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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by a volunteer on behalf of Pilot Officer John A. Martin DFC (retired) Larne, N. Ireland and been added to the site with his permission. Mr Martin understands the site’s terms and conditions.

I joined the RAF when I was 18 years old in 1940 and saw many sights during the 7 years service which I served. There were many startling sights, causing you to mature pretty quickly. Today there is much in the press about the effects of smoking; anyone who smokes is treated like a pariah. After seven hours flying on a bombing mission, being shot at from the ground or the air, what did you want when you landed? A fag. You couldn’t smoke while you were flying. Today the press is full of warnings don’t smoke, don’t smoke, for goodness sake, because of what you were enduring each day and night on the missions, you were eating them. There was an occasion we were chosen to fly to the Baltic to place mines up there. The mines were released from the bomb doors in the same manner as the bombs. The mines were quite a size, taking up most of the area of the bomb chamber. We were only able to carry about two or three mines. They were very heavy. Stettin and around that area was being used by the Germans. We left in the afternoon, flying low level across the country, across Sweden right up to Denmark to get to the Baltic. When we got there we dropped our mines at the target location and were returning back, there were 8 crews went out on the mission. On the return journey, Mac McDonald, the skipper called me up front to ‘take over for a while’ to give him a break. I was flying the aircraft, it was moonlight and I was flying up and down as the moonlight got brighter and dimmer. Suddenly the aircraft gave a violent lurch, I couldn’t figure what had gone wrong. It was Mac, he had jerked the other control column to scare me, and succeeded. That night we were the only crew out of the 8 to return from the mine laying mission. We saw no action during the whole trip, there was no gun fire, no flack, no fighters, nothing. It was terrible when you think of it.

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