大象传媒

I volunteered as soon as I was 18 years old in Norwich. First training was in Blackpool for marshall drills and radio training, then moved to Yatesbury in Wiltshire for air radio training. After the immediate training I took a air gunnery course in Wales so that I could get out quickly. My role in the crew was as a radio operator but of course if things went wrong I could take over any other position. I was with the crew and starting operating in August 1941, in our second operation to Berlin we were caught over Berlin and nosed dived to roof top level, we could see the gunners shooting at the chimneys taking the roofs off, we reached the Dutch coast and we were attacked by a JU88. I switched over to SOS so that they could fix our position as we crossed the North sea. We returned to base the next day and found that the main spa (thats the part that holds the two wings together). They found that there were 156 large holes in the air craft. The trip back to Martlesham Heath, the nearest one to the coast was a 9 hour trip. Our next operation was to Stetin which took 9 and a half hours and many crews went to Essen where the Germans produced most of their war ammunitions called Kropps. There was a continued battering for at least 20 minutes from ack acks, if the flack stopped you knew the fighters were homing in on you, we were incredibly lucky to get through there. Squadrons switched on to Stirling one's in September and we could carry nearly four times as much as Wellingtons. They could carry 1800 stick incenduraries each and carry on the wings, the only aircraft that could so. In the last 3 operations we took on a new second pilot, Rawdon Middleton, he was the first Australian air VC of the war. Their is a street named after him in Beckrow and the mess has been changed to Middleton Hall. I moved back there as an instructor, and we put 1000 aircraft up to Cologne, the next to Essen and then i moved to Chipping Warden as an instructor. Later on after 9 months rest I formed another crew, went back on to 90 squadron at Tuddenham, in East Anglia. Bomber command was switched to supporting the troops for D Day, we were doing a lot of the bombing from 2000 ft. After the tour I ended up in Black Bush at Surrey as passenger control officer

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