大象传媒

75 OTU

The journey from Avonmouth, Bristol, to South Africa took nearly six weeks. During that time I had to man an anti-aircraft gun post position on board the troop ship with an airman as ammunition loader.

At Clarewood Transit Camp near Durban we slept under canvas for six weeks before boarding a former enemy liner which took us to Egypt. During our time in the camp we were offered great hospitality by the local civilian population who invited many of us to their homes for meals and loaned us their cars.

We arrived at Port Tewfik in early December 1942. We then travelled north to Suez and on to an RAF base in the desert called Gianaclis, some 40 miles south-west of Alexandria, where we established 75 OTU.

It was while I was with OTU I had another narrow escape from a serious accident. On one training exercise our Avro Anson aircraft was due to stage a mock attack on a royal naval submarine just off the coast off Egypt.

While I was in the process of instructing a trainee how to send a sighting report, the aircraft suddenly filled with smoke.

The pilot, who had recently joined the OTU from a Beaufighter squadron, had to fire the colours of the day so the submarine could identify us. However, instead of opening his port window to fire the pistol he fired it through the floor of the aircraft.

The exercise was immediately aborted and we returned to base to discover a square metre of the port wing which joined the fuselage had burned away, just inches from the fuel line. If that line had been hit, the aircraft would have blown up and we would all have been killed.

There was one fatal accident while I was at the OTU; one of the training crew crashed into the sea on a night flying exercise. The bodies were recovered later and given a military funeral in Alexandria and the instructors, including myself carried the remains.

During my year as an instructor there was a certain amount of unrest amongst UK ground personnel at the camp. On one occasion the station flagpole was chopped down. No-one owned up to the act and as a result we were all confined to camp for one month with no leave to Alexandria.

The second occasion of unrest occurred when a visiting party gave a concert at the base. At the end of the show, as the group captain gave them a vote of thanks, his speech was drowned out by boos. I thought it was disgraceful for those responsible to show such discord in front of civilians while war in the Middle-East was continuing.

The third instance of misconduct at the camp involved the adjutant, who got so drunk one evening that he cancelled night-flying. When the wing commander found out he placed the adjutant under arrest, he was court marshalled, reduced to the rank of a non-commissioned officer and posted elsewhere. Later on the group captain was also posted away due to his inability to control men.

Towards the end of my year as instructor I received my commission as a pilot officer and was posted back on operations to 221 Squadron Malta, a Wellington torpedo squadron. I was not sorry to leave 75 OTU. It was such an unhappy camp.

221 Squadron

On arriving at 221 Squadron I became a member of Pilot Officer Keegan鈥檚 crew. Our task was mainly anti-submarine patrols and air reconnaissance. Later I joined Wing Commander Mike Shaw鈥檚 crew until his tour was completed and he was posted back to the UK.

Once again I thought my number was up whilst I was on patrol off the toe of Italy one day on an anti-shipping patrol. I thought the navigator said 鈥渋t鈥檚 windy鈥� when he was actually saying 鈥渄inghy鈥�. We were in severe trouble - our engines had started to loose power and we were steadily dropping from our patrol height of 5,000 feet towards the Adriatic Sea so I sent an SOS

Suddenly the operational radio frequency went quiet. I heard RAF Gibraltar calling asking what the trouble was, followed by RAF base in lexandria and my own base in Malta, RAF Luqa, asking me the same question.

By then we had started our ditching drill and had the emergency dinghy to hand 鈥� we were convinced we were going into the sea. Then, when we just a few hundred feet above the water, the power slowly started coming back to our engines.

The cause of our problem was due to the fact that the second pilot had not switched onto the main tanks from the overload tanks earlier, just as F/Lt Goddard had forgotten to do several months earlier. Once again, I had escaped serious injury.

Shortly afterwards, in February 1944, my squadron moved from Malta to Grottaglie near Tarantino, Italy, where we shared the airfield with an American bomber squadron. Our task was now to bomb anti-submarine pens on port installations along the Yugoslav coast and across northern Greece, Albania, and Italy.

We also had to assist Tito who was head of the Yugoslav Partisans. He had assembled a force on the Island of Vis to attack a nearby island which was held by the Germans and our job was to bomb E-boats so Tito鈥檚 craft could land there. It was during one of these bombing raids in the northern part of Yugoslavia that I had another brush with death.

One day as we were crossing the Adriatic Sea I noticed two large exhausts of an aircraft dead astern which I quickly identified as a Beaufighter aircraft: one of our own. The next few seconds though, I could not believe my eyes. The night-fighter had lowered his flaps and opened up with four cannons and six machine guns.

I was positioned on the rear gun but I did not return fire because I assumed the Beaufighter would soon realise he was attacking a friendly Wellington bomber, not a German aircraft.

After a minute or two the fire stopped and there was no longer any sign of him so I assumed ground control has warned him he was attacking a friendly aircraft. Furthermore, we had aleady fired the colours of the day and our bomber was also fitted with IFF: Identification Friend or Foe.

A few moment later, however, and the Beaufighter returned for a second attack. Once again I did not return fire and we somehow we managed to stay up in the air. At this point I decided that if the bomber were to return for a third attack I would have no option but to return fire. It would be him or us.

Thankfully he did not come back again and we eventually made it to Grottaglie. Our pilot managed to do a skilful ground loop and we landed just 70 yards from an American bomb dump. With cannon shells through the props, no port wheel, part of the port wing and main fuselage shot away and a broken air speed indicator it was nothing short of a miracle that we escaped uninjured.

Shortly after the incident a court of enquiry was held. The Beaufighter crew had assumed that our Wellington had been captured by the Germans and was about to attack a target in Italy. For the Germans had recently made a surprise attack on Allied shipping at the Port of Bari on the Italian coast and had sunk over forty ships.

But because we did not release any bombs, nor return fire on the Beaufighter, the crew were severely reprimanded over the incident. Once again I had stared death in the face, and somehow managed to survive.

This incident was to be one of my final experiences of operational duties for just a few weeks afterwards, on August 1 1944, I was posted to a transit camp in Heliopolis, Cairo, to await my next posting.

Final Days

After a few weeks mainly censoring airmen鈥檚 mail, I learnt that instead of being posted to South Africa where I had applied to be an instructor, I was being sent back to the UK. In October 1944, after nearly two and a half years abroad, I disembarked at Liverpool and began three weeks leave.

After months in the desert I was amazed at the green fields, and was shocked to find the weather was so bitterly cold. I reached my home in Ashton-under-Lyne and knocked on the front door, but just when I thought the longing to see my family would be over, I discovered they were all out.

My mother had gone on holiday to visit family in Belfast, my youngest sister Desmo was at work, my other sisters Molly and Margaret were away with the WRENS and my brother Leo was at sea with the Navy.

I didn鈥檛 have a key to the house because so many years had passed since I was last home so I went to the hospital where I worked before the war and visited some of my former colleagues. A few days later I went to Belfast to see my mother and relatives.

On completion of my leave I spent a few weeks at RAF Brackla, a few miles outside Inverness, Scotland, where I awaited my posting. I was soon sent to RAF Hendon, London, and joined Transport Command where I became a signals briefing officer.

Shortly afterwards I went to RAF Lyneham, Wiltshire, and I travelled to Cairo, Sharjah in the Persian Gulf, Karachi in Pakistan, Maribor in India and Ratmalana, Ceylon. My job was to confirm the signal information given to wop/ags was correct and up-to-date and teach them what frequencies and call signs to use.

By this time I had become tired of flying so I didn鈥檛 mind that I was no longer on operational duties. A few months later I became a signals briefing officer at RAF Merryfield, Somerset, and finally I was sent to RAF Holmsley South near Christchurch, Hampshire, where I stayed until my release from the service on July 6 1946.

At the end of the war I returned to Ashton-under-Lyne and took up my old position at the town鈥檚 hospital. If the war had not taken place I would have probably been manager by this time, but I has to start at the bottom of the ladder once again.

A few months later, however, I was forced to resign from my post and take over the running of a family hotel in Belfast after the death of my great aunt. I then began my long career in hotel management.

My time with the RAF was a great experience and I was very proud to have reached the position of flight lieutenant by the time I left. When I was with the force I saw countries I never would have otherwise seen and I met people of cultures I never would have normally encountered. I also made many friends, two of whom I am still in contact with.

I regularly telephone former navigator Arthur Griffiths who now lives in Newport, south Wales, and I last visited Gib Whittamore, former pilot and navigator, in Canada in 2001. However, my war-time experience is not one I would wish to repeat. I had six near fatal accidents during my time in the service, none of which were due to enemy action.

Flight Lieutenant (Jack) H D Farley RAF VR
206 Squadron and 221 Squadron
Coastal Command

I would like to dedicate this story of my service career to all RAF wireless operator air gunners in recognition of the valuable work they did as important members of bomber crews.

To see my war-time photos please go to www.bbc.co.uk/history and click on "Your Photos"

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