大象传媒

21st December 2005

[Bryan Williams] "Apprehension was never ever discussed in our crew at all. The only thing, I was sure, first crew that I flew with, the pilot was a really, really nice guy, I remember thinking; 鈥淭his guy isn鈥檛 gonna last too long鈥� and, sure enough, the first time I didn鈥檛 fly with them on operations they got shot down 鈥� What鈥檚 the date today?"

[Alan Brigham] "21st December 2005"

[Bryan Williams] "They got shot down on the night of the 21st/22nd of November 1943*, Frankfurt, and what happened was; the day before, the 20th, I was walking from the flight office with Joe Paine (the navigator) and he said; 鈥淔or Christ鈥檚 sake Bryan, you really can鈥檛 carry on like that鈥� 鈥� I really had the flu (except we only ever called it a cold in them days鈥� 鈥� and as we were passing the sick quarters he said 鈥渏ust go in and get something for your cold鈥�. So I went in and this very officious WRAF Corporal said 鈥淥h you鈥檙e too late, the sick parade鈥檚 over.鈥� So I sneezed, fortunately, and the young MO [Medical Officer], who eventually became the 鈥楺uack鈥� at Patrington, said 鈥淐ome in, I鈥檒l have a look at you鈥�. He took my temperature and he called the male Corporal and he said, 鈥淭ake this Sergeant and put him into bed鈥�. My temperature was somewhere over 100, I don鈥檛 know, and I was in hospital from then until Christmas Eve. He only let me out on Christmas Eve because he said 鈥淵ou can go home if you want to鈥� because I had chatted to him and I鈥檇 told him I only lived in Hull, that was Holme on Spalding Moor, and I鈥檇 also told him that my crew had been shot down so I was on my tod.

When I came back, there was this crew who, the wireless operator and navigator had left them, the pilot was called Slade - built like a brick-shithouse 鈥� tough, hard, not very pleasant but he was going to survive if anybody was! So I joined them with this Flight Lieutenant navigator - the navigator was more important than the pilot really, and he was brilliant. I鈥檇 done six operations then, as a crew, but not with this navigator. The crew of five, on a Whitley, had finished at OTU [Operational Training Unit] and been posted to St Athens where they were still flying Whitleys and they used to do anti-submarine patrols over the Bay of Biscay. They were shot down by a submarine. The submarine would have been armed with a 3 inch gun and probably a 12 pounder as well 鈥� and of course, they would have had machine guns. The Whitleys had four depth charges, but they only used to fly at about 5 or 600 feet. They went in to depth-charge this submarine and, normally, they crash-dive. This one didn鈥檛, it stayed there and boom-boom-boom; it was a sitting target at 100 miles an hour, straight in the drink! The submarine dived and left them, which was the right thing to do, and they were picked up later that day by a Spanish fishing boat and taken into a Portuguese port to start with. The fishermen were doing better out of rescuing RAF crews than they were at fishing!"
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*The official record of this event offers the following information:

Halifax LK 732 operating with number 76 Squadron took off from Holme-on-Spalding Moor at 1518 hours on 20 December 1943 to attack Frankfurt. Nothing further was heard from the aircraft and it was later learned that it had crashed through enemy action at Dachsenhausen (10 miles SE of Koblenz) at approximately 2000 hours.

The three crew members who were killed on impact are laid to rest in the Rheinberg British Military Cemetary. The remaining four were taken prisoner of war and later repatriated to the UK. The details are as follows:

Mid-Upper Gunner: Sergeant N M E Blatch (killed)
Pilot: Pilot Officer W D V Cable (killed)
Bomb Aimer: Flying Officer J Blair (killed)
Navigator: Flight Lieutenant J O Pakeman
Wireless Operator/Air Gunner: Flight Lieutenant I G Evans
Flight Engineer: Flight Sergeant G J Castleton
Rear Gunner: Flight Sergeant L H Rollingson
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Added by: Alan Brigham - www.hullwebs.co.uk

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