大象传媒

The big question was,鈥� to which squadron would we be posted. The U-boat activity in the Atlantic was disastrous. Coastal Command aircraft were based at several places such as Tiree to cover the North Atlantic approaches, Some were based in the south of England to cover the areas south of Ireland. Rumour suggested that a squadron was to be based in South America to cover the southern and central Atlantic. Hopefully that could be for us! At least, we were all convinced that we did not want a posting to Gibraltar where, we were told, the great problem was getting airborne off the short runway with a full bomb load. We were also aware that returning aircrew told of the difficulty of maintaining a straight take off in times of strong winds as the wind direction changed as it bounced off the north front of the rock halfway down the runway. So, news was received with some misgivings that, in fact, we were posted to 233 squadron based at Gibraltar. The home base was Gosport, where I had initially gone, after I had volunteered, some 20 months previously.
Unfortunately, all the pilot and navigator pairs who trained together at OTU were separated. I have never appreciated any logical reason for this although the prime intention was to mix up the nationalities of the individual crews. I lost 鈥淪tinkie鈥� Muise, who was from Lancashire, and was teamed up with a Canadian, Roy Cunningham. As all Canadian pilots and navigators were always commissioned this meant that we did not have the opportunity for fellowship and activity in the same mess. He was in the Officer鈥檚 mess whilst I was in the Senior NCO鈥檚 mess together with our Wireless
Operator. Jack Reid, a New Zealander, and a mad French Canadian Rear Gunner, by the name of 鈥淐O鈥� Simpson.
On November 8th we all met together at Gosport where Hudson 鈥淛鈥� Johnnie was allocated to us. It was powered by two Wright Cyclone radial engines and had been one of the first to have been flown directly across the Atlantic rather than being shipped across. We were told that it was quite economical on fuel but realised that that could signal too lean a fuel mixture which could lead to overheating. We were kitted out with white shirts, khaki battle dress top, trousers and tropical kit, including the ever famous pith helmet. Quite why we needed a pith helmet we were not aware but I suppose they were probably left over from First World War stocks and they had to get rid of them to someone! (The World War one soldiers had always said that they were for p鈥︹��. in!). We were issued with a revolver and six rounds of ammunition and an Arab 鈥� Ghoolie Chit鈥�.
This, we were advised, must always be carried so that, if you came down in the North African desert you could present it to any Bedouin Arabs. The chit, in English and Arabic asked the Arabs not to harm you but to take you to the nearest British or American forces and they would be well rewarded. I often wondered, anticipating the level of education to which the Bedouins were likely to have been exposed, what would happen if they could not read?
On November 18th we took off from Gosport, destination Portreath, in Cornwall, from where we would take off for Gibraltar. As we headed westwards I noticed long streaks of oil streaming from the starboard engine. The vision of an 8 hour trip with such a loss of oil was not acceptable so we put down at Exeter airfield from where American Flying Fortresses were operating. Being an American base we had hopes that they might be able to service our Hudson and get us on the way again. Whilst we were waiting for repairs we meandered round Exeter and, on one morning, we took the bus down to Exmouth; all 4 of us were standing on the quay admiring the view when a police constable marched up to us and asked us to accompany him to the police station. For why, we asked, but he did not respond except to say 鈥� please follow me鈥�. To the police station we went and we were questioned as to why we had R A F hats and blue flashes and chevrons on khaki uniform. Maybe they thought that we were German spies who didn鈥檛 realise that the RAF uniform was blue? Except to say that we were stationed at Exeter airbase we could not say much; however our identity cards seemed to satisfy them to some degree and we were free to go.
One day, whilst we were waiting for the repairs to our aircraft, stands out as a day of horror. As we stood by our aircraft we watched as a returned Fortress was cleaned up. The remains of one of their gunners was, literally, shovelled out of the blister turret. All we could do was turn round and spew up our last meal.
News came; we must fly up to Kemble where there was an American maintenance base. 鈥淏ut鈥�, we said, 鈥淲e have only one engine鈥�. Response, 鈥淔ly up on one engine or wait here for we know not how long until a replacement engine arrives鈥�. At that time Exeter airfield was rather like the contour of an upturned saucer. We drained off a lot of fuel to lighten the load and decided to go. On November 25th we started to take off uphill and then hoped to speed up on the last bit downhill! We staggered up the hill, just one engine with the throttle fully open through the gate and hoped for the best. Halfway down the downward slope we started to lift off and made it to Kemble. Reception was somewhat frosty. They had enough to do without having to worry about a Royal Air Force plane, a reconnaissance one at that. Reluctantly mechanics had a go at the oil leak and the next day we did a test flight. My log book shows that we stayed up for only ten minutes; oil was pouring out, the engine was worse than ever. So we settled down for what looked like being a long wait. We went into Cirencester but found little to do, so Roy and I set off to hitch a lift to Cheltenham from where we took a train to Sheffield and home for the weekend. On the Sunday night we returned, by train, to Cheltenham from where we hoped to get a lift back to Kemble. There were not many cars on the road so we walked several miles before, at last, we did get a lift.
The advice we now received was to fly to the very large American maintenance unit at Burtonwood, near Warrington. On 1st December we flew there and left the aircraft in, what we hoped would be, the capable hands of some very pleasant American mechanics. 鈥淲e do not repair engines here鈥�, they said, 鈥渨e put new ones on鈥�! The only problem, they didn鈥檛 have a Wright Cyclone; but, not to worry, they would have one in a couple of week鈥檚 time! During this period we were completely in the hands of the United States Air Force, the Royal Air Force maintenance unit having given us an appropriate signal to that effect. We got to know Warrington like the back of our hands; we went to the cinema and saw the new film 鈥淕one With The Wind鈥� amongst other things.

There was another problem, however; as we were virtually in the hands of the U S A F we were not receiving our usual monthly pay and we were running short of money! We had not been paid since we left Gosport on November 18th and, in those days you did not have a bank cheque account. December 14th; we received the message, 鈥淵our aircraft is ready and you can arrange to leave.鈥� So on the 15th we headed back, now with two very good engines, to Kemble where we had left a lot of our baggage, the radio and other equipment which had been taken out to lighten our load whilst we were traversing the country on one engine.
All was reassembled, the Christmas season was fast approaching, we were away from home and base and had visions of picnicking somewhere on Christmas Day, December 25th. We did a 20 minute test flight and before the engines had time to cool decided to do our briefing and head straight down to Portreath, with the hope of flying that night, Christmas Eve, to Gibraltar, to arrive on the Squadron in time for the Christmas celebrations. Fate was against us. There was heavy fog in Cornwall that night. We stood down; Roy, Jack and I went to have a sleep whilst our air gunner, 鈥淐 O 鈥�, as we called him, went into the mess. At about 5.00am we were called to be ready for take off. We found 鈥淐O鈥�, somewhat the worse for drink. We virtually poured him on to the aircraft, laid him down near the gun turret, and took off. This flight of some 8 hours and 5 minutes was to be my longest navigational exercise and we started off flying in heavy cloud, with occasional flashes of lightning to the west of us. This was not conducive to taking either drift reading on the sea, (it was dark in any case) or star shots, so initially we had to rely on the wind velocity information given at briefing by the meteorological officer. That had been some 10 hours previously and, once daylight arrived and the skies had cleared I found that the drift we were experiencing was much different from what had been forecast. It seemed probable that we were too far to the west, so the course was changed to a south-easterly direction. We did not want to make landfall off either Spain or Portugal but required to head in towards the Straits of Gibraltar. Panic was beginning to set in as we thought we should be approaching landfall just south of Cadiz. Still there was only sea and still more sea when, at last, in the murk ahead, we glimpsed land. Instead of being a coastline running in a northwest to southeast alignment it was northeast to southwest. Immediately we realised this was the African coast of Morocco. With much joy we turned to port and after about 15 minutes saw the Straits before us. A sigh of relief; as our fuel gauges were showing well down into all four red markers on the gauges, (we had four fuel tanks, two in each wing), I folded away the chart and we turned to starboard through the Straits, passing Tarifa point on the portside and there, ahead of us, was the Rock of Gibraltar. Whilst we were experiencing this flight, CO had been terribly sick, in the Elsan toilet fortunately, and vowed that he would not drink alcohol again until he got back to England.
We landed at about 2.00pm and parked the aircraft; we were taken straight to the mess before debriefing but there was little left of the Christmas meal. From memory I think we had Soya sausages, potatoes, baked beans and fruit.

The next part of this story can be found at: a5389725

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