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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 remember the time when I went to join up to serve in the war; I went to join the RAF, because it looked glamorous to me. The uniform looked well, that’s why I joined up. I was 18 at that time. I didn’t have any connections with the military. I trained as a flight mechanic and after finishing that I went to RAF Ford, Little Hampton, on the south coast, where they carried out the daylight bombings. There were fighters and bombers stationed there. I was a plug cleaner, cleaning aircraft plugs, and while you were doing your chores, you kept a eye out for the flag, which indicated an attack was imminent and you went to the bomb shelter. The Germans came at any time of the day to carry out an attack. One day there was a gang of Irishmen repairing a plane in the hanger, and when the flag went up they stopped work immediately and went into the bomb shelter to wait until the attack was over. Unfortunately for them, there was a direct hit on the bomb shelter and they were all killed. When you were eating your meals in the mess, there were so many holes in the roof, that if it rained, the water ran in through them, it was terrible down there. I was posted, after my time at RAF Ford, to work as a Flight Mechanic on Flying Fortresses in the RAF Poolbrooke in Norfolk. This was an experimental project. The RAF brought over the American aeroplane called the Flying Fortress. One night we had to carry out a vacuum pump change, and this Sergeant and I went out to change the vacuum pump. We got the vacuum pump changed and decided to ‘run up’ the engine. The engines were difficult to operate in the Flying Fortress. You turned over the engine initially on weak mixture and as soon as the engine started to kick, you went on to ultra rich mixture. Because of the height the Flying Fortresses fly at the leading edge of the main plane is rubberised to allow it flexibility to break off the ice. When we went to start the engine, we put the controls onto automatic rich, and it wouldn’t start. We reset the controls and it wouldn’t start. The next time we tried to start the engine, it went on fire, and the rubberised leading edge also caught fire. The whole aeroplane went up in flames. The Sergeant and I got out of the aeroplane and ran into a bomb shelter. The Flying Fortress was armed with ∙5 calibre guns instead of the British ∙303 calibre. These rounds of ammunition were exploding off in all directions. There was nothing left of the aircraft afterwards, but the tail plane. After this incident, a Board of Inquiry was held, which found that we hadn’t been given enough instructions on how to operate the Fortress engines and the changing from the lean to rich mixtures. We were then sent to the aircraft factory at Burton Wood near Warrington for familiarisation training.

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