大象传媒

This contribution was submitted by Cyril Totman and is added to the site with his permission.

At the end of my 35 missons I was posted back to the UK by BOAC via Lisbon but it was following the Congo river. In the log book it actually says what happened. I think it was safe to go across the Med but it was quicker for me to go back to the UK the way I went. They wanted us in the UK quickly so they could train people to tow gliders in preparation for the invasion of Europe. It took 63 hours to get from Cairo to UK! I was given a passport to get into Lisbon. The journey was Cairo to Lagos on a C-class flying boat, Lagos to Foynes on a boeing Clipper. Churchill had come back from the States on that. There was a famous filmstar was shot down in a flying boat from Lisbon and was killed. It was a dangerous, dangerous place. Portugal was neutral like Switzerland. They kitted us up with a civvy suit. We went to a hotel in Esteril. In that same hotel there were German airmen! We had no money but we went in the casino which was a bit of an education for me! We watched these people make fantastic bets. When I came back to the UK i was posted to Bramcoat in the midlands which was operational training unit, training people who had done their bit in Ops and we were training them to fly to the Far East. We had a thing called the grope which was a simulation from the point of navigation and radio controls to simulate the route from the UK to through the Med, Malta, Cairo, Iraq, India to the Far East.

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