Aldo Galardini: Sì, sì, dopo ogni allarme, bastava che uno non scappasse, davano cinquanta lire.
CR: Perché allora era diffuso lo scappare –
Aldo Galardini: Eh [enfasi] era talmente diffuso che noi l’avevamo anche organizzato. C’è da dire, in stazione noi avevamo a disposizione una locomotiva a vapore pronta sul primo binario, una locomotiva è una vettura di terza classe, va bene, di quelli come c’eran una volta con tanti sportelli, no, con tanti sportelli con ottolini [?], va bene, allora, quando da Torre del Lago dove c’era il radar ci davano l’allarme che gli apparecchi si stavano – gli aerei venivano indirizzati verso la nostra zona, noi si montava sul treno, noi si chiamava il treno fuga, si scappava tutti e andavamo in campagna a un tre, quattro chilometri da Pistoia, fuori degli scambi di Pistoia, oltre – verso Montale Agliana. Verso Montale Agliana, si passava il ponte degli Armacani, si fermava il – questo trenino, si fermava lì e tutti gli impiegati – tutti i componenti della stazione scendevano precipitosamente dal treno, andavano giù nei campi e si buttavano a diacere nelle fosse e insomma e così si faceva sempre franca. Io mi ricordo una volta che avevamo – oltre – avevamo un comandante tedesco in stazione, che è tra l’altro – era un ferroviere in Germania, era un ferroviere ma era un semplice ferroviere, un deviatore, qualcosa del genere, bene, a Pistoia invece aveva addirittura l’incarico di capostazione e ci capiva anche e perbacco aveva tutte le qualità, aveva tutti i numeri, era entrato molto bene nel nostro sistema di servizio e lui non voleva che specialmente quelli addetti alla circolazione treni – assolutamente non tollerava o premio o non premio, lui non tollerava che lasciassero il servizio.
CR: Anche quando [incomprensibile] di salire sul treno?
Aldo Galardini: Sì, sì, sì, niente, lui non voleva, potevano andar via gli impiegati, quelli addetti alle biglietterie, eccetera eccetera, ma quelli addetti alla circolazione treni non potevano assolutamente scappare, i capistazione, i telegrafisti, eccetera eccetera. Allora, io mi ricordo che allora ero al telegrafo, ero al telegrafo, viene il – s’annuncia – s’annuncia dal – c’avevamo sempre un terrapista che stava col telefono collegato con Torre del Lago, s’annuncia che questi aerei si stanno dirigendo su Pistoia e un fuga fuga generale, no, io siccome tra l’altro ero al telegrafo, ero tra quelli che non potevo andar via, mi affaccio sulla porta per andar via e lì c’è questo sergente maggiore tedesco che si chiamava Maruska [?], il quale mi vede e mi fa un cenno come dire ‘No, non si scappa’, allora io ritorno indietro, lì al telegrafo – al telegrafo allora si faceva anche l’accettazione telegrammi e c’era uno sportello, va bene, uno sportello, cioè ma grande, bene e che con questi sportelli che si aprono per poter parlare col pubblico, no, cioè in basso dove si scambia la moneta e si scambia gli stampati, con una piattaforma girevole e poi un pochino più in alto un oblò, sia pure quadrato, che sarà stato quaranta per quaranta, trentacinque, quarantacinque [incomprensibile] insomma la cosa è certa, perché io mi soffermo su questi particolari? Che noi si pensò di scappare di lì, va bene –
CR: Dio bono, dall’oblò?
Aldo Galardini: Sì, da questo oblò che era alto da terra un metro e mezzo, du’ metri, ma sa’, la paura purtroppo – allora si monta su una sedia, passa un primo impiegato, un certo Panconi Sevenzo [?] che era un tipo come il mio fratello, quando gli pigliava il terrore lui cominciava a picchiare la testa. Lui quando finiva i bombardamenti noi ci si domandava sempre cosa gli era successo, perché lui tornava sempre pieno di sangue, perché lui picchiava dappertutto.
CR: Ma ce n’era diversi terrorizzati che gli prendeva il terrore?
Aldo Galardini: No, fortunatamente no, no, erano proprio casi direi patologici, casi rari. Sicché lui passa per primo, va di là, il secondo a passare era un certo Corsino [?] Corsini, che ora poveretto è morto, che era molto robusto, molto grosso, sicché monta sulla sedia, monta sul banco, poi si mette con la testa e con le spalle dall’altra parte, quando arriva in mezzo non va né di qua né di là, allora l’altro, perché facesse, prima lo tirava dalla parte della testa e delle spalle, io, preso anch’io [enfasi] dalla paura di non far in tempo a scappare visto che non passava, lo tiravo dalla parte – sicché lo spogliai tutto: gli levai le scarpe, gli levai i pantaloni, gli levai le mutande, questo pover’omo rimase nel mezzo. Morale della favola: quella volta lì non hanno bombardato la stazione e di conseguenza è andata bene, sennò sarebbe stato una commedia [ride], anche perché ci avrebbero trovato con le scarpe e le mutande in mano di questo collega, ‘O questi cosa facevano [ride] invece di far servizio?’. Questa volta non è successo il bombardamento, un’altra volta, sempre in servizio, sempre in servizio – quella volta ho fatto in tempo a scappare, quella volta ho fatto in tempo a scappare, perché? Ho fatto in tempo a scappare perché mi son trovato – quando hanno dato l’allarme mi sono trovato in una posizione favorevole, pertanto sono sfuggito all’attenzione lì del comandante, di questo Maruska [?] e di altri suoi commilitoni e ho cominciato a correre verso la – ho presso la Via Pratese, Via Quattro Novembre, no, che tra l’altro costeggia la ferrovia, io non v’esagero, io arrivai in fondo al ponte, ci arrivai io prima – prima io del treno [ride], questo per dirvi [ride] quanto scappavo, quando io sono arrivato in fondo a Via Quattro Novembre, ho preso sulla sinistra verso la casa paterna, no, perché di lì cominciavano subito i campi. Dietro la casa paterna c’erano tutti i campi dei famosi fratelli Capecchi, no, che facevano le piante e lì era tutto una boscaglia, sicché io una volta là, là non c’era più pericolo, no, c’era mica obbiettivi né niente.
CR: Ma per sbaglio non potevano bombardare lì?
Aldo Galardini: Sì, infatti, gli americani non è che guardassero a spese nello sbagliare, cioè dire – per loro non c’era una questione di dire ‘Sa’, bisogna stare attenti, perché poi un giorno ci mancheranno le muni –’, loro distrugge – per loro era indifferente, loro – per loro era indifferente, loro bombardavano, ma poi basta.
CR: Ma voi avevate l’impressione che bombardassero per terrorizzare la popolazione o solo gli obbiettivi? Allora, però, che impressione avevate?
Aldo Galardini: Allora no, allora era per gli obiettivi.
CR: Ce l’avevate quest’impressione?
Aldo Galardini: Sì e in più s’ aveva quest’altra – forse risentivo un pochino della propaganda, no, che in effetti non erano dei grossi piloti, perché per esempio il – il Ponte delle Svolte non l’hanno mai preso. Sì, lì c’era una particolarità, ora apro parentesi, no, cioè a dire: quando loro vedevano il ponte non poteano – sganciando, era già – andavano molto – vale a dire, loro doveano sgangiare prima di vederlo e infatti poi da ultimo c’arrivarono, perché – vabbè comunque torniamo –
CR: Ma risentimento c’era? C’era un risentimento verso questi che bombardavano, o no?
Aldo Galardini: No, non c’è mai stato nulla, specialmente verso gli americani. No, no, no, non c’è mai stato –
CR: Perché li distinguevate gli americani dagli inglesi quando bombardavano?
Aldo Galardini: Sì, ecco gli inglesi – il regime fascista era un po’ riuscito a piano piano [incomprensibile] questi bombardamenti un po’ indiscriminati, senza criterio insomma, non si considerava –
CR: La volontà di colpire la gente non ce la leggevate, via.
Aldo Galardini: No, no, no, nella maniera più assoluta, perché poi a un certo momento, quando si sono fatti un po’ più precisi, un po’ più accorti e bomba – e gli obbiettivi li centravano perbacco, eccome se li centravano, soltanto – io sono convinto questo, che siccome c’era già la lotta partigiana, c’era già tante altre cose, ci sta che loro abbiano inteso pochino stancare anche la popolazione, portarla a una – una ribellione, ma sa’, bisogna stare attenti, perché generalmente sono quelle azioni un po’ a doppio taglio, è un po’ come un’arma a doppio taglio, no, molto spesso invece di creare, diciamo così, un risentimento nei confronti dei tedeschi, c’era proprio anche da creare risentimento proprio verso di loro, sicché, insomma, secondo me sono quelle azioni da usare con molto criterio e naturalmente mi sa chi dà certi ordini le cose le sa. Comunque, questa volta che vi dicevo prima, io sono giunto giù in fondo a Via Quattro Novembre, sono andato verso la sinistra verso Via Bastione Mediceo, allora si chiamava Via dei Campi Santi, quando sono arrivato a casa mia c’era un orto, per passare al di là dell’orto – del mio orto, a passare al di là dell’altro orto, c’era una gora che io per anni, anni e anni non ce l’avevo mai fatta a saltarla, saltavo sempre dentro, tant’è vero che era un po’ oggetto di scherno da parte dei miei fratelli, dei cugini, degli amici, dei ragazzetti di allora, no. Bene, quella volta lì io ho saltato dall’altra parte e mi è avanzato buoni trenta centimetri [ride], questa è la forza della paura [ride], vero, questo è la forza della paura, aspe – un momento, ho dimenticato la cosa più importante: quando io scappavo una donna per la strada m’ha fermato, m’ha fatto un gesto e m’ha detto ‘Mi prendi un bambino? Mi prendi un bambino?’, c’aveva due bambini: uno in collo e uno che lo tirava per la mano e m’ha dato quello che aveva in collo, io ho presso questo bambino, sì, non ho mica guardato per il sottile e ho continuato a scappare, ormai ero lanciato, sembravo un leprotto [ride] quando io ho saltato la gora e sono andato bene al di là –
Annalia Galardini: Col bambino.
Aldo Galardini: Eh [enfasi] son saltato anche col bambino, sono andato in mezzo ai campi, mi son nascosto tra gli alberi e poi quando è venuto il cessato allarme son sortito fuori con questo bambino, però io la mamma non l’ho più trovata, capito, e allora cosa ho fatto? Sono andato in questura a portare questo bambino dicendo che ‘A me m’hanno dato un bambino [ride], ora io non so, ve lo consegno [ride] a voi’. Insomma, nessuno voleva questo bambino, poi a un certo punto è intervenuto un funzionario e ha detto ‘Beh, lo lasci qui e si farà una denuncia, qualche cosa, vedremo che si può fare’ e infatti poi non ho saputo più nulla, tornai dopo un paio di giorni a sentir di questo bambino, mi dissero ‘Sì, sì, l’hann – dopo neanche un’ora è venuta la mamma, perché ha pensato proprio che lei avrebbe agito così’ e anche questa volta – anche in questa circostanza andò bene. Un’altra volta andò un pochino – un po’ peggio, ma però anche qui s’è risolta soltanto con una grossa paura, no: ero in servizio, sempre, solito allarme, solito cenno tra di noi e – cenno che venne subito captato da questo Maruska [?], da questo comandante –
CR: Ma cosa vi faceva quando poi ritornavate ed eravate scappati? Niente?
Aldo Galardini: Niente, a quelli che potevano scappare niente, a quell’altri mangiate così, mangiate di muso [incomprensibile]
CR: Anche perché ne aveva bisogno, insomma, per mandare avanti –
Aldo Galardini: Sì, ma sai, lì era tutto bloccato a un certo momento, sicché in quei momenti lì non si movea niente, però un giorno che io ero in servizio con lui avevamo lì in stazione un treno di carri armati, erano sei carrarmati – una locomotiva a vapore e sei carrarmati, questi sei carrarmati erano carrarmati molto potenti che erano caricati su dei pianali adibiti proprio – creati per il trasporto eccezionale, a un certo momento quando viene l’allarme – ah, quella volta lì – quella volta lì io lo vengo a sapere un pochino prima, fin dalla mattina si sapeva che ci sarebbe stato un – ma forse era talmente l’abitudine, insomma, a me mi dissero ‘Oggi bombardano la stazione Pistoia’, sicché quando – il giorno in servizio io mi tenevo pronto, no, sono partito e quando stavo per varcare la soglia mi son sentito una mano sulle spalle, una manona che mi sembrava la mano di un gigante, mi rigiro era questo Maruska che con una mano m’avea agguantato e con il mitra puntato di dietro, ‘Mandare via treno e poi scappare’, dico ‘Dove si manda il treno?’, si mandava alla diorama [?], nella galleria, nella trincea. Si chiama la gabina ma non c’è nessuno, perché gli scambi erano molto distanti, no, noi sugli scambi avevamo una gabina, un porta terra [?], per poter partire questo treno bisognava chiedere la predisposizione e gli itinerari degli scambi, poi si chiedeva la via libera a Valdibrana, si chiudevano i passaggi a livello lungo il percorso e si mandava via questo treno, tutto questo tre o quattro minuti ci vuole per scambiarsi questi monogrammi [?] perché io devo chieder– devo dire ‘La gabina – il treno parte dal binario, disponete scambio per partenza’ loro devon girare gli scambi, poi mi devono richiamare e dirmi ‘Disposto scambi per partenza treno’ eccetera eccetera. Quattro, cinque minuti, no, ‘Mandare via treno e poi scappare anche noi’, a parte il fatto che il treno fuga era bell’e partito, io ho fatt– chiedo questo fonogramma [?] mando via questo treno, il treno era macchinisti tedeschi e personale di scorta che noi chiamiamo conduttori, no, il conduttore quello lì erano [incomprensibile] tutti militari, perché era un trasporto militare, carrarmati che andavano a Livorno [incomprensibile] e il treno parte. Quando il treno è partito ormai non c’era niente da fare, allora io chiedo a Maruska – che poi a cose normali era bravo, tanto che i tedeschi quando hanno [incomprensibile] addosso, anche se lui era uno di quelli che non riconosceva giusta questa guerra, la condannava in pieno, anche. L’aveva cominciata a condannare più che altro quando Hitler cominciò a ammazzare tutti gli ebrei, cioè, per dire, quelle assurdità nell’assurdità, no, la razza eletta, la razza [incomprensibile], allora ha capito che era veramente un pazzo. Questo Maruska tengo presente che aveva moglie e due figli, allora io gli faccio a un certo punto ‘Maruska ma – ma chi te lo fa fare di fare l’eroe? Tu hai moglie e due figli [incomprensibile] bombarda la stazione, a tua moglie e ai tuoi figli chi ci pensa?’, dico, ‘Il grande Fuhrer?’, ‘No, quello’ dice ‘muore prima di me’ ‘E allora [enfasi]?’ ‘Allora perché non siamo scappati anche noi?’ [incomprensibile] ‘Non si puole scappare, voi italiani siete un po’ facili [incomprensibile] ma noi no’ ‘Ma potei lascia’ scappa’ me’.
Annalia Galardini: [ride]
Aldo Galardini: ‘Potei lascia’ scappa’ me’ dico ‘io un c’ho mia il grande Fuhrer, io da costà [?]’, nel tempo che si fanno questi discorsi lui mi dava una sigaretta perché avea capito che quella volta lì forse – dico ‘Oggi ci bombardano, oggi Maruska è la fine [enfasi], tua moglie non la rivedi più, i tuoi bambini non li rivedi più [enfasi], almeno io son giovanotto, ma mi piange più di te perché te qualcosa hai goduto, io non ho ancora goduto nulla’. Io intanto a diciott’anni a trovarmi in mezzo a quelle cose lì, si sente un grande rumore, un brontolio, un suono lontano tipico, perlomeno in quel momento lì, degli aerei che si stavano avvicinando, no, quando sono tanti fanno un rumore tutto particolare che bisogna averlo vissuto, ecco, perché è un rumore che ha qualcosa di allucinante proprio, è un rumore di centinaia di motori che frullano assieme. Allora vedo che Maruska si irrigidisce e dopo un po’ fa ‘No, questi non sono aerei, niente aerei’ ‘Come niente aerei?’ ‘Niente aerei’ e infatti da lì a mezzo minuto vediamo passare di fronte alla stazione il treno che s’era mandato via poco prima e [ride] stava ritransitando davanti alla stazione a una velocità di cento chilometri l’ora. Passa [enfasi] tutta la stazione, gli scambi d’ingresso erano ritrovo [?] buoni perché erano gli scambi che erano rimasti – erano rimasti in quella posizione quando lui era partito, tanto quando è tornato indietro gli scambi di uscita lato Montale li ha trovati in falsa posizione, perché lui transitava dal terzo binario e quegli scambi erano stati fatti per far partire il treno fuga dal suo binario. Pertanto lui gli scambi li ha tutti danneggiati, ha spezzato tutto, no, però la forza era tale che il treno ha proseguito la sua corsa e [enfasi] all’altezza del ponte dell’Armacani è andato a picchiare contro il treno fuga, contro il treno fuga e sicché vi potete immaginare quello che è successo quando poi – anzitutto ci ha picchiato e i carri sono fuoriusciti dai binari, sono andati giù nella scarpata, no, una cosa e via [?], dopo neanche un’ora c’era tutto il comando tedesco a Pistoia, volean sapere com’era, cos’era successo? Era successo che gli aerei americani di scorta – di scorta al bombardiere che andava però da un’altra parte, vedendo questo treno, l’avean cominciato a mitragliare, te lo immagini [incomprensibile] i tedeschi che erano sul treno non fecen discorsi, i grandi eroi, no, no, loro non fecero come Maruska, perché si buttaron di sotto e scapparono, soltanto il treno era frenato [?] e tornò indietro.
CR: [incomprensibile] Da Valdibrana –
Aldo Galardini: [incomprensibile] loro in discesa, da Valdibrana, sicché questo è un altro – un altro particolare di quel periodo là, per cui ripeto, non ci fu bombardamento ma questo episodio fu molto significativo anche perché, ripeto, venne il commando tedesco, volle sape’ com’era andata naturalmente [incomprensibile] chissà che fine avranno fatto quei soldati che erano [incomprensibile] capito, insomma. A noi non ci fecero niente perché noi s’era fatto il nostro dovere, se poi – poi naturalmente m’hanno sfottuto, m’hanno dato noia per tanto tempo, no, dicevano che io ero un capostazione che mi torna indietro i treni invece di mandarli avanti, i ragazzi – allora i miei colleghi mi hanno dato noia per tanto tempo, un altro – un altro bombardamento –
[parlano contemporaneamente]
CR: Ma si viveva con la paura dei bombardamenti? C’era questa paura?
Aldo Galardini: Sì, sì, sì, no, vedi, di fronte al bombardamento era già molto che uno rimanesse calmo e lucido e poi il resto – cosa fai? Sei di fronte ad un avvenimento che non che non ci puoi far niente, ecco, quello è proprio il caso tipo che uno subisce e basta, capito, meno male che Pistoia ebbe quei suoi sette, otto, dieci bombardamenti, insomma non è che si accanirono molto, più che altro – ecco, ad esempio, quando volevan fare i bombardamenti precisi, ecco. Lucca è proprio un caso emblematico, Lucca l’hanno bombardata un sacco di volte, non c’è [enfasi] – non è cascata una bomba fuori degli scambi [?] di Lucca, perché? Perché i lucchesi l’ottanta percento sono tutti in America, quindi – ma i più sono in America, tutti gli americani, tutto, tutto, non c’è stato – non hanno sbagliato di un centimetro [enfasi] sicché quando li volevano fare per bene li potevano fare.
CR: [incomprensibile]
Aldo Galardini: Sì, non [?] volean sciupar la città loro, non volevano proprio, si vedeva che era un caso proprio, invece a Pistoia purtroppo discriminavano come la morte anche perché –
CR: [incomprensibile] vicino al loro obiettivo [incomprensibile] potevano arrivare a colpire fino ad otto chilometri di distanza. Per esempio, lei se l’è ricordato per molto nel dopoguerra? O è una cosa che ha rimosso? Il fatto dei bombardamenti non è un ricordo ricorrente?
Aldo Galardini: No, no, qualche volta se ne parla coi fratelli più che altro, perché è con la famiglia che io l’ho vissuti, capito, è per questo anche, poi ecco, vi volevo dire questo qui [enfasi] una cosa questo penso sia molto interessante, no, allora, per capire gli americani secondo me basta vedere i loro tiri, danno già un po’ – danno già la struttura del [incomprensibile] no, cioè a dire – ora vi racconto questo episodio, è stato la grande potenza di mezzi, insomma, che li ha fatti [?] vincere [?], perché io sono convinto di una cosa: a parità di mezzi per carità, gli americani scomparivano in una settimana, no con noi, contro i tedeschi, ma la supremazia di mezzi era tale – era troppo schiacciante. Lo sapete un giorno – ecco quella è stata una dimostrazione di forza, vi dico questo, questo è l’episodio – ora poi parlane anche con Mario, con Raffaelo – questo è stato un episodio – un giorno, la mattina suona l’allarme, la mattina suona l’allarme alle otto e mezzo, le nove, una domenica mattina [enfasi] di ottobre, sono cominciati a passare stormi di aerei da bombardamento, il giorno alle due passavano sempre–
CR: Lo sbarco in Sicilia quando c’è –
[parlano contemporaneamente]
Aldo Galardini: Una cosa impressionante, ininterrotta [enfasi] e quel giorno lì anche i fascisti, quelli di fede, quelli che credevano cecamente a quello – capirono che – per carità –
CR: Lo sbarco in Sicilia è stato più grosso dello sbarco in Normandia per mezzi e uomini, quattromila aerei intervennero.
Aldo Galardini: Infatti sembrava che quel giorno lì passasse – e siccome non bombardarono, quel giorno lì e stato una dimostrazione, capito, ormai il popolo era quasi in ginocchio e il fascismo cominciava proprio ormai, cioè – no, perché sennò si spiega, perché non bombardarono da nessuna parte. Ma vi rendete conto cosa vuol dire, dio bo’, quattro ore di aerei di seguito tutto sulla testa? Te non vedevi mai l’aria.
[parlano contemporaneamente]
Aldo Galardini: Sì, sì, sì. Allora senti, noi eravamo sfollati lassù come t’ho detto all’inizio, in montagna, a una località chiamata Innocenti, una casa colonica, a Pistoia i primi a arrivare sono state le truppe sudafricane, bravi figlioli, bravi ragazzi, una bella gioventù proprio, no, e lì tu hai cominciato a vedere l’abbondanza, la ricchezza che avevano [?] e il comando prende base – prende la base giù al pie’ del monte, va bene, e lassù in cima al monte dove eravamo noi, proprio agli Innocenti, ci viene fatto un comando distaccato, sicché piazzano tutti i cannoni, eccetera eccetera, tanto i tedeschi se n’erano già andati, no, i tedeschi erano attestati in Collina, Acquerino, Felciano, quella zona, sennò – allora comincia un duello aereo tra i cannoni americani e quelli tedeschi: gli americani – loro avean fatto i turni, mettean lì – una cosa automatica, mettean dentro il proiettile, sparavano, attaccavano la mattina, poi smettevano un’ora il giorno per mangiare, poi riattaccavano, non c’erano problemi di re – la prima volta [ride] che hanno preparato il tiro, le prime cannonate che son partite da giù hanno scoperchiato tutto il tetto di dove c’era il comando americano, questo per dirti com’erano bravi, no, poi tant’è vero che quei famosi cannoni che c’era lassù all’Acquerino che suonava e che hanno mandato [incomprensibile] chi l’andò a trovare? Sono andato anch’io tra l’altro, io però no come partigiano, sono stati i partigiani, perché lassù c’era una piccola galleria. Questo cannone sparava uno, due, tre, cinque colpi poi rientrava in galleria e tutti i giorni bambini mia era di quella romba lì e gli americani ci diventavan matti. Allora c’hanno chiamato, gli abbiamo detto dov’era il coso, non è che siin partiti una pattuglia, due pattuglie, cinque pattuglie e erano sette i presi [?] che non eran neanche sette, no per carità. Per fare un soldato ci vuole [incomprensibile] era il loro motto, cominciarono bambini mia e durarono una trentina di giorni a tirare sempre in quel punto lì, poi quell’altro smise perché non potea neanche più sortire per tirar fuori il cannone [ride], non gli dava neanche il tempo d’andare a fare la pipì dio bono, ecco noi siamo andati avanti – la guerra potea finire se fossero stati un po’ diversi i criteri, i concetti, eccetera eccetera, poteva finire sei mesi prima, un anno prima.
CR: Loro, gli alleati, l’hanno tirata per le lunghe, sì.
Aldo Galardini: Quanto ci siamo stati? L’avanzata di Valdarno –
CR: L’avanzata piano piano, sembra ci fosse la volontà di fiaccare un po’ il movimento partigiano, in modo – dopo con l’Italia liberata –
Aldo Galardini: Sì, sì, sì, lo scopo era anche quello, per carità.
CR: Più che ci stanno, più che si fiaccano, capito.
Aldo Galardini: Insomma, a un certo momento, più frastagliata la trovavano questa povera Italia e anche moralmente – per loro sarebbe stato un [?] gioco, infatti, io penso sia andata così ecco, sennò non si spiega come coi mezzi che avevano, la potenza, tutto, insomma, tutte queste cose, se avessero avuto gli italiani quei mezzi, quando aveano ancora un po’ di fede, no, oddio, c’è per esempio chi non c’ha mai creduto e basta, c’è invece chi inizialmente ci ha creduto insomma. Bisogna essere obiettivi, d’altra parte sai, il lavaggio del cervello cominciava nelle scuole, come fai a dire – è un po’ difficile, insomma, che un ragazzo abbia subito quel discernimento, quella facoltà di valutare le cose di capire il ben – sicché tu t’alzavi la mattina col saluto fascista, dio bono, sì, da ultimo t’aveano fatto du’ affari così, perché, sa’, bisogna sta’ attenti anche con quelli, si finisce sempre con l’esagerare ma –
Annalia Galardini: Ma il babbo era a casa in quel periodo?
Aldo Galardini: Il babbo era tornato dal fronte anche lui, perché lui era su a Fiume, no, e il babbo era lassù all’Innocenti anche lui, rimpiattato come tutti noi, perché –
Annalia Galardini: Tutti s’era [?] in guerra, tutti rimpiattati.
Aldo Galardini: E d’altra parte noi eravamo bell’e tagliati fuori, a chi si doveva presentare? Ma la cosa era troppo compromessa non è che ci fosse – poi stava diventando una guerra fratricida, capito, che vai ad ammazzare altri italiani?
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Title
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Interview with Aldo Galardini
Description
An account of the resource
L’intervistato è Aldo Galardini, nato a Castel di Casio (BO) il 25 giugno 1925, ferroviere in pensione. Interviene la nipote Annalia Galardini, è presente la moglie. L’intervista è effettuata da Claudio Rosati a Pistoia, presso l’abitazione dell’informatore, il 19 settembre 1983. Durante il primo bombardamento di Pistoia, Aldo Galardini si trovava in casa con la famiglia in Via Bastione Mediceo e non si recò al rifugio antiaereo. La prima bomba cadde sopra la conceria accanto alla loro casa. In seguito, sfollarono a San Quirico di Pontenuovo, in località Innocenti, vicino alla quale si formò un comando alleato di sudafricani e americani, in seguito alla ritirata tedesca sull’Appennino pistoiese. Numerose furono le cannonate tra americani e tedeschi. È stato ferroviere alla stazione di Pistoia e ricorda di quando il governo fascista istituì un premio di cinquanta lire per i dipendenti che rimanevano in servizio durante i bombardamenti. In caso di possibile bombardamento, lui e i colleghi venivano avvertiti da Torre del Lago, dove era posizionato un radar; in questo modo predisponevano la fuga su una locomotiva a vapore e si dirigevano fuori dalla città, verso Montale o Agliana. <br /><br />The interviewee is Aldo Galardini, born at Castel di Casio (Bologna province) on 25 June 1925, retired railwayman. His niece Annalia Galardini edges in, his wife are also in the room. The interview was conducted by Claudio Rosati in Pistoia on 19 September 1983, in his house. During the first bombing of Pistoia, Aldo Galardini was at home with family at Via Bastione Mediceo and did not go to the shelter. The first bomb hit the nearby tanner’s shop. They were then evacuated to Innocenti, near San Quirico di Pontenuovo. There a command post was established by South Africans and Americans after the Germans retreated to the Apennine hills and mountains near Pistoia; Americans and Germans exchanged many artillery rounds. Aldo Galardini was a railwayman at Pistoia station: he remembers a 50 Lire cash prize given to those who did not stop working during bombings. When a bombing was likely, he and his colleagues were warned by the Torre del Lago radar station; this allowed them to flee to Montale or Agliana on a steam engine.
Date
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1983-09-19
Identifier
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MB CR 3 B
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Claudio Rosati
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Italy
Italy--Pistoia
Type
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Sound
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00:36:21 audio recording
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Civilian
Language
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ita
Temporal Coverage
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1943-10-24
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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
bombing
evacuation
radar
-
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/376/7301/PHouriganM1804.1.jpg
710d60d65d0d6dc0948b05c33ec1e73c
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/files/original/376/7301/AHouriganM180416.2.mp3
e72ccdc7eb2d57d68e893377766b8057
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Title
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Hourigan, Margaret
Margaret Hourigan
M Hourigan
Description
An account of the resource
158 items. An oral history interview with Margaret Hourigan (1922 - 2023, 889775 Royal Air Force) and 156 target photographs taken by 50 and 61 Squadron aircraft during 1944. Margaret Hourigan served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as a plotter with Fighter Command before being posted to RAF Waddington and RAF Skellingthorpe with Bomber Command.
The collection has been loaned to the IBCC Digital Archive for digitisation by Margaret Hourigan and catalogued by Trevor Hardcastle.
Publisher
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IBCC Digital Archive
Date
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2019-04-16
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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Hourigan,M
Transcribed audio recording
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Transcription
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DE: So, a quick introduction, this is an interview for the International Bomber Command Centre. My name is Dan Ellin, today I am interviewing Margaret Hourigan nee Parsons it is the 16th of April 2018, we’re at the IBCC Digital Archive, Riseholme and also present in the room is David Hourigan. So, Margaret, could you start?
MH: Start yes.
DE: Start by telling us a little about your life?
MH: Yes, my childhood. If I start, I remember 1926, I remember the Great Strike. And my father was a miner when he came back from the War, the only job he could get, he was very badly wounded in the first World War. And I remember the, standing on the front step of our little house on Lowmoor Road and a man ran in toour front door. And the police outside, was it police or a soldier? On a black horse reared up and the man ran under the horse’s legs into our house and out the back door. And I don’t know what happened but police everywhere. I think the miners were striking, maybe they were being a bit angry, I don’t know. But my Dad was a safety man and so he was down the pit so it was OK. I remember that very plainly, I think it was 1926. I would have been four. And then, my Dad was very, very ill after that he got badly burnt at work. I remember [unclear] to think he was going to die. We were too little to know that. Anyway, he didn’t die, eventually he recovered. And I can’t remember moving but we moved to another house and my Nanna and Grandpa left and they had a fish and chip shop which we took over so my Dad worked there. He also worked at the pit, he also worked as a gardener for a doctor, and he also had his own allotment. So, he repaired our shoes and cut our hair when we had no money. And we were always well fed through the Depression years but I remember terrible scenes of children with no shoes in the snow. Awful things we saw at Kirkby. And I think then the miners didn’t get any help if they were injured at work. I think they went home and had to suffer. I can’t, I know we were all very Labour, when the Daily Herald paper came out we all thought we were in heaven, and all very Labour. I’m not now [chuckles] we were then. And we used to go to, when I was a little bit older, we used to go to Hucknall Air Display. There was a little aerodrome there, and they had Tiger Moths. I used to think ‘One day, God I’d love to fly them.’ And every year we visited until I went to work and then I decided that I would join up as soon as war was declared. Oh, belonged to the Labour Party League of Youth then and we were very hostile little bunch and when Mr Chamberlain came back from Berlin waving his bit of paper we all went mad and got very angry. And the Labour Party said they were going to disband us if we didn’t shut up. One of our trips was to go to the pictures and we sat down when they played God Save the Queen or King or we walked out according to our mood. Anyway, soon as war was declared whoosh we all joined up except one poor man who was a true conscientious objector. He never did join up and he had awful struggle, but he never gave in. We were all wimps, as soon as war was declared.
DE: What happened to him do you know?
MH: I don’t know. I know he was penalised and punished and treated like dirt. I don’t know. He didn’t die because one day David answered the telephone, somebody in Canberra saying ‘Anybody from Kirkby in Ashfield?’ And David rang up and said ‘Yes, my mother is.’ So he chatted I said ‘I remember his Dad he was a conchie.’ We never heard from him again. I mean I didn’t mean to be derogatory, I thought he was a wonderful man.
DE: Um. But you, you, you joined up?
MH: We joined the WAAFs yes. And I went to stay with my Auntie Margaret. She had a shop on Highson Green at Basford in Nottingham. And early hours of the morning I trotted off to Nottingham station. I went to St Pancras, how I got across London I don’t know. I’d never been before and I went to Kingsway and there was a male clerk there and a doctor. And they talked to me all morning and then the male clerk took me to the pictures at lunchtime. You know they had those newsreel places then, and I shut my eyes the whole way through because I thought if I can’t see, if my eyes aren’t good enough, they won’t take me I was sitting there [chuckles] [unclear] a right nutcase. Anyway, took me back to Kingsway afterwards and must have had a cup of tea or something. And the doctor said ‘You’ve got a heart of a lion.’ Always remember that.
DE: Um.
And then I had a medical, went home and I think it was very early January 1940 I got the call up. Freezing cold winter. I don’t know how I got to London, I suppose I did. And went to Watford, think it was Watford. And it was freezing cold there and a dirty, dirty billet the men had been in, and nobody had been in for months, anyway it was really dirty. And the water froze in the pipes, we couldn’t have a wash. The girls had water bottles that froze in bed. I woke up the next morning and I went to the sick bay, and I was covered in big red blobs. And the doctor said ‘Haven’t ever seen flea bites before?’ I hadn’t. Anyway, they must have gone away because we started marching up and down, up and down, and round and round, got our uniforms and then I was posted to Leighton Buzzard. I found I’d been enrolled as a clerk,special duties, so I must have talked well and got a very high classification. And went to Leighton Buzzard, started plotting. And then one day they said ‘You and two other girls are posted to Bawdsey Manor.’ It’s down near Felixstowe where Watson-Watt invented the radar. [unclear] arrived late at night, remember crossing water but it actually wasn’t an island, it was just a little inlet to get across to the house. And a man rowed the boat over and somewhere I met some soldiers. I don’t know how because they said would I ask the girls at the base if they would like to come to a dance? I thought they’d all be too posh to go but they ‘Oh yes.’ So, we went to the dance with the sailors, the soldiers and it was a huge house. Lots of rooms, lots of cockroaches. And in the morning I woke up and they had kedgeree for breakfast. I’d never seen it before. I was just used to cornflakes or porridge and they had this great big thing of kedgeree. Anyway, the Indian educated girls all loved it. A lot of girls had been brought up by their families living in India, they thought it was wonderful, I didn’t. Anyway, we started on the radar and we had a green screen, like a television screen, with a green line wavering line that went across it really quickly. And echoes, a big echo would be an aeroplane, and wiggle, wiggle so many in the group. I couldn’t do it, I hated it, made me feel sick. Anyway, I persisted and the other girls just had a little green handle, they could turn it and illuminate the echo and say ‘Twelve plus’ and ‘twenty thousand feet.’ I could not do it. So, I went to the WAAF officer in the end and I said ‘I hate it, I can’t do it.’ And there was a man in the office with her. He said. And she said ‘Yes, yes.’ I couldn’t go, he thought I knew too much. Anyway, outside was the big pylons, you know?
DE: Um.
MH: And one interesting day before I left we were walking, a WAAF and I, were walking along the edge of green grass and the Channel was here in front of us. And I could see ships out at sea and big black birds flying all round it. And I thought they were big huge seagulls. And as we were walking along we saw the Coastguard. He was dancing up and down, waving his arms at us. We thought ‘Oh, he’s gone mad.’ And when we caught up with him, just as we caught up with him, a low flying German aeroplane went over. It would only be a hundred feet, we could see the pilot laughing. And he said ‘I was trying to warn you.’ Well where could we go? Nowhere to lie down and hide. Anyway, he was laughing. The German pilot must have thought it was a bit of a joke. We were both in uniform.
DE: Um
MH: Anyway, he flew inland for a little while and he came out further down the coast, we could still see him. He wasn’t laughing when he came back out. And he went back. The black birds were the first attack on a convoy.
DE: I see.
MH: So that was that. Nearly written off before I started. And then I went to Fighter Command Headquarters at Bentley Priory in the ops room there, started plotting.
DE: And what was that like?
MH: Huge, and down, down, down underground. We lived in huts opposite and I remember I Winston Churchill coming in. I remember King George coming in, looking down on the plots. And must have started bombing. I remember Dunkirk about that time. I asked, anyway I got a bit lonely, the girls were all very posh shall we say. One girl’s father signed the pound note, I know that. If you told me who it was I’d tell you that was so but I can’t remember. But I know her father was high in the Government. They all came along with their gold braid to pick their daughters up in big cars and here’s poor little me from Kirkby. I had nobody to pick me up. And I decided to have my photograph taken. So, I went along to this photographer and I had a black velvet dress I remember and I said ‘Would you take it with me smoking a cigarette?’ He said ‘Indeed I won’t!’ I thought I’d be a film star. He said ‘Indeed I won’t!’ He did a lovely ‘photo. Anyway, I asked to go to 12 Group, I went to 12 Group headquarters then in Hucknall and I stayed there all through the Battle of Britain and the night bombing. I was plotting the night Coventry was bombed and there were so many plots on the table but we couldn’t relieve each other. We used to take time off, two people standing beside each other plotting and grabbing plots off. You plotted five minutes red, five minutes yellow and five minutes blue. Then you snatched the red off and started plotting red again and they knew the time upstairs, they could tell how old the plot was. And when they were over land the Observer Corps did all the plots. Out at sea we got the plots from the radar.
DE: Um.
MH: And the men who were plotting that night from Coventry, not one of the them left their posts. All of their houses were bombed, not all badly but all stayed with us. Thought that was rather wonderful. Didn’t get much praise at all really when they talk about the war now nobody remembers the Observer Corps do they?
DE: No, my grandfather was in the Observer Corps.
MH: Was he?
DE: How did, how did it feel then seeing, watching the plots of the German aircraft coming in?
MH: We were too damn busy to bother. We wrote a poem about it. I wrote it down somewhere I know. ‘A bloody raids coming roaring in, kicking up a bloody din. Who can spot their bloody game? Bloody seven, two and four, these and bloody thousands more. Across the bloody coast they came, bloody Jones is up above , he a bloody man we’d love. No bloody smoking says the cad, enough to drive us bloody mad.’ Because we knitted or sewed or read but the men got so bored they cracked up.
DE: Um.
MH: In the end, when we started we’d be half and half. By this time, this time, they’d might be two men left who were C3, they couldn’t go anywhere else.
DE: Right.
MH: So then after all that bombing I had trouble with varicose veins and I was going to hospital, hilarious story. Going to hospital for treatment. And one day I woke up, I didn’t know, somebody knocked on the door, I’d stripped my nightgown off, standing there stark naked and a big policeman walked in the door. And I stood there [exclamation noise], and I stood there and he shut the door and went out. I still stood there. And he came in again and I hadn’t moved. And I ran. He said ‘I’d never seen anything as pretty in all my life as your little bum waddling down the hall.’ He didn’t know it was me but I went to get the bus to go and have my injections for my varicose veins and he was there and I cut him dead. He said ‘I knew then it was you.’ Otherwise he didn’t. So that was all over the camp. ‘A WAAF’s been caught in the nude.’ And it was me. He said ‘Why didn’t you put some clothes on?’ I said ‘I couldn’t think.’ Anyway, Wing Commander Woods was the CO there and he said ‘Why don’t you put in for Bomber Command, there’s a sergeant’s job going there?’ So, I did and took me to Grantham for the interview and I marched in, polished up to the hilt, [unclear]into the hall, turned round and they were sitting at the table there. Whizzed round, slipped on my bum. And I tried to carry on, I couldn’t. Anyway, we all started laughing then that was OK, we were all at ease. And I got accepted and I was posted to Swinderby and then I went to Waddington. And then 44 Squadron left Waddington, the Rhodesians. We had no squadron there we had put in concrete runways. I don’t know why they keep saying that there were squadrons there, there weren’t. They put in a concrete runway.
DE: Yeah it was closed for a while.
MH: It was closed for quite a while.
DE: We interviewed a chap who was there when they were putting the runways in.
MH: Yeah, yeah. We had Irish labourers come in. They were awful, we hated them. I damn near got raped one night. They were so drunk luckily they couldn’t catch me. But we had to walk home from Waddington. I was with an Aussie sergeant, Bill. That’s all I know. And we walked up the hill, you know you get to the top of the hill? All the nice houses were. Over the top was flat. That side’s green,this side’s airfield. And we heard these men saying ‘No, no, no you hold her, you hold him and I’ll have her. No, no, no, no, you hold him and I’ll have her.’ I thought ‘What’d they say?’ And I said to Bill ‘There going to rape me!’ and as we were passing by, I don’t know if it was an ack ack army unit but there was a five barred gate and a shed. I knew there were soldiers in there, and I put my hand on top of that gate and I cleared it. And I ran into the hut, the men were all in the ‘jamas, laughing and talking, and I said ‘Those men are going to rape me.’ And a couple of them got dressed and then Bill arrived. He said ‘I couldn’t get over the gate.’ But I cleared it. Olympic runner honestly. Anyway, they took us back to camp and that was that. But we had lots of trouble with the Irish then, always drunk, always fighting. Anyway, I trained as a watchkeeper and then sometimes I went to Bardney, sometimes I stayed I went to Skellingthorpe. The first time I was at Skellingthorpe I was under flying control, little tiny ops room. All the room was full of men. Officers, group captains everybody. And the raid was coming through on my little telephone . And I never learnt French at school and the route was coming through in French. I couldn’t do it. I know what, one was [unclear]. On one of those photos we’ve taken upstairs. I can remember that. Anyway, I struggled and did it and you know your degrees, I put in sixty three degrees and all that. And I made, I did it alright. Anyway Flight Lieutenant Williams said ‘You did a good job Maggie.’ He helped me, sorted it all out. But that was my initiation Eventually, we moved to a big ops room at the Doddington end of Skellingthorpe and had a great big table in the middle. I had a little office and Squadron Leader Quinn was at that end in his little office. He was a station navigation officer. And intelligence there in another little room. Daddy, Squadron Leader Dodd, we called him ‘Daddy Dodd’ ‘cause he was in his thirties. Daddy Williams was in his twenties and I know Daddy Quinn was twenty-nine. We thought he was old. And I worked there from then on. I remember a Lanc’ crashing at the end of the runway and blowing a great big hole and all the windows in Lincoln High Street were broken. And this air gunner was still sitting on the hole. He must have been mad, never, ever heard of him again.
DE: Um.
MH: But that was, we used to go to the end of the runway and watch the boys go. Not so much coming back ‘cause they came back early in the morning. But I’d walk round the perimeter track and they’d be lying by the aircraft on a nice summers day waiting to take off. I never dared say ‘Good luck or God bless you.’ Thought they’d think I was putting a jinx on them, but I wanted to say something, but I daren’t, never did.
DE: Um.
MH: But in the, when we went to lunch mess at lunchtime they’d all say ‘What’s the petrol like Mag?’ It worked out, you know long or short trip. Or ‘What’s the bomb load?’ they’d know if that was a big one that was a short trip. Or a little one was a long trip. And they knew I knew. I knew they knew I knew but I couldn’t say anything to them. And we had Group Captain Jefferson there who was a very, very posh gentleman. It was all ‘Do, do, do,do you think Maggie. Do you think you could?’ I can’t tell you what he said, it’s too rude. But he always sat with me at night when they were off flying and Daddy Dodd used to go to Lincoln and stay at the hotel with his wife and we had a code that I had to tell him, if somebody was coming back early or something like that. He’d ring me and say, I can’t remember what the code was but ‘Yes, come back’ or ‘No, you don’t need to.’
DE: Right.
MH: We had a great rapport. And that’s pretty well it I think. I often went to Bardney and worked there. And I remember meeting the nicest man I’ve ever met in my life. A Flight Lieutenant Dennis Irving. He was a very Catholic gentleman who went to mass, said the rosary, prayed. Everybody knew, we all knew and yet he wasn’t a bit shy about it. Was a real Christian gentleman. And the funny thing was they all had to wear civilian clothes when they went home to Ireland. I worked with a WAAF who had to go home in civvies. And yet when my husband went in Ireland he said that he had to wear civvies there were U boat men in the pubs in full uniform. They weren’t happy.
DE: No, I can imagine.
MH: Anyway, I pretty well went along like that was escorted to station dances and pictures. I remember once going to the pictures, Casablanca. We all sang ‘You must remember this.’ The whole theatre was singing and really the rapport, you can’t imagine and the friendship. It was just something.
DE: Um.
MH: Sometimes I’d go to a meal and they’d be one sergeant sitting there, I can remember him. And I thought ‘I should talk to you.’ But how do you talk to a stranger who’s looking a bit grumpy? Anyway, I thought you’re not going to come back. And he didn’t. Sometimes things happen like that. I remember being madly in love with a boy. And I was hanging around the flying control and in the end the girls said ‘For God’s sake Maggie, clear off.’ [unclear] I had to go home. Anyway, he did his tour and went back to Australia. That was that. He was killed afterwards anyway. And one day Daddy Quinn said to me ‘Maggie, I’ve got good news for you. Mentioned in dispatches.’
DE: You were mentioned in dispatches?
MH: Um.
DE: What was that for?
MH: I suppose because I was a good girl, did my work well. I lost the citation, I’ve got the box, the packet that it came in but my son that went to America took everything, I never got it back. I’ve got the envelope and I’ve got the thing it came with.
DE: Right.
MH: It said.
DE: Well we could probably look it up and find it [unclear].
MH: That’s what came with it. You can’t look it up, it’s all gone.
DE: No, we can look it up in the Gazette. It says it’s dated the first of January 1946.
MH: [Rustling of paper] What this is? That’s what the citation was with.
DE: Yes.
MH: Yes, they said you could look at the what’s its name? The magazine.
DE: The Gazette?
MH: Yes, the Gazette. It’ll be in there. That’s what we did, a plotter.
DE: Yes. So what was your job like?
MH: In the operations room?
DE: In the watch office. What was your job in the watch office?
MH: Oh the – the ‘phone would ring in the morning. We had to get to work at nine o’clock. I was always late. And the ‘phone would ring and a voice would say ‘Ops on tonight, maximum effort.’ Or they’d say ‘Nothing on tonight.’ Soon as they said ops were on I rang the group captain and I rang both wing commanders from the squadrons and then flight commanders and then the bombing leader and engineer officer, flying control, intelligence. And they all started their work then and then we had teleprinters bringing all the information later on in the war so Groupie Jefferson used to come in and read it and the route and Squadron Leader Quinn would come in. He’d plan the route from that we were going to fly. Height, target. Then I had to look up the colours of the day and they had to fire those across the coastal path the naval ship or whatever when they were coming in.
DE: Um.
MH: And eventually they’d have to announce they briefing times and would have to announce the meal times. And then I would go off duty at five, five thirty. Would go down to the runway then and watch them going. And then one time I went off in the morning and it was terribly misty like it’s been here for the last week. Very low cloud. And Jock McPherson was in the control in his little black and white van at the end of the runway firing a Very cartridge. I said ‘Can I have one?’ He gave me one, we were doing one each. And fire it and the Lancaster would come out of the mist. Over the waafery, down to the end of the runway. If it had been three foot short we would have been killed. But nobody did they all landed, bang on the runway.
DE: Wow.
MH: I think they had a bomb load on too, I think they were coming back with a bomb load.
DE: Crikey.
MH: Anyway, they were hilarious things.
DE: Ah ha.
MH: Another time we were sleeping naked outside. There was a little garden, I think it was an officer’s garden, somebody lived there. A nice little garden of roses. We used to go out then take our clothes off and a bit of low flying went on [chuckles]. Anyway that was that I think. When the invasion was on that night I went out to the toilet, about five o’clock in the morning, or six. It was just turning light. The sky was black with aircraft. Couldn’t, could not believe so many aircraft and I thought ‘I’ll remember this as long as I live.’ Which I have.
DE: Did you know what it was then when you saw?
MH: Well, I knew when I saw it what it was. I didn’t know, didn’t know it was on until then. But we had two accidents. Another time a bomb went off in the dispersal. All of the Lancs were loaded and windows again went in the High Street. But the people were lovely to us. One of the girls that, a big store, don’t know what it was. Just above the Stonebow she always gave me silk stockings. They were very hard to get.
DE: Um.
MH: Um. And then one day the war was over. And 50 and 61 just disappeared. Groupie Jefferson just disappeared and a Group Captain Forbes came. And he was a very nice man, we always thought about him. He’d come back from Japan and his wife was interned. We could never work out how that happened, not Japan, Singapore.
DE: Um.
MH: Anyway, 463 came and they were being briefed to bring the prisoners back from Europe. And I was on, I went early and WAAF said ‘’I knew you’d come early tonight when they were here.’ All the officers were in the ops room being briefed. And I saw this blonde one leaning on the table at the back. I thought ‘Oh, he looks alright.’ I can’t remember him coming up to me but he must have ‘cause I went out with him that night and I married him. (chuckles). Two months later I married him and went to Australia.
DE: OK. Well why not?
MH: Um. It’s silly. Silly, silly, silly. I didn’t know if he had a job, didn’t know if he was a layabout or what. I mean they were all handsome in uniform, I never looked further than that. Anyway he went to uni, the Government paid for them all to go to uni if they wanted to and they’d matriculated, so he did. Did an economics degree and a commerce and he worked in the Government all his life. And I got presented to the Queen Mother when she came and had a good life.
DE: So, you met him after D-Day?
MH: After the war was over.
DE: Yeah.
MH: He was on 463 Squadron.
DE: And did you marry him in the UK?
MH: Yes I did.
DE: When did you both go to Australia?
MH: He went back that Christmas. We married in October, October the 30th He went back to Australia then Christmas and I went back the next August on the Orbita.
DE: What was that like?
MH: They divided all the first-class cabins for in about six. And there was hardly any water to wash yourselves. We were taking all our clothes off and going standing in a draughty doorway it was so hot. And when we were going down Suez Canal we were passing all the British ships coming home with all the troops. And they were ‘Where are you going?’ and the Aussies were shouting ‘We’re going to Australia, we’ve got all the girls.’ And the Englishmen ‘ Have they really got all the girls?’ We felt miserable then. The Aussies were awful. When we got to Port Said the people came along the boat, beside the boat, hauling up handbags and things for us to buy.
DE: Um.
MH: And the Aussies put hoses on them.
DE: Right.
MH: I know my husband said when he arrived back in Australia all the big dignitaries came out to meet the ships coming in and cheering the boys. My husband always called them ‘The Cheer Company’, cheer you when you go and cheer you when you come back. They put the hoses on them as well. And anyway then I had a horrible time. My mother in law hated, me she was Irish and blamed me for all the stuff going on in Ireland. I’d never heard of it. We were never taught at school anything about that.
DE: Um. So where did you live in Australia?
MH: We lived in Enfield, it’s not a terribly good area really. But they lived there, my mother in law lived there with her second husband. My husband’s father came back from the first World War with a, what did he have? Military Medal, and I think he was a bit shell shocked. He cleared off and left his family and never, ever heard what happened to him again.
DE: Um.
MH: Anyway, we’ve got his medal and he got a write up on. You know you can look it up on David’s mobile and he’s got all his citation.
DE: Yes. Never, ever heard from him again. Shame wasn’t it?
DE: Um.
MH: They had lovely grandchildren. I had eight children, three sets of twins, and two single girls. David’s a twin. I’ve lost three.
DE: Oh dear.
MH: Um. Anyway, that’s that. I think that’s told you everything.
DE: If it’s OK I’ll ask a couple more questions?
MH: Yes.
DE: What did your husband do after the war in Australia?
MH: He was an, he started off as an auditor and then he worked for the Leader of the Opposition who was a Labour man. Mr O’Halloran Giles, he worked for him. And then Mr O’Halloran-Giles.
DH: Mr O’Halloran?
MH: Um? O’Halloran Giles. Mick O’Halloran that’s right. And then he died and Frank Walsh was the second one. My husband worked for him and they were elected into office but my husband couldn’t go with him the Public Service wouldn’t let him transfer to the Premier’s office. So he stayed in the Public Works Committee and he worked for them for thirty odd years.
DE: Right, OK. Did you have a job?
MH: No.
DE: No.?
MH: Too busy. I beg your pardon I did have a job when I first went to Australia. My mother in law insisted that I went to work. And I was pregnant with twins, sick as a dog, morning sickness. And I went to work at [Myle?] Emporium, which was a bit like [TJ’s?] sort of place, and they were so sorry for me they put me in bed every day. They said I was the worst saleswoman they’d ever had. How could I go from my job to that?
DE: Quite.
MH: And [Lloyd?] used to meet me at the railway station on his way home and take me home. I couldn’t face his mother. And they drank and swore and called all the English ’Pommies bastards.’ And it was after the Bodyline cricket series when Ray Larwood was there, who was born, lived near where I lived in Nottinghamshire.
DE: Um.
MH: And were all Bodyline killers. She used to go on about it. Anyway that was that, eventually they left and sold us the house and left. We could never afford to move anywhere else then ‘cause all the children went to private schools. We had some nuns opposite our house. I had a knock on the door one day and they said ‘Can David and Diane come to school?’ I thought ‘Go to school with nuns, no.’ I said ‘No, we’re moving.’ Couldn’t think of anything else to say. I thought afterwards said to my husband ‘They looked, had nice faces.’ ‘Cause he was a Catholic, I didn’t know. Anyway they knew and anyway I went and said ‘Yes, they can come.’
DE: Um.
MH: They started off. And David and Diane went to school. Sister [unclear] had about a hundred children didn’t she David? All in one room. When I went there [hissing noise] they all had their front teeth missing. ‘Mrs Hourigan’s here, Mrs Hourigan’s here.’ Anyway I heard them talking one day and teaching them saying about Jesus and Jesus was God when he came to earth. And I said ‘What’s she saying? Jesus wasn’t God.’ So I said to her ‘Don’t agree with what you’re saying.’ So she said ‘Well the mother sets the religion, if you don’t like it.’ She said ‘Have to give it up, but.’ She said ‘Before you do that go for a retreat,’ I went for a retreat at Canberra College and I fell in love with it. What they were telling me, and the singing and the hymns and the incense. I was in heaven and I converted in 1954.
DE: Right, OK.
MH: Never regretted it. And with losing three children I can tell you I needed my faith.
DE: Um.
MH: David’s my right hand man. And when I came here for this reunion I had these photographs to give all these years. I’ve rung Bomber Command time and time again in London and they took a message once and I said that bombing photos and no idea, absolutely no idea what I was saying and then it’d only be a couple of months ago I rang my daughter who lived in Dorset died and my other daughter moved into her house. And I was telling Elizabeth and she said ‘Mum I’ll fix it.’ So she rang and she got Nicky Barr, is it Nicky Barr? Who said ‘I’m thrilled, thrilled, thrilled. We’re opening the memorial.’ She said ‘I’d love your Mum to come.’ So Nicky rang Annette who’s done the Australian contingent and Annette rang me and said ‘Do you want to come with us?’ I said ‘Oh, I’d give my right arm to come with you.’ So I did. And then when we were at? We were David, where I fell in love again?
DH: Coningsby.
MH: Coningsby. I saw the Millikin name on the wall. I said ‘I knew a Millikin.’ And Wing Commander Millikin’s in 61, 619 now.
DE: Ah ha
MH: And he said ‘You knew my, that would have been my grandfather.’
DE: Wow.
MH: He hardly believed me at first but when I told him things I knew about his grandfather he knew I was genuine. And he said ‘Did my grandfather kiss you?’ I said ‘I wish he would, he didn’t, he was married.’
DE: Well.
MH: But anyway he was really happy. And he was a lovely man his grandfather was. A happy one like this one, happy and kind.
DE: Um.
MH: We had all those events, I could tell you hundreds truly, things come back to me. I’m lying in bed at night, cor. Is the lake still at Skellingthorpe?
DE: Um, I’m not sure. Skellingthorpe has changed an awful lot because –
MH: I know it’s a town, village now.
DE: It was built on virtually all of the, all of the old RAF station yeah.
MH: I know the school’s Lancaster school isn’t it?
DE: Um.
MH: Where the watch office was they said, and the waafery was in the rookery.
DE: Oh right, yes. What was the waafery like?
MH: Oh, a few huts. I had to walk across an empty block to get in have a bath. Get your clothes off. You can imagine in the middle of winter going to have a bath?
DE: Did they have plugs in the baths?
MH: No, took your own plug. We found that everywhere we travelled, it all went to Ireland, there was never a plug in the bath.
DE: So what did you do?
MH: Put a plastic bag over it.
DE: Aha.
MH: And that sucks in stops the water flowing away. There was plenty of hot water.
DE: But it was a long walk from the?
MH: Not really a long walk, a cold walk.
DE: Cold?
MH: And being an NCO I had a room at the end of the hut. So all the girls were there, open beds, but I had a little private room. And a little stove and I used to fill it with flowers, from the. What’s those flowers David?
DH: Cinerarias??
MH: No, those big bushes, rhododendrons. Rhododendrons.
DH: Rhododendrons.
MH: Yeah.
DE: OK. Did you have any trouble with the girls in the rest of the hut?
MH: Never, never, no. One girl surprised us. She was sitting knitting baby clothes and suddenly they said ‘She’s gone.’ We didn’t know. Was pregnant. She’d gone. We had, some of the English airman used to be a bit snobby. When the Aussies came and the Rhodesians they were really, and the Canadians, they were really you know, didn’t care whether you were a sergeant or what. They were officers there agreeable but some of the British. One man I met, and he used to come in the ops room. They all came in the ops room at night when ops weren’t on and I had a kettle and a toaster and the NAAFI used to send me over a big lump of butter and a lot of bread and make toast. And anybody would turn up and have a slice of toast and a cup of something. And this man used to, flight lieutenant somebody or other, used to come and have a cup of tea and toast with me and Bill. Familiar yes, ‘Maggie fa, fa, fa’ and a couple of days later I went into town and I was walking up towards the Stonebow I remember on the right hand side. Met him with this civilian woman and of course I chatted to him like I had in the ops room the night before and he just cut me as dead as dead. I thought ‘You pig.’ The next time he came for cups of tea I tell you he didn’t get it. Hung his head. I thought ‘Don’t bother coming here.’
DE: I can’t say I blame you, that’s –
MH: No, no. But I found that, and they used to call the WAAF’s ‘camp bikes’ or ‘officer’s ground sheets’ was the pet one.
DE: Do you think that was justified or?
MH: No, [emphatic] no, no, no. When I look back and think how hard the girls worked. The MTT, the girls in the mess, and the equipment. And my friend used to drive the bomb trolley and people in the office, and teleprinters, telephone exchange, intelligence, meterology. We all worked so hard and we all believed we were shortening the war.
DE: Um.
MH: I never heard anybody say anything else. And David will laugh. I meant to tell you this story about David’s friend. When they were about eighteen, they were at Uni. And the man remembers to this day, he’s a professor now. Monash University but he knows Mrs Hourigan was angry with him. He said, what was it we were talking about? Bomber Command, we talk about Bomber Command the whole time my husband and I when we got back. We lived what had happened. And we were talking. And he said ‘Oh, they all went off.’ He said ‘They thought kill a few Germans tonight.’ And thought that of Bomber Command, and I said ‘Nothing of the kind.’ And David saw him recently and he said ‘Your mother still remembers then does she?’ He said ‘Yes, she does.’ I’ll never forget, I was so upset, so angry. And when I was in hospital last year the doctor said to me ‘I’ve heard that when they woke up in the morning they threw a dart at the wall. Wherever the dart landed they said ‘That’s where we’ll bomb tonight.’ I said ‘Nothing could be further from the truth.’
DE: So do you think in Australia Bomber Command has got an odd sort of reputation?
MH: I think it, I thought it was general because here for a long time we were wanted for being war criminals weren’t we?
DE: Um. Some people think that yeah. I just wondered if you thought it was different in Australia because you know I think.
MH: I think in Australia a lot of the people thought that the Bomber Command boys had been having a good time in England and they were being bombed by the Japanese. And when they went back it was ‘Oh you’ve been having a good time overseas, we’ve been suffering the Japanese.’ In fact when the War was over the squadrons were ordered to come back to fight Japan.
DE: Um.
MH: Only lucky that the Americans dropped the atomic bomb in August or they’d all have been coming back for that.
DE: Um.
MH: But I don’t think that they understood the War ‘cause they hadn’t been in it. ‘Cause when we’re lying in bed hearing the doodle bugs going round, buzz, buzz, buzz, and then the engine stop you think ‘Oh God, where’s it going to land?’ They had none of that.
DE: Quite, no.
MH: I remember being in Nottingham one night when Nottingham was bombed and I was with my Auntie. And she was a little way out of Nottingham and remember seeing all the incendiaries in the fields. We could see the bombs going down. And one night, we used to hitch, when we were in Fighter Command, we used to hitch hike to London on our days off and one night I remember being on top of a building and mines were coming down on parachutes. How I got up there I don’t know and the men were running around. What do you call them? Air raid wardens were running around with buckets and hoses and we’re up there laughing and dancing about, the WAAF’s and me. We never were in any danger ever when we were in uniform. Except those Irish men. Never forget them. But nowhere else, we went in, we were wandering around looking for a pub we could get a drink. [unclear] some places I can tell you wouldn’t go in. We’d open the front door awful, people with black eyes and black and they’d just look up, we backed out again. I don’t know what sort of den on iniquity it was, didn’t even know where we were.
DE: Um.
MH: But we’d hitch. And when we met the Canadians we cut all our buttons off and swapped with them. We came back to Nottingham without a button on our uniform. And they went off without buttons on theirs. I’ve still got Canadian buttons on mine somewhere. Don’t know where it is, my uniform is now. Think Michael took it to America
DE: Aha.
MH: So, that’s it I think.
DE: Okey dokey
MH: Are you happy with that?
DE: I’m absolutely very, very much so. I’m just having a look to see if I’ve got any questions I wanted to ask. Just going right back to the very start when you joined the.
MH: Um. WAAF’s.
DE: Did you, did you volunteer or were you?
MH: I volunteered.
DE: Why did you choose the WAAF’s? Why did you volunteer?
MH: I liked the air force. I used to read the Biggles books when I was a little girl.
DE: Um.
MH: You know Biggles and his second pilot was Algy and his engineer was Ginger, and I lived those books. And I just wanted to join the air force, thought it was wonderful.
DE: I was just wondering how volunteering during the war sort of fitted in with your early political beliefs?
MH: Forgot all about them. Voted Liberal ever since I came out, out to Australia. No, I remember in Hucknall a man, some officer I’ve forgotten who it was, he used to pick us all up, bit of a ratbag I don’t know. And he took us, this bunch of WAAF’s up to his house, he was filling us with gin I remember that, we were all merry. And he was asking us questions about politics and we were slamming the government, slamming this and that and he couldn’t believe his good fortune. We were telling him everything that was going to happen after the war. What we were going to do, burn the place down I think and start again. And then the next night he asked us to go back to his house again, we didn’t have any gin, he had another man there. He said ‘Tell him what you told me last night.’ Of course, we were all dumb, needed a gin to get us going again. He was very disappointed. We wouldn’t be wound up.
DE: Who do you think the man was?
MH: I don’t know who he was, he was some somebody, some politician I bet you. But when my husband worked for the Labour Party I was happy with them. Then we had a man who was a bit nasty, but he was openly gay and he was a nasty man as well. Had nasty habits and my husband had to work with him. Some of the time he really didn’t like him and I sort of went a bit off the Labour Party. And then I changed my mind.
DE: OK.
MH: And I thought in Australia the unions were running the show and my daughter’s husband, married a sailor, who was in Vietnam and the waterside workers wouldn’t ship any arms or food or anything over, and that put me off.
DE: Aha. OK.
MH: And one of the men asked me the other day, on one of the interviews what I thought about when people died. I didn’t always react you know, you saw missing, missing, missing, missing, missing. I know they were all terribly upset when Dambusters went and Henry Maudsley was a man from 50 Squadron who everybody loved. Oxford Blue and very educated. Lovely young man. And when we went into the chapel in Lincoln the candlesticks and crucifix are dedicated to Henry Maudsley, supplied by his family. So yesterday we put a poppy on him on the memorial. I forgot should have done one for Guy Gibson, I couldn’t think. ‘Cause I didn’t lose anybody.
DE: You didn’t?
MH: No.
DE: No.
MH: Not personally. But it was hard, I mean you knew that they’d been shot down. You knew the worry that they were going to be shot down. And some of them you looked at them and you knew they were going to get it ‘cause they were a bit –
DE: Bit shaky?
MH: They had a twitch or. And you always thought ‘Oh they’re going to cop it.’ And they did. And the mad ones, the ones you thought ‘You’re going to die.’ They survived ‘cause they were realistic, ‘We can’t possibly live.’ So.
DE: Um. Did anyone ever talk about lack of moral fibre?
MH: One man, one man, lack of moral fibre. It was awful. Ripped everything off him, all his ensignia, in front of the whole camp. I was reading about Group Captain Cheshire yesterday on David’s mobile. I saw ‘Group Captain Cheshire – Unknown Story.’ And read about him and he said with lack of moral fibre he had to be very strict because it could taint the whole lot of them.
DE: Um.
MH: He said he was very strict with it.
DE: So did you, did you see that actually happen with people having their?
MH: It did happen. It did happen.
DE: Where was that? Can you remember?
MH: Oh, I think it was at Skellingthorpe we had one. But they got sent away quickly because they’d taint everybody else. I know my husband said when he was flying his bomb aimer said ‘I can’t press the tit, I can’t press the tit!’ My husband said ‘You’ll faffing well press the tit or you’ll go with ‘em!’
DE: Your husband was a pilot?
MH: Yeah.
DE: How many ops did he do?
MH: About fifteen. He only came at the end of the war, he was only eighteen in 1942. I was two years older than him.
DE: Um.
MH: Never let me forget it. I was a cradle snatcher. [chuckles] But they looked so old the Bomber Command men, they all had grey faces. And there hair seemed to get colourless somehow they looked. Fighter pilots always looked gay and young and laughing. I know in the Battle of Britain I bet they didn’t but otherwise they were always gay and young. But the Bomber Command pilots always looked old.
DE: Why was that do you think?
MH: I don’t, because in the morning they’d know, ‘I might die tonight.’ And friends, people all around them were dying and I think that they knew how dicey their life was. And they’d live in a hut and come home and half the beds would be empty.
DE: Um.
MH: And sometimes when they took off in the morning they’d go to Germany and come back at say midnight and they’d be an intruder in the circuit. And one time was dropping bombs on the Waddington bomb dump. We thought it was hilarious at Skellingthorpe, bombing Waddington. They had Air Commodore Hesketh, we hated him. And he was a very bossy man, all his gold braid. And we didn’t have any of that at Skelly, only had the Groupie. They didn’t go around polishing boots and looking and making a parade and all like they did at Waddington.
DE: So do you think there was a difference between the permanent stations and the wartime stations?
MH: Yeah, I reckon. Well the Aussies were very casual. I remember one raid when the war began they handed, not when war began, when the D-Day began they handed the air force over to the army. It was the silliest thing they ever did. The army would call up, ‘Come and bomb this.’ And they’d get the bombs on the ‘plane. ‘No, don’t come now, we don’t need you.’ And then ‘Come and bomb this.’ They’d all get ready again, ‘No, don’t come we don’t need you.’
DE: Um.
MH: And in the end they said ‘Either take us off or the bombs sink in the ground.’ Anyway one time they said ‘We don’t need you, stand down but don’t leave the station.’ Course all the Skellingthorpe mob stayed around but the Waddington mob all shot into Lincoln. And within half an hour they called ops on again. And the police and SP’s were racing around trying to round the Aussies out of the pubs. We were all ready but they, they were very undisciplined like that.
DE: What was Lincoln like? Did you go out in Lincoln?
MH: Oh, incredible. At night when the bombers had taken off you just heard this roar, you can’t imagine. Well we had thirty six take off at Skelly, there were thirty six at Waddington, sixteen or seventeen at Bardney and Scampton and Woodhall Spa and East Kirkby all of them. All take off, all go over. They used to meet at Beachy Head and, or Reading sometimes and amalgamate there and then start flying out to Holland. But they’d just all roar over. Massive noise.
DE: Um. And of course working where you did you knew before they did where they were going?
MH: Absolutely. And when they did the Berlin run, I think it was 1944, they went to Berlin about five nights in a row. And Nuremburg was another one, they lost about ninety ‘planes that night. None of them liked going up the Ruhr, Cologne or. Some of them, I know they had fish names for targets and we had a [unclear] ‘phone scrambled if you wanted to talk privately you pressed the scrambler.
DE: Yes.
MH: I remember Air Commodore Hesketh rang one day. I didn’t know it was him. I picked up the ‘phone, I said ‘Hello, hello, hello.’ [loudly] ‘Air Commodore Hesketh here.’ ‘Oh,[long drawn in breath] beg your pardon sir .’ ‘I want Group Captain Jefferson.’ I suppose he said to Groupie Jefferson ‘She’s a right one in there.’ He would have defended me. I know he would. But we had a lot of fun, used to laugh a lot. And I never, ever worked out the bomb load. I could not do it.
DE: OK.
MH: I had to have one cookie, one thousand pounder, twelve SPC’s of incendiaries. And each Lancaster carried that. We had thirty two, thirty six whatever and I couldn’t do maths at all. I always rang Waddington the girls and said ‘How much bomb load have we taken off?’ And she would tell me. And I had to phone 5 Group and say ‘This much has gone.’
DE: Um.
MH: Once Groupie, Daddy Quinn came in with his slide rule. ‘Just do this Mag, just do this.’ I told him not to bother me. Can’t be bothered. I couldn’t cope, my little failing.
DE: You found a cunning way of getting round it.
MH: [laughing] We had, one night we had a camp concert. I was with this sergeant sitting there and a man who did tricks. What do you call ‘em? A conjurer. And he said ‘Two come up on the stage.’ He spotted us two sergeants sitting. ‘You come up.’ I had to get up and hold ropes and get things and next thing I kept dropping mine. Everybody was cheering, it was awful. Oh dear.
DE: Was that an ENSA concert?
MH: Yeah, yeah. And once we had some old ladies come, oh they were terrible. You had to sort of play a little tea thing in the afternoon. Fancy getting a bunch of airmen and airwomen and these old, fat old ladies with a cello, a big thing, and a piano and they’re all big stout old things in [silk?] dresses. We had to sit and listen.
DE: Not the sort of entertainment that you were after?
MH: No, no. No, no, no, no. Sometimes they were pathetic. I remember when I was young one of the WAAF’s in Skellingthorpe, not Skellingthorpe, [Waddington?] and this girl was singing. A pilot was sitting there she was singing at him and he was looking at her. Oh, they were so in love and she was really singing at him. She had on a pretty dress. All WAAF’s. We were slightly envious because in Fighter Command we didn’t see a man.
DE: Right, so Bomber Command was an improvement then?
MH: Bomber Command wall to wall men. But in 5 Command and 12 Group and Bentley Priory were just headquarters and Air Commodore um, you know the man who had his big wing and was always fighting? What was his name? Oh, can’t think. Anyway 11 Group fought with 12 Group because we had Douglas Bader and he wanted the big wings and [unclear] aeroplanes taking ten minutes to get off. He said ‘it goes in formation then.’
DE: Um.
MH: You could shoot them down. And he said, he said ‘if they drop after they drop their bombs it doesn’t matter.’ And 11 Group mostly were dropping them on my airfields. Anyway I can’t think, can’t think of the name. There was um. It’s gone, gone, it’s gone. It’ll come back to me, float back to me. My mind’s like a computer [unclear]. Anyway they had a lot of arguments about that. [unclear] once Douglas Bader came into the ops room we nearly all swooned away.
DE: Really?
MH: Um, um. See somebody with wings and young.
DE: Right. Yes.
MH: Never did get posted to ops in Fighter Command. I had this poor lover. David will laugh. What was his name? [unclear] and he followed me everywhere, he was a Canadian, and I did not want him. I never went out with him and they kept saying ‘He’s at the guardroom.’ And I wouldn’t go and talk to him and if I ever met a group of Canadians they’d say ‘You’re not Maggie are you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh, awful person.’ And in the end I asked one of them what happened to him. Killed, he flew into a hill.
DE: Oh dear.
MH: I had to pray for him all my life.
DE: Um.
MH: I didn’t want him though. He was about six foot six, he was, and I was only little. And this great big thing standing beside me. Only a little thing. Anyway that was, would have been about 1944 I suppose.
DE: Ah.
MH: Look at it now, 2018. He’s still on my conscience. You can’t make yourself fall in love though can you?
DE: No. And for you it happened with your blonde Australian from 463 Squadron.
MH: Um. All my babies were premature. I had nobody to help me. No mother, no sister, no aunties. No sisters, nobody. [rustling of papers]There’s my MID thing, is that good enough? Defence Medal, yeah MID. Ha, ha, ha.
DE: Well unless you can think of another anecdote to tell me?
MH: No, don’t think I’ve any more.
DE: I’m sure.
MH: We used hitch hike and sit on the tanks and drive to London. Never got into any harm. Just hop in the truck and it’s ‘Hop up love.’ And take us to London and drop us down, we stayed at the Waterloo Bridge. There was a Sally Army hostel nearby, we used to stay there.
DE: This was when you were on leave?
MH: On leave or weekends off. We worked night shifts we’re on, have a couple of days off. And what were those, Lyons Corner Houses then, they had like a restaurant. And they used to wheel a big trolley full of jelly cake, sort of like layers of cream and jelly. Could have a cup of tea and a slice of cake. Like being in heaven, used to have a slice of cake and a cup of tea.
DH: What was the story of your flight down the Ruhr after the war?
MH: Oh yes, yes.
DH: Oh, OK. Tell us about.
MH: Oh yes, we did a cook’s tour after the war. And I had two flights. I had one flight with a person just flying around over Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. And when we got back he said that he hadn’t filled his logbook in because I’d been sick on his log, which was a dirty lie and I was really angry about that. And then we did a cook’s tour down, what they call a cook’s tour, down the Ruhr when the war was over. Oh, the damage was awful. And we were going round Heliogland and the ‘plane was going like that. [chuckling]
DE: You felt a bit airsick [unclear]?
MH: I felt sick.
DE: How many people went on an aircraft trip, cook’s tour?
MH: Oh, I think a lot of people went on if they wanted to.
DE: Aha.
MH: And you were lucky enough to get someone that would take you.
DE: So where did you stand on the aircraft?
MH: I stood behind the navigator some of the time.
DE: Aha. So you could look out and?
MH: Um.
DE: Yeah.
MH: I was scared though. I was really scared.
DE: Of flying?
MH: Um. To say I’d wanted to be an airman all my life I was really frightened.
DE: Um.
MH: Once we got in the thick cloud I remember flying over Nottingham in what they called cumulus nimbus, real thick black cloud. And I thought ‘If anybody else is in the cloud with us what’s going to happen?’ But there wasn’t anybody in with us.
DE: No.
MH: And then when you’re going down, to [makes vomiting noise] I don’t mind now, I fly on all the big ones.
DE: Yeah. They’re a little bit different aren’t they?
MH: Absolutely. We flew home in the, what’s it David? sleeper. It was non-stop.
DE: The Dream Liner?
MH: Dream Liner, non-stop from Perth to London.
DE: Um.
MH: Horrible, too long.
DE: Yeah.
MH: Can you think of anything else I’ve told you David that I’ve forgotten?
DH: I just noticed you said you flew home on the Dream Liner but your home’s in Australia.
MH: Oh I forget yeah [laughs]
DH: Her heart’s still in England.
DE: Fair enough.
MH: My heart’s always been in England.
DE: Um. Well thank you very, very much for coming here and telling me these stories.
MH: Thank you. Thank you for listening.
DE: No, my pleasure.
MH: Um.
DE: I shall press stop. Thank you very much.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Interview with Margaret Hourigan
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Dan Ellin
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
2018-04-16
Rights
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This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Identifier
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AHouriganM180416
Conforms To
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Pending review
Spatial Coverage
Spatial characteristics of the resource.
Australia
Great Britain
England--Lincolnshire
Format
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01:13:32 audio recording
Description
An account of the resource
Margaret Hourigan grew up in and around Nottingham. Despite holding Labour principles she volunteered for the WAAF’s as soon as War was declared and was called up in January 1940. She Hourigan served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as a plotter with Fighter Command before being posted to RAF Waddington and RAF Skellingthorpe with Bomber Command. She met and married an Australian pilot, and emigrated to Australia after the war. Margaret and her husband had eight children.
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
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Dawn Studd
Temporal Coverage
Temporal characteristics of the resource.
1944
44 Squadron
463 Squadron
50 Squadron
61 Squadron
Churchill, Winston (1874-1965)
control caravan
control tower
Cook’s tour
entertainment
faith
George VI, King of Great Britain (1895-1952)
ground personnel
lack of moral fibre
memorial
military ethos
military living conditions
Normandy campaign (6 June – 21 August 1944)
operations room
perimeter track
radar
RAF Bardney
RAF Bentley Priory
RAF Skellingthorpe
RAF Waddington
runway
service vehicle
Women’s Auxiliary Air Force