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In 1941 I was a Wireless Operator / Air Gunner stationed at RAF Shallufa on No. 37 Wellington Bomber Squadron. On 23rd, May 1941 our crew (Harris,Malpas,Norcross,Langley Helyar,McCall) with five other Wellington crews, were detailed to bomb Maleme in Crete, which had been taken by the Germans. Due to last minute changes to targets , bomb and fuel loads , our fuel had been adjusted and we had just sufficient to reach the target in Crete and return to base. Unfortunately ,our calculations were upset by an unforecast very strong tailwind, cloud cover along the route and over the target and since navigation at that time was mainly by 'dead reckoning', we overshot the target by a considerable margin. When the navigator realised the problem ,it was obvious that we would not have enough fuel on the return to reach the Egyptian coast let alone base . Nevertheless, we set course for the coast and en route jettisoned the bomb load. We eventually spotted a convoy of ships being escorted by a cruiser and I fired the colours of the day for recognition . By means of the Aldis lamp, I asked the cruiser for our position . George Harris, our captain, having got this information, then decided to put the aeroplane down as close to the ships as possible in the hope that they would be able to pick us up.

We made an excellent landing on the sea, which proved to be extremely rough , and got out of the plane and onto the wing . We removed the dinghy from its stowage in the port engine nacelle but it had been perished by the sun and could not be inflated. I, being a weak and reluctant swimmer and not looking forward to jumping into water where my feet couldn't touch the bottom , promptly got mixed up with the trailing aerial which I had not had time to retract. I had a few exciting minutes where I was securely attached to the aircraft by a great length of stainless steel wire and was alternately sucked under the fuselage and washed out again by the tail end slapping up and down through the action of the huge wave movement. With the help of Bert and the others I managed to divest myself of the aerial and the aircraft and we all started to swim towards the ships in our Mae West life jackets. We had not been in the water long when a cheerful boat crew appeared at the top of a wave mountain , picked us up and took us to what turned out to be HMS Coventry. We were provided with dry clothes, food and rum and the Coventry crew made us very comfortable on the journey back to Alexandria. As some compensation for the immersion in the sea we spent a delightful 10 days on a houseboat on the Nile near the Gezirah sporting Club in Cairo..

A member of HMS Coventry's crew had taken some photographs of our ditched Wellington and sent these to our crew as Christmas cards. I still have the photograph and have attached a copy of it to this narrative.

Fairly recently, I contacted the secretary of the Coventry Association and he very kindly gave me copies of the *Captain's report for 23 /24 May 1941 which mentions the rescue of our crew. A copy of the relevant part of the Captain's Record for 23 / 24 th. May 1941 is as follows :-

During "stand to" the next morning , before it was properly light , the radar picked up an aircraft approaching from the direction of Crete, and apparently quite low. It appeared to be going to pass about five miles clear of us , when it suddenly altered course directly towards the convoy. I was about to order "open fire" when it fired a recognition signal, and it turned out to be an R.A.F. bomber. It circled close around the "Coventry" , asking by Aldis lamp for its position. We gave it a position, and it disappeared in the direction of the coast of Egypt, which was then only some 30 miles distant.

To my surprise , it appeared again after about ten minutes , and without making any further signal it "ditched" close alongside the "Coventry" and sank rapidly, but not before the crew escaped in a rubber dinghy.

The two frigates were on either bow of the convoy , operating their asdics with "Coventry" zig-zagging astern. I did not wish to remove a frigate from the screen , so I decided to pick up the survivors with the "Coventry". Before we could get the way off the ship we had considerably overshot the position of the rubber dinghy, and had to turn and come back to it.

When we had got the survivors out of the rubber dinghy ,the Gunnery Officer asked if he could exercise one of the four barrelled 0.5" machine guns by sinking it. As I had never seen one of these weapons in action I was interested to see how effective it could be., so I told him to get on with it but to be quick, as I was not anxious to remain stopped. I had a feeling that there may be a submarine about.

Actually the demonstration by the 0.5" machine gun was very disappointing, it took several bursts at a range of little more than a cable , to sink the rubber dinghy .They were disappointing guns , much too unhandy for close range work, and too limited in range to be effective at more distant targets.

The pilot of the aircraft informed me that they had been sent to bomb Maleme airfield which by this time was being used by the Germans.. They had got lost , and didn't know where they had dropped their bombs . After we had given them their position they had gone on for about ten miles , but not having sighted the Egyptian coast, and being down to the last few pints of fuel , had decided that they had better return to us and ditch alongside, rather than risk running out of fuel completely, before they were over Egypt.

* I learned much later that this 'extract' from the captain's report, because the Coventry was sunk in the Mediterranean some time after our ditching, is compiled from the memories of the Coventry's survivors . On the whole, I think, quite a good feat of memory .

Some years after the war , I saw a pilot I recognised as the captain of one of the five crews who were missing on the Crete raid . I asked him what had happened to him on the operation. Apparently he had experienced the same problems as we had and running short of fuel, had decided to take a chance and land on Crete and attempt to refuel the aircraft.His hopes were dashed when he discovered that all the fuel on the island had been destroyed . The crew then set fire to their aircraft and went down to the beaches and joined other RAF and Army personnel waiting in the hope of being taken off by boat. This was not to be, however, because the convoy which had saved us was composed of the last troopships to leave the island . He and his crew just had to wait with the others and were taken prisoner and they all spent the remainder of the war as guests of the Germans . What happened to the other four crews on that abortive Crete raid remains a mystery.

Looking back on the Crete raid , our crew were extremely fortunate. Up to the time we were detailed to fly to the Middle East, our captain had been Pat Field RAAF. For the flight to the Middle East our crew was captained by George Harris and we stayed with him for the tour of operations. Pat Field captained another crew on the Crete raid and he and his Wireless Operator , John Rowe, and others of his crew went missing.John Rowe signalled that they estimated to reach the Egyptian coast at 6.40 a.m. but Field's crew didn't make it and it was assumed that they had crashed or been shot down some time after the message was sent.

The ditching incident was our first operation in the Middle East but, apart from an operation when one of our Wellington's engines was put out of action over Benghazi , we managed to complete our tour of 30 operations without any major incidents.

I think we all looked forward with some trepidation to returning to the UK for further operations . I don't know what happened to my 37 Squadron crew since we were all split up on reaching England . Personnaly, I went on to train other Wireless Operators at OTUs from where I went on a couple of the so-called 'Thousand Raids' on Cologne and Essen and eventually joined another crew to complete a further tour on Stirlings and Lancasters in European operations.

As a matter of interest . I remember that at RAF Shallufa in 1941 , three American B17 Flying Fortress bombers arrived . One , I think crashed on take off, one was shot down and the remaining aircraft was still parked on the airfield when we left for England in February 1942. What were they doing there ? I may have known at the time but , at the ripe old age of 88, have forgotten !

As a footmote to my story and in the interests of history, it may be worth mentioning the 'Goldfish Club'composed of those saved by inflatable dinghy; a similar club to the 'Caterpillar Club '; survivors of life saving (silk ?) parachute jumps. Our ditched crew found that the dinghy could not be inflated because it was perished. We thought that the manufacturers might be interested in this fact and wrote to them giving an account of our experience. In return they thanked us for the information and, despite not being saved by the dinghy, made the crew members of their Goldfish Club and gave us the appropriate badges . I have still got mine which may be the only surviving symbol !

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