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flyable,! certainly owe my life to” this factor. As well as flak holes, there were sometimes unexploded incendiary bombs embedded in our wings-and this is where our fuel tanks were!. This was the result of flying through an incendiary shower dropped by Lanes flying above us at about 20,000ft.These would be removed by our gallant ground crew -of whom I cannot speak too highly. They did a great job keeping our aircraft in first class condition whatever the previous nights battle damage had been. They waved us off, and were there waiting for us to bring "their” aircraft home. Our CO-Gus Walker-later to become Sir Gus Walker, would also wave us off from beside the runway. He would stand there with cookhouse staff-who always waved us off-with the crew list in his hand, and as each plane started its run down the runway, he would run beside it, waving to the crew. And he would be waiting in the briefing room when we Returned, and chat to each crew. He was popular with the crews, who| he called "my boys".He had flown quite a few ops but had to stop flying when he severely damaged a hand in a ground incident involving exploding bombs. He died a few years ago, but his wife Lady Walker still attends 102 Squadron reunions
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The cold could also caused problems for crews, it was not unusual for the air temperature to be-20C,and ice would build up on the wings of the aircraft, often adding weight, and making the plane difficult to fly, and sometimes causing it to crash. The crews had little protection against the cold, and on one occasion when we were returning through the Alps from Turin, my oxygen tube froze solid, cutting off my supply of oxygen. The crew became aware of this, because I had switched on my intercom and was singing into my mike!!(This was due to me being starved of oxygen which has a similar affect to drinking too much alcohol)The skipper sent the flight engineer to my turret to see what the problem was. On finding my oxygen tube solid with ice, he went back into the fuselage and returned with a flask of hot coffee, he removed my mask and poured coffee into it, and this quickly thawed the ice in the tube, enabling me to breathe the oxygen vital to survival at 18000ft.I was; so starved of oxygen that I was hardly aware of what was happening, the quick thinking of the engineer surely saved my 1 if el.- another of my nine lives gone!
I
Search lights' of course caused problems, on many ops our plane would be lit by one as it swept the sky, but in March 43 when on our way to Munich, we were locked onto by a blue beam-these were radar controlled from the ground, and referred to as master search lights- immediately it illuminated us several other search lights locked onto us, and the skipper took violent evasive action, how he could see his instruments I do not know, as so intense was the light from the beams that I was completely blinded. We seemed to be held for ages, but it was maybe a couple of minutes before we were out of the beam, so violent had our evasive action been, that the gyro in the compass toppled, and we had to abort our op and return to base. The engineer thought that at one stage the skipper had rolled the Halifax onto its back, we still had our full bomb load aboard during these manoeuvres, and back at base we landed with them aboard,! cant recall just why we did not jettison them We were lucky that night, as usually when a plane is caught by a master beam, fighters come in and shoot it down, whilst the crew is disorientated..To fly with another crew as an "odd bod" was something that I was not keen on doing, so many of my colleagues had failed, to return from such ops.But on about three occasions, for various reasons,! flew as an odd bottle one that comes to mind was when a Wing Co was flying an op,and did not have a crew of his own as he seldom flew on ops 1!When he did he selected experienced men from other crews for the trip, and I was detailed to fly as his tail gunner. It was to Essen,! had been before and knew it was a heavily defended target. The flight to the target was normal, with the usual attention from flak searchlights and fighters, but when we reached Essen, he seemed reluctant to leave! We started a normal bombing run through heavy flak with bomb doors open - always a venerable situation- the bomb aimer doing his usual drill directing the pilot to our aiming point, the rest of us waiting to hear him say "bombs gone" and feel the pilot put the nose down and head away from the target, but in the midst of our bombing run the pilot told the bomb aimer that he was not happy with our run and we would go round again and make another run, so the bomb doors were closed, and we flew a circuit around Essen -which was well alight- and came in for a second time, again the bomb doors were opened and the bomb run began again and to our "dismay" the skipper again aborted it, and again we were taken over the blazing city and the AA gunners were very active. So for a third time we made a bombing run by now we all felt very ^separable and that we were pushing our luck. This time the skipper was satisfied, and our bombs were released into the inferno below.! had on occasions made two runs across a target, but never three., and it had then been the bomb aimers decision to go round again, as he and not the pilot was in the best position to see if our aiming point could
be hit.
I
We finished our tour with a trip to the steel works at Bohemia routine one as ops went, but we were all very much aware that it was not unusual for a crew to be lost on their last power were an experienced crew, but many an experienced crew went for a Burton. But we made it, and the following day we left 102 squadron, and went on leave.
None of us were to meet again for many years.! met our skipper
again in 1965.The Company who I worked for sent me on a seminar
in London, and there we met again. It was during dinner in the
evening when there was suddenly a shout of"Jimmy"and there a few
seats away was George. We had a few drinks together that
evening, and talked of our squadron days. Others at the seminar were
interested in us meeting again after 20 years, and being too young
to have been in WW2 were interested in our reminiscing, and if we
had accepted all the drinks offered us, we would not have survived
the evening. We found that we lived about 8 miles from each other
and met regularly until he died whilst playing golf in 1993.Five
years ago after a lot of research I tracked down an engineer who
flew with us several times, and a pilot I knew on 102,{and we and
our wives meet at the RAF Museum or Duxford a couple of times a
year. '
At the end of leave I had to report to RAF Topcliffe again, this time to be trained as an Air Gunner Instructor. We flew in Blenheim bombers, and spent time in the classroom learning instruction techniques.lt was similar to my original Air Gunners course. With emphasis on imparting knowledge to others. I enjoyed the course and passed as an Air Gunner Instructor, and was posted to No 4 Air Gunnery School at Morpeth in Northumberland. Here we were kept very busy teaching trainee air gunners in the skills of air gunnery.lt involved much blackboard work in the classroom, as well as flying in Ansons,and firing at drogues towed by Lysanders.We flew from 7am to 7pm during the summer, some days flying ten 40 minutes trips a day. I got to know some of the Anson pilots very well. They would take off with 3 trainees and myself aboard, and let me fly the aircraft to the firing range and back. I really enjoyed this-our Halifax pilot had taught each of our crew to fly the plane, when on air tests etc he would have ion of us in the 2nd pilots seat and let us to take over, under his1 instruction flying the plane straight and level and turning onto land flying a course. Some other pilots did this too, the reason being that in the event of the pilot being injured, another crew member could fly the aircraft home, and the crew then bale out, The plane would of course be sacrificed, but the crew live to fight another day. The pilots taught me to stall turn the Anson, great fun the G was terrific, the pupils enjoyed it too..
I enjoyed this posting, but I wanted to leave Training Command, and return to Squadron life and ops.but they would not release me. Instead I was sent to RAF Mamby in Lincolnshire on a Gunnery Leaders course. This was done on Vickers Wellingtons and Blenheim and on successful completion of the 2 month course I was posted as Gunnery Leader to No 11 Air Gunnery School at Andreas on the Isle Of Man.
Here I organised the ground and air training of groups of 60 UT Air Gunners. They stayed for 12 weeks training, most of them passed the course, were presented with their brevet, and went to OTU,and then onto Squadrons,- I wonder how many survived the war then another 60 trainees would arrive. The aircraft used for training were again Ansons,and the drouge towing aircraft were Martinets, a single engine gull winged plane, in which I would scrounge a flight on 7am checks on the weather. I could have made it a desk job, but I flew whenever I could, often in tljie Anson’s,! had joined the RAF to get into the air, not sit at a desk. I again requested to return to ops,but again they would not release me...
The rest of my 102 crew did return to ops,again in Halifaxs,but Halifax’s B MK3,a much superior aircraft to our MK 2.They went to a Path Finder squadron and did second tour I 1
So I remained at Andreas until I was demobbed at RAF Uxbridge in August 1946.
I enjoyed life in the RAF,especially on the squadron, the adrenalin flow was terrific, and nothing has matched it since, civil flying is very tame, but I did enjoy flying on Concorde, but flying on ops in a Halifax really was flyingl1!!

102 SQUADRON RAF POCKLINGTON. AIRCRAFT HALIFAX MKll.
DATE. TARGET.
i 6-11-42 "GARDENING"FRESIAN ISLANDS,DROPPING
MINES INTO SHIPPING LANES FROMlsOOFT.
i
16-11-42 GENOA - FIAT FACTORY |
i
26-11-42 "GARDENING"FRESIAN ISLANDS-AS ABOVE.
2-12-42 FRANKFURT-BMW FACTORY.
6-12-42 MANHEIM-MERCEDES FACTORY.
9-12-42 TURIN-FIAT FACTORY.
11-12-42 TURIN-FIAT FACTORY.
20-12-42 DUISBERG-INDUSTRIAL AREA.
2-2-43 COLOGNE-INDUSTRIAL AREA.
13-2-43 LORIENT-DOCKS.
14-2-43 COLOGNE-INDUSTRIAL AREA. [
i
16-2-43 LORIENT - DOCKS. |
i
18-2-43 WILHELMSHAVEN - DOCKS. j
19-2-43 WILHELMSHAVEN - DOCKS. |
5-3-43 ESSEN-KRUPPS FACTORY.
8-3-43 . NUREMBERG-INDUSTRIAL AREA.
9-3-43 MUNICH-INDUSTRIAL AREA.
11-3-43 STUTTGART-INDUSTRIAL AREA.
26-3-43 DUISBURG-INDUSTRIAL AREA.
27-3-43 BERLIN-INDUSTRIAL AREA.
29-3-43 BERLIN-INDUSTRIAL AREA.
3-4-43 ESSEN-KRUPPS FACTORY. |
i
4-4-43 KIEL-DOCK YARD. j
i
10-4-43 FRANKFURT-BMW FACTORY. j
.,.----..-..- ® (
i
13-5-43 BOCHUM-STEEL WORKS '
THERE ARE ABOUT 10 MORE "TRIPS" TO ADD TO THIS LIST,
AFTER I HAVE RESEARCHED THEM AT THE PRO AT KEW.

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