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Part two of an edited oral history interview with Mr. John Crawley conducted by Jenny Ford on behalf of Bedford Museum.

Roof Spotter
“I started working at an engineering firm called Howard and Dennis just off the Ampthill Road in Bedford. There was a national scheme because so much time was being lost to enemy aircraft in fact the Germans did it deliberately. They’d send aircraft out at night just to fly at random over England causing all the air raid sirens to go, knowing that it would dislocate the work force and all the factories were shut down until the ‘All Clear’ sounded. So a scheme came out and it applied in the daytime as well as at night because in those days, even though it was wartime not all the firms worked nights, there were only a few from what I can recall. So in the daytime they had what they called a ‘roof spotter’. There was a kind of observation post up on the roof of a factory and this would be connected to the Observer Corp Head Quarters. And even though the town sirens might have sounded, as soon as that happened then as ‘roof spotter’ it was my job to go up on the roof and man the post. If a German aircraft was seen to be making a direct approach to Bedford, in other words it was going to over fly the town, then they would communicate with the ‘roof spotters’. We would be warned - then we would give a ‘crash dive warning’ where the people underneath us in the factory had to take shelter immediately. Not the usual strolling along to the air raid shelter but they had get the hell out of it quick, because in a matter of minutes there could be a bomb coming down. So that was a ‘crash dive warning’ and by doing that of course nine times out of ten we didn’t even get an aircraft. The town sirens might have gone but there was no indication that there was an aircraft coming towards us because the sirens would sound if there were an aeroplane within 20 miles or so. It might not be heading this way at all but automatically the sirens would be sounded for general safety but with this scheme it would only be ‘danger imminent’ - so I was the ‘roof spotter’ at this particular Works.

It saved a lot of working time, it was a national thing and of course that defeated the object of German aeroplanes just flying around. Because in any case they didn’t do that for too long because the RAF was getting more and more efficient and if anybody that felt like strolling around England in the daytime was soon dealt with. But certainly they did the same thing at night, I mean they sent aeroplanes over just to dislocate everything, keep people awake, just to affect factories that were working nights and so on.

It was strange the bombing raid on Ashburnham Road. (23rd July 1942). The one time when I could have most probably sounded ‘crash dive warning’ for the firm we didn’t have an air raid warning! The air raid warning went more or less as the aeroplane dropped its bombs. I suppose it was about twenty to nine in the morning and I’d just cycled in ready to start work at quarter to nine. I was just putting my bicycle away and I looked up and I saw this aeroplane come out of the cloud, drop four bombs and then disappeared flying very low. I thought, gosh, that is the one occasion when I could have given a ‘crash dive warning’ to the workforce and I wasn’t even on duty. There we go! The Germans didn’t co-operate and didn’t come over at the time when we were available!

But it was interesting really because this particular aeroplane had taken off from an airfield in Holland, I don’t quite know the pronunciation, but it’s something like Gilze-risen. He’d flown across and come in over the Wash, followed the new cut out of the Bedford river until he let down and picked up the London and North Eastern Railway which is now of course the old East coast main line. He followed that nearly to Biggleswade where he did a turn to starboard, a U turn which then brought him in on a heading straight for what people thought was the target and that was the railway station but the actual target was W. H. Allen’s. Everybody automatically, ‘Oh, he was after the railway station’ well of course the Luftwaffe couldn’t have cared two hoots about the railway because they were of no real importance and any bombed railway line can be repaired and put back into traffic within a matter of hours. So he was actually after W. H. Allen’s who were employed on Naval contracts. In fact I think I can go so far as to say that there wasn’t a ship in the Royal Navy or anybody else’s Navy for that matter that hadn’t got some component that had been manufactured by W. H. Allen’s. They really were highly involved in making parts and engines, particularly marine engines. So that was his target and I think that was the nearest he ever came. At Cardington they used to fly the barrage balloons and I think this occasion was the nearest that they ever had a German aeroplane come in. But he knew Cardington, he knew where the balloons where because they were all clearly marked on the Luftwaffe maps. But he circumvented those and came in, dropped his bombs and then went off and went back on a reciprocal heading back to Holland.

The Germans never, only in the very early days when the Blitz was on in daylight did they come over when they thought they could kind of put on a tremendous show of two or three hundred aeroplanes flying in formation. Of course once we’d got the fighters, sufficient fighters, they became cold turkey. So the general plan eventually was that they resorted to flying just mostly at night. In daylight they would come over on a bad weather day and as I say the cloud base was probably down to 1500 feet so he was flying under cloud. Once he’d dropped his bombs he’d go back into the safety of the clouds and then return back to his Base.

Thurleigh — Base 111
111 that’s their number, every American Base had a number and Thurleigh I think was the biggest of the American Bases and it was used I think longer than any other Base. Speaking from memory I know they moved in, in September 1942 and I believe it was de-activated around about December 1945 although they did keep flying for a while because they were involved in the re-mapping of Europe. After a while they moved out of Thurleigh and took up a Base on the Continent to continue this re-mapping work.

Father, as I mentioned was Commandant of the Special Mobile Police, he’d been up to London on business by train and coming back he was in a compartment with an American Officer, some Colonel. They got very friendly chatting in the train because a train journey then wasn’t forty five minutes it was more like an hour and a half to an hour and three quarters if you were lucky. Anyway he brought him home for a drink and he saw all the model aircraft I’d got and I was talking aeroplanes to him and from memory I think I knew more about the Fortress than he did even though he flew them! I didn’t know about the actual flying of it but I knew about the specification and we had great conversation. Then he said, ‘If you can get over to Thurleigh’ he said, ‘I can get you a trip in a B17. So if you can get over there!’ I said, ‘Well, when can that be?’ ‘Oh, anytime you like, how about tomorrow?’ So I said, ‘Oh, that’s fine.’ So I cycled over to Thurleigh and reported where I had been told to report and lo and behold I managed to fly. Of course he did say come in your ATC uniform because with uniform on it was no problem at all. Not that that was a great deterrent because security at the American Base compared with the RAF Base was so easy. I don’t say they were lax but they were a bit more sensible, they weren’t quite so tight on it. I know the Americans, or the Yanks used to get their girlfriends over and I’ve seen them taking their girlfriends for a flight if they’ve been up on an engine test! The girl has illegitimately got aboard and flown with them and I’m not talking about one or two it was quite a few that had that pleasure.

So I started going out to the Base and then of course having done that I was all the more keener and as time went on I joined the Royal Observer Corp so I went over in my Royal Observer Corp uniform. In fact I took a number of other members of the Royal Observer Corp with me, one at a time to enjoy the experience. Oh, I’ve something like over one hundred hours flying as a passenger in wartime aircraft in the hopes that I could build up enough hours to convince the medical authorities that I was fit enough to join the RAF. Because having a double curvature of the spine when I went along for my medical I was politely shown the door in double quick time. So I thought, well if I can get my flights logged it might help me. I’ve still got my log book. In my log book I’ve got Bob Hope’s autograph, Francis Langford and Gerry Colona, all who came to the Base.

In fact on one occasion I flew in an aeroplane which was called ‘Princess Elizabeth’ and I’ve got a photograph of me standing there in front of it. The next day the King and Queen and Princess Elizabeth (6th July 1944) were coming over to name this aeroplane, it was a public relations exercise with the Americans. The Yanks thoroughly enjoyed it to have the British Royal Family come on Base — everyone of them seemed really inspired by it — so it was a good exercise. But I was most surprise - because I managed to get in on the background to see what was happening and I was amazed to see that the aeroplane that I had flown in the previous day as ‘Princess Elizabeth’ had had the name removed and was now called ‘Rose of York’! And I said, ‘What’s the idea of that?’ I said, ‘I flew in that aeroplane yesterday and it was ‘Princess Elizabeth’.’ They said, ‘Yes, but the higher ups suddenly realised that if the Germans shot her down it would give them a publicity coup. Then they could tell the world that they had shot down the ‘Princess Elizabeth’ the special aircraft belonging to the King and Queen’s eldest daughter so they thought if they change the name to ‘Rose of York’ (which she was in effect) it wouldn’t give them a publicity opportunity.’ So that’s why they changed her name. But that aeroplane was actually shot down on 3rd February 1945 over Berlin with the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ reporter Guy Byam on board. He was doing an ‘on the spot recording’, but he was doing it on a live raid in that aeroplane and he failed to come back. So ‘Rose of York’ did go down in the end.

You know anybody flying the number of hours I did out there is bound to have some fun and games and I was no exception, I thoroughly enjoyed it! The great thing is you are never frightened at the time, you always look back afterwards and think, ‘my God’. The one really hairy episode I remember, we were taking off in a B17 that had just had a new engine put in and she was on an engine test, the engine had been basically run in but she was on a flight to air test the engine. I think we were using runway 00 which points, from memory, points in a north westerly direction, why that particular runway because it wasn’t the longest runway but anyway we were using it according to the wind I suppose. I was standing behind the Pilot and Co-Pilot and I was amazed to suddenly to see - we were hurtling along the runway still stuck firmly on the ground - I was amazed to see the Pilot and Co-Pilot both putting their feet up on what you would call the dash board and trying to pull the control column back which in the end with tremendous effort they succeeded on doing. Afterwards it transpired that some idiot had left the ‘automatic pilot’ switched on and that was switched on for ‘straight and level flight’ and they had to over power it before they could get the aeroplane off the ground! I do remember at the time thinking, oh, we are on the right runway for this because just off to the near side, the left hand side about a quarter of a mile from the runway is the Thurleigh bomb dump where they store all the bombs! I thought that is the right direction to go to have a forced landing! But as I say at the time you don’t think anything of it but looking back I realise the seriousness of it all.

It would be a full crew for the aircraft tests. The Pilot would usually take his old crew along because it would be general training as well. There’d be the Pilot, Co-Pilot, the Flight Engineer, Bomb Aimer, Navigator, Wireless Operator and Gunners, a total crew of ten.�

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