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This story is contributed by Norman Davies, a navigator with 117 Squadron in Burma, and is added to the site with his permission.

We were posted to 117 Squadron which, in April 1945, was based just outside Chittagong.
This was the time when the 14th army were really pushing the Japanese back down through Burma and most of our operations at that time were supplying the 14th army, dropping supplies to them, dropping- if necessary - paratroops to go in. And we gradually went down with them. We were there two months and then in May we were posted to Ramree island which was a little uninhabited island off the west coast of Burma. Well we just had a base, a tented base and we kept on flying and we were there for a month. Then in June 1945 we went to Patanga which was north of Rangoon and in August 45, we eventually went to Morby which was the main base outside Rangoon.

An example of the type of thing we were taking in from the log book:
8th April base to Meiktila back to base...6000 pounds of rations, 6000 pounds of ammunition, 7000 pounds of rations....on a free drop. When you say a free drop, we were pushing out big crates of food or ammunition, without any parachutes attached. We used to fly in low...push them out, we would probably be flying at about 500 ft so they didn't have far to fall and they would be collected on the ground. We had pre-arranged dropping zones... DZs as they used to call them. They had to be a bit behind the front line. Sometimes we would land and the supplies would be unloaded. But the strips were very basic, they used to lay down this bitumen stuff...they could put an air strip anywhere as long as there was a clearing. We used to do about four sorties a day ....we'd start about five o'clock in the morning and you'd do the trip and back and that would be about four hours. So you'd be back at nine o'clock and then out again at ten o'clock...then back and then another in the afternoon and possibly another in the evening. So it wasn't really dangerous, it actually got a bit boring. So this went on....every line in the log book is a flight....

We had no official knowledge of how the war was progressing....we used to get news bulletins, but fortunately the Japs were in full retreat by that time. Fortunately for us they didn't have any air power. The top speed of the DC-3 the Dakota is about 120 knots .... can you imagine this big thing, elephant flying through the sky.... if there had been Jap fighter planes you know — Cheerio — we wouldn't have stood a chance. The main problem was the weather......the monsoon.....the clouds used to build up and a Dakota couldn't fly above ten thousand feet...so sometimes we even used to have to abhort, we couldn't get through the cloud. Then we'd have to return to base.

All the time we were moving base down the Irrawaddy .... as the Japs were retreating through Burma. As the 14th Army was going after them, so we had to keep on supplying. By the time we got to Morby the Japs were really out of Burma and had retreated into the Malay peninsula.

The other big problem was malaria....you'd have these yellow tablets — Mappacreem — horrible tasting things, and if on the squadron you happened to be the orderly officer of the day, one of the jobs was to make sure that the Indian troops took their Mappacreem because they were apt to forget it. We used to have a parade and line them up and make sure that the tablet went on to their tongue and that they swallowed them.

I remember very distinctly the 6th of August, when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. We had flown out that morning at 0830 to Toungoo with 6000 pounds of rations and one passenger...and we came back at 12 o'clock. So we landed back at base at about 25 past two on the 6th August and I remember going for a late lunch in the Mess and I was on my way back from the Mess and I met a fellow officer and he said:...have you heard there's been this huge bomb dropped on this place in Japan called Hiroshima. Their time was ahead of us...about four or five hours ahead of us.....he said there'd never been anything like it. Well it went in one ear and out the other....it didn't mean anything, we just kept on flying, with our routine. Then of course on the 9th, the next bomb went off on Nagasaki and soon after of course we heard the war was coming to an end, which was a relief in a way because personally I think that I wouldn't be here today if the bomb hadn't gone off. At that time we were preparing to advance down the Malay peninsula to drive them all the way back....but I think it would have been fraught with a bit of danger for us at that time....particularly in the way they were talking about us towing gliders down the Malay peninsula to get behind the Japanese and all sorts of things.....but it didn't come to pass so in a way I was glad of the bomb.

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