大象传媒

I was an apprentice at Pye鈥檚, a big radio company in Cambridge, when I joined up with a friend. His brother was a fighter pilot and used to write and tell us these wonderful stories. We saw occasional propaganda films of fighter pilots shooting down Germans left, right and centre and suggesting we were in imminent danger of invasion, so most of us wanted to be fighter pilots. We had a slight problem, my friend was just a year older than me and, at that time they said you could not fly until you were eighteen and a quarter years old. He was eighteen and I was only seventeen, but we toddled off to the recruiting office and I put my age up. Nobody said anything and we got through that. Then we went off to Oxford to have all sorts of medical and intelligence tests; to make sure you weren鈥檛 totally bonkers! There were thousands of people there, potential airmen, having all these tests. Most of them failed, either because of bad eyesight or not being clever enough 鈥� for some reason or other. When we came out, we had both been accepted as pilots or observers. We received a little silver badge saying 鈥楻AFVR鈥� which we pinned on our jackets. We felt so proud; we were doing something for our country.

They kept us waiting for about four months (they had hundreds of people apply) and then we went to Lords cricket ground in London. We received our identity cards and uniforms. Massive blocks of flats on Prince of Wales Road had been taken over for Air Force use 鈥� teeming with cadets, all with little white flashes in their caps showing they were aircrew cadets. We marched up and down for a few weeks and had horrible injections for everything anybody could think of. They would give you an armful of stuff and you鈥檇 stagger out. Some of them collapsed 鈥� it was dreadful. We used to eat in the zoo canteen. We鈥檇 go along at dinner time and there would be a queue of a thousand people all with their own knife, fork and spoon and enamel dish. At the counter there were girls with huge dishes of cheese and potato pie mainly. They would cut it into a square and slop it at you. If it landed on your plate it was very good!

We went through all that for a few weeks and then somebody said 鈥淥h dear, we鈥檝e got another lot coming in next week and this lot hasn鈥檛 moved on. What can we do with them?鈥� One of the senior officers happened to own a field in Shropshire: 鈥淚 know what, if you send chaps up there you鈥檒l keep them out of the way and make me a few bob on the side.鈥� We found all this out afterwards. We went to this field, the weeds were chest height. A lorry came and unloaded about eighty tents and some duckboards. We put the tents up and the duckboards down and they gave us a mattress with a few blades of straw in 鈥� for comfort! 鈥� that went on top of the duckboards and there was your bunk. It was awful, it poured with rain most of the time and the water ran down the slope under your duckboards.

Things moved along and we went to Sywell, Northampton, where they had Tiger Moths. Here they gave you eight hours flying practice to see if you were any good at it. The weather was appalling, I couldn鈥檛 actually see anything and we just went up into thick grey clouds. They used to do all these dreadful manoeuvres like stalling; the pilot would stop the engine and pull the nose up. Eventually it would fall down, while you left your stomach up there. When they鈥檇 done that a few times they taught you how to spin, which was the same sort of thing. Instead of going straight down you had to do three turns. The world is going round and round, you don鈥檛 know where you are or what you鈥檙e doing. I was promptly sick. Why I ever went in to be a pilot, I don鈥檛 know; I can鈥檛 even bear roundabouts at the fair, they make me feel dizzy and sick. They didn鈥檛 tell us whether or not we were going to be pilots, but some of us had a pretty good idea!

They had a look and decided to make me a navigator because I was quite good at maths. I didn鈥檛 have any choice. I went to East London for the basic classroom stuff and then we went on to Heath Park; about 10,000 of us there, waiting for troopships to go to Canada, America or South Africa. We waited there for weeks and weeks and once again somebody said, 鈥淥h dear, there鈥檚 a hold up, we鈥檙e bursting at the seams with all these chaps.鈥� So somebody had the bright idea 鈥� 鈥淲ell there鈥檚 an RAF regiment school up in Northumberland, on the coast of Whitley Bay. It would be a damn good idea to send a few chaps up there out of the way.鈥� This was about three weeks before Christmas and it gets bloody cold up there and that鈥檚 where they taught the RAF regiment how to guard aerodromes. We had to run around with rifles all day and lie down in the mud pretending to shoot people. By the time we got back to our billet we were filthy. We had been billeted in rows of terrace houses, all they had were beds and a stove. Unfortunately, we didn鈥檛 have any fuel and we had to get our muddy, wet denim coveralls clean by the next morning. So we went outside and pulled the picket fence to pieces to try to get our things dry. That was murder.

The ultimate thing was the final course. We had to rush over a golf course which
had a series of holes about four feet deep and full of water. When the enemy approached, we had to jump in the holes 鈥� it was so stupid! We were supposed to be the fittest, healthiest people in Britain and it seemed they were trying to kill us off. They used to be very fussy about the rifles. If you ran across a golf course thick in mud and have to drop down pretending someone鈥檚 firing, you鈥檙e going to get mud up the barrel! They picked out the most horrible, uneducated men to be corporals. When they inspected the rifles, they used to swear at us and call us every name under the sun. We spent most of our time trying to clean the guns and drying out our clothes for the next day. One day some of the chaps were queuing for the cinema, in Tyneside, when there was an air raid. A landmine was dropped half a mile away and they were all killed.

We went back to Manchester and they would call us in every few days and read the roll call of who were going to depart and whether they were going to be a pilot, navigator or whatever. Thousands of us would stand there all day in the pouring rain with a ground sheet on our shoulders. The water dripped everywhere and you stood there for hours while they read the names out. After six goes they eventually called my name and that of my friend. We were posted but they didn鈥檛 say to where. Within the next few days we had to get tropical kit 鈥� pith helmets and the most dreadful khaki drill uniforms. I don鈥檛 know who designed them; they were tight at the shoulders and about two feet too long and the trousers were awful. A few days later we went to Liverpool and jumped on a troopship, once again crowded to the gills.

There were eight hammocks strung in a cabin, once you鈥檇 climbed in you bumped into the others when the boat swayed. When we eventually got to the Bay of Biscay, there was a U-boat warning. Instead of going straight through we zigzagged about. For three days our stomachs went up and down with the swell. We were below decks and all you get is dreadful pressure on your head pressing one side, then the other. They brought the food down and put it on a bench, most of it slid on the floor and nobody wanted it. There were people being sick and mess everywhere. When we crossed the Equator, we were given a certificate 鈥淜ing Neptune is happy to welcome you to the Southern hemisphere鈥�. It took six weeks to get to Durban. As we pulled into dock we were met by the sight of an English lady, wearing white and singing 鈥楲and of Hope and Glory鈥� and 鈥楾here鈥檒l Always be an England鈥�, it was wonderful, rousing stuff. I鈥檝e read that she did that with every troopship that stopped in Durban, I think she was awarded an OBE in the end, a marvellous old dear.

Once we had disembarked we went to a transit camp, waiting around tents again, but that was good because we were near Durban. We would buy oranges in 鈥榩ockets鈥�, twenty oranges for a shilling. We couldn鈥檛 believe it because we hadn鈥檛 seen an orange for a year or more. You could buy chocolate or anything but milkshakes were my favourite. We gorged ourselves on all this stuff! Then there was a case of 鈥淥h dear, the systems clogged up again鈥�, so they sent us on leave. The South African people were wonderful. My friend and I went out in to the wilds, to a farm. It was lovely. We had three weeks of really super holiday 鈥� driving around in a big American car, having barbecues every night. It was brilliant. Four of us lived in the farm house with the family. The mother had a tray of eggs for breakfast, I think it was two feet square! You could have as many as you wanted, it was mad.

We moved on to advance training at Port Alfred, 200 miles along the coast and it took us four days to get there. We had RAF and SAAF instructors and did flying and ground work. Flying around South Africa was really easy because the weather was brilliant and the towns were lit up at night. We crept around quite well in Ansons. We used to go up in twos, one would navigate while the other map read, and on the next leg we would do it the other way around 鈥攑rovided neither was sick. If we flew over a town, we drew a map of it and would mark where any ships were in the habour. By Christmas 1943 we had finished our training and were given our brevets and stripes. Two out of twenty were commissioned because they had been to university. We spent five weeks coming back to England, Harrogate, where we stayed in hotels. Once again, there was a blockage, far too many people for the number of aeroplanes being built or the losses that had been sustained. I don鈥檛 know who it was, perhaps the same bright spark as before, but they sent us back to Whitley Bay! Fortunately, it was summertime, so it wasn鈥檛 too bad. That wasted a few more weeks.

We went to a school in Yorkshire to learn about the use of radar, then to Abingdon, in Oxford, flying on Whitleys. We did that for about four weeks and this was where we became crews. They told us to assemble in a hanger and sort ourselves into crews. I didn鈥檛 know who to pick. I knew my bombaimer, he had been in South Africa and came back on the boat with me. But there were pilots who were coming in second time around, with DFMs and things, others who had been training people for years and raw recruits who had done as much flying as we had. I went along with my bombaimer and picked up a chap who looked half dead. He was very pale but he was a Pilot Officer and had rather a battered cap, so we guessed he wasn鈥檛 absolutely brand new to flying. We talked to him: he had been trained in America, and had become an instructor. We thought 鈥淲ell he knows what he鈥檚 on about.鈥� We found a wireless operator and two airgunners and off we went, floating around the countryside 鈥� this time in total darkness. There was an occasional bearing from a radio beacon, but they were not very good early on. We got through that and they put us on the conversion unit for the Halifax.

Group Captain Cheshire was the boss at Marston, where the big battle took place during the English Civil War. We learned to fly the Halifax on the ropiest old aircraft. These had been in the war but were so worn out they dared not send them on operations, so gave them to the training units. If you could fly them, you could fly anything. We had been there for some time when one of our airgunners approached us and said, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think I can go on, sir. I鈥檝e had a premonition we鈥檙e going to be shot down and killed鈥�. I said 鈥淒on鈥檛 be silly. It will happen to other people, it usually does.鈥� He kept on about this for a few days, he was really nervous and one day he disappeared. Apparently, he鈥檇 told the chief instructor that he did not want to fly and was gone. It was found out later that he was cleaning lavatories at a remote aerodrome on the Yorkshire coast. The Air Ministry did not like people who decided that they did not want to fly when money had been spent on training them. Added to that is the fact that if someone says they are scared, it could spread like a rotten apple in a barrel. They used to deal very smartly with people who had been in a bad crash and couldn鈥檛 face scraping their friends out of a turret. Some of them got a sympathetic hearing while others were booted out to do the filthiest possible jobs.

On one conversion flight we had an engine catch fire. They were Rolls Royce engines with a glycol cooling system. If it sprang a leak the engine would catch fire and had to be stopped. When we flew proper Halifaxes with radial engines we did not have much trouble at all. I remember when we were getting to the squadron, training in Yorkshire, seeing streams of Halifaxes going over. On a big raid it would take half an hour for bombers to go over, it was a marvellous sight. When I was on the ground I used to think, 鈥淚 wish I was up there鈥�. When I was up there I used to think, 鈥淥h god, I wish I was down there watching this lot.鈥� It is something you never forget. We used to go from Yorkshire down to Reading, then to Dungeness or Beachy Head and across the channel. A continuous stream crossing at 8,000 feet.

Since I had signed up to become a fighter pilot, it was three years and twenty one days when I joined the squadron as a navigator. I thought I would join up and be a fighter pilot in about two months; shooting down all these horrible Germans, having all the girls chasing me around! We started operations on 30th November, 1944. Most of our raids had some Lancasters with us but only a few. It would come on the news: 鈥淎nother force of Lancasters has bombed Hamburg鈥�, if you knew the facts, it was probably three hundred Halifaxes and twenty Lancasters. It was always Lancasters as nobody had ever heard of Halifaxes.

Early on in the war, the bomber force used to wander about with the odd radio bearing and, perhaps, a shot with the sextant of a star, which was accurate only within ten or fifteen miles. We had two radars, one called 鈥榞ee鈥� which involved three radio stations sending out a pulse signal. Depending on where you were, you picked them up in a certain sequence. Using the chart marked with a lattice of circles, from the position of each radio station, which overlapped giving your position within about a mile. It was okay until we reached Germany, when they were very naughty and put loud noises and bangs on the radio so you could not hear anything. We also had H 2s radar that scanned the ground, painting a picture of the terrain on a screen. It was especially effective over the coastline, so even in thick cloud you could tell where you were. It picked up towns, where the sloping roofs gave a reflection roughly showing the shape of an industrial area. You could measure how far away you were and the direction you were travelling in, so it was pretty good for finding your position. Some targets we missed even with our better equipment. We had this magical radar, which was good, but more and more planes were concentrated on the route and this, in itself, added to the danger. You were in the dark with no lights showing, so the risk of collision must have been enormous.

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