大象传媒

In 1940, a plane came over our house very low and dropped anti personnel bombs (butterfly bombs). It was the first time it had happened in Ipswich, it machine-gunned the area too. Dad dived head first down the Anderson shelter but I kept mum in the porch. The bullets passed between dad and us, we were all O.K. At that time I was working at Ransomes and Rapiers in Ipswich, assembling mines and field guns.

I was called up into the Royal Navy on December 17th that year, and sent to HMS Victory in Portsmouth. Just before I arrived, there had been an air raid and everything was in chaos. The raid before had hit the clothing store so there were no uniforms to issue at the time, the Guildhall was also hit badly.

As I was a motor mechanic before the war, I went to work overhauling MTB鈥檚 at Gosport, they were 1000 hp Packard engines. We had to wear tin hats all the time so we could carry on working if there was a raid. A boat which caught fire off the petrol jetty had 2 live torpedoes on board and the air bottles from these hit the hospital. Whilst I was working in Gosport, my bed was burnt out by an incendiary bomb; also while I was there I caught flu and had to be admitted to Haslar Hospital in Gosport. I was in there when Gosport was blitzed. There was an anti-aircraft gun on the roof of the hospital and everytime it was fired all the beds jumped. Fortunately the hospital was not hit that time but the museum in the town was.

The MTB Coastal Command station at Felixstowe had just been set up and the 500 hp aircraft engines which they used were serviced at Shepton Mallet and this is where I spent 3 years. The serviced engines were transported to Felixstowe and others brought back. They only had a life of 500 hours before they needed to be stripped down. There were 20 male personnel and 22 Wrens based at Shepton Mallet. This is only hearsay but we heard that 22 spies were hanged there.

In the last year of the war I was in charge of the engine room of a boat which we were taking to West Africa. An engine failed but we managed to carry on with one engine and continued on to Freetown on the Gold Coast. There was an ASDIC on board but it was never used.

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