大象传媒

The biggest raid I remember was when we were coming back from a night raid on Germany. I cannot recall now exactly where we had been but on our return flight a number of Junkers 88's had followed us back unseen and in fact had integrated among us. As we neared our Airadrome at Bunt near Selby, we called them up to say what time we expected to arrive back. The only response we got were the words, 'Bandits, bandits! We knew then that there was trouble.

In these circumstances we had a proceedure. We had to fly north for about quarter of an hour then return. As we came back to the Airadrome we called again. No change, so we had to make a second trip. Eventually it was clear that we couldn't land there so we had to try and land at another airadrome. By that time we had hardly any fuel and were flying very low. We were told to bail out but then they were able to flash lights on and off to help us to land. We did, but ran off the runway.

The Germans had been bombing railway lines and the Airadromes. We had been flying just under the cloud but when we had climbed higher, we had seen four or five planes on fire and others shot up. This raid was never reported and was about the last big German effort over Britain. It was about 1944.

When you're running out of fuel it's very frightening. The only way you knew how much fuel you had was for the Engineer to compute it. We were very lucky to get back that night- we saw a Junkers shooting down one of our Squadron.

Our crew and our plane

The most wonderful thing is the bonding of the crew. We had a crew of 7. I was a Navigater and we had a great Pilot. Another crew member was an Englishman who had been living in France and a Fench speaking guy. He had to be got out via the French underground movement. I flew with the same crew in a Halifax throughout. Our plane was D-Dog. The Halifax had a cruising speed of 200mph. It was the best bomber. We had pretty good firing power, both bombs and ammunition and you could have 4 guns going off at the same time. We carried 2,000lb bombs and incendury bombs. We dropped them at the same time. You had to check the bomb base to see that they'd all gone.

There's a lot said about Spitfires, but I think Hurricanes were the better fighters. When it came to shooting bombers down in daylight they were the ones.

The thing I hated most as a Navigater was navigating at low level flying. It was terrible being caught in searchlights. Something you learned early on though, when flying at 20,000 feet was that you always had to be on oxygen. Once, the Pilot could get no reply from our Engineer. We found him lying on the floor because he'd forgotten to takehis oxygen bottle with him to the back of the plane.

Over Europe

One one occasion we made a daylight raid on Holland at about 4,000 feet. The purpose was to invade some heavy naval guns. At that height you felt the vibration from the explosions on the ground knocking the plane about.
Another time when we were coming back from Europe we found ourselves 10 to 15 degrees off course. The Pilot struggled to control the aircraft. Then we heard a clanging noise-it was ice on the propellers. We had to descend to 10,000 feet. We'd lost the Bomb Aimer's hatch and it was freezing cold. It was difficult to get level and the Pilot had a struggle. However, we got home safely.

Although as a crew we'd faced some very real danger and saw some difficult times, it was all a great adventure. We were young, daring and dedicated. For me, it was certainly 'the time of my life.'

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