大象传媒

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I remember as a 4 year old the start of the First World, seeing all the men going off to war. Everywhere there were posters of Kitchener with the pointing finger urging people to enlist.

In the 1930s I was a member of the Officers Training Core (OTC), they held dances at a place near Putney Bridge. Hitler used to send some lovely women to England to attend these dances and they would try to recruit the Officers to go to Germany. Those who went to Germany told us that the Hitler Youth would try to recruit them. Those people who went to Germany were given hat & arm badges and certificates; when they returned they laughed their heads off, they did not take it seriously.

During the war I was an aeronautical engineer, I was based in north London.
My job was to repair the bombers that had been damaged in raids. The types of planes were Hampden, Halifax and York, and the work involved patching up holes in the wings that had been made by bullets & flak.

When the Supermarine Works in Southampton had been bombed out, marquees were set up on open ground outside the city. Here aero engines were assembled until the factories had been rebuilt.

When the Dam Busters project was being developed everybody, who worked on bombers, was given a problem to solve. At De Havilands we only had a wind tunnel, so we were not able to test the bomb, we were only able to offer advice. I did work on changes to the Lancaster bomber that were needed to accommodate the bouncing bomb.

During the war I also belonged to the Volunteer Fire Brigade. As part of a course at Willsden they called for volunteers to go through a gas chamber (equipped with helmets, boots & gas masks) to test that the equipment worked against mustard gas. Nobody volunteered, so foolishly I stepped forward, I later regretted this and was very worried at the prospect of the mustard gas, however, as luck would have it, the government decreed that mustard gas would probably not be used, so the test was no longer needed. This was a terrific relief to me.

During the London Blitz terrible mistakes were made. One night, when no air raid warning had been given, a landmine was dropped in High Road (off Edgeware road). It hit a tree and exploded in the air, it blew the upper rooms and roofs off many houses and many children who were asleep in their bedrooms were killed. Their bodies were laid out on the pavements next morning. At 10.30 next morning as I was driving another landmine was dropped on Cricklewood Lane, Golders Green. It land in the branches of a tree. It was about 2鈥�6鈥� across and 3-4鈥� high with horns (these triggered the explosives), I stopped my car to have a look, but when I saw it swaying in the breeze with the horns only inches away from the branches, I got away as fast as I could.

In preparation for D Day bombers were modified to enable them to tow gliders, a hook was attached to the back. This worked OK when empty gliders were towed, but a plane鈥檚 tail is a weak area (it only contains controls and the rear turret). When fully laden gliders were towed, the back of the plane was pulled off when it was on the runway. Strengthening plates had to be fixed to the rear end of the bombers.

I saw one of the first V2 rockets over London. There was a corkscrew trail in the sky and the approach of the rocket was silent. It landed in Bounds Green, Edmonton, leaving a crater 20 feet in diameter.

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