大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 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鈥檚 terms and conditions.

We were involved in most of the big raids. We went to Berlin. One night we went to Turin, when the forecasters gave us the wrong winds by which to navigate. There were 90 aircraft shot down that night out of 700 aircraft. I was in the astrodome and could see, 鈥渢here鈥檚 one going down, there鈥檚 another one going down, there鈥檚 another one going down鈥�. They were just going down like flies. Including the 90 that were shot down and those which crashed, there were 120 aircraft lost that night, just because of the wrong winds being given. Even then we were lucky and got back. On being briefed for Manheim, the briefing officer would tell us that we had had a good spell of dry weather and this town had a large number of wooden structures, it should burn well tonight. We went to Italy also, we flew over the Alps and en route I was admiring Mount Blanc. It was a beautiful night, there was snow on the mountain. Mac McDonald, the skipper said he could see the TIs (Target Indicators) going down now. Instead of being over Turin, we were over Milan. Not Turin. We came around again and went to Turin. We were the only aircraft there at this time, the others had been and gone. We got an aiming point and dropped our bomb load and returned to base. The next night we were briefed that we were going to bomb the Fait works in Turin. We had to climb over the Alps again and do a low level bombing on the Fait works at Turin, and then climb back up to get back over the Alps again. When we were on our way to Turin, over the Alps, Mount Blanc was above our level of flight. The journey time for that raid on Turin was about 8 or 9 hours which was very close to the limit for a Sterling. Part of the duties of a Flight Engineer on a Sterling was the balancing of the 7 fuel tanks fitted to each main plane. Your main tanks were 2 and 4. They held 250 and 300 gallons of fuel. On the trailing edge you also had fuel tanks. If you were caught by a fighter you couldn鈥檛 use the trailing edge tanks as the fuel wouldn鈥檛 run from them to the engines so you had to change to tanks 2 and 4 during combat. During the flight over the target you also went onto tanks 2 and 4 so that you could get out of the target area as quickly as possible. Which meant that you were juggling all the time with the tanks so that you finished with fuel in tanks 2 and 4 . During the flight I kept a watch on the oil pressures and temperatures and advised the Pilot what engine settings to use so that we could save as much fuel as possible. If there were any leaks we had materials to carry out a first aid repair.

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