大象传媒

1941 -

In the summer of 1941 I was stationed at RAF Grantham, awaiting the call to begin training as aircrew, but mere willingness to volunteer could not overcome or dispel the inevitable"bottlenecks" that occured from time to time in the training programme and the weeks of waiting grew long -as did the selfish fear that the war might end before my ambition could be fulfilled. I need have had no fear.

Nevertheless I was not totally dissatisfied for I had the privilege of being entitled to wear the white flash on my forage cap, denoting that at least I was aircrew in waiting. Meanwhile I could occasionally get into the air for short flights secure in the knowledge that sooner rather than later I would be called away to the Initial Training Wing to begin a pilots course.

At that time RAF Grantham was used as a flying school for trainig pilots, employing the underpowered Fairey Battle planes that had not been used for training previously, together with Avra Ansons.

It was a gusty airfield, still using grassed runways and the various flights were operated from every available space in a highly organized manner so that the maximum number of flying hours could be obtained. Of the latter evrey moment was vital.

This inevitably meant that corners had occasionally to be cut and minor infringements winked at, although sometimes the rule breaking was not so minor and the possible consequences very serious indeed, bringing draconian punishment to the offender if he happened to be caught.

I nearly brought this upon myself on several occasions when an aircraft, newly brought out of the hangar, after repair, would remain on the concrete apron until someone-usually a pupil pilot, had time to taxi it across the grasss perimeter to a point where it was immediately available for use.

One afternoon, not for the first time, the temptation became too much for me and I climbed into the empty cockpit of a stationary Anson and began to taxi it to the edge of the airfield and from there follow the perimeter to the distant flight area, where I knew it was needed urgently for the day's session.

At the time sheer exhilaration at being in control of a moving aircraft far outweighed the fear of being caught at it, and all went well until a sudden gusting wind caught me unprepared and I was late in applying counter power to one of the two engines to control a change of direction.

The plane immediately swung round in an arc and as I struggled to resume a straight course I caught sight out of the corner of my eye an aircraft lined up for take-off, whose rudder had been in immediate danger of being swept away by the wing tip of my plane.

Petrified with horror, as soon as the aircraft responded again to the controls, I throttled back and brought it to a juddering halt and sat palpitating with a mixture of agitation, fear and relief. Then I resumed the taxiing - very carefully indeed - and finally brought the plane to rest in an inconspicuous spot alongside several other Ansons.

At this stage I was still severely shaken and I deeply regretted taking such precipitate action, for I was quite certain that my erratic progress must have been witnessed. Visions of several months " Glass-House"* filled my head, for I had endangered a valuable aircraft in time of war. In fact I had endangered two, if the near miss with the second aircraft had been a slightly closer encounter.
(* Glass-House: Penal prison with harsh regime at Aldershot)

So I sat tight for a while expecting the aircraft door to be pulled open by outraged authority, or at least one of the several gound crew in the vicinty, but after a moment or two during which nothing happened I slowly came to realise that no-one seemed in the least concerned.

Perhaps the exaggerated swing on the perimeter had not been so violent as I had imagined. Perhaps the pilot in the aircraft that was about to take off had not even seen me. Perhaps I had been too far away from the apron to arouse interest from that quarter.

Slowly, very slowly it dawned on me that I might have got away with it, but I allowed another few minutes to elapse before I stepped down from the Anson and melted into the busy activity around the flight office.

Scarcely had I done so when one of the flying instructors caught sight of me and thinking I was a pupil pilot waiting for instruction he called me over at the precise moment when his real pupil turned up. I heard the instructor inform his pupil to practice formation flying with another aircraft standing nearby and I was about to disappear when the instructor asked me if I would accompany his pupil on the formation exercise in order to change over the fuel cocks when it became necessary, because they lay out of reach for the pilot. This was standard practice for the fuel cocks were at the opposite side of the cockpit to the pilot and it was normal for the person in the co-pilot's seat to perform this function.

Stricly speaking, only a qualified pilot was entitled to carry a passenger, but the pupils at Grantham were in such an advanced stage of training that this rule was often waived an I certainly had no objection to flying with a pupil. I would have done anything to get a flight at all, so i climbed into the Anson alongside the pupil while a willing member of ground crew joined the other pupil pilot who was taking part in the two-plane formation practice.

During the climb to a safe operating height it was the custom for the person occupying the second pilot's seat to manually wind up the under carriage after take off. This was a tedious sickening act that induced nausea, for it called for winding a chain operated mechanism to raise the wheels and it required 126 turns of a handle using considerable physical effort, so we had reached a height of 900 feet before the last turn of the crank was made and the under carriage was safely locked in position. Of course the reverse procedure would precede landing.

Relieved of the effort at last and able to raise my head, I glanced out of the side window and found myself unable to believe what I was looking at. Just off our starboard wing and very dangerously close was the second aircraft, but all I could see of him was almost the complete, yellow painted underside as he appeared to be in an almost vertical bank endeavouring to get clear before a collision occured.

That was all I saw and next moment he had vanished - a common enough occurrence in flying and although alarmed I was not particularly worried, for I expected him to correct his position and take up formation at a safer distance.

The pilot next to me thought much the same and we flew on for a while waiting for him to surface, as it were - but after 20 more minutes of level flight the other plane had not reappeared and we were now both uneasy. The Avro Anson was (and maybe still is) a highly serviceable aircraft, stable to handle and with a widely spaced under-carriage. It was held in high esteem by those who flew it, but none of them would claim that it could perform a near vertical bank, nor would any normal pilot begin to attempt it.

Silent we turned back towards Grantham, prepared to call off the excercise for no-one can practice formation flying with a single aircraft and we were, at that stage merely idly curious as to where the second plane had got to. It could have developed engine problems and perhaps had already landed.

We were within a short distance from Grantham aerodrome when we spotted a column of smoke rising from a small wood that lay not far from the northern boundary and at almost the same moment a fire engine racing at full speed could be seen heading in the direction of the fire, for a fire it was, as we could see when we dropped lower.

From the moment we had seen the smoke we had experienced foreboding and fears were confirmed as we drew lower over the wood and I fancied that I could discern through the smoke and flames, the tubular metal structure of a plane's fuselage.

The Anson was constructed of a metal tubular frame covered with canvas and plywood to which several lyers of highly inflammable "dope" had been applied. It would burn with intense heat and the occupants could not possibly have survived it. We could only hope that they had died instantly in the crash.

There could be no doubt that this was the aircraft I had seen off our starboard wing tip, because at an altitude of only 900 feet there would have been little airspace in which to manoevure and recover from the extreme angle of bank. Possibly what we had seen initially was the aircraft poised to flip over on it's back in an inverted position. There could be no recovery from that, so they must have instantly fallen the remaining few hundred feet to the ground, striking the trees in the wood as they did so.

After we landed and reported the circumstances, that was that. In war time such an accident was not uncommon and we were not called to any formal enquiry.

As a deterrent to my flying ambitions it had scarcely any effect at all and two months later I was posted from Grantham to an I.T.W. to commence aircrew training.

This prologue is a lead-in to aircrew training that I later underwent in England, U.S.A and Canada, while the process of becoming casualty - evader - POW does not greatly differ from that of thousands of my comrades.
However, day to day life in Stalag as opposed to an Oflag is dealt with in a detail that reveals physical aspects of deprivation that have never previously been recorded.
Similarly, although escape attempts by R.A.F. aircrew were by no means uncommon, each by its individual method was peerforce unique and I do not recall the nature of my attempt being duplicated alsewhere.
The entire period 1941 - 1945 was for me a continuous adventure story of small triumphs and inevitable disasters - the former gratifying and the latter endurable.
Further manuscripts covering:
Casualty and POW - Oct 1943
Stalag IVB - Muhlberg-on-Elbe
Living conditions - Stalag IVB 1943-45
Escape 1944
Recapture 1944
Imprisonment 1944
Liberation 1945 (April)
Repatriation, England 1945 (May)

are available if so required (approx 70 A4 sheets totalling approx 60000 words)

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