大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War website by Julia Shuvalova on behalf of Mr Ken Williams, and has been added to the site with his permission. The author is fully aware of the terms and conditions of the site.

The Squadron was normally engaged on clandestine operations over Burma, Siam, Indo-China and Northern Malaya. This entailed night flying, during the moonlight period of each month, descending to 700 feet - usually into steep valleys - to drop agents and supplies behind the Japanese lines.

On the 14th of February 1945 pilot Wally Kindred and I were summoned to the Flight Office. We were briefed to fly down to Akyab - which had just been liberated - on the Burma coast to collect a Very Important Person.

We were airborne by 9 am and two hours or so later landed in Akyab, which only had a short pierced steel plating runway, and was the base for a Spitfire Squadron.

Wally landed the Dakota quite easily and taxied towards a group of Burmese, one of them being a very attractive young lady. Our dispatcher, Johnny Green - who was really a Liberator ball turret gunner - left the aircraft and, to our surprise, returned with this huge crowd of people. In total there were 41 bodies, plus a load of luggage, a goat and some chickens!

Somehow, Johnny and our wireless operator "Butch" Dalglish packed them on board, including the livestock, with perhaps 20 sitting on the long seats and the rest squatting on the floor. There was, of course, plenty of room on top!

We managed to get into the air and made an uneventful landing at Calcutta some two hours later, where our passengers disembarked.

Certainly, the attractive lady was someone of importance. It was rumoured she was a princess who had been a prisoner of the Japs since 1942.

Some years later a friend of Johnny's who had been a Spitfire pilot - and whose Squadron had landed at Akyab that same morning - told him he was surprised we had made such a successful landing on this short metal strip, and was even more surprised that had managed to get off with such a load.

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