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In 1942 I reported for duty at Lloyd’s Cricket Ground in London. After pilot training I finally got my wings and was assigned to the 55 Squadron, the ‘Night Intruders’.

I remember my first night raid with the ‘Night Intruders’. We were a front line unit, and during the winter of 1943 we were stationed in Italy in Cecina with the American 5th Army, flying American Baltimore light bombers. It was the crew’s first night mission, Glen ‘Smoothy’ Cross the navigator, Don Ralph the wireless operator, ‘Scho’ Schofield the gunner and myself, ‘Wimpy’. Our mission was to attack a marshalling yard at Bologna. We took off during the night and had to find the place in the dark first! When we did, I began to dive and fire my guns. We had tracer rounds loaded, and Smoothy in the nose of the plane saw them and shouted back that we were taking flak! A second later he called back to say that the flak wasn’t coming up at us, it was actually going down! He’d seen my tracer rounds and thought that we were being shot at, not the other way round. There was no opposition and I fired my guns at the wagons and vehicles below. I didn’t really feel anything at the time, it was just a job that we were doing. We dropped all our bombs and returned to base. Most of the raids were similar to that and it became quite routine. But I’ll never forget that first mission for us all.

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by James Barton from Westree Learning Centre and has been added to the website on behalf of Captain Ron Healey with his/her permission and they fully understand the site’s terms and conditions.

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