大象传媒

Much has been said and written in recent years about the activities of Bomber
Command and in particular our Commander in Chief, "Bomber" Harris. I believed
then, and still believe that what was done was right. I did not bomb Dresden, but had I been ordered to do so, I would not have given it a second thought.

Chapter VIII. Lossiemouth.

I was at home in Wigston, Leicestershire and my 21st. birthday, the 2nd. February was fast approaching. Parents and friends were trying to organise a party,, meagre rations, permitting. They need not have worried because I received instructions to proceed immediately to 20 OTU Lossiemouth, At 9.30 pm the eve of my birthday I caught a train from South Wigston station to Rugby and then onto a tram bound for Scotland. I arrived at Lossiemouth at 11pm the following day. What a way to spend a 21st. birthday!
The next day having completed arrival procedures I duly reported to the Bombing Leader for duty. At the same time I discovered that George Knott had also been posted to Lossiemouth as a screened pilot. I flew with him ocassionally when he needed some ballast in the rear turret when doing an air test.

The role of 20 OTU was to train Free French Aircrew, again flying Wellingtons and my job was to fly with them on bombing exercises to check that they were using correct procedures. I used to say, "Patter in English please", which was alright until they got a bit excited and lapsed into French. Bombing took place on Kingston Bombing Range, on the coast East of Lossiemouth. One of my other jobs was to plot the bombs on a chart using co-ordinates given by observers at quadrant points on the range.
These were phoned through to the bomb plotting office. The student bomb-aimer then came to the office to see the results of his aiming efforts. 10 Ib smoke bombs were used for daylight bombing and 10 Ib flash bombs for night bombing In the summer at Lossie, night flying was almost impossible due to the short night in those Northern parts. It was quite common to take off after sunset and then see the sun set again..
After a few weeks I was attached from 20 OTU to 91 Group Air-bomber instructors school at Moreton in Marsh for 3 weeks before becoming an official instructor. I returned to 20 OTU and shortly afterwards was again sent off on a course, this time to the Bomber Command Analysis School at Worksop.
Here I became an alleged expert on the Mark XTV Bombsight. This was a gyro stabilised bombsight which was a tactical bombsight rather than a precision bombsight. It consisted of a computor box and a sighting head and obtained information of airspeed, height, temperature and course from aircraft instruments plus one or two manual settings and converted this information into a sighting angle. The only piece of vital information to be added was the wind speed and direction which had to be calculated by the Navigator. The bomb-aimer was then able to do a bombing run without the necessity of flying straight and level..
It took account of climbing, a shallow dive and banking. The sequence of events when bombing was, when the bomb release (hereafter called the 'tit' was pressed several things happened, the bombs started to be released in the order set on the automatic bomb distributor, so that they were dropped in a 'stick'. The photoflash was released, the camera started to operate and as the bombs reached the point of impact almost immediately beneath the aircraft, the photographs were taken. Having used this equipment for the whole of my tour of operations I can vouch for its performance.
The Americans had their much vaunted Norden and Sperry Bombsights
which were claimed to be very accurate but required the aircraft to maintain a straight and level flight path for an unacceptable time against heavily defended targets.
The Mk XTV was so good that the Americans adopted it for their own aircraft and called it the Tl Bombsight. Many Tl 's were used by the RAF in lieu of the MkXTV. A matter of production I guess. .

On my return from Worksop, with glowing reports from my two courses, the Bombing Leader said "OK Flight Sergeant you had better apply for a commission." This I did and after going through all the procedures was commissioned in the rank of Pilot Officer (198592) on the 5th. June, 1945.

Of course 'VE' Day took place on the 5th: May after which it was only a matter of time before the OTU's were run down and in the case of Lossiemouth this was to be sooner rather than later.
The Wellingtons were all flown down to Hawarden in Cheshire for eventual disposal, I must record one tragic incident which happened whilst I was at Lossiemouth. One Sunday morning a Wellington took off on air test and lost an engine on take-off and the pilot was obviously trying to make a crash landing on the beach to the East of Seatown. He didn't make it and crashed on top of a small block of maisonettes killing most of the inhabitants who were still in bed. A tragic accident!
The question now arose as to where next we would all go. We were given the option of being made redundant aircrew, going to another OTU or going back to an operational Squadron. My problem was solved for me,' Johnnie' Johnson, 'A' Flight Commander, came into the plotting office and said "I'm going back on ops, I want a bomb-aimer". Thus I joined his crew and other instructors made up a full crew with the exception of a flight engineer, all having done a first tour. Johnnie had to revert from his Squadron Leader rank to Flight Lieutenant. All the other members of the crew were officers.

'This story was submitted to the People's War site by Rod Aldwinckle of the CSV Action Desk on behalf of John Derek Bailey and has been added to the site with his / permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions

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