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PHIL MEAD'S RECOLLECTIONS OF SERVICE WITH THE RAF AND OPERATIONAL FERRYING WITH 84 GROUP SUPPORT UNIT SECOND TACTICAL AIR FORCE
Much has been written about the Battle of Britain and Bomber Command but very little mention is ever given to Transport Command and its offshoots. In 1942 I joined the RAF as a trainee pilot. Many young men like me were kitted out at Air Crew Reception Centre, St John's Wood, London and then posted to Initial Training Wing to learn about the theory of flight, engines and aircraft recognition. We then went on to Elementary Flying Training School where we learned to fly De Havilland Tiger Moths. Those with natural aptitude went solo often after eight or nine hours. Eventually we were sorted into aircrew of all categories: pilots, navigators, bomb aimers, wireless operators, engineers and air gunners. My maths was considered better than my landings so I ended up as a trainee navigator.
Pilots and navigators did their flying training abroad: some were sent to Canada and USA, some to Rhodesia and some to South Africa. In 1942 I sailed from Liverpool to South Africa aboard the P&O Strathmore in a convoy of about 45 ships. With U-boats a serious threat to our shipping, most ships were in large convoys. We arrived in Durban seven weeks later having been right out into the mid-Atlantic. Not all made it 鈥� crumps in the night and lights flashing from mastheads meant another U-boat had struck home.
My flying training was at 41 Air School East London, a two-day train journey south of Durban. We completed about 250 hours on twin-engined Avro Ansons piloted by officers of the South African Air Force. Often square search exercises were carried out over the Indian Ocean. After the passing out parade in November 1943 we sewed our navigator brevvies on our uniforms with sergeants stripes on our sleeves and then I with many others sailed back to the UK in a Castle Line ship called the Arundel Castle. This meant a dash up the east coast of Africa through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, across the Mediterranean to Port Augusta, Sicily, and home again to Liverpool by January 1944.
Expecting to go straight to Bomber Command we were disappointed to be told we had 200 hours of night flying to complete at Advanced Flying Unit, Mona, in the centre of Anglesey in North Wales. Night flying was usually over Snowdon, up to Blackpool Tower, over Chicken Rock, Bardsey Island Light and the Isle of Man. 鈥淣ow for Bomber Command,鈥� we thought. But to our surprise, in a hangar at Cowbridge near Cardiff, 24 navigators met up with 24 pilots and we were left to pair up. The pilot I paired with and flew with for the next two years was Flying Officer Brian Walker, who had a big handlebar moustache.
Our next move was to RAF Aston Down in Gloucestershire, where we were allocated Mark 1 stripped out Avro Ansons and told we were now 1311 T Flight Transport Command. It was May 1944 and our next orders were to practise flying out over the Bristol Channel and making landfall along the northern coast of Devon and Cornwall. We were still doing this when on the 6th June 1944 we heard how our combined forces had landed on the Normandy coast. The invasion had started and we were obviously going to be part of it.
Next the whole unit to flew down to Thruxton near Alton in Hampshire, where we were told that our title had now changed to 84 Group Support Unit Second Tactical Air Force and our particular job would be to transport supplies, equipment and personnel to the beachhead area in support of the Canadian Army. As soon as a beachhead had been established airstrips would be bulldozed through the Normandy fields and landing surfaces put down in the form of wire mesh. These landing strips were to be identified as B1, B2, B3 etc, and our chief navigational officer showed us their exact positions on a large-scale topographical map.
The Avro Anson had previously been used for air鈥攕ea rescue. It was a large twin-engined low-wing monoplane with an enormous glasshouse of a cockpit. It was unarmed and constructed mainly of fabric on steel tubes. It usually had a crew of five or six, but all the interior seating had been stripped out with the exception of pilot and second pilot seats. I sat next to Brian and did my navigating by map reading and plotting on my knees. We always flew alone rather than in flights as this would have made us too obvious to the enemy. The first thing I had to do on take off was to wind up the under carriage, which took 195 turns.
Flying out over the channel meant there were no fixes so we relied mainly on a drift recorder to measure the angle between the course indicated by the direction of the aircraft and the track actually made good. Course, track and wind make up the triangle of velocities and air speed, ground speed and wind speed can all be calculated. The drift recorder was sighted on the white caps on the sea. We always flew at 2000 feet with an air speed of about 140 knots and in addition to the usual RAF roundels we had large black and white stripes painted on the wings to make identification easy. The upper part of the aircraft was camouflaged in green and brown and the underside in duck egg blue, which we hoped would make us invisible to the enemy.
The Normandy Landings had been successful and the coast between the Cherbourg peninsular and Bayeaux had been secured. The British held beaches were known as Gold and Sword, the Canadians held Juno and the Americans held beaches known as Omaha and Utah; but even after two weeks little advance had been made inland and the Germans still held Caen.
My first operational ferrying flight was to B2 close to Isigny. Our Anson took a long time to get airborne as she was so heavy with crates of military equipment. We set course almost due south, 200 degrees magnetic, from the point of Selsey Bill. In just over 30 minutes we could make out the beaches at the base of the peninsular and were surprised to see so much shipping just off shore, with each vessel flying its own barrage balloon. B2 was not very clear, being a strip across what had been a field of potatoes, but we circled and landed as we had been warned on to a narrow metal strip of wire mesh. Just as we were coming into land I saw a soldier blown ten feet into the air 鈥� he had obviously trodden on a land mine. While the plane was unloading, I noticed Colorada beetle on the potato plants surrounding the runway. This was considered a scourge in England and there were posters on every railway platform telling us to report the beetle if seen. So I reported it to my CO but he was too busy fighting a war to worry about beetles! To fly back to the UK I had to start the two large radial engines of the Anson manually when there was no starting trolley available on the landing strips. This meant I had to insert a very large starting handle above my head to turn over the rather sluggish radial engines.
Brian and I made daily sorties to the landing strips on the beaches. Because the strips were close to the front line, which moved back and forth daily, we were all issued with khaki battle dress as our air force blue was too much like German army field grey. We also were issued with revolvers and flying boots called 鈥榚scape boots鈥� whose tops tore off to leave black shoes. We had compasses in collar studs, maps of Europe printed on silk scarves and whistles hanging from our collars. On one occasion we were waiting for our plane to be unloaded when a Canadian Bren gun carrier growled to a halt beside the Anson and the soldiers in it shouted across to us: 鈥淵ou Brits have been bombing our guys鈥�. We were then forcibly persuaded to join the Canadians on a recce into the centre of Caen. We were dumped off in a central square which was under mortar fire from the Germans. Having been told we would be collected later Brian and I took shelter in a circular open-air pissoir. Fortunately the Canadians kept their word and we were returned to our plane some hours later 鈥� it had not been a nice experience.
Although the Allies had gained virtually complete control of the skies by this time, German planes occasionally flew over the Beaches area dropping leaflets showing dead Tommies floating in the sea followed by the words: 鈥淵ou are caught like rats in a trap. Surrender now.鈥�
Caen was eventually taken by the Allies and then the British Army headed northeast. The Canadians made a central advance through Vimoutiers and the American forces pushed forward further south. Flights became longer and landings were made on decent airfields in places like Lille, Ghent Einhoven and Antwerp. On one flight we were fired on by German ack-ack from positions inside Dunkirk, which had become an isolated pocket of resistance. On another occasion fairly near the Leopold Canal a sinister looking small black high-wing monoplane, which was a German Fiesler Storch reconnaissance aircraft, came up and made circles round us. We could see the pilot in a black leather helmet with goggles and as he was waving his pistol at us we pulled out our .38 revolvers and waved them back. Whereupon he flew down to a lower level and disappeared from view.
The advance of the Allies through France, Belgium, Holland and into Germany had not been quick. The Americans under General Hodges crossed the Rhine and the British forces commanded by General Montgomery were delayed crossing the bridges at Arnhem. By now our duties had grown to taking 35 Wing replacement pilots to wherever they were based with their Typhoon fighter bombers and tank busting rockets. Often it was too late to return to the UK, so we carried a tent to enable us to stay overnight. Lunch packs were provided with cornedbeef sandwiches and cake, toilet facilities in the air were limited, comprising a large funnel at the rear of the aircraft. We always looked for a NAAFI or Salvation Army tea van whenever we landed.
We had come so far into Germany that our base had been moved to permanent buildings on a German airfield at Celle near Hanover in Saxony. It was here on the 8th of May 1945 that we heard that Germany had surrendered. Our title was changed to 84 Group Communications Squadron with the British Army Forces of Occupation and we flew personnel on leave to England, Paris and Brussels. On the 2nd September 1945 victory was declared against Japan and that evening flying with an Australian pilot we crashed upside down across a ploughed field in a small light aircraft called an Auster 鈥� but that鈥檚 another story. Occasionally I navigated our CO Air Commodore McDonald in his Mosquito from Celle to Northolt using the G Radar navigational aid.
Eventually all good things come to an end. On August bank holiday 1946 I was demobbed. It was a sad moment as I threw my escape boots on one pile and my Irvin jacket on another and changed into my tweed demob suit. My flying logbook showed that I had completed over 1200 hours of operational flying, mostly in Ansons.
I was back in Normandy for the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation and there was not a single village that did not have a celebration. Huge banners were strung across high streets saying 鈥淲elcome to our Liberators鈥�, and you could follow the progress of the liberation of Normandy with the dates of towns and villages celebrations. 50th anniversary commemorative medals were struck and I was one of the many veterans of the campaign who received theirs from the President of Lower Normandy during the summer of 1994.

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