大象传媒

I had always been interested in flying since the mid 1930鈥檚 and it was actually in 1939 that we had been told of the story of Alcock and Brown, the first aviators to fly across the North Atlantic from Newfoundland to Ireland in July 1919, using a converted WW1 bomber. I left school in July 1939 with a good School Certificate and went into an accountant鈥檚 office in Birmingham. I was then sixteen and I joined the ADCC (later the Air Training Core) as I hoped to become a navigator in the RAF. I volunteered for flying duties in the RAF just before I was nineteen and was fortunate enough to be accepted for flying duties.

I eventually went to the Observers Flying School in Winnipeg, Canada and successfully gained my flying wing with honours. I also won a Longines chronometer, which I later used throughout my RAF career. I was then posted to RAF Ferry Command based at Dorval airport in Montreal, Quebec Province. I understood that I would meet up with a pilot and a wireless operator to form a crew of a Lockheed Hudson bomber, which we would fly to Gander in Newfoundland, to fly across the Atlantic to Prestwick in Scotland.

There was no RAF station at Dorval, I was given two addresses to go to find accommodation in Montreal city and report back where I was going to stay (4020 Dorchester, Westmount, Montreal) and there I lived for over two years. The first order I had was to obtain a passport and report my address to Dorval. I heard nothing more about training but received orders to report to the airport for a briefing for a flight in a Lockheed Ventura for delivery to West Africa.
My pilot was to be Tad Mouradick, an American civilian and a civilian wireless operator. The next morning I reported back to Duval and set off for the first leg to West Palm Beach, in Florida. From there we flew to Trinidad and then Belen and then on to Natal (Brazil). From there we flew, by night, across the South Atlantic to Ascension Island and then on to Lagos after some five days flying. We had two days rest and then boarded a converted Liberator for the return journey back to Miami, then caught a train to New York and a civilian flight by the American Airlines back to Montreal.

Later I was crewed with another American pilot whose name was Nick Pickard, in his early thirties, an excellent pilot and engineer and also a young English wireless operator named Geoff Mangham and we became a permanent crew. We flew on many deliveries to the UK and North Africa and India in all types of American bombers and also Canadian built Lancasters and Mosquito planes, leaving Dorval via Gander and Goose, sometimes via Iceland during winter months. We made one reverse delivery from UK to Canada in returning a Canadian built Hampden bomber back to Dorval.

I can also remember that during the two winters I served with Ferry Command I returned to Montreal via New York, having crossed the Atlantic as a passenger on the Atlantic Liners, the Andes, the Acquitania, the Louis Pasteur, Ile de France and the Empress of Scotland.

I was finally posted to 231 Long Range Communications Squadron using Coronado flying boats from Montreal to Largs (Scotland) via Botwood (Newfoundland) carrying mostly VIP鈥檚 and mail and urgent supplies to and fro across the Atlantic.

I didn鈥檛 really want to stay on in the RAF, I was anxious to get married to my long-time girlfriend in Walsall and I chose to become a schoolmaster rather than an accountant. We married in 1946 and have raised a wonderful family of five boys and three girls here in Lichfield and we are looking forward to our diamond wedding next March.

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