大象传媒

Shot Down in a Fjord

My squadron was based at Wick in Scotland, where our objective was to strike any enemy ships moving along the Norwegian coast.

It was on the 17th of May 1942 that reports were coming in that the German battle cruiser the Prinz Eugen had been sighted making its way down the coast of Norway. Our squadron at Wick was immediately ordered to attempt to intercept the battle cruiser, which was expected to be somewhere south of Stavanger, probably making its way into the Baltic Sea.

Some 18 Beauforts took off loaded with torpedoes, flying at sea level to avoid being picked up by enemy detection apparatus (radar as such was not, I understand, available to German coastal defences at that time). We were escorted by 4 Beaufighters to provide air cover and to strafe the battleship whilst the Beauforts got into position to drop their torpedoes.

To be effective, a torpedo had to be dropped at 90 feet above sea level, aircraft speed reduced to 180 knots and the aircraft also had to be so positioned that the running torpedo would intercept the ship. Warships had tremendous fire power against attacking aircraft, and of course made zig-zag turns, making it very difficult to get into position. The idea was that as many torpedo aircraft as possible would attack from different angles, hopefully drawing away some of the 'flak' and perhaps one torpedo would find its target. As it happened, the Prinz Eugen was not found sailing south of Stavanger. The Wing Commander, after a search along the coast, decided to fly north to Stavanger, as it was thought the Prinz Eugen may have found shelter in the harbour. As we swept the dock area, there was no sign of it or any other shipping.

As we all turned away to fly back down the coast, German fighter aircraft could be seen taking off from an airfield. The squadron was still in formation, and as we turned about I was on the inside of the turn and consequently had to reduce speed a little to keep station. Shore anti-aircraft batteries opened up. I could see the plumes of water following me as they got the range. Suddenly they ceased and the rear gunner warned me that a fighter, a M.E. 109, was coming up fast. Almost immediately, machine gun and cannon tracer appeared just under us. I tried to jerk the aircraft out of the line of fire but a quick burst of bullets and cannon struck the fuselage and wing tanks.

A piece of shrapnel must have entered my lower jaw and knocked me unconscious for what must have been a very short time. I recovered consciousness to find Stuffy Collins the Navigator looking into my face. His face, I remember, was spotted in blood; on reflection the blood must have been from me as I breathed. I immediately took over the controls to find that we were flying almost at right angles to the sea. Once righted, the cabin began to fill with smoke, and flames were engulfing the starboard wing. Both engines were still functioning. The heat became intense. We were too low to bail out, so it was imperative to force land onto the sea. At the same time I opened the entrance hatch above my head to try to let in some fresh air. I managed to manoeuvre the Beaufort into a landing position. Just before we hit the water I released the parachute safety harness (in the Beaufort, the pilot sat on his packed parachute). This action I am sure was instrumental in saving my life. As we hit the water, my last thought was 'this is it' and I would now be meeting Jesus.

As the flaming Beaufort hit the waves, I completely blacked out. I came to in a sea of flame all around me, except for a narrow channel through which I managed to swim clear of the petrol flames.

I will briefly go back to just before we boarded for this operation. Discovering that someone had taken my Mae West from my locker, I found the only one left was a very soiled Mae West thrown in a corner. I recall checking it for the compressed bottle which inflated the Mae West and concluded (erroneously) that it didn't have one.

So once I had swum clear, I didn't bother to inflate the Mae West but tried instead to inflate it through the tube designed for this purpose, only to discover that I couldn't inflate anything as part of my bottom lip and eight incisor teeth, 4 on top and 4 below, had been shot away. Whilst trying this, I looked around and could see no sign of any of my crew or the aircraft. However, from somewhere, a wing petrol tank floated past me. I attempted to climb onto it, and as I did so, the lever which activated the air bottle (which I hadn't tried as I was convinced there wasn't one) caught on the side of the petrol tank. Lo and behold, the Mae West inflated beautifully with no leaks. I hung onto the petrol tank for a minute or two but the sea seemed too rough, so I dropped back into the water, which surprisingly seemed quite warm, which I learned was due to the warm Gulf Stream which flowed down the coast of Norway to the North Sea.

As the 109 flew over me, probably the one which shot us down, I managed to wave to it. I remember lying back supported by the Mae West and I blacked out again.

Norwegian Hospital

The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital with strange voices speaking in a language I couldn't understand, and I remember thinking in my confused state that they must be Matabele (Africans) talking to each other. I soon realised that they were talking German. I must have dropped off again or given an anaesthetic. The next thing I remember was waking up in a two-bed ward, with stitches down my chin and a bandage tied below my jaw and over my head. Also, a wound on my forehead required several stitches, and I had a rather long wound approximately 6 inches long down the inside of my right knee into the gastronemious muscle. I could only take liquid through a tube or a spouted receptacle, I suppose because my front teeth had been shot away. I was able to use this gap without opening my mouth, and I later realised the jaw bone had been broken approximately in the middle.

The occupant of the other bed was a German soldier who had had an accident riding a motorcycle and had horrendous fractures in his leg bones. He had arrived there several weeks before me and was still there three months later as his wounds kept becoming infected, there being no antibiotics available at that time.

I soon became aware of a German soldier with a large Luger pistol on his hip. He was, I was told, my guard and was to prevent my escape, which was pretty ludicrous as I was almost incapable of even sitting up in bed. After a week or so, he was taken away.

At the Stavanger Hospital, in which all the nurses were Norwegian, the top two floors were serviced by German doctors for German soldiers only, and the bottom floor was for Norwegians only and under their own Norwegian doctors. I was of course given very special care by the nurses, particularly the sister-in-charge Sister Olina and Nurse Borga. I was warned to be careful of one other nurse as she was a quisling (traitor) and consequently pro-German.

Visit from a German soldier

After about ten days or so, a German soldier came to see me. He had been in the party which had picked me up from the sea. I was for the first time able to piece together what happened after I had passed out lying in my Mae West. A Norwegian motor boat with its owner on board plus eleven German Luftwaffe personnel (why so many was difficult to understand), picked me up some five miles off the coast of Stavanger. It must have been fairly late in the evening as I had been shot down around 8pm GMT. My visitor said that once I was on board I became very violent in trying to get up and empty my pockets of any papers I might have on me. A struggle ensued, with the Germans trying to restrain me, which according to him was very difficult in the small boat with so many on board. Also he said I was very strong (must have been fit in those days). Apparently in the fracas, the paraffin lamp was knocked over and started a fire which could not be contained, so the boat was abandoned and soon sank. I was now back in the water with twelve other people, pretty disgruntled I should imagine.

I am not sure how the officials on shore were informed. My visitor said a stork sea plane from the air sea rescue base landed and picked me up, plus several of the Luftwaffe airmen. Being a fairly small, light float-plane it could only take a limited number of people, so my visitor and at least eight others were left and later picked up by another motor boat. They cannot have been very pleased with me, I imagine.

My visitor had lost his watch, and his practically new uniform had been ruined. So at least in some small way I had caused some losses to the German government, as the other ten must have had their uniforms ruined in some way by the fire and then sea water. Whether the Norwegian boat owner was ever compensated I never found out (he was probably prosecuted for being careless).

On reflecting back to my crash into the sea and finding myself in the water, I am sure that Jesus was with me and pulled me out of the burning aircraft which must have exploded on impact. Whether the torpedo was the cause of the fire, I never understood. Normally a torpedo only became active after it had been dropped and run for some distance for the nose cap to unwind and expose the detonator.

I was incredibly lucky to have survived. My great regret was the loss of the three members of my crew. We had only been together for a relatively short time since leaving Chivenor, and had flown on occasions on patrols in the North Sea and Norwegian coast. Stationed at Wick, which was not far from John O'Groats, I had little chance of meeting their parents. Fred Parkins was the only married member of the crew.

Once again I must divert and mention that at that time there were four Beaufort squadron stationed at various aerodromes down the Scottish East coast. They were 22 Squadron, 317, 42 and 86. The number 86 was later taken over by a Boeing squadron after I had been shot down, and the Beauforts were posted to Malta. My friend Johnnie Atkinson crashed on take-off in England; he and his crew didn't survive. Cliff Thomson did a number of sorties from Malta and was eventually shot down, captured and taken to Italy as a P.O.W. I also learned that Roy Pitkin had been shot down in his Hudson and killed.

Surgery

I spent three months in Stavanger Hospital, during which time I had to undergo dental surgery to repair my broken lower jaw. This required me to be taken to the dental surgery in town. The first session lasted from 10am to 5pm, with no food of course and very little fluid. The dental surgeons, who were German, had to make two wire braces to fit my upper and lower jaw. These were wired to my remaining teeth. I don't know how many times my gums had to be anaesthetised with a local anaesthetic but it seemed like every hour or so. This I found very traumatic, plus the manipulation to align the two halves of the lower jaw. Eventually, leaving out all the gory details, the two wire braces were drawn together to prevent any movement of the bones during the healing process. At last I was taken back to the hospital where I had a long sleep.

As I mentioned before, the nurses spoilt me terribly, bringing cigarettes and books. I read the complete works of John Galsworthy's Forsyth Saga, also Anthony Adverse of a thousand pages. I had no news of home or my fianc茅e Doreen in England, and no wireless. Although the German patient had a small one, he was not allowed to let me listen to it. But at one time he did tune into the 大象传媒 at the very moment Vera Lynn was singing "Don't know where, don't know when, but I know we'll meet again some sunny day". It was strangely a great morale boost for me, plus the prospect of being with Doreen some sunny day.

Slowly, the jaw knit, but required from time to time fragments of bone and/or shrapnel to be removed as they surfaced. One of the temporary nurses whose name I have forgotten was connected in some way with the Norwegian resistance. She offered to help me escape to Sweden, which would have required travel over rough country. The idea was certainly encouraging; I asked what effect an escape would have on the nurses who looked over me. She said they would probably be shot or at the very least imprisoned. To her relief I think, I refused to allow this sort of punishment to be given to such lovely people. I would rather attempt to escape on my own, if possible, away from Norway, without having any civilians involved.

The hatred of the Norwegians for the German occupying forces was something I had never experienced before. The courage and daring of the Norwegian resistance forces are legion and well documented in numerous books and films. So many lost their lives, as did their families, as reprisals by the Germans in an attempt to subjugate the civilians.

From hospital to POW camp

Eventually, the German doctors saw no reason to keep me any longer in hospital, where I had been for four-and-a-half months. With some emotion, my nurse saw me off under escort to Oslo. The journey was by train, guarded by two German soldiers. I was taken and imprisoned at Gestapo HQ in Oslo, a large multi-storey building in the centre of the city. This very building was later completely destroyed by a flight of precision bombing Mosquitoes of the RAF. Here I was interrogated by a Gestapo intelligence officer, in an attempt to gain any British information on the war. I gave him only my name, rank and number. He soon gave up as I think he realised that any information he might drag out would be ancient history as it was now four-and-a-half months since I had been shot down. He spoke excellent English; he told me he had spent a long time in Singapore and had been a member of the English club there before the war.

I recall him asking me what I thought would happen to Rhodesia after the Germans had won the war. I told him I didn't think they would win and things would be normal. He said, "We shall see" in a provocative tone, for at that time the Afrika Korp were having successes in the Middle East and on the Russian front.

I spent only two days in Oslo and was then flown to Berlin via Copenhagen, under guard by Luftwaffe personnel. The aircraft was a Junkers JU52, a 3-engined plane with corrugated fuselage, a very successful transport plane. There is still one flying at various air shows in South Africa.

My stay in Berlin was as brief as the stop in Copenhagen. Berlin seemed full of uniformed men and women, all saluting each other. There were so many varieties of uniform that my RAF uniform was largely unrecognisable to many Germans. Soon I was on my way by train to Dulagluft (the Luftwaffe in-transit camp) at Frankfort-on-Oder. Here again I was confined for a few days and required to fill in a questionnaire asking a variety of questions, but as usual only name, rank and number were given. I wasn't pushed or threatened to divulge other information as were the recently shot down airmen.

After two days, I was allowed to join other prisoners in the barracks. It was wonderful to meet up with all the air force crews recently captured, to be able to talk freely, and have news of things in the UK. One was at first a little cagey as the Germans sometimes planted "stooges" in air force uniforms to glean any vital information from the conversations amongst the POWs. Possibly the barracks were also "bugged".

We were soon on our way across Germany to permanent POW camps (Stalags).

A Rhodesian Pilot's Story - Chapter 2 - Life in a POW Camp

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