大象传媒

This story was submitted by Wendy Young. It had been added on behalf of Edwin F.L. Sutton with his permission. He fully understands the terms and conditions.

I was born in 1923 in Southampton. In 1938 during my school holidays I remember seeing air raid shelters being dug in case of war. In 1939 things became more serious. In the September, war was declared, and our school was evacuated to Poole in Dorset.
I had finished my school certificate in 1938 and went into the sixth form to take the higher school certificate. As I had been awarded a scholarship, I stayed on to get a better grade as I was hoping to go to university. I left school when I was eighteen. I didn't go to university and couldn't get a job because people knew I would be called up and they didn't want to employ me for a short time. So I became a builder's labourer repairing bomb damage in Southampton, as it had been subjected to substantial air raids during 1940.
The reason I volunteered for the R.A.F. in the august of 1941 was because I knew I was going to be called up. Many of my colleuges would say to me "you might as well be happy and do a decent job and get well paid for it".
So I volunteered for air crew and was accepted as a navigator. I did my early flying training in the Union of South Africa, and spent nine months there. I qualified as a navigator bomb aimer in the march of 1943, then I spent five months doing basic training.
I went to the R.A.F. station at Bobbington so I could become more advanced in flying. From there I went on to an operational training unit in Wymeswold in Leicestershire, where I met and joined forces with the crew which would be with me for some time.
There was the pilot, a wireless operator from Mamties, a rear gunner from Cyprus, a straight navigator from Streatham, and myself, a navigator bomb aimer, who infact served as a bomb aimer with that crew.
We were earmarked for the middle east, and we were sent to Moreton-in Marsh Gloucestershire where we were given a Wellington H.E.814. The Wellington Bomber was the only bomber that operataed from the start to the end of the war. It was also used for other purposes other than bombing.
In November of 1943, we flew to Poithreath in Cornwall and from there flew to Rabat Sale in Morocco. It took us eight hours and thirty five minutes, then on to Biskia on the edge of the Sahara, and on to kairovan in Tunisia.
On the 10th November we joined 40 squadron and in the december the squadron moved en bloc to Italy. There were six squadrons based in three aerodromes near Puglia, bombing ports along the Italian coast, stopping german inports. Also the capital cities of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as laying mines along the river Danube.
Once we were chased returning from a bombing mission over Bucharest. An enemy aircraft got on our tail, we saw him coming and got out of his way. We also saw six aircraft shot down. There wasn't much you could do to help people at night. You didn't draw attention to yourself. Bombing was done from between six to twelve thousand feet.
Wellingtons carried 750 gallons of petrol, on that we could travel 700 miles and return with an overloaded tank of 185 gallons of petrol. We would be able to travel fourteen to fifteen hundred miles.
Our bomb load was about 5000lbs but the official load was about 4000lbs, depending on the target. In June 1944 after 40 operational flights we finished. It was just before my 21st birthday. I was posted to what was known as a communications flight in Iraq. i spent the niext twenty months there.
When I joined the unit there were 20 aircraft, 12 pilots and 3 navigators of which I was one. We had a wide variety of aircraft, Hudsons which flew freight and Sunderland flying boats. We took soldiers on leave from Iraq to Palestine on leave.

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