大象传媒

An edited oral history interview with members of 582 No.8 (PFF Group), Little Staughton (officially formed on 1st April 1944) and Mr. Harry Hughes, Navigator, 692 Squadron, Graveley which was part of the Light Night Striking Force.

Interviewees - Mr. Edward 鈥楾ed鈥� Stocker, DSO, Air Commodore Gerry Bennington, Mr. Reg Cann, Mr. Harry Hughes, Mr. George Hall, Mr. Roy Pengilley, and Mr. Howard Lees conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum. The interview took place at the Moat House Hotel, Bedford on 18th June 2005. This was on the occasion of the final re-union of RAF personnel and their families of the No.8 PFF Group.

鈥淢y name is Harry Hughes, a Navigator, and I was on 102 Squadron to start with, our main force in Yorkshire and that was on Halifaxes. I arrived at Pocklington in Yorkshire to join 102 Squadron in February 1943. Of course I did not know then that 102 Sqadron was destined to sustain the 2nd highest loss rate in Bomber Command although the losses were running high at that time - (6 out of 8 on a recent Flensburg raid.)

We expected to start with an easy gardening (mine laying) trip but we were sent to Essen which was the most heavily defended City in the Ruhr Valley. When I saw the flak over the target it looked impossible to get through. However the danger to us came from above when another Halifax dropped its incendiaries on us. Fortunately they did not ignite but they did on another occasion over Wuppertal and then we were also hit by a 1000 lb bomb taking away our port rudder and part of the port tailplane much to the consternation of Ken Lazenby our rear gunner.

Out of a total of 76 operations I only did three outside Germany i.e. in occupied countries. One of these was to Pilzen to bomb the Skoda works. It was a long trip. My log book shows a time of 10 hours and 45 minutes flying time having landed at Harwell to refuel and repair some flak damage which was down to me.

It was our third trip and it was a moonlit night we were flying at about 10,000ft. My bomb aimer, Harry Hooper gave me a pin point on the Moselle which put us 6 miles north of track. After about 8 minutes we were coned and got some flak. There was nothing north of our track but Saarbrucken was south so I drew a track from the pinpoint and extended it beyond Saarbrucken to find that we would go over Karlsruhr, which we did. On extending it further I found that we would hit Stuttgart. I told Sam Hartley our Pilot that as soon as we saw the first searchlights to go on to a NW course until I calculated that we were back on our original track. By this time I was able to calculate the wind velocity. It must be borne in mind that I was still new to operations (a sprog) and as a navigator the most important thing was to know where you were. Well we carried on to our next turning point which was to the South of Pilzen but about 7 minutes before my ETA the Pathfinder flares went down and Harry insisted that he could see the Skoda works so we bombed along with everyone else despite my protestations. On the way home we were routed north of Mannheim which was also being bombed that night. We could see the fires but we were to the south which confirmed that I was right. Having landed at Harwell we did not get back to base until 1330 hours the following day having had to repair the flak holes in the ailerons and the tailplane. We finally got to bed but I was awoken after two hours to go to the Operations Room where I found everyone pouring over my log and chart. It had been confirmed by the PR Spit that we had not bombed Pilzen and I was told that I was the only navigator to have insisted that we had not.

Well we completed our tour and after a period of instructing I returned to operations with 8 Group Pathfinders on 692 Squadron, which was part of the Light Night Striking Force. We were based across the A1 from Bedford at Gravely. On our Mosquito aircraft we carried a 4000lb bomb mainly to Berlin. This was more than a B17 (Flying Fortress) could carry with 12 crew. We often carried out window opening for the first wave of Pathfinders and in addition we shot our 4000lb bomb into the railway tunnels during the Ardennes push. The mining of the Kiel canal in moonlight at low level was another of our tasks. I finished my second tour in February 鈥�45 and was then posted to India to ferry Mosquitoes and Beaufighters down to Burma but that is another story.

The losses in Bomber Command were high. During the 7 months I was on 102 Squadron we lost 50 aircraft and in fact the chances of completing a tour of 30 operations was about one in seven. In two nights in January 鈥�44 102 Squadron lost 11 out of 29 sorties. On 692 our losses were quite low in comparison.鈥�

W.H.Hughes DFC DFM AE

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.