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In 1942 I was posted, firstly, to a place at St. Johns Wood, then to the Initial Training Wing at Babbacombe under the ‘P.N.B.’ scheme. This was a common training for pilots, navigators and air bombers. At the end of the course we passed the exams and became ‘Leading Aircraftmen’.

After Babbacombe I was posted to the Elementary Flying School at Fair Oaks, near Woking. Here I was introduced to the ‘Tiger Moth’ trainer aircraft — that beloved little biplane — in which I was able to put into practice some of the theory that I had absorbed at the Initial Training Wing. I had only ‘been up’ once before; in a ‘Magister’ during the second A.T.C. camp at Biggin Hill. It was after a ‘trial’ period that I was put on the list for pilot training across the Atlantic. After a fairly sickening cruise I arrived at Newport News, Virginia. A lengthy train ride took me right up to Monckton, New Brunswick (Canada) to a sort of reception centre. Then I went by train to the U.S.A. again — ending up as a guest of the United States Naval Air Service. This was quite an experience!

My uniform consisted of the U.S.N. khaki but with the R.A.F. forage cap. July 1943 was very hot — 85 degrees at 8 p.m. — and I sometimes felt very dozy. One week would be classes in the morning and flying in the afternoon, while the other ‘shift’ would do the opposite. And then we would ‘swap over’ — flying in the morning and classes in the afternoon. Discipline was very strict.

My flying instructor was Lt. (junior grade) McNett, U.S.N.A.S. “Wake up — Goddamit!” he would say (particularly during the a.m. flights). I preferred the aircraft to him. It was called ‘N2S-1’, ‘N2S-2’, or ‘N2S-3’ (they all looked the same to me) and were ex-fighter aircraft. Made by Boeing-Stearman, they were solidly built biplanes with radial engines. At Fair Oaks the procedure was fairly simple. A mechanic would say “Switches off”. Having assured him that this was the case I would then cry out “Suck in”. Then would ensue a sort of ‘dance’ during which the mechanic would grasp the tip of the ‘prop’ and turn it anti-clockwise — the ‘dance’ on one foot being a safety measure (in case the prop gave him one on the head) whereby he moved away as he swung. Having sucked in some fuel (that is, the engine, not him) the order would sound “Switches on — Contact!”, after which the mechanic would hold the tip of the prop and give it a swing in the other direction. With luck the engine would fire at the first attempt. With the ‘N2S’ it was not like this. The mechanic would insert a crank-rod into the appropriate hole and start winding. Then would follow a build-up of whining sound, electricity, and apprehension. “Switch on”, of course, was the same. They used to take us by coach to an airfield some miles away. This ride could make you feel sick, even if the aircraft didn’t.

Came the day that I actually went up without the reassuring presence of the man in the front cockpit. I found that I liked it. Practising landings on the airfield proved good enough. I used to lose height quite rapidly by ‘side-slipping’ perilously close to the ground before straightening out. This is achieved by banking the aircraft to, say, the left — giving right rudder so that the thing doesn’t turn left at the same time. I don’t recall actually seeing anyone else doing this trick; usually a chap would start gliding in from about a mile away.

The spin, of course, had to be mastered before you could go solo. I had had a taste of this at Fair Oaks. “Righto — now we’re going to do a left-hand spin, O.K.? Strapped well in, are we? Right, this is what we do … throttle back, stick right back…” He didn’t want to spoil it for me! One minute the sky, a moment of quiet, and suddenly, with a whoosh, the ground was dead ahead — and going round at the same time” Now you don’t feel giddy and you might be so ‘fascinated’ by the gyrations as to forget to come out of this unnatural state. I have heard of cadets ‘freezing’ on the stick.

The instructor had continued: “Right, now, keep the stick right back and apply right rudder...”. The ‘Tiggy’ had responded and the ground had stopped turning. “Now, hold it” otherwise we’ll go the other way… that’s it… keep the stick back…right, now open the throttle and ease the stick forward”. Now it was all over. Now there was a limit to my self-confidence. I just would not practise a spin when I was solo. After I had had a test under another instructor (who didn’t think I was up to standard) and a grand total of twenty-three hours solo time, I approached McNett and said I didn’t think I would make it. “Sure you will”, the nice part of him said. But I had thought of the crew that I might have one day.

I think that it was appreciated that I was saving them money by discontinuing the pilot training, and so I was permitted to transfer to Air Bomber training (the Initial Training was common to pilots, navigators and Air Bombers, and so would not be wasted). So, after only six weeks under the Stars and Stripes, I crossed the Detroit River and spent some days waiting at the R.C.A.F. station at Windsor, Ontario.

Windsor, Ontario was just a place to wait until it got through to someone that there was a ‘spare bod’ waiting for something to happen. Eventually I was moved up to a Manning Depot at Toronto. This depot consisted of some ten thousand men all waiting to go somewhere.

From Toronto I was posted to Picton, Ontario, to await a course on Bombing and Gunnery.

Bombing was done from ‘Anson’ aircraft fitted with the vector bombsights. The undercarriage had to be wound up and down — I forget how many turns, it seemed ages. Once the bombing range caught fire and I was one of the party sent out to deal with it. Perturbed by an ‘Anson’ flying around I was assured that the safest place to be was at the target. Observers on the range would take bearings of the bursts and these would be plotted on a chart. The directions in which the aircraft had been flying at the times of release were also plotted against each burst. The instructor would alter present the ‘bomb-aimer with the completed graph and indicate one’s faults: “Windspeed overset/underset”, “Air-speed overset/underset”, “Height incorrectly set”, and so on. Provided that one did the same thing on each ‘run’, the chart would show a pattern or grouping from which one’s errors could be deduced.

Gunnery was carried out from the mid-upper turret of ‘Bolingbrokes’ (the Canadian version of ‘Blenheims’) and meant a tight fit due to all the flying clothing that had to be worn. Scoring was possible due to coloured bullet holes in the target drogue except that on one occasion I managed to shoot the towing cable and so release the drogue.

After the course was over I left to go further west. The next — and final — part of my qualifying training took place at the Central Navigation School, Rivers, near Brandon, Manitoba. In case anyone thought that Air Bombers only dropped bombs, then I hasten to add that the majority of the time was spent assisting the Navigator — sextant shots, map-reading references, observations and so on (bearing in mind that the Navigator could be put out of commission on ‘ops’ in which contingency the Air Bomber would be expected to bring the kite back to base). This, then, was the place where we went a stage further than that of the Initial Training Wing.

I can recall it took three days on the train from Toronto to Brandon; there were no clouds — just monotonous blue skies. In a lesson styled ‘Reconnaissance’ I learned the names of the sea areas of Scandinavia, the names of German rivers (and their positions, of course) and odd geographical scraps.

The day came when we stood to attention in a hangar while some officer pinned our ‘B’ brevets on our tunics. The next priority was to call in at a place where — for a small fee — ladies cut the ‘propeller’ (L.A.C.) badges from our sleeves, replaced them with sergeants stripes and sewed on the brevets. At last I had achieved something!

The next thing was to get us back home. There was the long train ride to Toronto, followed by another to Halifax, Nova Scotia, from whence we sailed on the ‘Liz’ to Liverpool. Once in England I was glad to see some clouds again. Our first posting was to Harrogate. This was where we were billeted in requisitioned buildings and paraded in the street! When I got the chance I phoned home and spoke to Mum — a thing I hadn’t done for a year.

The Operational Training Unit, at Ashbourne, Derbyshire, was where I became part of a crew. While we were all twenty years old, our skipper was an old man of twenty-one. He was Dave Borrett, a Flight-Sergeant — kindly loaned by the Royal Australian Air Force. We were left to sort ourselves out in forming the crews. I have a photograph which shows a ‘Whitley’ bomber, in front of which I can see Len Hyde (rear Gunner — ‘Arry the Tail’), myself, David Borrett (Pilot — ‘Skip’), George Robinson (Navigator — ‘Robby The Brain’) and Frank Mayell (Wireless Operator — ‘The first and last hope’). We were to spend the next months together…

Nearby was a satellite airfield called Darley Moor and we spent our time here. One of the Air Bomber’s functions was to operate the front gun turret (a single Vickers gas-operated machine gun!) but there was no call for me to fire it. Another of my functions was to take aerial photographs. Somewhere I have a lot of photographs, taken at a very low level, which, when overlapped, form a good view of some town. In each photograph there is also a photograph of a clock cunningly concealed in the camera — so confirming the time that the Navigator had said we were there.

I really liked the “Whitley” — much larger than the “Anson”, although having two engines in common with it. Once I walked along the catwalk and knocked on Len’s door, asked him how he was, and took a backward look for a change. He had a power-operated turret that had four machine guns, with belts of ammunition that made my little gun look pathetic.

Over now to a place called Tilstock — the Heavy Conversion Unit and on to the ‘Stirling’ bomber. This much-maligned ‘Rolls-Royce’ of the four-engined bombers had seen better days and, due to the inability to house the aircraft in the standard ‘Bellman’ hangar, had had its wings clipped to 99’1” by which its ‘ceiling’ had been reduced. This was a very large aircraft with wheels as big as a man. It was possible to walk beneath the propellers while they were turning, without getting your head cut off. I had a new role now. On take-off and landing I had to assist the pilot with the under-carriage, flaps, and engine revolutions (effected by operation of the propeller pitch. Thus we would roar off at 2400 r.p.m. at ‘fine’ pitch, and, when Dave said, the four levers below the throttles would be adjusted so that the propeller pitch ‘coarsened’ at 1800 r.p.m. Similarly the flaps (that affected the profile of the mainplane) would have to be set — providing for ‘lift’ on take-off and ‘drag’ for landing. The undercarriage was a most complex structure in itself. A warning light would indicate that the wheels had not locked in position and there were times when we had a little concern — after all, the ‘Stirling’ was some thirty tons fully loaded. When an early landing was occasioned (due to some fault somewhere in the plane) we had to circle around for some time jettisoning thousands of gallons of fuel in order that the under-carriage would not collapse on landing. There had now been an addition to our crew — the Flight Engineer. This man had his own ‘desk’ with numerous gauges and fuel pumps, thus relieving the pilot of some of the vast array, at any rate. Unlike the original ‘Stirlings’ there was no front gun turret and no mid-upper gun turret, so we would have to hope that attacks would only come from the rear, and that Len would manage with his four-gun turret!

There came a time when we were told that we would be going to join a squadron — at last! Shepherds Grove was not too far from Bury St. Edmunds. Perhaps I should have said that I had earlier been diverted from entering Bomber Command; this, I suspected, was why I had been given so much aerial mapreading! At one time I thought I was being trained for the Tactical Air Force. What would they want with an Air Bomber who wasn’t in Bomber Command? Upon arrival at Shepherds Grove I noticed that the ‘flash’ insignia on the vehicles said ‘D/38’. What did ‘D’ stand for? (‘38’ was the Group). “Air Defence of Great Britain”, someone explained. Shortly after my arrival the ‘flashes’ were altered to ‘F/38’. Now I wondered “What is going on?”. Here I was, an Air Bomber, flying in ‘Stirling’ bombers, in FIGHTER COMMAND!

We would be required, mainly, to fly in ones or twos — dropping containers of food and ammunition for the Underground movement! There was still a lot of training. My first ‘op’ was tugging a ‘Horsa’ glider on 24th March 1945 on the ‘Rhine Crossing’.

We went, all alone, one night to drop some containers at a place in Denmark. Lying in the nose I had to try and find the ‘target’. Some light ack-ack to port was all we saw of the enemy. “What height does your meter read?”, I cried over the intercom to Dave. “Five hundred feet”, came his voice. Watching the ground rushing by (180 mph — perhaps ‘slow’ by today’s standards — was three miles per minute) I was relieved that there had been no cliff! “Knock a ‘nought’ off that”, I replied, “We’re nearly on the ground!”. Dave lifted her up and I could see more than one fire burning. It was my decision for just this moment of the flight. Thinking that the Germans may also have made a fire, and — if so — not wanting to let them have the supplies, I decided to give it a miss.

By now we still weren’t anywhere near high enough (I should have wanted about 500 feet to allow the ‘chutes to open out) and only going further into Denmark. There was a general murmur of agreement and we brought the stuff back to base. It was a pity, of course, but no-one criticised us. A fitter did, however, comfort us with the words: “That dodgy engine” (we had delayed take-off — that’s why we were alone) “We were waiting for it to pack up on you”.

On a ‘drop’ over Norway I did have the satisfaction of a success. There was the fire! But I thought they’d overshot. At base I told the Interrogation officer that I thought the containers had landed “Past the target and to the right a bit”. This information, together with the Navigator’s information on course, etc. was then radioed to the Norwegians. We were still eating our breakfast when we were told that “They’ve got them!” We knew these ‘ops’ as ‘S.O.E.’ but it was only after the war that I found out that the letters meant ‘Special Operations Executive’. Other ‘jobs’ involved ferrying the S.A.S. to Denmark (where some Germans had not appreciated that the war was over) when we actually landed for a change (at Kastrup). We also went to Stavanger and Berlin (Gatow).

My best memory is of the time we were returning home on VE Day. Thinking that we “might not have enough fuel left”, two or three of us persuaded Dave to land at Eindhoven. Of course, half the squadron must have had the same fears! Now I had brought my shoes (“in case we landed somewhere”) but Frank (the wireless operator) had not; thus he trudged around the streets of Eindhoven in his flying boots. I don’t know what the others did, but Frank and I met up with some Dutch folk who immediately took us to a little party upstairs in one of the houses. There were groups of Dutch dancing in the streets, here and there. When we were seated, the Dutch people (who now spoke in English) sang ‘God save the King’. One family put us up for the night — offering us a slice of black bread for breakfast — they hadn’t got much food. When I got home I wrote to our hosts but heard no more of them.

I finished my service as a ‘Demob’ sergeant at Hednesford, Staffordshire.

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