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ONE STARRY NIGHT
Written by my Grandfather
Corporal John W Donaldson
May 1943

We knew that it was a very important job - but we were really fed up with it! Even the C.O. himself came to us in Workshops and told us how serious it was. We worked hard - only a few days notice to plan and fit plane dampers - to be used in a special mission on Burma. So we worked night and day in relays when we could, but even then putting in twice as many working hours as we should, and we were all feeling the strain. At last they were ready for air test and I was to fly on this along with the sergeant i/c Workshops, and of course, the crew. I was too tired to go ashore for a feed and a wash - so I laid on one of the bunks in the "Cat" while waiting for the aircrew. Just after dark the power boat woke me up as she came alongside. A few minutes later we were airborne and climbing to the stars.

Three hours it had been decided would be sufficient and we were to be observed from the ground as well as by a sister ship, which took off somewhat later. We cruised around the camp at 1000 ft and then circled Madras, away slowly over a neighbouring airfield - watching the twinkling lights from the city and scattered villages. But I liked best to look at the stars - so near and yet so coldly remote. The moon rose palely from a bank of fluffy cotton wool and the earth became a map in dark relief. Climbing to 5000 ft we swung away from Madras, through little puffs of cloud - like a cloud we seemed to drift slowly over the countryside. Bewitching night! My thoughts - like myself, became detached - I was a stranger in a dream world, and time stood still. Entranced by the cold beauty of the marvellous night among a million twinkling jewels, I felt a strong sense of annoyance when Sgt. Berry nudged me, and told me that our lights were out - we were making our run! We came in from several miles north of the camp, the silver lake agleam in the moonlight, and patterned yellow squares showed up the compound of the airmens’ quarters. To one side, and slightly below, drifted the navigation lights of "J", her flaming exhaust stacks like flashing eyes, she banked and turned, but did not follow - we were not seen! We swung slowly over Control the lights on the tower blinked, but not at us, and I could imagine the many pairs of eyes straining upward - watching for the tell-tale glare of flaming exhaust gases. They could hear us, but we were invisible. I thought of the nights in "Blighty" both in the old slit trenches while "jerry" had circled just like this. How plain it all was, if we were out to bomb, how easy it would be. First, Control, standing alone tall and white in the moonlight, its shadow pointing like a finger of doom, and then the airmen’s camp, so sharply silhouetted, and the "Ship", with its busy workers under the floodlights - how easy to destroy it all!

We curved in a slow bank over the lake, and our lights came on - "Sparks" flicked out his message to Control. A request to land, and granted in a moment. We made our circuit and swung in towards the flare-path down with the grace of a swooping gull - effortless and easy - fifteen tons or more - to touch the water and skim with foaming wake across the placid lake. The pilot throttled back and we lay, floating serenely among the moon-shot wavelets. The sergeant told me to nip up smartly onto the mainplane, and observe the dampers while still hot. A very foolish order, and I, as foolish, carried it out, realising as I finally got there, just how dangerous it was. The pilot had not been told! He did not know that a man was perched high on the mainplane between the engines, and he opened up the throttles just as I reached the petrol tank vents between the narcelles, the "Cat" tore across the lake again, up at something like seventy miles an hour. I held on grimly to the two thin pipes, feeling them bend as the slipstream thrashed my body. The thunderous roar from the exhaust dampers on each side of my head deafened me - made me cower inside myself - and the pungent gases filled my throat as I fought for breath in the tumult of shrieking air and roaring engines. For a few horrible moments I thought he was about to take off again - but almost as soon as the thought, the message must have reached the pilot, for he throttled back - and drifted gently towards the mooring buoy. The brilliant searchlight from the powerboat picked me out, perched high on the mainplane, my clothes flying in the slipstreams blast, and my crouching body hugging close to the slender vents which afforded such precious but such precarious grasp on life. I sobbed out a deep breath of relief, as the whirling props, so uncomfortably close, flicked and died - then I looked up to the stars and laughed. It was treated as a joke by all - but beneath the laughter and banter was a little shaky tremble - and a thankfulness that it had not been worse.

We had done a good job they said, we had flown unseen through the moonlit night, over and round the camp - out sister ship had seen no sign of us. The work was done, and we could rest - until the next time!

Corporal John W Donaldson
May 1943

"cat" = Sunderland Flying Boat

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