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This story was submitted to the Peoples War site by R.McKay of the Belfast Education and Library Board/Holywood Arches Library.
On behalf of Edward Cadden (Author)Added to the site with his permisson.
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Light Blue Ulstermen

A Victorian popular print represented ‘the boyhood of Raleigh’ in WW2. A pastiche of the print was produced with instead of Walt and chums listening to a Tudor sailors yarn. There was a RAF pilot shooting a line to enthralled ATC Cadets, The new print was entitled ‘the boyhood of…’
I have spent 50 years involved on the Air Cadet Organisation and these are tales are told to this ex-cadet?

Tommy

Tommy Hutton was a navigator on a Lancaster bomber. On a mission to southern Germany his aircraft was damaged by Anti-Aircraft fire and the pilot managed to nurse it to the Belgian Border where the aircraft had to be abandoned. Tommy evaded capture and made contact with the Belgian Underground. He was passed from group to group and arrived in France. There again he was passed from group to group and eventually reached the Spanish border. He was smuggled through Axis-sympathetic and reached safety in Gibraltar. After the war Tommy was a dedicated member of the RAF Escaping Society. His own son was named for the Roman Catholic priest who was executed for having aided Tommy and other escapees. The Society had separate compartments — those like Tommy who were never captured and evaders and those who were POW’s and escapers. All contributed to the support of their former saviours in post-war straits or to the dependants of those killed in their escape or evasion.

Jimmy

Squadron Leader Jimmy Speers from Ballymena flew 35 operations with Bomber Command on Lancaster’s and Stirling’s. In the post war RAF he was a Radar/Navigator on night and all-weather fighters and Battery Commander of Bloodhound missiles in the RAF and Royal Australian Air Force.
At the 40th Anniversary of D-Day the film ‘the Longest Day’ was revived ob TV. I said to Jimmy that surely Lancaster’s would not have been wasted dropping dummy paratroops called Ruperts. Jimmy said his crew had flown the mission in a Lancaster. I then found an article which cited Stirling’s of Jimmy’s unit as the droppers. Jimmy checked his log-book and found he had been navigating a Stirling on the sortie. He blamed age on the image of a Lancaster fixed in his mind for the mission. The amazing thing was that the next op, a week later was in a Lancaster. In the middle of an intensive campaign Jimmy’s unit had converted in a week to an entirely new aircraft.

Dougie

Dougie Cooper was captured and incarcerated in Stalag Luff III at Sagen. The famous wooden horse escape involved a tunnel dug in full view of the guards under cover of a vaulting horse used for exercise by a group of prisoners. Dougie did not escape via the wooden horse route nor in the subsequent great escape. He was however one of the vital helpers who dispersed the distinct underground soil amongst the surface dusts by devices such as dribbling sandbags down trouser legs.

Alex

Alex Dunne was highly accomplished Aircraft Engineer who died at a terribly young age. He was also and accomplished teacher and enabled our ATC Squadron to win the Currall Trophy for the highest marks in the UK in the Aircraft Engineering papers of ATC Proficiency Examinations. At the outset of WW2 Alex was servicing Hampden Bombers in 5 Group Bomber Command. The Hampden’s peculiar design earned it the nicknames ‘Flying Tadpole’ or ‘Flying Suitcase’. All of the crew were in separate compartments with no communication possible except by intercom. Some of the earliest VCs arose from consequences of the isolation in battle and Alex had known the men involved.
A less sombre memory was that related by WGCDR Guy Gibson VC in his book ‘Enemy Coast Ahead’. Each member of the crew had a personal relief tube and if unliked by Ground crew would discover in operational use that the tube had been knotted externally. Alex confirmed that Gibson was speaking from personal experience as in his junior officer days Gibson was rather stroppy with Ground crew.

Harry and Hugh

Flight Lt Harry McNabb and Flight Lt Hugh Harper both served in the RAF in the Far East in WW2. Post-war they both joined 3502 (Ulster) Sqn R AUX AF and when it was disbanded became officer in the RAF URCT instructing ATC cadets.
Due to their inseparable social life and the disparity of their respective heights they were known very affectionately as ‘the two Ronnies’.
Harry trained as a navigator in Southern Rhodesia and was posted to a Beaufighter Fighter Bomber Unit in Burma. With a hefty gun armament and the capacity to carry bombs, rockets or a torpedo the ‘Beau’ was called by the Japanese ‘the whispering death’. In a reflective mood Harry would recall sorties to destroy Japanese Waterborne Movements.
Throttle back to reduce noise of your approach, pop up over the riverside trees and attack the mixture of Sampans and rafts you found. In Harry’s words ‘no Ack-ack, no fighters — it was just murder’.
Hugh was Ground crew fitter in Singapore when the Japanese was started. Some reasonable Bristol Bombers but no capacity for adequate fighter escort. American Buffalo and Mohawk fighters inherited from French orders and judged unfit for combat in Europe. Truly obsolete Vildebeest Torpedo Biplanes whose replacements were overdue from Australian Production Aircraft.
Massacre after massacre even after hurricane fighters were shipped in. Evacuation to Java for a further short fight and then capture by the Japanese for the next 3 years. Hugh was a slave-labour joiner in Nagasaki Shipyards. Even with his small stature the diet was unsustaining but he was able to steal nails and other iron mongery and swap them for eggs with local civilians. Punishment for both parties if detected would have been decapitation for misuse of strategic war material. When the huge US Superfortress raids started the prisoners were simply left outside. In late July Hugh was moved to an outlying yard some distance from Nagasaki. He believed he had seen the approach run of ‘Bocks Car’ with its atom bomb but like the natives thought it was a photo reconnaissance run.

Harry had swapped onto Mosquitos and then it was discovered that the glue which bonded the wooden machine was particularly attractive to a tropical growth causing the wings to fall off. Harry claimed his most hair-raising war experience was navigating infected Mosquitos back to Calcutta in the 1945 monsoon season.
Harry completed his war service in Singapore and the two pals argued for decades about the exact location of the Chinese graveyard in Changi.
Hugh was approaching retirement in the NI Civil Service and Harry was also about to retired as Principal of a primary school. They decided to celebrate retirement with a round-the-world trip to visit distant relatives and old haunts.
Harry contacted the Japanese Embassy in London with details of Hugh’s war experiences. An official of the Embassy visited Hugh at his Newtownabbey home with an itinerary of Nagasaki visits and hotel transport courtesy of the Japanese Government and Hugh’s ‘old-firm’ Hitachi.
Hugh met amongst other people the chap who had taken his photograph for his slave labourers pass and who had just retired for Hitachi. On completion of the world trip a few weeks later a file of press-cuttings on Hugh’s Nagasaki visit with English translations awaited him.
The headline in the main Nagasaki journal was: ‘Ex-Hitachi worker returns after 35 years’.

Tommy Parr

As a self-confident 24 year old flying officer RAFUR(J) I was posted in to command 1134 SQN ATC over the head of an incumbent officer PLT OFF Tommy Parr but we hit it off well because Tommy had more distressing experiences as a air-gunner than dealing with a sprog CO.
Tommy’s actions were in machines almost ignored in RAF histories and against an enemy almost discounted — Italy. His first ops were in Egypt in what were know as ‘short nosed’ Bristol Blenheim’s, the Mark 1 version of the bomber which was a derivative of ‘Britain First’ the twin engine machine ordered up by Lord Rothhermere to show how slow and useless were current RAF fighters.
The defenders were Fait CR32 and CR 42 biplanes which were much more dangerous that British histories admit. The gun turret in the Blenheim 1 was manually operated and once you had followed an attacker through 250 degrees you had to wind the turret all the way back to engage his mates. Tommy went on the Blenheim IV’s which had an extended nose dreamed up by Canadians and a power operated turret. Operations were against the Italians in Greece and then the Luftwaffe. Tommy moved on to a new type, the Martin Maryland. These were inherited from French orders cancelled at the 1940 surrender and although they had a light bomb load their high speed unload mad them useful as photo-reconnaissance machines. Tommy’s protective work brought sorties over newly captured Crete and much work for the Royal Navy out of Malta. Tommy was on an improved Maryland version of the Baltimore for the invasion of Sicily and fighting off highly manoeuvrable Italian Monoplane fighters. He stayed with Baltimores for the rest of the war with a score of operational sorties that would have earned him two or three rests from duty in any other theatre. One of the most notable operations was the bombing of Monte Cassino.

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