Australians at War Film Archive

Well I was born in a house called Westwood in Hanson Street, Hamilton. On the date of my birth, the second of the second, 1919.

I, we lived there for a period of I suppose about ten or twelve years before we built a house in Hamilton South and I grew up from there on. And that was about ten years after I was born there. I went to school at Hamilton Primary School, which was just up the hill from where I lived.

After that I went to Newcastle Boys High, which was up on the hill at Newcastle, before they moved it to Waratah. I go the Intermediate Certificate, did reasonably well. Went on to fourth year, and I'd always been very keen on drawing. That was my hobby I suppose.

and I was [(UNCLEAR)] thinking a bit about what I was going to do and of course it was the Churchill thing that the eldest son would take over the father’s business, but that was what they had. But I prevailed on my father to let me leave high school and enrol in the Newcastle art school. And after much humming and ahing, he finally agreed,

provided I got a diploma there. So I did. And for the next three or four years I was an art student.

Well, I'd have been about, that’s a good one, I suppose about sixteen.

Well my father had a furniture business in Hunter Street.

He was a very well known public man. He was an alderman of the council, Newcastle’s council. He was patron of the [(UNCLEAR)]. He was head of the surf life saving association. And cricket, and everything. And he was a very, very public spirited man. And he was very well known and he was a famous, well, famous for his

Newcastle historia and he, his passion was writing about the history of Newcastle, Maitland, Hunter Valley, anywhere like that and then we built the house in Dumeresq Street we had a big [(UNCLEAR)] between the house and the back of the house was a billiard room, specially built, and a garage off one end. And the big billiard table up there. And that was his room,

had about a wall of females and others. But as the years went on the billiards fell aside and it became a repository for people who say, “What’ll we do with this?” He'd say give it to [(UNCLEAR)] girl to look after. I remember on the billiard table there was a full scale makers model of [(UNCLEAR)] Jane which is now in the public library in Newcastle.

thing for the billiard table. So that is the background. He was a very good speaker and he would on reflection I thought my mother brought me up till I was a teenager and then he was very good. I was very, very happy

with him. But I had many escapades when I was living in Denison Street, at school and all that. We had a pretty good life.

Not much. But I remember my mother used to insist that we didn’t have bread and butter and jam, we could have bread and butter or we had bread and jam, but not the three together.

That’s all I can remember about the Depression. The only other thing I can remember on reflection I used to have always fighting with my mother. Why couldn’t I go to school without shoes and socks on like the other kids. I didn’t realise that possibly they didn’t have shoes. But she would insist that I wore socks and shoes to school and I always felt the odd man out. They’re the points I remember. I can remember also

these hawkers in the street, rabbit-oh, and pit props, things like that. But no, I’ve go no other room for [(UNCLEAR)]. We were not, shall I say, suffering by it. But everybody must have suffered some way, probably. I was too young to know what my father was going through in a business sense. But

yes, the it’s a long time ago now.

Well, that’s another side of the story. When I got out of the air force, I had a good gong, DFC [Distinguished Flying Cross] and all that. It was a big shift from being a fighter pilot to going into a business that sold furniture.

My father had had enough of the war, trying to run a business during the war with no stock and all the problems they had. You don’t realise the problems a man in business had, and he was wanting out, as soon as he could. He wanted to get back to his billiard room and do his rigging and so forth. So I obviously came to a decision I had to make

So I said if you like I would, would you like me to come in and take over the business? Of course he went out to pack as I came in the front door. It was basically what happened. It was a big shock to the system a bit. I was married and we had a son by then yes, and

I had to find somewhere to live. I stayed at my mothers place for a while. We, as a family, had a family home, at Lake Macquarie, Coal Point. Which we went every school holiday for six weeks. No electricity, no power nothing, just a big house on the waterfront. I said to my father would he

consider leasing the place to me and I would do the improvements as a part of the repayment of it, and he did, so we moved to Lake and we lived there for ten years. At Coal point, but this time we’re raising a family. Then 1954, the big floods of Maitland, we had an unusual situation occur,

We were there and rain and rain and rain. You wouldn’t be able to remember it. It was one of those 100 year floods that happened up in the valley. I remember we used to have a proper clay tennis court at the back of the house on the road side. The road was up there, came down, the tennis court, and you used to drive the car across behind the back lines

in the garage, it was on concrete piers. Behind that there was a power pole that went up. Power from the street, down to the house. A four by four was on the back of the house, with the power going in. And I was had this business in town and I used to travel to and fro. I got up and I felt something was wrong, it was wet.

I looked up and I seen this 4X4, it was bent. I thought gee. It was obviously bent by the wires. So I rang Nesca, which was the electricity people. They took one look at it and got on the blower and trucks came from everywhere. They cut the wires and the house virtually moved, you could feel

it. And we found out that we were on a slide. It’s like a, you can imagine building a sand castle and a bit falls away. On that. So the house, the corner was cracked and all of that. And we had to evacuate. A very good friend of mine, Tim Mayo, was an architect. He lived out there.

He rounded up some tradesmen builders and so forth. They jacked it up and levelled it, stopped it from going any further, but it was pretty near useable, just. My second son Bruce, the artist, he was a severe asthmatic. And we had that in the middle of all this, so we came back to Newcastle,

to my mother’s place. I still hadn’t decided where we gonna live. So I bought a block of land up in Merewether Heights, which was one of these spots and when I bought it there was no power to it, I couldn’t get any water, nothing. That stymied me for a while. I was driving past here 49 years ago,

and I saw this place was up for auction, newly built. Tile roof, brick, nice gardens, three bedrooms. So I looked at it, and I came, I didn’t know how I was going to pay for it, so I rang my friend in an insurance company. He said look don’t worry, buy it and we’ll take out a policy on the value of the loan, the loan so forth and so forth, so I bought it. We’ve been here ever since.

But the business went on and on. I became quite well known in the business field because I decided that when I saw the business that’s there now, well to me everything was upside down you know and I thought well I wanted to have a business that would reflect both my artistic thoughts and

and the fact is that Newcastle suffered from a stigma that you couldn’t buy anything decent in Newcastle. If you were a local and you had some money and you wanted to buy something you would go to the city to buy it. Anyhow, I set about to change all this. I built, created, what was eventually called Goold Interiors, which become quite nationally known.

That’s where I got all these chairs from, they were very exclusive chairs. You [(UNCLEAR)] buy them off Glen Ferguson, you had to have a credit [(UNCLEAR)] almost to get them. Anyhow, I created this Goold Interiors and I bought the properties and it was hard work

and I persisted against what the common sense should have been. I should have gone along with the tide of what Newcastle really was, it was a working man’s town. I was catering for the silver tales, which was about 5 percent of the market, and I still had the opposition from Sydney for people who had to go and buy down there. But it succeeded in

lots of ways. I was very proud of it. I used to have a people sent to me by some of the top [(UNCLEAR)] from overseas to see what a place oughta look like if you’re going to sell furniture. The shop was all done in rooms, laid out with bedside tables and flowers, and so forth. Had a decorator working for me.

In fact I finished up with two decorators. People could come in and get advice on what they want for the room, got into wall paper, got into curtains. Got into high quality carpets. So the business grew and I remember one day this fellow came in from [(UNCLEAR)], from New Zealand he was. And Tony Parker who was Parker

furniture, was with another well known name, the best furniture business. He rang me and said this fellow was coming. He said show him around and tell him what you oughta do. So he came up and he looked around. He was there for the morning. When he was leaving he said do you mind if I ask you a pertinent question. I said no, not at all.

he said, well, why Newcastle. Why aren’t you in Melbourne or Brisbane, in a capital city. He said you'd kill it. But Newcastle, that must be hard, hard rows. I said it is. I went home, I didn’t sleep for a week, because I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to leave Newcastle. I had the family here and we grew up here, my roots were here, shall we say

Four, two boys, two girls.

Yes, when I got registered, '65, my son had joined the business, it must have been Doug. He came in some years before that. We had a [(UNCLEAR)] business. The commercial side of the business, office furniture, office desks, blinds and all that sort of

products, and he ran that. So the occasion came up where we had this place in Auckland Street where we the head of the [(UNCLEAR)] did his work, proper showroom. It belonged to the United Order of Odd Fellows Friendly Society, and

I got on very well but the secretary manager, the lease I had was ridiculously low. I didn’t quite realise that until I went to sell it, or went to buy it I should say. Doug was in the business. I was getting to the stage where I was getting cheesed off with it

I felt that it was time I got out. My legs were playing up, I had both knees replaced soon after. I couldn’t stand for very long. So the Odd Fellows always had an agreement with me that if they were going to sell the place, they would give me first option.

to purchase. Anyhow they did this, it came up. Doug and I went down to see them in their head office in Sydney, and we had a price on the place.

Yeah. I'm sorry, I jumped didn’t I.

Yes, well when I was at art school, when I turned 18, put it this way, I was at art school and I was doing pretty well, but it was the, I suppose it was the, not the habit, but the, we all, overall

myself and Fred, we joined the CMF [Citizens’ Military Force – Militia]. It was the thing to do in those days. We faced up to the 16th Light Horse, which was the glamour regiment you might say. But they were full, so they said why don’t you join the 2nd [(UNCLEAR)] Field Ambulance, that’s attached to us. So we did, and we had to do monthly drills

and all that sort of business until the time came when we called up to go into three months camp, because of the war. Before that, I had become involved with [(UNCLEAR)] she had become my girlfriend and we used to go out quite a bit.

we used to go down. I was learning art from Newcastle Tech [Technical College], art school, but also I was learning water colour and landscapes from George Daniels, which was a local Newcastle man. And then I went down to Sydney to learn portrait painting from Henry Heinke, who'd won the Archibald Prize winner, and I used to catch the flight down on Saturday mornings,

which left here at seven o'clock or something. And go down to his studio, which was down near the ship in at the Circular Quay, on the top floor of an old warehouse, you had to pull the rope down to get the lift up. My lessons started at two o'clock and finish at four. So from when I got there till two o'clock I used to muck around with him, watch

him. He was very well known for his pub art. I can reflect on artists those days. Even though he was an Archibald Prize, didn’t sell many paintings. He existed by commissions he had from the pubs. If he was in an area where there was lots of dog racing he had dogs racing. Anyhow, I catch the flyer back, left at five o'clock, and I get back to

Newcastle and I take Phil to the Civic Theatre, which was the place to go.

Well, the light horse was not a [(UNCLEAR)] you couldn’t say that but it was , but it appealed to me and the few friends I had, that we'd like to join the light horse. And which immediately didn’t have horses but it had

Bren gun carriers, things like that. They were full they couldn’t take them but they did ask us to join the second [(UNCLEAR)] Field Ambulance, which was part of the Light Horse. So we used to have to do weekend camps, parades, parade grounds.

First of all I’ll take you

to where we had a three months camp at Armidale, and I got this ranking of lance corporal because I did all the signs for round the place, no parking, keep off the grass, all this sort of business. By the time I got to the, I got home, I'd had enough of the army, it wasn’t for me I could see that. I thought I'd go and enlist in the air force,

so I went to the recruiting depot in Newcastle, and I can still see the sergeant sitting down there and said that I wanted to enlist in the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] and that perhaps some of my ability as an artist could be used, for instance, camouflage work, all that. And I remember him looking down the lists. He said,

“No, nothing like that.” He said, “What school'd you go to?” I said, “Newcastle Boys High.” Think you’ll be [(UNCLEAR)]. I said yes. He said, “Why don’t you join aircrew.” “Aircrew?” I said, I’ve never been in an aeroplane in my life. It doesn’t matter, he said, “We could do with people like you.” So I said, “Well, why not?” So I joined the aircrew. When I went home to the family and told them that my mother went, oh terrible, terrible. But next door live a man called

Les Irwin. He was a bank manager, but he was also an old RAC [Royal Air Corps] pilot. And as such he was in charge of aircrew enlistment in Newcastle, so he was very pleased and happy with it. He says, “I’ll put you down as a pilot trainee.” Not that that made any difference, but that’s what happened. We then we had to go to

night classes three nights a week to have at my old primary school, used to hang around with a fellow called Sam Elves. He was a fine old fellow, well old when I was there. We learnt such things as Morse code, navigation, airmanship and so forth. Get a, brush us up. We were in what you call the aircrew reserve, but we weren’t

in the air force yet. We had a little badge to wear like this. So we had to wait. We did this initially about March April, every fortnight. On December 2nd I think it is, I was called up by the air force. Had to report to Woolloomooloo.

I was given another medical, a big medical. Sworn in, and I became LACWA [Leading Aircraftsman Wireless Airgunner] Goold auto 3, 135. Aircrew trainee. We went from there out to Bradfield Park and spent two months out there what they call Initial Training School.

That was the beginning of my air force. Now, you want anything before that.

Yep. That follows this. I met a, I shouldn’t say this because we are still very close friends.

He’s my best friend and I'm his best friend. Because our surnames begun with G there were a group of us. That’s how I met my friend Keith Gamble. We got around together. When we got to Bradfield

Park we were on the same flight. 9PC I remember that. And I was the marker. I had to mark step in march out parade and they all had to fall in on me and so we had two months of physical training and more ground subjects and so forth. Then we were posted. Posted, all my course except two of us

was sent to, no we all went to Tambert, that’s right. This was our EFTS, no. 2 FTS, no, number 2. Anyway, put EFTS. Elementary Flying Training School. At Tamworth, learnt to fly Tiger Moths [De Havilland Tiger Moth training aircraft]. My instructor was Flying Officer Andy McArthur Onslow. There was a

[(UNCLEAR)] from Camden, famous, the whole family. He was a very fine fellow and a good instructor. They weren’t all like that, all the instructors. I remember one fellow, Costello, his eyes used to, protruding eyes, he had a violent temper and if a pupil didn’t do what he ought to he used to stamp his foot. And one day he put it right through the bottom of the

Tiger Moth and he had to stay there until they dragged him out. [(UNCLEAR)] humiliation. Currently too I'm up to see, at the end of this month, people from Melbourne, there’s an artist called Jeffrey Pentland, and I said, “Petland I know that name.” He said, “Oh, you’ll know my uncle, Jerry Petland.” “Yes, he was an instructor in Tamworth.”

He was famous in the RAAF. So all I can say about Jerry was he could fly anything, he could drink anything. And he said, “That'd be right.” After Tamworth, I was going to all the course I was posted to Amberley. I must say that also going back a bit, when I was at Tamworth I made friends, very close friends, with a fellow called

Bob Frith, who was an amazing individual. He lived. The Friths an old family, from Toronto and all that area. He was the second cousin of mine I found out. Anyway, he was 27, he was an alderman for the Lismore council. So he helped me through all the ground slip [(UNCLEAR)]. He was a very, very,

very strong minded person. We used to tease him a bit. We weren’t all made up of, like Bob was you know. There were some scallywags amongst us. He used to rip into one fellow called Herbie Pim. Herbie Pim used to swear like a trooper, he was a real bushy cab somewhere out the back of west.

He would say Herbert, this used to get his date back up. He'd say there is no need to express ill in such a manner. You have to learn different. We used to tease Bob and say to Bob if we were coming in late and you were on guard duty, we were five minutes late, would you dob us in. He said yes, “A law’s a law, it has to be observed.” But he was good. Anyhow, he figured in my life for quite a bit. Anyhow,

when we were leaving Tamworth as I said, the whole course was posted to Amberley, which is in Queensland. They were flying Ansons in preparation to go under bombers. Bob Frith was one of them so we parted there and I was sent to Wagga which was a fighter training school. It was there I met Keith Campbell again, so we got together again.

We were flying Wirraways the first until two months, we had an instructor, a fellow called Madden who was not a particularly nice type I didn’t think. Then the second two months we were teamed. I used to fly with Keith Campbell. We didn’t have an instructor

any more we were given exercises to do which we had to do as if we were on the squadron, make our own navigational plan or whatever we had to do we had to do ourselves. I remember one incident there I was the pilot and Keith was in the back seat. The weather was closed in. Wagga [Wagga Wagga] was very fog prone. And the fog rolled in

and of course they cancelled all flying. And you must realise we were pretty keen this time, we’re the best pilots there are, so we were dead keen to get off and we pestered the control and eventually they said the weather’s clearing and off we went. And we were flying. Keith was in the back seat. I was in the front seat, going through a cloud. Watching the turno bank closely. Looked

out right, I could see this great big ground boulder, god, so I opened the throttle and pulled up through the clouds flew up until we got above the clouds and began flying west. I said to Keith there’s Coolabong. Coolabong was a satellite aerodrome for Wagga, which was used as a spare. So we landed there and we rang. Keith rang up Wagga to say we were here, and they said, well stay

there. And we stayed there and we were there till mid afternoon. This happened about nine or ten o'clock in the morning or a bit after. We rang up they said we could come back, so we flew back, landed at Wagga and there were five planes crashed with ten blokes in it, were killed, due to the weather. Black Friday.

and so we were lucky to get out of that one. We used to do silly things. Of course, the CO [Commanding Officer] there, a chap called Wing Commander Sherger, who eventually later became chief of the air staff. And he had a big job of keeping control of a group of over eager young men who thought they were crash hot pilots, without

killing their enthusiasm. He had to be very strict. We used to do silly things on reflection. Cause when I got up the ladder a bit I used to jump on people who did silly things. We used to go out, Keith and I we, The Sydney to Melbourne train used to go through near Wagga, so we would go down, as it went through we speeded up, shooosh, and of course if they got your number

you were for the jump. We made sure we always went sideways, not down the couldn’t see the [(UNCLEAR)]. Anyhow, we, we went through Wagga, passed all right, got our wings. First of all you get your wings as an LAC [Leading Aircraftsman] halfway through the course. The first two months, you’re with an LAC

pilot, [(UNCLEAR)] or 135. Then with the end of the course when we graduated, you might say, and we get a rank. I was a sergeant pilot, WA gil 2135. The CO, being ‘shergo’ spoke to us and told us we were, our course work was regarded as being above average and we were all posted to England. We were given one

week’s leave, so we all went home and that’s when I proposed to Phil. So we then left Sydney on the 7the August on the Arbateah, bound for Canada. We went via New Zealand where we stopped in Auckland for three or four days.

one thing I always remember was we had to go to Bradfield Park, which was not only where start, but also from where you leave. We used to have to fall in in the morning, got the Gambles, Goolds, Grant

No Grant. Greenwood, something like that. Not many of them, only about five Gs. Grant never turned up. We got around the grape vine that tomorrow was going to be the last day. We lined up, the usual thing, Campbell, Goold, sir, Grant, sir, he was just standing beside me. When we went aboard the Arboteah it was all done very hush-hush

you know, stupid, but I sat beside Gordon Grant in the bus, or the coach taking us to the wharf and he used to give me these letters and I'd throw em out every now and then. And wasn’t until we got on board and also assigned to a cabin. The Arboteah was still in service as a passenger. Cabins were

I suppose you might say the tourist cabins were, double bunks. Four of us occupied a cabin. Gordon Grant was one of them, Keith Grant. Four Gs they were. Then I learnt that Gordon Grant had just got married, and he was lovesick and he was not a happy man at all, so we got to New Zealand

we put the Kiwis came on board that was same as we were doing. We were all, we were a unit travelling cause we were all pilots, trained. There were also a lot of training aircrew who were finishing their training in Canada, follow. In fact they were the bulk of the number. We were fifty at most and the rest were the Australians and the new Zealanders were made up of

LAC pilots and navigators going to Canada to finish their training. Anyhow, when we left Auckland contrary to the different departure to Newcastle, Sydney, there were bands playing, everywhere they were singing the Maori’s farewell. And everybody was crying and tears. The only thing I reflect about leaving Sydney,

was Bob Frith I ran into him again. Oh he said, come. I'd met his wife up at Tamworth. Whatever her name was, I forget now. I’ve hired a launch to follow us down the harbour, I'd like you to come and join us. So we did. She described how she would identify herself, with a flag or something. We saw her and we waved. That was the last time he saw his wife because he was killed in the Middle East. But on the way over

the Arboteah, leaving Auckland.

Before we left, we left New Zealand we went to Suva, for a night, day I think, then we went to Vancouver. Here we disembarked. We were taken by coaches to the

troop train that was to take us across Canada, Canadian National Railways. It was a also a passenger, a proper, it wasn’t a troop train it was a higher grade than a troop train would be. We had pull down sleepers. You probably would’ve seen it but when I was your age you seen them on the films. There'd be a corridor of people sleeping up there and down here.

Pull all these back and pull them up and the seats were. We had a Negro porter called Clarence who used to do this for us. So we were living well cared for across Canada on the troop train. Took us some time and when we got to Banff we had a three hour break so we were allowed to just walk around Banff

it was up in the Rockies [Rocky Mountains]. I was with Keith. We knocked around together by now. There was a big carriage with the royal coat of arms on the side of it and everything. As soon as they [(UNCLEAR)] I said Keith, let’s go and have a look at that. So we went over to the carriage and as we were going to walk up a chap came out in a white and said I'm afraid this is out of bounds to all personnel

troops. I said oh, I'm sorry and we just had to walk away and a girl came out and said do come in and have a cup of coffee with us. So we went in and we met this fellow, Mr Hunkerfunk, who was the Chairman of the Canadian National Railways. That was his private coach. And his sister I reckon it was, and this girl was his sister’s daughter, so his niece.

so they [(UNCLEAR)] coffee. and they asked us all about where we were from and they were very, very nice people. So he knew where we were bound for and in trained I think [(UNCLEAR)] so away we went. This time we got to Winnipeg where we pulled in again and the same thing happened in that they said look there’ll be a three hour break or a four hour break. You can’t leave the station but the ladies

from the local whatever it was come in with coffee and teas and biscuits and fruit, [(UNCLEAR)] and to entertain you. And over the loud speaker came this, "Would Sergeant Pilot Goold and Sergeant Pilot Campbell report to the RTO’s [Rail Transport Officer’s] office immediately.” On the double. So we thought what have we done now, anyway, we went there and it was Mr

Hunkerfunk and the RTO was [(UNCLEAR)] yes sir, by all sir, by all means Mr Hunkerfunk, so away we went with Mr Hunkerfunk in his chauffeur driven car, and we had a look all round Winnipeg and he took us up to his penthouse suite and put on a sumptuous meal for us and we were getting worried about the time. He said look, I run the railways, we’ll be back in time. So we just sat and relaxed

and eventually we got back to the train and we got aboard and our friend wouldn’t believe us what we done. He said, now when you get to Halifax, that’s where you’ll finish up. He said I want you to get in touch with a Rex Moore, who’s my nephew. He’s a stockbroker, or something like that.

And he said, “They’ll be very pleased to look after you, they will.” So away we went. We eventually got to Halifax, Keith and I, and I said to Keith, “What’s that telephone number?” And he says, “I haven’t got it,” and I said, “I haven’t got it either.” So I thought gee, probably in there. So we knew the name so we rang up the exchange and I said to the girl, “We’re Australians, just going

through” and I said, “Would you help us” I said, “We were given the name of Mr Rex Moore, who we think’s a stock broker or an accountant or something like that. We can’t find his telephone number and we’ve got to ring him.” She said, “Wait a moment please” and she came back and gave us his number. So we rang up and oh they were pleased, they were waiting for us, so. The camp was in quarantine I remember that, for measles or something. That didn’t worry

us we went straight up and we went to the Moore’s and they looked after us for oh, nearly a fortnight. They had a place out on ‘the Bay’ they used to call it. A lovely home and I remember a Mary Moore was an American and

she was a coffee fanatic. She used to open a tin of coffee in the morning and [(UNCLEAR)] throw it away and get a new one the next day. Her family were in the coffee business. Anyhow that was one little thing. They looked after us but jumping ahead if I could, about two or three years ago Keith rang me up and said, “You wouldn’t

know what I’ve been doing today would you,” and I said, “Yes, you’ve been playing golf.” Because we were great golfing opponents. No, he said, “I’ve been taking out Mary Moore’s daughter, taking her round, showing her Sydney.” I said, “Mary Moore?” He said, “You know, Halifax.” I said, “Good god. I remember the girls but, two girls, about this high.”

I said, “Gee whiz.” I said where are they staying. He said the Rex Hilton or something. So he gave me the number, so I rang them up and spoke to her, spoke to him. Their name was Luger. He was a very nice bloke he chatted away. I got on to the daughter, I forget her name, and we chatted,

and she told me all about how her Mum. Her father had died. Her mother was still alive and she was 89 or 88, something. I never saw her again, but Keith, my friend, does a lot of travelling. And this time be, once he used to go away and he was going to Newfoundland. I said what you going to Newfoundland for. We been there, Halifax, terrible place.

cold, and nothing attractive about it. Oh he said, “I like to do it.” So he came back he told me that he rang off chance to see if he could find Mary Moore or Rex Moore and he did. Rex Moore died and of course Mary Moore is alive, living in this big house all on her own. He said you know once, he said she’s driving

a Cadillac. She’s about 88, 89. He said she picked us up from the motel, and drove us to her place. She said she is incredible. So I took it upon myself. I sent a little painting over, you know, about this big. From a typical Australian bush scene. In memory, in

memory of our visit and the many things they did for us and so forth. Well, she wrote me letters. She said even my family won’t believe me, that I’ve got a boyfriend in Australia now. So she was a wonderful lady. She died only about a month ago, six weeks ago. Well, I’ve lost you, where am I now.

Yeah.

we were. Halifax got. Can I tell you a little bit about Halifax. Halifax was, America was not in the war. Halifax was a big harbour, full of ships, merchant ships, ships going to England and from there the big convoys went. Talk about the Battle of the Atlantic that started as we were leaving. They were, so

consequently Halifax was full of merchant marine, tough breed, Liverpool Irish, and they, the picket, 100 strong, used to march throughout the town. There was Canadian air force, Australian air force, navy, army and these merchant marines. There was no,

no liquor. You couldn’t buy grog in a shop. Had to buy it from the liquor store. You had to say you were going to take it to your place of residence on the bottom line and consume it there. So hence, they developed a great trade in illicit alcohol. So it was a pretty mean city. I remember reading a book, No Mean City,

back in Glasgow, this was exactly the same. We got aboard this ship, the infamous SS Empress of Asia, and we, about 50 men, we went down by bus to the docks. Got out, there was this beautiful liner there,

Ile de France, I remember that. I thought this is going to be good. Went straight past that there here was this American liner, looked crook, crumby. There was a big bunch of Canadians in front of it all milling around, and there an angry murmur in the crowd and suddenly there was armed

soldiers appeared, stood around, with bayonets, and that was, we were the back of the row you know, the last to go on and we didn’t know what was going off and the chap in charge of us said he'd go aboard and find out and he came back. Apparently this ship had brought Italian prisoners of war

back from the Middle East. The tub had been cleaned out and the Liverpool, Irish crew had mutinied, they wouldn’t take it to sea. It was a [(UNCLEAR)] about that and the troops who had gone aboard had also try to get off. That’s why the soldiers were there, trying to keep them on board. I had to go on this ship

Anyhow. The doctor went aboard. He come back and he said he wouldn’t send anybody aboard that. Nothing would work, the latrines wouldn’t work, nothing. We had a move a round table conference amongst us all and we were fed up with travelling and waiting, so we thought we'd chance it and we went aboard. And we went right down the bottom and we couldn’t go any lower.

And we went across the Atlantic in that. I'm quite sure that if we had been torpedoed there wouldn’t have been anyone got out of that. We didn’t have any life drill. Discipline didn’t exist. Except amongst ourselves, but as far as the crew was concerned. It was a bad trip. It was written up in our air force, RAF [Royal Air Force] records as one of the things they know

don’t know much about. When we got to, close to, the weather was foul too, rough. I saw these two, airplanes coming across, Hurricanes. First time I'd seen an operational flying plane. I said, I'm going to fly one of them. Anyhow we

landed at Liverpool I think, and somebody from air board came along and apologised to us. By the way, when we were in Canada, about half of us, ten of our crew also jumped ship. Slid down the lines holding the ship, said we’re not going to travel on that, so immediately arrested, put on the

they’re all stuck aboard the Isle of France behind us, in luxury accommodation. Went across in less than seven days. Took us nearly three weeks. I remember this RAF fighter said might be some consolation, but the, yeah but who jumped ship at Halifax, all the [(UNCLEAR)] have been dropped. They had

it for nothing. What cheesed us off, eventually we had to go down to Bournemouth.

Well, at Bournemouth we were sorted out and I was post to a place called, Crosby on Eden,

north of England. North of, not far from Carlisle and there we were converted onto Hurricanes. And from there, I got through that all right. I was the best Hurricane pilot that ever flew a Hurricane. We all thought that. I was then posted to a 607 squadron

county of Durham, auxiliary air force. We were stationed at Banston at Kent. That as the closest aerodrome to France really. Copped a lot through the battle of Britain, and while we were there a bit. I flew from there on a few scrambles.

and flied the odd convoy patrol, [(UNCLEAR)] us, because you couldn’t fly, the weather was so bad. March, early March, we found we were posted overseas, as a squadron. Squadron was we all got [(UNCLEAR)]. The Australians who were with me, they stayed back.

we left England and there were three Australians on the squadron. We went down to, I'm not sure whether it was Portsmouth, somewhere like that, pick up the ship we were going on. Which it had to be the sister ship of that dreadful ship I told you about. That one was terrible, this one was great. There we joined a convoy, big convoy.

which took us down the coastline via Sierra Leone, with free [(UNCLEAR)]. We stopped there to pick up some more ships, then went down just round the cape. We got off at Halifax. Now, not Halifax, Durban. We were there for about a fortnight. We then got on this Isle

de France, which was the ship took us across to India, and up to Karachi, where we got our Hurricanes. Across to Calcutta, place called [(UNCLEAR)]. That was during the monsoon, which [(UNCLEAR)] later. Then the we eventually flew down to

[(UNCLEAR)] , can’t say Burma cause we couldn’t get into Burma, but we were actually flying from India, into Burma. When the fighting was over in Burma, we were safe in India. I stayed with the squadron till we shifted around. Got up to a place called Imphal, where we [(UNCLEAR)] the Japanese and

came home.

Oh, ah, the, ah, gotta explain a little bit how all this happened. When the Japanese took all of Burma, they stopped at the border of India and Burma, which ran north south basically.

on what they call the Arakan. They stopped there because of the monsoons. You have to be in a monsoon to understand why, because nothing moves. Roads are impassable, flying is hazardous and everything sort of beds down. At that stage.

So ah well, we arrived there in June I think, ‘42, to [(UNCLEAR)] we were to get the experience flying in such conditions, monsoonal weather. We then moved down to a place called Fanag in Choonagog and started doing operational

flying, against the Japanese. By this time it was September, which was the end of the monsoon. And of course the war starts up again. And the Japanese start to try to make advances against our resistance. That was the First Arakan Campaign. But then the same thing happens at say the end of April ‘43 the monsoon came and it hit, and we were sent back to

to Haliport for a rest, the squadron, and to take accumulated leave and so forth. And that’s where we got Spitfires. We went out for the Second Arakan Campaign, which was on the same theatre of war, and the Japanese were more aggressive by that time. The third part of my campaign was when we moved to Alipor, to ah

Imphal, and that was called the air battle for Imphal. And the end of May I had my repatriation to Australia. By this time I'm flight commander of D flight, the 607 Squadron, they'd reorganised the, when we got split A’s, one time we got split A’s

by now. That was in March, ‘44, and we squadron was reorganised, the CO was posted, the two flight commanders was posted, ad the several the crew, their time expired so you say, and they gave us a new CO. We had two or three new flight lieutenants, but the only

two had experience fighting Japanese, that was myself and a Canadian, Ken Clark. They made me OC B Flight. Ken was OC A Flight. We used what was [(UNCLEAR)] we were flight officers and they had three or four flight lieutenants based in the squadron. RAF rules say you don’t do that. Anyhow, that was the three sort of

campaigns, putting it as campaigns together. When the battle of Imphal was fought, I’ve got a, got a I don’t know whether it’s going to happen, but I gave an address to a Newcastle club, about the very thing we’re talking about. If you want to you can read that, which tells you how the war was fought by the Japanese crack divisions and the 14th Army

over the [(UNCLEAR)], and after about ten or twelve days of fighting, the Japanese eventually gave in. Just walked. They didn’t give in they just left. Eventually the 14th Army just walked, fought their way through [(UNCLEAR)] and the war finished. But I was left by then.

Yes. When I got to Australia, got married, that’s very important. I had some dental work to be done at Bradfield Park. So Canarvis, my friendly dentist, he stretched it out for three or four weeks. Which I spent in Sydney with Phil, living it up.

then I got posted to a place called Ballarat. Ballarat was a flying gunners school and I got there and they didn’t know what I was there for, I said, “I dunno.” That was when my DFC was promulgated. And they said make yourself at home and they said we’ll see what we can find for you to do. It was cold, so cold, and after Burma,

I was sick. I had this, the doctors said to me you’ve got acute nervous dyspepsia. He said do you rink beer, I said yeah. He said well get into that, drink plenty of beer. Anyhow, while I was there, sitting in the sun, feeling miserable, a Wirraway landed and a long lanky

skinny bloke got out. I said, “Kaz Mann,” he said, “Wilf, what are you doing here.” I said, “I wouldn’t have a clue.” He said, “Well come down to Cressie with me.” Jack’s there and a few other blokes you know. Come on down. I said, “I can’t walk out the place.” So he said, “Well leave it to me, I’ll tee it up.“ So sure enough, about three weeks later I got a posting to Mt Cressie, which was a

several flying gunnery school, where there was two schools. One was a gunnery leaders school where gunners were taught the finer points of gunnery. And a fighter squadron, fighter pilots like me, PGI, Pilot Gunnery Instruction. Of course, taught you combat flying,

Cobra attacks, and instruction. That lasted about five or six weeks. I had to then, was posted to Mildura and on course, that’s what my got my back up. They wanted me to go and do a course and go back to do operational flying in New Guinea. And I had Phil with me and we

said we'd, at Mildura, married officers could live out, so we, she drove down with another officers wife and we met in Mildura and we stayed at the Grand Hotel for a while, till we found a house, but I arrived a week late. I was paraded before the CO

Peter Jeffries, you know, this is where I said I might as well make my point while I'm here, sir. I said I resent being put on course to go and shoot coconuts off palm trees in New Guinea. I just done nearly three years operational flying in Burma. Oh. He said, well, you’ve falsified your documents. I said, “What do you mean by that.” He said, “Well it says you’ve got one tour,

you’ve got more than three tours.” I said, “Well I know that.” I said, “You weren’t in the RAF.” They didn’t measure three tours one, to one. They flew on until they had to get rid of you or you were clapped out. Oh, he said, “All right.” I won that round and I’ve taken off and put on staff at Mildura. That’s why I stayed till

I left the air force. Which was in September ‘45 I think.

Yep. I was a PGI instructor for the station. In charge of all gunnery bombing. And my friend John Olivia, who’s still alive. He was in charge of all aircraft testing,

came out of the test pad, and they used to call him the ‘test and Instructional Training, TIT squad, and we were responsible directly to the chief instructor, so we could authorise flights on any aircraft we wanted to. We flew a lot. I liked that job, we used to fly and fly and fly. And when the new Mustangs got issued to the RAAF [Royal Australian Air Force] we, they came to Mildura

we got the first flights of those. They were around for a while. We eventually got a house, and we [(UNCLEAR)] Nicky Barr, who was chief instructor, it’s a story and a half. Have you ever ran into him. Amazing person. The bloke used, should be one of these.

He was the chief instructor, Commander Nicky Barr. His wife Dot. They lived in a house, lived next door but one. And Glen Cooper, who was CFI [Chief Flying Instructor], they lived down there, some down there. Used to have a party every Friday night at somebody’s house. We all became very close friends and friendship’s been maintained since the war. Unfortunately some of em are

fallen off their tree. that happens. We’re all at the age, of, what am I, 84 some are older. Peter Jeffries died, Nicky Barr’s alive. Yes, that’s where I finished. That’s broadly, not in detail.

Is that what you wanted?

Well, I became a member of the RSL at Toronto. I didn’t frequent it. I wasn’t an RSL type to be truthful. And when we left Toronto, coming to live

here. I didn’t keep up my membership I must say and I had no association with any individual squadron groups because here because I was Burma and that’s the reason why I'm doing this particularly and why I made the address to the Newcastle club, is that there was 1180 of us,

air crew, Australians. The only ones who served actively in the Burma theatre of war. There were no army. The navy were in a big way, but that was in the water down on the Indian Ocean. But in the actual war, there were only 1180 of us. We were all aircrew, and we were on bomber squadrons, fighter squadrons, so on and so forth, transport squadrons.

Out of that 1180 of em, three hundred and ninety of em were killed or went missing. The rest of us are whittled down now. So I became very keen member of a group called SEAC, South East Asia Command. Which is us. I go to that because I can talk to people that I know that have been in my theatre, or know what I'm talking about. I know what they’re talking about

When I was, I was also in the Spitfire Association and I went to a couple of their meetings and lunches and they say to me what squadron were you on and I say 607 and they say 607, what are they. And they’re were I got tired of telling them I was an RAF

fighter pilot. And of course all that they were most of them were all involved in their squadrons up the north of Australia. Nice fellas but they didn’t know what I was talking about, where it could have been Wilemakanka as far as they were concerned. Anyhow, I got tired of that too. So I'm still a member. I still pay my fees and that but I.

I regularly attend the SEAC meetings, which are only held twice three times a year at somebody’s home. We sit around, have a barbecue, have a meeting that lasts about an hour. That’s all I’ve kept up really, service wise. I’ve been a member of the Newcastle united services club. Which is only a club, it’s not a, it’s a

bit like the Imperial Services Club in Sydney, which is a social club just to have drinks, doesn’t do any service work. You know, not other clubs, not service clubs.

Just for the. We got there in January and

left in September.

Yeah.

I did. Well, I hadn’t thought about it for a long time during the war. I often think you’re on a different planet, plane. You’re more concerned with

flying and probably staying alive and all those sorts of things. It wasn’t until I got back, got home. I was only home for a less than a week and I got married and I had to report back to Bradfield Park again. But even then I was still in the air force.

I thought about what we were going to do. It wasn’t until I got out of the air force that the business came up and I could see that her father had had enough. See, he was forty six years older than me I think and so I could start to, then I had to think

about what I'm going to do, became pretty obvious that I was expected to take over the business.

Yeah. There were, I had two sisters and a brother. The next one to me was Bernice, she has since died.

And there was Keith, he’s alive. He lived down in Newport and Joy, she’s the youngest one. She lives here. She’s a widow. But they, we’re all good family, keep in touch, close touch.

Well, part from doing VAD [Voluntary Aid Detachment], what do you call them, VA Department, she worked for in, my father’s shop for a while, with my sister. Before that she used to work, she was a short hand typist, you know the style. Had another shop somewhere.

so she was, hired by June and Hall. She was [(UNCLEAR)], about all you could say about her.

Well, it wasn’t until I retired

I always used to scribble a lot, unconsciously. Bring up some of the business things I’ve got, I see some drawings on it, but I never got back to any painting. I remember before I retired, some years before that the big thing was with retiring was

with retirees was that you had to have some hobby. You couldn’t play golf all the time, or bowls, you had to have some kind of hobby. And I thought gosh, what have I got. I couldn’t hammer a nail in straight. I could always think of my old father, Dad, he had the best hobby in the world. There wasn’t enough hours in the day for Dad.

used to get up and go straight down to the billiard room, and start writing away. And my mother would say, Will, Will, about ten eleven o'clock at night, better come in and have something to eat. All right, he'd come up grizzling, but that was his hobby, wasn’t enough days in the wasn’t enough hours in the day for him. And I thought what am I going to do. And Doug said, “Why don’t you get back to painting.”

and I thought about it and I thought about it and he managed to enrol me in a WEA [?] course, and I went along and there was this. I was the only male there. A room full of women. A fellow got up and said we’re here to talk about working on a painting and everyone said yes, yes. He says well, first of all

this is the water colour brush, this is called a round brush. This is called a flat brush, this is something or other. He said and these are water colour tubes, or pads. I thought god, this is enough for me, going back. So I went to one. That was enough. But it then started me to think. Because everything he was talking about, it was starting to come back, you know.

No, well, em, cause, eh, once one [(UNCLEAR)] committed us by thought to be flying air crew, I

must say up till that stage I never worried about planes. The aero club was just down there at Broadmeadow. Naturally we see Tiger Moths flying around, but to me they were nothing. I could always remember before that, I remember Amy Johnson drove down Beaumont Street, I remember seeing her, little person, she landed somewhere,

the show ground or something like that, but no, I hadn’t thought about a plane, but I just this fellow said to me, why don’t you join air crew, and I thought why not. That’s how [(UNCLEAR)] I think it was. When I got to Tamworth, it was with the FSDS we were talking about, there was six here, I'm not sure

We, one was confronted with the thought, we’re going to eventually learn to fly. The must tell you also, all through your flying training career you were being faced with the terrible thing of being scrubbed.

being scrubbed is that you were given, I don’t say we were given actually. Generally speaking the I s'pose, the air force decided that if you hadn’t gone solo within 12 hours or 15 hours or whatever it was then you were going to be scrubbed, because you never go so. You could make a good navigator, a good air gunner, but not a pilot, that’s what they used to say.

which is really truly [(UNCLEAR)] a lot of stupid nonsense, because sure a lot of people would have flown very, very well if they'd had a bit more time. Anyhow, so that was in the back of your mind. Will you get scrubbed. I always remember this Andy Macarthur fellow, I was blessed with a fellow who could instruct and very considerate, and the time came when he

landed he stopped at the end of the landing strip. Cause they weren’t strips, they were aerodromes, grass he said right oh, off you go. And I reeled back and I thought god, it’s my turn now. I took off and remember flying around a bit for quite a while, made to land in [(UNCLEAR)] without bending the aeroplane,

and he said that’s very good, so I was away. He gave, they give you more instructions. They get you to that stage where you’ve gotta be tested by the CFI. So that happened and I was, I felt quite confident flying a Tiger Moth.

when I finished.

Yep. But that’s only for physical training and lectures. The lectures on various things. Morse code and ones we had to learn there, things like that. Or we learnt them before at the school at night time, but Bradfield Park was the official place were they did all the different matters of the [(UNCLEAR)].

What we used to call the Koran subjects. There was pervading right through the training was you had to reach the standard to be a pilot. That was in marching, drill, or ground subjects. The report of the corporal in charge of the site, as to your

military bearing and your ability to march, the shoulder after the rifle, all that. But on his report was whether you were going to be a pilot, which was a lot of nonsense you know. But we believed that. So that was a part of the initial training, but that had nothing to do with the flying.

Well, going back before that, when the war started really, in 1939, I was rather very interested in such things as the International Brigade in Spain.

I always thought that would be good to be involved with. But I'm quite sure it wasn’t for any democratic reasons it was more the adventure of the thought. Then there used to be a series of lectures given by a Professor Black I think his name was. He spoke on things like Hitler and Nazism. [(UNCLEAR)], and Ramsay

MacDonald and British system, Roosevelt and Americans, all those things. Every one of them, fascinating to me. So

Well, I don’t remember that, not very much. Only when I was going away, Mum used to go into a tither.

father was very, understanding and considerate.

Well, he never said so, but you can’t tell, he might have been. I think he was also proud the fact that I had, was in the airforce.

he wasn’t a person to speak about it too much. Although when I was away, in Burma, well India. We call it Burma but we were stationed, flying in Burma, called it the Burma Campaign. I had a close friend in Newcastle alive, who was with me the whole time, doing the same thing that I did. His name was Bill Andrews. His father was

geez, George Andrews, manager of the bank of NSW [New South Wales] and he was with the, agitators, because we were classified as you’re probably going to the lost tribe of the RAF. And even the Brits we were serving with, British squadrons,

they got the short end of the stick. RAAF wise, nobody knew we were there. And Dad and old George used to write these letters to the defence minister about what they were going to do about us troops, our rank was always the last ones to come through. The Canadians got the best of it. We'd come along later somehow.

Yes, he was very proud I know when I came out.

No. See, he was forty, well, he was well he was too old, too young, whatever, to go to the first war, too old to go to the second war. He was must have been, well I was born

1919, he was 46 then I think. Put it all together, find he just wasn’t available.

No. No. Nobody.

my brother was too young. He was still at high school when I came back from India. He was a brain. He was dux of the high school, dux of the university, something like that. But that’s about all.

No. Well, we wanted to. I watched the TV [television] quite a bit on the history channel. I like watching the people. I know people, they think I'm a bit of a nut, I prefer to watch something like that than watch some other modern stuff. I can understand the feelings of the

RAAF pilots that are [(UNCLEAR)], the Hornets. They’re trained right up to hilt, as we were, and they’re given a chance to be put into operation went into Iraq. So they’re mind, from my mind. We were keyed to get to where the war was, not where it wasn’t. So we were very pleased to hear that we were posted overseas to the UK [United Kingdom]. So we

knew we were getting into the war. That’s hard for people to understand unless you were in the situation like we were. When I got to we were flying Hurricanes. They were one of the top fighter planes in the world. That in itself was an honour as far as I was concerned. I guess you should go on. As I said to you about my memoirs. On reflection

I never ever, ever, ever, expected to get to the degree that I did do. I'm naturally an introvert. I'm not an extrovert in any sense. I well I got to where a lot of people never got to. Fighter pilot. I don’t talk about it. Only fighter pilots, or friends close you know that we

that we talk a few things.

Well, not for the first time but I can remember it was a battle to launch myself into the air you might say. Not really. I can understand where some of the people in my course. I said it in my memoir. The instructors were a mixed lot. Some of them were hard to get on with, some of them hated the job they were doing, they wanted to be away flying in the

probably. The fellow Costello, he just took it out on the pupils. And I'm quite sure quite a few of them felt quite intimidated by the attitude of the instructor.

No. In Tiger Moths, in front and behind.

The whole war time stuff, two wings, biplane. The instructor and. Words for communication was by a voice tube, we didn’t have electrical stuff. Later on they did of course, but no, I don’t recall anything

about that. I wasn’t overconfident but I wasn’t under-confident, because I was able to do what he asked me cause. But he was a very good instructor, he would say look it would be better if you did it this way than that. Not get a blast of abuse in your ear from the instructor behind you.

Oh no, no, it was open.

no, the really early stuff, open front, open back. Very, very manoeuvrable. But not for that purpose. A light plane, easy to fly. As we found out later, easy to fly, but then hard, cause when you get used to flying a service plane, with lots of power, a Tiger Moth was, amusing.

It was sometimes hard to put on the ground because we weren’t used to such slow speeds. Yeah, they’re things. But Tamworth was a good place, good friends. It passed very quickly.

None at all, none at all.

Oh, five thousand feet, that would be about the highest. But during the aerobatics, we go to about five thousand feet. But if we’re just doing localised flying, we might go to two thousand feet. I can’t remember that detail. It’s a long time ago, but we certainly didn’t go much higher than that.

Oh yes, we had a proper flying suits. Had oh, we weren’t cold, but I don’t remember that very much either. We weren’t uncomfortable, put it that way.

Oh yes, yes. Had to do all the aerobatics. It was part of your training. Fly the aircraft in an upside down position, loop the loop, slow rolls, it’s what you used to look forward to.

Never. Other people have I know, never worried me. No, [(UNCLEAR)] when the instructor was flying, doing something to demonstrate, they used to get a bit of nausea, I had nothing. Never worried me. Fortunately. Never thought about it.

In fact I’ve never been sea sick I don’t think, either. Don’t remember. Sure not.

I think I went solo in about twelve hours, something like that. I think they used to

they'd know if a fellow got to 14 hours or something, he might be. We got some aspects, like taking off or landing. A couple of hours'd straighten him out. But the point was that they had a limited time I think to work to and the then a back up for pilots coming through. They had to get these courses through. They couldn’t

extend the course generally because of couple of pilots to get solo. I think that was behind the set up.

No, no, no. Wagga, yeah.

went to Wagga and did two months of dual flying and solo flying. We had an instructor, like at Tamworth, where you learnt to do all the things you did in a Tiger Moth we were in a Wirraway, which was a powered aeroplane, heavily powered, lots of instruments all over it. We had proper communication, and

we had that for two months. And if we [(UNCLEAR)] too much you could be scrubbed for anything the instructor felt you weren’t good enough at. Same thing applied there. You had a certain number of hours to go solo in a Wirraway. I remember one thing I got ticked off with. I

was ready to take off with a pilot, an instructor, you fly solo, but not on your own, he’s in the back for a while, couple of times. The instructor says, “What are you doing.” I said, “Taking off.” He said, “What about all those aeroplanes down there.” I said, “Well I didn’t see those things.” Well he said, “That’s one bad mark against you.” Because, you’re not supposed to take off into a bunch of aeroplanes in case something happens to you, you dive into them.

Anyhow, that stuck in my mind, but other than that I didn’t have much problems.

Yes. I have photographs of it over there but I’ll describe it. It was built by the Australian government I suppose. Initially I think the idea was it was going to be a fighter plane.

It was a radial, a big radial in the front, it had two seats, back, there and behind. It could, it had machine guns in the wings. I forget how many. It was also equipped to have a machine gun firing in the back so the fellow in the back

seat could swivel around and look backwards. That was used [(UNCLEAR)] pretty quickly because it was never going to be a fighter plane. It was used up in the highlands for a limbering point of view. They then used it as the plane for training fighter pilots, wholly. It was used for that purpose, it was a

not a handsome looking plane, but it was very efficient. Very good. Undercarriage, lift the wheels up and all that. Everything you could do on a more advanced plane you could do on a Wirraway.

I suppose

I'm, it’s like people talk about yachts. They look good. They look good they are good. For a plane it was like that, if it looked good, it was good. Spitfire, Hurricane, German Me [Messerschmitt] 109, they all looked good, they were good, very good. Wirraway never looked to me, quite like what they call a fighter plane.

it was, to me, always a training plane, a good training plane too. But that’s it.

Oh. Not heavy initially, because it steps up. When I first saw it after Tamworth, I’ve gotta learn to fly this thing, because it’s got all the masses of dials

and things on the front. You got to know what they meant. When you got to flying Spitfires you went back to Wirraway, as I did, at Mildura, it’s quite a different story. You could fly it easily, but it feels different. I don’t like flying a Spitfire or a Mustang. They’re beautiful.

No, I don’t think. No, we had a long sloping sliding canopy, closed though. Yes. You pull one, you pull over both of them, they weren’t separate.

We had, earphones, we communicated by those, and it had, we didn’t have air to ground I don’t think, but we couldn’t communicate back to the ground, but communicate between each other. I think later on they could have easily rigged them.

with the same control down to the ground, so the controllers on the ground could speak to you and tell you what you gotta do. That’s another phase of fighting. You don’t just run around the sky looking for people. It’s all done by radar.

Well, not really, you’re only doing practice flying. You’re not going very far away, all that sort of business. I'm quite sure we had no communication, ground wise. I could be wrong. [(UNCLEAR)]

No. Oh I had some scary moments that one was, I looked out the window and saw those great big

rocks. I knew we were rather close to it. As I said I pulled up through the cloud, got above it. But that day, there were five planes lost that day. Through the weather. See if you get into weather, cloud or fog or anything, you’ve gotta have blind flying training.

That’s why a lot of light planes suddenly get lost. You’ve read them in the paper. That means you’ve gotta fly on the [(UNCLEAR)], which is an arm like that and a thing like that. That turns, [(UNCLEAR)] the plane. Right. So the plane, if it’s there like that, the plane’s got a wing down. If it’s up like that

it means that one’s down, like that, it’s perfect. Now, if you’re in a situation you also develop what they call vertigo, and you’ll swear that you’re turning to the right. You’ll swear on a stack of bibles that you’re turning right. But if you look at your turner bank you’ll find that you’re not, you’re going the other way. And that killed a lot of pilots out there.

that’s where you are had to learn to fly on your turner bank if you were in cloud. To add to that while we were in Mildura you had to do a course on a link trainer. Which was to that really. A link trainer was a simulator, they call it now.

You were in a box with all the flying instruments in it and you were given a course to fly. They were all marked out on the chart when you got out. Marked according to your success or not. They used to teach you the turner bank too, in pilot training. But it was vital that you flew in cloud on the turner banks, it was your blind flying instruments.

If you didn’t you were, you had it.

Definitely in cloud, or at night, black night. Cloud, fog, definitely, otherwise your instincts are wrong. Vertigo. Sitting in here this is a bit

in a cockpit, I'd swear that the plane was turning that way, it was doing just the opposite. So you correct it by brining it up without looking at the turner, just on instinct, and you put it into a spin and go into the ground. That’s what vertigo does. And that was quite common. Not common, but enough that you knew about it.

the Wirraway as a plane, a phase of my flying career that I don’t think much about really. I don’t think much about it I think, Wagga.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.

Yes. We got our wings half way through. We were still LACs, that’s the first part of the course, when we had an instructor

after the second part, we went into flight with a flight commander. We did our flying training as per our exercises. You take over Wilemakanka, land there, report to the control and come back again. If I was a pilot with Keith to navigate, to fly this course, so we had to

do it all ourselves, well that’s a part of your training. When that finished, that was the end of a complete course. We were given our ranks and so forth.

Leading Air Craftsman. It’s a rank, starts of at Aircraftsman AC school, AC1, AC2, you’ve got AC corporal, sergeant.

I was an LAC from Bradfield, that was our first rank. We didn’t start at the bottom. We were LACs from when we first joined up. I graduated or passed out at Wagga, at the end of the course

as a sergeant pilot. There were a few got commissions, not many. They were pilot officers. Yeah we were sergeant pilots.

We didn’t say that, the CO of the station

told us that, as the course was rated above average, we were being posted to the UK for further operational duty. That is what he said, so we thought that was great. He probably told that to every course. But we were pleased.

No we sailed to Auckland, then Suva, then to Vancouver. And we had a cruiser or a destroyer escort most of the way. Can’t think whether it was a cruiser or a destroyer, but it was a battleship any way. Yes, that’s right.

Yes.

My mother and Phil came down. There was a lot of hostility, not hostility, but they couldn’t get on the docks. You know, they had to stay outside. There was no, no ribbons and all that sort of thing, and that was ridiculous, because when we got to Auckland they had all the bands on the thing and there were thousands of people on the docks with banners and everything.

That cheesed us off a bit. They came down but they couldn’t see us. That’s how Bob Ruth got his wife, she hired a launch and followed the harbour there down. Eventually we saw her. We waved to her, she waved to us.

Oh, don’t know about the wharf in the city. Couldn’t tell you that.

Well, yes. We were just teenagers and we knocked around in groups, different groups.

went to different dances and all that sort of business. Eventually we got together and I that was for about two, three years before the war. She got on well with Mum and Dad, they got on well with her. Phil’s mother died at birth and she was brought up by her

aunt, and old grandma. They were wonderful people, so we all got on well together. When I was at Tamworth, Armidale in the army, that’s right, Dad and Mum and Keith and Berry and Jill, Phil came up to

see me. She come up with the family. But, oh yes, we got on very well together, quickly. When I was leaving for overseas I thought well the best thing to do was get engaged to be married. It would have happened anyhow. So when I got back I rang up from Melbourne. We were

disembarked, we went ashore, sent to the public cricket ground, where somebody from air [(UNCLEAR)] said some nice words to us about working [(UNCLEAR)] and all this and how it’s going to save the troops. We then were allocated different dormitories. The first thing we hadn’t had the

the, we came back from India on the USS General Butler, this was an American troopship. And they’re dry, and I got to like iced tea, that’s all we had. We didn’t have beer for like donkeys years, so we decided we’re going to go out and had a few beers. Before I did that I rang up Phil and told her she better make arrangements for our wedding. When I got back, so she did that.

after getting a leave pass as a medicals, I got home, coming home. I pinched myself several times over in western Australia. It seemed a long time since I left. When I got home there were people everywhere. I was quite bemused you know.

No, when I met Phil when I was a nobody, just a civilian. Teenager going to dances, to the beaches swimming.

Well, I don’t know really, but I imagine she was

in a bit of a quandary what to think I suppose. I’ve never discussed that. She would never remember that anyhow. [(UNCLEAR)]. That’s one, I can’t answer that one. [(UNCLEAR)]

Ooh yes. Definitely. It was always. She always said it that

it was a terrible concern to all of them. Particularly when they hear of other people who didn’t get back or could happen to me but couldn’t. You always had the feeling that you had. It couldn’t happen to me. What I'm talking about is a fighter pilot, you gotta believe that.

She probably was very worried. It was a very emotional time for everybody when you’re

posted overseas. Lots of tears and lots of all that. Both sides. People going and the people they are leaving behind. I must had further, Gordon Grant really got to me. We says oh come over and have a drink Gordon and he said no, I prefer to sit down here. Many, many years later. When I got to him I lost

Gordon, no, no idea where he went. But I had this close friend, John Olivia, who I mentioned before. He and his wife Bubby, which used to call her, [(UNCLEAR)] and I lived together in Mildura. And we’ve kept our friendship up ever since. Unfortunately, Bubby died four or five years ago. Before that they had a home in Narrabri, nice big home on the corner.

and we were sitting out on the lawn. I said John, is there any airforce blokes around here. Oh yes he said, there’s a fellow down the corner, lives a bit down there, he’s a bomber pilot I think. His name was Grant. And before I could say is that Gordon Grant, a chap walked past us down the street, there’s a lawn and a hedge and this fellow, I looked up and I said Gordon! It was Gordon Grant. [(UNCLEAR)]

and he came in. No I said, the last time I had to go down and meet his wife. But I bet you I never seen you before but I always remember the photograph he used to carry in a leather folder. She was a very beautiful looking bride in her long dress. I don’t know what happened after that one. Last time I saw him too. One an only time.

will be stuck in my mind forever. But I forgot I lost track of what you were asking me, about going away.

Yeah, via Auckland and Suva.

At Auckland, oh yes.

we live on board but people ask you to stay you can leave. We stayed on board but we were out every day, all day, and night. For the period we were there. Suva was the same. We had to march through Suva and when we were finished this lady come up and said would a couple of you like to come on a drive with

us. So myself and Keith I think it was said it would be very nice, and she got the car and they took us for a drive all round Fiji, Suva it was. Turned out he used to be the Manager for the Burns Phelp line. Had this lovely home up on the top and was Suva is a hot place and they had this

place that had, you could open the front, open the back and sit in the cool, a breeze would blow through. They entertained us for the day and took us back to the ship. We were there for two or three days. Something to do every day. Something you can say about us we were all very inquisitive people. We got out, found our way around.

I had been on a couple of cruises before this, one was to New Zealand. The other one was Tasmania, that’s all, local cruises, never went overseas, no. Well, you know.

Yep, that would be about right.

We were in transit. We didn’t stop anywhere, we just got off at Vancouver, went down the coast in a troop train, moved off, eventually. Don’t know how long we were there for, maybe twenty four hours.

the train moved off. Stopped on the way over as I said, till we got to Halifax. We stayed there for a couple of weeks, went across to the UK.

No. Nothing. No flying at all until I got to the OUT at Loxwood.

Operational Training Unit.

We landed at Liverpool, it was badly bombed, had been bombed. And we didn’t set off [(UNCLEAR)] we went in the train, down to Bournemouth, and Bournemouth was not badly bombed. That was the first time I found that I was really in the war, cause we got a

couple of girls we found down there. They were all very nice, all very hospitable, they wanted to help you. And we were in our air force blues, noticeable against the Canadians and the British. They were wearing grey colour and we were having drinks in the Grand Hotel at Bournemouth and this fellow walked

in and said, gentlemen, I put to you the air raid siren is going. And it was the air raid siren. It is a pretty eerie noise, and then nothing happened, and then he come back, and he said gentlemen, the all clear has gone. He said I always feel so brave when you boys in blue are around. He walked outside, next thing, grumf! Came these

great big explosions. We all hit the floor. Except the girls they sat at the tables, they lived there. And so we after a while, shamed we got to our feet. The Germans had dropped some land mines on the waterfront outside the hotel and it had blown the front of it out. So that was the first time I knew we were in a war.

yes, so that was Bournemouth. [(UNCLEAR)] originally asked.

Yes. Definitely, very proud of it.

It was all the RAF and RCAF [Royal Canadian Air Force] all wore the same colour grey, ladies grey. They looked good too, but we thought ours was better. They only funny part of it was. We were up at [(UNCLEAR)] Dunedin, which was not far from Carlisle. One day, this Australian friend, Price Watson, so we decided we’ll

go into Carlisle, we had the day off. So we went in there, eventually went into a pub, typical British pub. We lined up our drink. We could hear people say, Norwegians, no, no, free French, no, no, so Pierce was a real character, he turned around and said hows about hows [(UNCLEAR)] getting

on these days. They, when they found we were Australians, we couldn’t buy anyone anything, they went crazy over us. But the free French and the Norwegians wore a similar colour as ours and there were free French and Norwegians pilots training in the same unit as we were so they got it confused, but oh yes

I like their uniform. Never been asked that question before.

Oh yes. Well you asked me about our time. One of the things we did, Keith and I. He has been a great business man. One of the things we did at Halifax [(UNCLEAR)]

was to pool our money. He says how much money have you got left. I said not very much, so he said give it to me. I did. And he went out and he bought cigarettes, called sweet capol cigarettes. And we finished up with a deep sea kit bag, that would be, full of cigarettes. We had no money, not a cracker, so when we got to Bournemouth, we had to convert this,

so he gave me a packet of twenty, something, a box, and I went one this way, and we all had gas masks. Took the gas mask out, put it in the corner, put the cigarettes in the container. Went up to the YWCA [Young Women’s Christian Association], I remember that. I said to the girl at the desk I said, “Would you like to buy some Canadian cigarettes.” She said, “Love to, but how much.” I gave her a price,

a highly inflated price and sold them. Well I walked out of the place, straight into Keith he said, ‘Don’t worry, I sold the lot, for a great profit.” Sold them all to a British major in the army or something, so we were flash with the money. So we decided we would go down and we would enrol in the Lady Riders McDonald organization,

which was set up by these two ladies to provide a second home for visiting overseas people. Mostly Australians and Canadians, all I knew were Australians. We went out and they had an office in Bournemouth. We went in and you had to fill out everything, name rank and number. What you like to do,

where you’re parents, where you lived, your parents and so forth. Your fiancé, and all that. What you like to do, fishing or shooting or whatever. We all said, “We want to go to London.” I remember this lady said, “Look, our contacts in London are fully booked, but we have a Lady Rosemouth in Surrey,”

which she says, “Is not very far from London, just get the tube in and you’re right.” We said, “That would be all right,” so we. She said, “Now what you’ve gotta do, get a train in to Victoria station, get out and get a train to Oxted, at Surrey, and you’ll be met there by Lady Rosemouth.” So we did all this and we got out at Oxted and here’s this

chappy I suppose and a lady who, and they were driving a car with a gas cylinder on top. Petrol was short, it was one way of doing it. Anyhow she introduced herself to us, and she said I want you to understand this is your second home now. The first thing I’ll do is I’ll get

your home addresses and write to your parents and tell them you’ve got a second home. So we went out to this beautiful place. We drove out a bit, through the lovely commons, to this beautiful home. Another home over there which was for servants. We were taken in and given this room.

A room each. They had beautiful thick lovely doonas on them. The bathroom adjoining had heated towel rails, with the towels hanging over it. Oh, beautiful. They were an amazing family. I was reading about them one day. There was Sir Allen Rosemouth, who was a powerful official in the department of

defence or something. Lady Rosemouth. They had three sons who were in the army. The Guards Regiments. One of them was in Burma. In India [(UNCLEAR)] then. They had a son who ran away from [(UNCLEAR)] and joined the navy as an AB [Able Seaman] and a daughter Mary, husband who was lieutenant commander on the Hood. And he'd

been killed in an accident some months before. Sir Allen was a corporal in the home guard. They made us feel wonderfully welcome. As she said, she wrote to my mother and father, and I think she might have wrote to Phil to, as she done for years and years and years after.

Well I was there.

See I could write [(UNCLEAR)] I tell you. Anyhow, we were there a couple of weekends, and one weekend she said I’ve got another Australian coming out for lunch. He was a [(UNCLEAR)] somebody far from where I'm talking about. And that was a famous fighter base in England and he was flying on 452 Squadron. Flying Spitfires. Anyhow,

we hadn’t got OTU, west [(UNCLEAR)] you know. This fellow turned up, Keith and I both thought oh Christ, here we are, we haven’t even got into a fighter plane, this chap’s already shot down three or four Germans. His name was Keith Chisholm.

I remember he, we had lunch together, he came over the next day, past the house, as he said he would. Keith said, look at him, showing off. The war went on a bit and Lady Rosemouth used to write to me. As she did to Keith Chisholm. She said she had a letter from Keith and he was

POW, had been shot down. He was trying to get out if he could, or get home. Bored. But they were not true, because Keith Chisholm was never in the POW camp. He'd been shot down and he'd gone into the Polish underground and was fighting as a freedom fighter. The British soldiers

used to intercept the letters and Lady Rosemouth would write, and they'd write back to her. And that’s the way it went. When I got back to Australia, before I got down to Wagga and those places, before I went down to Mildura, I used to go into their Australian. We used to all congregate at the Australian, at the long bar at the Australian Hotel.

blokes like, all come back. Oh, I says, where’s Keith Chisholm, oh, he says, well I often thought about you. It wasn’t a mention made then, I didn’t know about that, he didn’t tell me and I didn’t know. It wasn’t until I got the Woman’s Weekly some couple of years later, I read this story about this fighter pilot was sponsoring this Polish family

coming to Australia. He used to operate with them in the Polish underground. He died recently in New York. Amazing. But that’s the sort of [(UNCLEAR)] with that sort of people. And she kept writing to us until she died I think. And the follow-up of that story was in 1984 when we were in England,

my daughter, eldest daughter Jill, she'd been living in London for ten years. She was married, married an Australian who come from Newcastle and met him in England. Greg is one of these fellows who seems to get away with anything. Great.

I wanted to go to Beacon Hill they had a, one of those air displays. I heard about it. I read all the airforce things. I get magazines from overseas. We arranged Jill and Greg and Phil and I to go to Beacon Hill. On the way we went via where they held the national

horse races. We went over and had a look at that. We got out to Beacon Hill and had quite a bit of time there and saw the air displays and the different planes. Saw the Spitfire again and the Hurricane. And on the way back I remember him actually saying, look at the road map for me, read the road you know. And I said all right, and I said look at this,

there’s Limsfield, that’s where Lady Rosemouth used to live. He said what’s that, what do you mean. I said I used to go and stay with them. He said, we’ll go and see them. I said you can’t do that. He whoosh around, does a wheelie in the car, and away we go. We get to Limsfield, which was the Oxted, Limsfield was the little village, type. And said

where might you Phil fortunately remembered the name of the house. Don’t tell me, I can’t think. Anyhow, he raced off into the pub there and wanted to know who could tell him how to get to this place. No, no, but one old fellow said wait a minute he said, I know, you go back to the roundabout, it’s always in England, go round the roundabout

go down through the golf course and you’ll find it’s there. And we did all this and went all the way down and Phil said, the name, can’t think of it, and there it was. That’s it, so we drove in, and stopped the car at this drive, and I remember I saw this chap come down the back of the side

and traditional British they always had a tweed coat on, tie, running boots up to here. I got out and I said, “Excuse me,” I introduced myself and said, “I happened to stay here in 1941.” Oh, he said, “He raced off and left me, came back with his wife.” This time Phil and Jill are on the back seat down on the floor,

you can’t do this you can’t do this. She came over and she said please come in she said, “Come in, you must come in.” So they eventually got out, we all went inside. She said, “You’re the first one I’ve been able to speak to about the house as it was.” She said, “I'd like to take you for a walk around and see if anything’s changed much.” Beautiful old place. I was able to do that.

Oh yes, wonderful. These Bairdwells had bought it off the Rosemouths. One of the sons, who'd been a POW in Burma, who was also with the [(UNCLEAR)]. He decided to sell it and these people bought

it, so there was nobody in between.

No, she was just, she was before

I got that far. She came into it when I was in Bournemouth and we enlisted in this organisation who put us on to Lady Rosemouth. But after that, on my staying with her I went on to OTU and trained with Hurricanes. And then went on to the squadron down at Manson.

Well, altogether from Friday to Monday. Only for weekends. We didn’t have much time off but she was one, exceptional one, but there were people like her everywhere. England was very, very hospitable, they were so grateful I think to have people like us, Canadians, really,

but they couldn’t do enough for you. That’s the way I see it.

Yeah, I mean it was, they treated us that way. I was talking about being in a hotel. We couldn’t do anything, couldn’t buy anything. Nothing. They just, what ever we wanted they bought. We used to go to London

too, we used to stay in a pub called the Regents Palace, which was Australian headquarters you might say. [(UNCLEAR)] The unofficial one was Regents Palace. It wasn’t very far from where Fleet Street was, an in Fleet Street there was a place called Codgers, which was a pub, and it was a drinking hole for Australians

and Canadians and New Zealanders and they had a bar maid there called Eve, and she used to keep an autograph book, and everybody who was everybody in the RAF was in that book. You could tell the people

on the third or fourth page. The book was full by the time it was finished. You couldn’t buy anything. These reporters used to buy people lunch, or drinks and they'd throw all their change into this pot, and that’s all it takes. Then the while we were there we used to get around a bit and one night we decided we wanted to go to the Astor-

-ia dance along. We were having drinks at Codgers, went outside and it was pitch black and it was fog. English fog. London fog is smooth, you can’t see. I said to Keith what are we going to do. He said oh, I don’t know. Just then a constable came along. Emerged out of the

gloom. And he said what are you, can I help you sir. I said we wanted to go to the Astoria dance along, but we don’t know how to get there now. Come with me. So we walked along the three of us, and we got the end of his beat. Phiiiiiiit. Blew his whistle, after a while phiiit another whistle come out of the [(UNCLEAR)] and he told what he want, what they want, what we wanted to do, so off we go with the second constable, so we eventually

got to the Astoria dance hall. We went in and had a good night, per the constables.

But that was the feeling in England, I felt anyhow. Definitely.

It was a wonderful at that stage. We weren’t in the war, we were having a wonderful time. No, well, I went to the squadron and I suppose the first impact it had on me was when I got there I wasn’t very welcome. There was seven Canadians and two Australians.

Arrived at the same time, from OTU and we were put on two flights, A and B Flight. I was on B Flight. Whether they had a couple of other Canadians, and we weren’t very welcome by the flight commander because, it was a very operational squadron and they were hoping to get replacements, they were operational trained pilots

now, we weren’t, we come from OTU. We were trained on a Hurricane, we had flown Hurricanes. Each squadron had its own rules of ability and you had to go up with a flight with the squadron commander or the flight commander who put you through their paces. It was a, show you what you had to do.

they'd assess you and come back and say all right, you’re a member of the squadron numbers. That was a great accolade. My memo said I am now a fully qualified fighter pilot and I can wear a top button undone. You know that. Well fighter pilots in Britain always wore the top button undone. That indicated you were a fighter pilot. So whilst I was

there I was in the dispersal and I could see all these pikes standing in the corners. Long pikes with a spear like thing on the end. I couldn’t figure out what they were for. I thought they must be for pinking down aircraft. So I plucked up enough courage to ask one of the

senior pilots there to ask what they were for. Oh he said, that’s our aerodrome defence. What do you mean by aerodrome defence. He said well, during the invasion scare which was just past, the distribution of the army was pretty limited and these were given to the unit and they expected that

there would be a parachute landing on the aerodrome. We were to run out with these pikes and spear the Germans if you could, if he didn’t shoot you first. And that was the standard of defence they had at that stage. You have to defend the aerodrome the best way you could until the nearby army came in and took over. So that didn’t sound very

happy to me. I thought thank god the invasion’s over anyhow.

Well, because we weren’t operationally trained. The reasons why we were there because all the pilots gone before, missing, prisoners of war, and they wanted to, it was a very highly operational squadron and they did these challenge dash they call them,

fly across, low level, right on the deck, and drop bombs on ships and down again. They wanted to have people who were trained already on that particular type of fighting. For that type of operation, they had to go through all the business of training us up to that standard to do it. They were pretty they weren’t battle weary, but they were pretty

phased, you know. When you looked at the operational board, the squadron board, you see the names all the lines drawn through them. Six or seven of us that went there were replacement pilots for those that had gone before us. They were either prisoners of war, killed or posted, that’s all.

Start to realise you are in a real situation. Another thing that happened at that time too was, as new pilots, to report to the operational room. We went up there and there were two armed airmen standing outside the doors. We

had to, we all carried identity cards, show our identity cards and we were taken in. There was a big map on the wall, big huge map, France and the channel. We sat down and the squadron leader came out and introduced himself, and said just wanted to thank us for coming up here, nice to have you, and all

that and got our names. We stood up and identified ourselves. Okay fellows. That is where our enemy are. That’s [(UNCLEAR)], that’s our opponents there. He said, “I’ll tell you something. The flight commander of B Flight over there is named Otto Schwartzis. At the present time he is out having a weekend with his girlfriend.

And that chap there he said the CO’s name is so-and-so.” He ran through all these names of German pilots and where they were, where they were born, how old they were, everything. Now he said, “I want to tell you, the Germans know exactly about you what we know about them. They’ll know the wealth that you come from Newcastle, that you

have arrived here. They’ll know all about it, as we know about them.” That sort of rocked you a little bit when they. You are fed all the time you know, mum’s the word, you don’t speak loosely, you realise what we knew, the Germans knew the same.

If they knew all about us. They know you’ve just arrived, they know where you have come from, they know where you are from, tell you all about you. That was a bit of a set back, not a set back, but a bit surprising.

Well, didn’t have many thoughts about them really. You knew they were very good. We knew very good.

the fighter pilots were, very highly, [(UNCLEAR)] trained, good aeroplane, good as a, better than a Hurricane, just better. The [(UNCLEAR)] well I was obviously more aware obviously

for keeps now. One of the things I think the reason why I am probably sitting here alive now, the weather was so poorly in that time, in England. I read that in some of the war books I got. Same for the Germans. We were almost grounded because of the weather, couldn’t fly. They were going [(UNCLEAR)] I remember one incident there. By this time I was

a member of the squadron and all the fellows, we all got on. I happened to be put on readiness this morning with the flight commander, Robin Heatherby, who was sitting there. When you’re on readiness you put your [(UNCLEAR)] on, you’re all rigged up, the rest of the blokes just walk with their coats and things on. Then the phone rang and they said scramble, scramble

That’s the only time you ever took off when they say scramble. We had to take off because there was a bogey they call it, coming over the channel and there was a convoy of ships going up the channel. They had a saying, when the weather is bad, even the sea gulls don’t fly. They just walk. And we took off through this cloud. And ten cents

that means cloud, came out about 15,000 feet. I came out on top of the cloud. Couldn’t see anybody, can’t see my leader anywhere. Flew around a bit, so I thought I gotta let down. So I let down through the cloud, come out, at the bottom, about 1,500 feet, suddenly I see all these ships and all these lights starts coming up at me and I realised it was

flack. They were shooting at me, so I went straight back up through the cloud again, got up the top. Eventually, I got home, back to the squadron. I learnt that was a royal naval ship. I had no identity so they just saw me as a plane that could be anything, so they opened fire. That was, brought me back in to the war. Again I realised it was getting serious now.

Yes, well, it was about February 5th 1942. By now I'm a fully accepted member of the squadron. I do my stint of operations [(UNCLEAR)] and so forth. We’re on [(UNCLEAR)] this particular morning.

and these six Swordfish arrived. Now Swordfish are biplanes, royal naval biplanes. And they have a big torpedo slung under their body, bellies. These six landed and taxied up to dispersal. Got around position, facing the right way, they got out first of course we all said what are you doing here. They said, well we don’t know.

What are we doing here. Well we don’t know for sure. Just then some brass arrived, the CO of the station gold braid everywhere, they all disappeared. We still didn’t know what they were here for. So every day for the next four or five days these fellows, these royal naval airmen. They had six pilots and two other crew I think,

they all came down to dispersal and sat around, on readiness, with us. We used to have the usual cracks about the navy, they'd have a crack about the air force. Great bunch of fellows though. And we all got on famously, well down at readiness and in the mess. Anyhow, we’re still quite a bewilderment, both of us, as to what they were doing there.

then the week of the 12th I think it was, or the 7th, of June, they come over the loudspeaker [(UNCLEAR)] system, would all air crew men report to dispersal immediately. This is a red alert. You did it quick, post haste. We all got down to dispersal, the whole squadron, plus these Royal Naval blokes. And we

then learnt that we had the Scharnhorst, the Eisenhower and the Prinz Eugen which were three popular battle ships which were hold up in Brest and making a dash up the channel to get into the north sea and home. The Brits had known this for some time and they had people watching them. The weather was always

the deciding factor I think, because the weather was filthy. I said to you before. The weather was overcast, raining, ceilings were low, visibility was virtually nil. Anyhow, they made their dash. It wasn’t until they were well up the channel that we were alerted to this situation. Then a whole bunch of Spitfires arrived,

headed by Wing Commander ‘tin Legs’ Bader. He got all the pilots together and briefed them on what was about to happen, and what was expected of us and the fighter blokes. Because I think every aeroplane who could fly in England was put on alert. Anyhow, the fist people to be scrambled were these Swordfish.

they went off cause they could only fly at about 90 miles per hour. They went out and never came back, none of them, they were all wiped out. The CO was the commander. He got a VC [Victoria Cross] I think. Our squadron was bombed up, well bombing up, ten planes I think were bombed up and the CO and the flight commanders

and all the senior fellows took that job on. But briefly we’d be the next wave off, so we had to prepare ourselves. So we were then scrambled. Our squadron was scrambled. The Spitfires were all up, and there was general mayhem and eventually our squadron started to come back. I think we lost about four

planes and pilots. But we successfully damaged the German destroyer, put it out of action. Then the CO got back and his flight commanders and he immediately put on a restriction, no more flying. The weather was so bad that you couldn’t be effective. The Germans, the battle was making slow, the same time

It was a real ding dong go. I think if both sides did I say, there were 100 planes each. The Germans brought they’re fighter planes up from the south of France, up the coast, to try and protect this and it was a day to be remembered and it all started out how they found out. They didn’t know until they found out

by Group Captain Victor Beamish who, when you became a group captain you didn’t fly operations over the channel, because you had too much knowledge if you were picked up by the Germans. But they used to sneak off, and Victor Beamish was a bit of a press on type, so he went down to the squadron, which he was stationed on, took one of their Spitfires, got it

in to go with him, and two of them took and did an illegal sweep up the French coast to see if they could find any Germans asleep at the steering wheel but when they broke cloud they saw these German battleships making their way up the channel. They put it on alert that they were making their way. That went down in the annals of history, and all by a lack of

the game we were ready, nervous, apprehensive. We saw several Spitfires crash on landing. They called it off, so we didn’t have to go. That’s one time I probably got away with it. If I'd gone, I don’t know what'd happen. The weather was so bad. And they the opposition was horrific.

flack, flag ships, destroyers, so forth.

No, those ships got through. Eventually finished up where they were going to, so it was, as far as our [(UNCLEAR)], non event. Lost a lot of planes, but they had to do it. The Germans were good enough, the weather was with them.

You couldn’t see, you wouldn’t see across the road. That’s what made flying difficult and being on a ship much easier. So that was that one. Shortly after that, oh, March was when we left the squadron to go overseas.

Well the squadron is made up of 24 pilots basically. Broken into two flights, twelve each. And if you go onto readiness, depending on the event. Normal readiness, twelve pilots go on readiness. That means you go down to dispersal, you get your plane out, you put it over where it’s supposed to be.

You go over it with the ground crew, see that the oxygen’s working and the radio’s going and you put on your May West and you all filter back to dispersal the leader of the squadron will check out and ring up the office and that we are always ping pong. The ping, pong squadron is in

readiness, 12 aeroplanes. From that point on you sit and wait.

You didn’t know your plane the way ground crew did, the ins and outs of how it worked, I didn’t anyhow, but you certainly, if you were sensible you checked on the oxygen to see if that was working, for one,

and the radio, that was vital to have the radio working, and things like that.

The ground crew would maintain it. They would service it. They would pull the panels off, go over the engine, and say, check the filters, do all that, and they'd declare it serviceable. That plane would be serviceable as far as the

ground crew were. You used to sign a form that was called and E77. The pilot signed that the plane was serviceable. The rest of what they did depended on the pilot or not. Some of them didn’t care. Some were over cautious. Some of them that fellows that knew the difference. They used to say people who were hunters and

people who were not hunters. Hunters were the ones that would be very careful about their equipment, see that it worked well. Check your radio which was a simple operation. Just press a button and ring up, turn the oxygen on, put it over your mouth and you could feel it. Simple things like that. Having done that you

give the wheels a kick, she’s right. And go back to dispersal and wait. That was the worst part, waiting.

Yes, yes, yes. Could have happened. Didn’t happen to me and didn’t happen to any of the people I knew, but that was the idea of it. If you got in and you turned the oxygen on and it wasn’t working, it put you

out of the air, U/S [unserviceable] straight away. Cause I mean, you have to have to have oxygen. U/S, unserviceable. Plane would be taken off to be serviced. There were many incidents where I suppose it occurred that somebody made an error that wasn’t found until after the plane had taken off. But not often, not for me anyhow.

Yes, well what I was talking about in the UK at Banston. Readiness was more of the war, because you couldn’t fly very well for the weather. Everything was clamped. The only time you were flying was when you were scrambled for a bandit or a bogey. Otherwise, you just sit there from, you sit there from say you might be there for the dawn run so you go there

from first flight to midday. Then you get relieved by the other twelve. Then they go on from say one o’clock till four or five, till shut down, then they do the early morning shift. Like that.

Yes. A bogey is an unidentified plane. There’s friendly bogey unidentified plane

and bandit was an identified enemy.

No it wouldn’t. The radar would be reading it see. It said there’s blip. And we used to have what we called IFF, identification, friend or foe, which we used to press the button when we took off, on the side, and that, on the radar operator would see on the screen, rather than just all blips.

there'd be longer blips for us and short blips would be for the enemy other aircraft. So you could tell who was who. You count up how many there were. That was the idea of it really. They'd scramble you accordingly. And when they scrambled you they would jump forward but they'd [(UNCLEAR)] the flight anywhere.

When we were really operational flying in Burma, and I would probably be the leader and I would do all this. Go around your plane and you'd ground crew were part of you as much as anything. They liked the plane and they were proud of you I suppose and you'd say G’day to them and talk about the weather and say what a helluva place to be this time in the morning. You got to know a little bit about their personal life.

then so she’s right. They'd clean the windscreens for you so that you could see through it, so it wasn’t covered in dust, which was quite prevalent. So you'd go back to the dispersals and another pilot would go there, once they were all there they would check them over, you know. Then I'd ring up ops and say, okay, ping pong section in readiness.

with 12 aircraft. And they'd acknowledge and dogsbody, P3 ping pong standby. And we wait, wouldn’t know how long, half an hour, an hour, two hours, nervous pace were the order of the day. Everybody would walk around. When you’re in combat regularly, nerves were very much, conversation was very limited.

You get, the odd nervous puke was not unusual. Then you'd be just hoping, waiting, let’s just get it over with. You knew they were going to come. That was the case then, that’s when the real nerves get to you. When you get off, of course you can get on with the job then. It was pretty nerve racking.

Well, I mean, ah, in lots of ways, as I said, some would walk around, walk around in a circle, walk around the, try and read a book. Some of the hardened blokes would try and play cards, but it was all pony. It was generally a nervous tension. You could feel it. When we first got to Burma, we had a [(UNCLEAR)] in dispersal where the pilots used to sit

in all manners of chairs and everything and books and things on the walls and so forth. The phone'd ring and everyone'd make a dash for the door. We were supposed to be if you were scrambled you had to get up in a couple of minutes if we could. That meant you had to get into the aeroplane, belt up, strap up and take off as quick as you could. If you could get off in less than five minutes it was pretty good. In two minutes was the ideal

you aimed for that, but when the phone'd ring and you'd pick it up and everybody'd jump, and it would be ops ring up to see what the weather was like down there. So this got too much for us, so our doctor who was a Scotch man, McGregor, he said I’ll fix this, so he built, got the locals to build another basher out of bamboo, somewhere over there and they'd be, put the

operational phones in that basher, away from us. We had nothing here. And there'd be a big claxon horn. So when we were scrambled they'd blow the claxon horn and away we'd go. The phone could ring there and we can’t put what the weather was like, if they want morning tea or they might be ringing about that. That’s all they used to do. Then they also, we were rigged up in the outside the hut, the signal hut, the signal

rigged up a loud speaker system, so the ground crew could hear the interception coming over and that was great for morale. They were all waiting for you to get back, see how you got on. So there was a great affinity. We were extremely lucky with the ground crew were wonderful blokes. They kept the planes flying in the most unbelievably bad conditions without a moan or groan.

Well, yes, when we were in England. It was, I remember one Canadian [(UNCLEAR)] said to me I come from Sirlookout and we get 40 below there, it’s never as cold as this. And it was, it was off the North Sea, it was a biting cold. And cloud is hanging around. Most unpleasant. When we were in India, it was how hot it was.

and you'd be stripping off as fast as you could. So weather was always a topic for any pilot weather was a popular topic.

Play cards, read a book.

anything like that. Talk about what you’re going to do tonight down at the pub, something like that. It was not that tensioned, because you knew that in this sort of weather, in fact for both us and the Germans, we, you couldn’t fly. And people did fly but it wasn’t the accepted norm, no.

Well when you were in readiness, you had your flying gear on, plus your Mae West [life jacket], and your helmet. You'd put your helmet over the reflector in the cockpit, and the parachute in the plane with the straps back. Some of the pilots used to put the parachute on the wing tip, with the straps hanging down, the idea being to get in there as quick as you could. So you hop in, the ground crew would hop up on the sides and

belt you up. And you'd put your helmet on, put your oxygen in, and go. As quick as you could. After a while you do it by reflex action, you know what I mean. But while you had to make sure you had your helmet down with your earphones and microphone,

and your goggles. You learnt after a while when you weren’t so young and smart that you wore everything, particularly, like that, because of fire. You didn’t have that on, you could get burnt in the face. It would be very bad. So whatever you had, even a shirt like this, would be some protection against flames.

In England, leather. In Burma, khaki. Some of them kept their leather helmets, but generally speaking that was the way it was done. I had mine right up till I well, I’ve still got parts of it but I gave it to SEAC,

the South East Asia Command I belong to, they had a memorabilia place at the war museum and we put in all these things, remnants of my helmet, face mask, gloves. Fire was always the thing you were frightened of, particularly when you saw some people who were burnt because they weren’t properly protected.

so you learnt to, as you got smarter and more experienced, to wear the clothes that were designed for you.

Well, in the face, you’re exposed, somewhere. Hands if you don’t wear gloves up to here. Some of the flames were so fierce they burnt through the suit

that’s when you really had it bad, flash flame particularly in India, as you can imagine, India was so hot. Some of the blokes were flying in a pair of shorts, short sleeved socks, short sleeved shirt, and helmet. And of course you had to wear the oxygen mask and thing, that’s why I wore

In fact, if they had to crash and they caught fire. I experienced this. The flames shot out and up your arm and burnt all the back of your arms, your face, everything. All the exposed parts would have what they call them, second degree burns, bad burns, then underneath that you'd have another burn, but not as bad as that. So the wise thing was to wear long, fully covered

flying suit, even if it was khaki, this weight, as long as you wore one. Gloves, up to here, leather gloves, face mask, helmet, so you were pretty well covered.

Not normally, it wasn’t necessarily cold either, unless you got up to very high altitude, lets say in England it would be very cold, yeah.

in England they used to wear a long woollen socks right up to here and heavy leather things, because it was very cold up at 35,000 feet, in England. But in India, you didn’t need it. If you were wise

you wore it, but you didn’t need it.

Not really, I wouldn’t say so. You got used to flying with the gloves on. Some of the fellows wore little silk gloves, they take that because they can feel better but it didn’t take you long if you got burnt to wear proper leather gloves.

Didn’t require that much finesse, like movement. But no.

The RAF did. Or the RAAF, whatever, and they were issued to you and had to be checked by the parachute section. You were supposed to go down and watch them pack your parachute

which we never did. We did a few times, just to give the parachute section a lift, that we thought to go down and see what they were doing. They pack it all, and it'd be issued back to you. Always kept at dispersal. You never took it with you back to your quarters or anything like that. It was in a locker somewhere.

Yes, the parachute goes on first, over here, through here, and there’s a thing, shove all these things into it, that was it, you were in your parachute. You had a when you were flying over land all the time you sat on a rubber seat, when you were flying over

the water, you had a dinghy seat, about that thick, which was pretty hard I tell you, but you had to wear it. So you hop up on the main plane and the ground crew would be on each side of the wing, help you in. They give you the straps to put into the straps of the plane. By that time you'd be

starting up. You have an outside ac starter, away you go.

Yeah. Well I mean, you used to think that if you go down in water you go down. It’s harder than concrete. Not much chance of getting, although, when you had dinghies, there was odds on if you

were a fighter pilot in France, you'd finish up in the drink. You'd finish up in the English Channel or the North Sea, and dinghies, you'd pull a lever and the dinghy'd blow up automatically, and you'd have two minutes to get into it. Otherwise you'd be dead with the cold. Once you get into it you release a die marker, you know

put it round you. That'd automatically, it would alert the air sea rescue and they'd come looking for you.

Pretty good, pretty good. They were always o alert, because you know the people coming back and coming back in those days, the air sea rescue did a great job, they were equipped with eh

with aeroplanes and they were equipped with fast air sea rescue launches. And if they could get a pinpoint on the plane they'd have someone there quick smart, the plane first then they'd sight you and phone the positions to the air sea rescue launch, drag you aboard, plus Germans, anybody they could find.

Depended where you were, well in water, you had more chance getting out than Burma, when we flew over impenetrable jungle, if you went into there, chances you getting out were nil, very limited. You didn’t know where you were. You were also given a compass. You wore a battledress. Do you know what a battle dress is. Battledress is like a

coat with sleeves and buckles on the sleeves down there, and down there, like a working thing. Two or three of the buttons were magnetised, so put one on the other one and it would swing north all the time. You had many life saving

gears given to you, money, if you’re flying over France you'd be given French money. They used to, the flying boot, which was made of leather, black leather, had like a pair of leather shoes, thing around here, where that fits, and up here was the top part.

you put that on and if you were shot down you escaped. You ripped the top bit off and you walked around in a pair of shoes. And course the flying gear that you wore, the trousers you wore could be mistaken for a pair of ordinary slacks, had all that gear. It was used too by pilots. Fortunately I never had to do it.

No. Used to carry what you called a [(UNCLEAR)] though, everywhere, this was in Burma and France, which said I am an allied pilot, in the local idiom and any assistance you can give, take me to the nearest British outpost and you will be rewarded. We used to carry that.

Yes. S'posed to, there was always a drill for them. I must say I don’t remember doing one. I might have done one or two, but I didn’t do it often. But they were pretty simple you know.

and the occasion met the, the demand met the occasion I would say. You got into one if you were in the cold water, or if you were injured or shot up. They did everything they could to provide you with suitable gear. A lot of people who got shot down in France got away with by

meeting friendly locals and escaped through the underground, which took them out. Took them from town to town, city to city, brings you down over the, Spain, to Spain out. Spain being a neutral country at the time I think.

I had two friends who were on the squadron, came to the squadron I mentioned, three of us. Brice Watson and Ron Sharman. They were both from Melbourne, they were left to form this new squadron. Had the deer parade, which was attacked by Hurricane Thomas, they were on the squadron

Brice was shot down, caught, made a prisoner of war, and he finished his term of the war in prison, somewhere. But Ron Sharman managed to escape, he drifted all round France, and down through the [(UNCLEAR)], eventually got back to England. If you did that you couldn’t fly again. Send you out to Burma, fly out there, because they couldn’t send you back to France. Because in case if you were caught

again the Gestapo [Geheime Staats Polizei – German secret police] would get out of you how you got out before. Who helped you, and they knew. So that was taboo.

That was very rare,

a red alert was normally when you were being bombed or something like that, in England. It was only a very rarely used, but it indicated a serious, it was something important. As I said, a red alert, everyone was involved. The station was put on red alert. Everybody.

By the [(UNCLEAR)] system, the loud speakers.

Just come over loud speakers. In England, in Burma they probably ran around, shook you, wake you up. But no, I'm being facetious, in England it was, Manson was a peacetime station. Brick built, they had all those things there.

Yes, that’s right.

Yes, very much. We got posted there and we arrived and welcomed by the CO who I can remember said

now gentlemen, you’re here to [(UNCLEAR)] and you’ll be flying Hurricane ones. He said I wouldn’t be getting one if I was paid. But he says you will, cause you’ll have to learn to fly a Hurricane. You know, facetiously, but he wasn’t far wrong because they really were old Hurricanes. But they were a good plane. I anticipated flying one but it was very exciting.

Probably do a little bit of nervous wretch too, not unknown. When we got there we were given a dual flight in what they call a miles master, which was like a Wirraway but bigger. More power. We'd taken a dual trip around the place to see where we lived here. This was Manson,

that was Carlisle, that was something, something. Then they'd land and say you go up and you'd have a couple of flights and get your hand back, because you hadn’t flown for a while. They go down to the dispersal and you'd be told to go and sit in a Hurricane. They give you a sheet of paper which tells you the fuel

capacity, the pressure for the tyres and all that. But basically, you were told you all the layout of the cockpit, where the pitch lever was, where and flaps, and petrol tank, reserve tank, all that stuff that’s important. You had to sit and learn that. And

after a few days of doing this the instructor'd come over and lean on the side of the cockpit and say, where’s the petrol pump. He'd say that’s right, very casual, they'd say all right, off you go. So you take the Hurricane over there, get into it. This is when you'd start to think, because you gotta start it. It was the first hurdle to get over, because they were a pretty delicate thing to start

ack ack started outside. You'd do a pre cockpit drill, which was TMF, TMPFIF I think. You had to check them all. Temperature, Mixture, Pitch, Fuel, Flaps, and make sure they were all right. Give the

thumbs up to the blokes. We had to give a few pumps of the wobble pump, that was a bit of pressure, thumbs up, press the starter button, fwomp, away she went. That wasn’t always the case because you could over prime it. It wouldn’t go, you'd have to sit and wait and wait, and wait. Mine went off all right, taxied out, there was a great big nose out in front of you, you had to put your head out, you had to swing the aeroplane when you

taxiing, so you could see ahead. Got out the end of the strip, of the aerodrome in this case.

Well it was a wonderful plane. The fuselage was all fabric, and the main plates were metal, metal main plates.

It had a Rolls Royce Merlin engine, three bladed prop, and the cockpit was very small, as they all are in British planes. You had the throttle and the pitch lever on one side and wheel, and the flaps on the other side but the flaps used to be in front, the wheels were down there.

It was an old dated plane compared to what it was in later on in the years. But it was very at that stage, to me, it appeared to be what a fighter plane should be. It wasn’t till I go on, out to the having taxied out all right, got out the end then, turned her in towards the win and the control tower gave the green light to take off and you open the throttle, that’s when you realise

the joy of a powered plane. Compared to the Wirraway, this was incredible. Took off, next thing I was in the air. It wasn’t until I got to about 3,000 feet that, I forgot to put my wheels up. So I put the wheels up and flew around for a while. The controls were so beautiful and so easy to move. Flew it everywhere. Eventually, after about half an hour, forty five minutes,

just came in and landed, hoping to put it down without bending it. You had a certain way to land a fighter plane. You always had to come in on the turn to the right way, and if anything happened, you got shot by another plane, you could tighten your turn up, come in quicker, get it down. Anyhow, come down, put it down watched the, put it down all right. That was it. I was

taxied it, I made it, I’ve done it. And from then on I was you know, all right. Depending on your ability, but I was reasonably successful at flying the thing, putting it down. Which was [(UNCLEAR)] of a lot of people, land it too high and ‘pungg’, falls down.

Well, depends on what stage we’re at, but if you are talking about flying a Hurricane, it would be the landing, always the landing.

Well it wasn’t difficult, but when you are landing a plane, it is in unusual positions, not straight level, coming down.

It’s you gotta maintain the throttle, bring the stick back so you’re not going too fast. You can’t bring a fighter plane in like a Hurricane at 200mph, you'd bend it and that'd be it. You had to learn all that and that sometimes made it difficult if you weren’t spot on. You couldn’t, you had to land.

you know, you couldn’t land three quarters of the way up the runway, you had to land on the first part so you didn’t run out of landing room.

Very good, it had a central column with a round ring, and on the ring was the throttle fire button and

so turn that way, go up like that, and this'd go up here and that'd turn for the wings, and back and forwards for the, sideways, like that.

Well, depends on what mach you flew. The Mark 2B, which I flew [(UNCLEAR)], had 12 machine guns, six on each wing

303s, and the Mark 2C had 4 cannons, four 20mm cannons on each side. They were it was varied a bit. Sometimes the CO of the squadron might vary his own plane, might have two cannons and four machine guns. Basically that was the way, four cannons

with four twelve machine guns.

Oh yes, yes, we used to have air to air. We used to have a drogue. Do you know what a drogue is? It is a big cylinder of cloth and it'd be dragged behind a plane, it was a drogue carrier

the plane would be dragging, it would fly behind a plane like a big kite, and you would attack it. And when you did this the bullets were colours. If I was doing it my colours were red, so if you hit it, the holes would be red. You might be yellow. If there were yellow holes then you hit it, no yellow holes then you missed it. That was the way. We used to do that. But it’s not terribly effective, but it gave you a chance to fire your gun.

No, that was the ultimate. It’s why you learnt to fly the plane, to fire your guns. The aeroplane was a gun platform and the decks of combat, it was very, very rare, but the essence of it,

if you got up close behind somebody, the closer to them the better, you couldn’t miss him. But if you sat back a bit and tried, there was no hope of hitting him. But that all came with time. And you always find the real aces, the experts, would go down in history. The Germans were good at it too. The Japs [Japanese] were very good at it, they'd get right up close

to you, 70 yards from you, fire, they couldn’t miss. Took a bit of nerve that, and flying, to get into that position.

Yep. It was the first of the single seater planes that was brought out by the British government

for the RAF just prior to the start of the war, 1939. And it was the workhorse for the fighter command. It shot more planes down than the Spitfire because there were a lot more Hurricanes, then they brought the Spitfire out. A couple they fought the battle of Britain. As time went on

the planes were improved, bigger engines and things like that, particularly the Spitfires. The Spitfires were 1, 2, 5, 9, 8, 9, 12, 16, always an improvement, the power of the engine or something.

Yeah.

when I joined the Hurricane bomber squadron, the 609 Squadron. One of the first operating and they carried two, two hundred pound bombs, one under each wing. It was an event that the Germans were also using. One of the Me 109s, put a bomb underneath them.

two bombs or one bombs, and they go then and drop the bombs, but when you’ve dropped the bombs you reverted back to your fighter pilot role. But it wasn’t a very comfortable job. The drill was, when I got to Manson, they took you out showed you how to do it. You had to go in as low as you could. Every pilot thinks he’s

pretty good at low fire [(UNCLEAR)], but not when you get into professional fighter bomber squadron, they really fly low because your life depends on it. You gotta fly below, if you can, the radar screen, out of sight of the Germans. If you were to hand a ship or whatever, you had to go in low and fire your guns furiously while they’re firing furiously at you.

pull up you release your bombs away, they'd carry on the same trajectory as you were. Fairly effective, but very dangerous, because you had to get over the plane and down again, over the target. With everybody firing at you madly. Fatalities were pretty high in that game.

Oh yes

lots, lots of people. You know, they all manners of things. It was a situation didn’t matter what aeroplane you were in, you couldn’t take risks with it. If you didn’t handle it properly then you were in

danger, you crashed. Yeah. Lot of people lost their lives. Other people lost their lives, particularly in England and Burma, the weather. Weather beats you. Couldn’t, no horizon, didn’t know whether you were Arthur or Martha, run out of fuel.

Crash. The fatality rate I would say in Burma, there was more people lost due to the weather than there were in combat. And that applies to all planes, bomber planes, fighter planes.

Oh well,

it was a part of what was happening, nothing very much. Some people probably might be highly affected by it, on the average, we kind of accepted it. What had to be had to be. And the loss of a friend

were never very nice, but you had to sort of handle it the best way you could. I wouldn’t say it affected morale then I think. Cause you all want to get on, press on.

well

well I lost a few people, friends, [(UNCLEAR)] down at Wagga, we lost some planes down there, people I knew, also people OTU, lost and just didn’t come back and we'd find them. During the war, we lost quite a few people, friends we knew. Got shot down or

crashed or something like that. And yeah, it wasn’t anything you enjoyed, it wasn’t a reflection on you, you learnt how to cope with that. One way of coping with it you went and got a few sherbets in you. That’s what the typical approach was.

No. Not unless they found the body. In those cases your person was basically missing in action. That’s all. If he was killed, yes, a body, there was a proper burial service. If he crashed into the aerodrome, there might be a service, but not unless you do that.

if you just didn’t come back he was missing, missing in action.

No, not really. I think they down played a lot of that so you didn’t get too mentally involved with it. It would be, you would attend the service, the funeral, wouldn’t be very long.

chap would be buried, they probably the Padre would say a few words, that'd be it, get back to the mess and get into the beer.

Yes, I mean, the pilots themselves would be very, when they were

on readiness we were very close to each other. If anything, you'd think it would be the other way, a group on their own, the pilots sort of there, but I think generally speaking I made very good friends, yeah, very good friends. Some survived the war some

didn’t. But I don’t think I. We certainly weren’t like an army unit, when they were all together fighting together. We were individualists, we had to be, but we oversee each other’s bombs. But there’s many a stories that I can tell and anybody can tell, the ah

the incredible events that occur to a person who you swore was dead, written off as dead. Turned up in a POW camp, things like that.

Yeah. If you were flying a, we were taking the Hurricanes

across to Karachi, to Calcutta, it was a fair way. I almost went to sleep. I did. You can feel yourself drifting off, this buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. You were just ferrying aeroplanes, that’s all. In combat you didn’t think like that, you were scrambled you were scrambled. Your eyes were peeled to see what was around. So on and so forth.

and after the event, if you were in combat, the adrenalin was pumping, you gotta get back, get down, and boast about it. Many a story, you’ve probably seen it, the pilots all round doing this and sort of, that was the part of the ethic of fighter pilot.

German or Australian or what, all the same.

Well not so much that. You had about. On a fighter squadron you had about twenty four pilots, broken into two twelve, twelve, each

flight. There’s some people, you naturally think, you’re a prickly individual. Other people you think are very friendly, so you made friends as you would in civilian life with people. I would have very friendly with two Canadians, and a Burmese fellow. We were close, really close friends.

other people we used to be friendly, ‘g'day’, something like that, but we wouldn’t seek their company out. That’s the way it was. So you highly respected their ability, but you didn’t necessarily like them as a person. You had all sorts of things crept up into it.

We had the squadron, when we left England, one chap Burt Murray, he was a policeman from [(UNCLEAR)] in South Africa. He was a British born, and he was, if you thought about apartheid, he was it. He, anyone with coloured blood in him was taboo. Course when we got to India, with all these Anglo Indians, he couldn’t

tell whether they were British or what. He was very, very difficult. He made a lot of bad friends that way. His attitude. You didn’t see it very often, but that was the type of thing that could come up. Also, you could probably lose respect for a fellow who you knew was not pulling his weight.

That happened, several times. One fellow, whose name is, again I'm at Burma, I did all my operational flying in Burma. I pick on that because that is where I was involved. This fellow was an Australian. He was posted at the squadron as a replacement. One of about four or five. And I'd been on the

squadron for eighteen months or two years by now, and I’ll probably spoke in this accent, I don’t know, but he certainly didn’t wear any ‘Australias’. I could hear this Australian voice. The Australian voice stands out like you’ve no idea. So the bloke [(UNCLEAR)] I said that’s an Australian you better go out and have a talk to him.

I knew what he meant. I said. They recognised him straight away. I said to him, “Probably better to tone your voice down a bit.” And so much for me, he said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “Don’t you know me?” He said no, well, I said, “I know you. Your name’s…” I won’t mention his name. I says, “You worked in the bank

in corner of Bolton and Hunter Street Newcastle.” He says, “How did you know that?” I told him who I was, well he was shocked. He was a flight commander three. Flight commander said, “You'd better take him as your number two,” so I took him as my number two. You had to fly in pairs, wherever you went. I was the leader, the number two if you get into any trouble and get attacked by

an enemy fighter. Anyhow, we used to go out to these defensive patrols out across the front line into Burma. Anyhow, his engine always used to play up. He had fuel trouble, he had to turn back to base. That happened three or four or five times. The CO called me in. There was the doctor and the flight commander and me. They were discussing this, and the doctor

said there’s only one thing that is wrong with him, he’s got LMF, that’s Lack of Morale Fibre. So what to do with him. The thing was, a posting came up to go to Singapore, which was an OTU back on the north west front, that’s where he went to. But he’s the sort of person who crops up out of the blue.

No we were all a pretty close-knit group.

Well, you never know how often but it must have been fairly often, particularly in bomber command in England. Going across dropping these bombs, being hit by night fighters. It covered all sorts of names.

The nerves gave, you didn’t blame the people sometimes. Nerves were gone, couldn’t face it. Report to the doctor best way. Doctor would certify you LMF or something, not that they got morale fibre in that case because you yourself owned up to it. But if you tried to hide it, it would come out.

He wasn’t branded that way, but there’s a problem with these fellows, a problem with anybody who wasn’t doing his job. He was coming back with so called fuel shortage or something and the ground crew could find nothing wrong with the plane every time. So it got back to one thing, the pilot doesn’t want to go any further.

It was not unusual. Unfortunately not very often but. You can understand it sometimes.

No one ever knew. No one knew in this case except me. And the flight commander, CO, doctor, he was just posted.

No one would ever have known, except a few people.

Well, it’s not a thing you were aware of, you didn’t know anything about it. You heard of it, but it wasn’t something that was prevalent. I don’t want to dwell on it too much

because it’s just one of those things, you asked me whether there were any occasions where you took a dislike to anybody. It wasn’t that sort of thing really, I never had any. Once in my flying career. Other people I have known went right through the war, never run across them, in bomber command, anywhere. It was a, you know, just don’t talk about those sort of things.

its' best not to go too much into that. It wasn’t a part of our life, generally.

Well, not really, when we got to Manston, as I said, the weather was foul. We were at

Manston was very near to [(UNCLEAR)] called Ramsgate markets. We used to go in there, meet the locals. They were all pretty normal. There were no things. They were still subjected to the odd hit one raider, drop bombs. No, there was no significant. By the time they got to this they'd been through a lot, they'd been through the battle of Britain, they'd been through everything, they were pretty

used to the situation.

No, not when I was, no, not Manston. I have been heavily bombed, but no, not in England. What I'm trying to get at is that England was only a small part of my flying career. None of my

combat experience or battle experience occurred there, it all occurred in Burma. That’s the big part of my story.

That’s right, yes. It was the epitome of the air

fighting, German versus the British.

Well you, I suppose that, but as I wrote in my memoirs, it plays a pretty small part of my actual service career and my flying experiences. You might say from

in England I was still a sprog, even when we left to come out to India. Took a while to get sort of a bit battle hardened you might say. I certainly wasn’t getting it in England because of the situation that existed. Wasn’t until we got out to India later in the war

when it started to hot up, that we actually got into the job that we were supposed to do, to be a combat pilot.

No, no. No. The closest I got to it was when I told you I was scrambled for a bogey or something. Got lost in the cloud. But no, none went on, the weather was so bad, that

combat flying generally, both sides, was taboo.

I wouldn’t say I was craving for it. I don’t think that would be a fair word for it.

Well, possibly. That’s what we were there for. I didn’t anticipate flying in the weather we were supposed to fly in.

that was something we didn’t like. It was a terrible, very, very important part of your flying. Might be all right to get off, but you gotta get back again. Strips closed down through the weather. It’s not like the modern aircraft with landing things. You just had to get in the best way you could. And you couldn’t sometimes

see, bail out or crash land.

Nearly, nearly, that was again in India, in Calcutta. We were doing night flying, and night fighting [(UNCLEAR)] hell out of the battle of Britain. The Blitz on London. Twelve of our planes were sent off Hurricanes they were. And we had to fly in a

anti clockwise direction and told to fly at 22,000 feet. They had the radar screen there and got a band, which was Japanese bombers, they'd get through the outer circle, they'd come in to us, providing the height, I'd be vectoring onto them. The first time I ran out lost my radio, it packed up. And couldn’t see where I was. You were going round in circles.

You’re not going in a straight line. I had no idea where I was, I panic button, hit that one time. I thought, well, what am I going to do. I looked around, I could see lightning up that way, lightning that way. Calcutta’s a big city, almost blacked out, almost blacked out. I couldn’t see anything. Will I bail out or what’ll I do. I looked down and I saw a flash on the water, it was the river.

there’s only one river, they call it [(UNCLEAR)], and I just dived straight down and I found, on the ground level, dim lights and I got back to the aerodrome, landed. But I tell you what I was pretty upset about that, for sure.

Well, the radar controller, not the radar, the controller has got you on his screen. He would give you a bearing on the plane that you’re following, this is night time, and you would have a radar and you'd follow it up, and as soon as you saw the exhaust of the plane in front of you, and you go and attack it, but that’s something. But that wasn’t in my, I wasn’t night fighter pilot.

they were the blokes in twin engine aeroplanes at two in the morning.

No, Hurricanes. I did one tour in Hurricanes in India. One tour in spit

fives and one tour in spit eights. So I did that much. But the first tour, which we got to India, which were Hurricanes, the First Arakan Campaign, yeah. The

details of that, you’ve got to lead me, tell me what you want to talk about.

No.

Yes, the, if you’ve read that particular thing I gave you last night, the overall

policy of Roosevelt, Churchill where they were going to defeat the Germans first and deal with the Japanese after, so we were fighting Japanese. We didn’t have much say in the pick of the cherry, I can tell you. But it was after the fall of Burma it was serious enough to send out replacement squadrons where we were. We were

by Hurricanes, that was it. We picked them up at Karachi, [(UNCLEAR)], and the flying in tropical conditions. Are you going to start on one, Burma, or are you going to question me or what.

Well, we got to Karachi, and in May or June 1942 and we picked up our

Hurricanes after a week or so, and we flew across India, to land at Alipal, which was outside of Calcutta. That was to be our base. The idea was we were first of all to become operational we had to learn to fly in tropical conditions. I mean when you saw the horrendous tropical monsoonal clouds, bases of 1,000 feet and tops of 45,000 feet,

you were told never, never to fly in one, sudden death. That was the idea of them. They didn’t tell us we were running into the worst monsoons since 1897. The heat was terrible. Everybody, everybody, suffered some kind of skin trouble, in here, in here, in your crutch, behind your ears. Some more than others. And the rain,

it used to rain and rain and rain, then it would stop. Then you wouldn’t be able to see across the road with the steam rising off everything. And all we were not aware that India was suffering with the worst famines for 200 years, because of the lack of rice. The Japanese controlled all the rice grown in Burma.

but everybody was dying in the street, just lived there in the gutters. That was a bit hard to take. We sort of got used to that, but you couldn’t get used to it. I wasn’t built that way. Calcutta was a terrible place, huge city. There must have been about two million people that slept in the street.

on the street. Cattle was highly respected. They wouldn’t touch cattle, they roamed everywhere. Very, very difficult place to live. Signs everywhere, quit India, quit India, quit India. Everywhere we went we carried side arms. Anyhow, eventually

we were posted to a place further east, to a place called Jesaw, where we started, we were getting into serious flying. No operations yet. Another thing that used to amaze us, the lack of aerodrome control regarding animals. You come in to land and all of a sudden a cow would stroll in front of you. Then we got further

east and we getting towards the [(UNCLEAR)] monsoon.

Well, we just it’s, we’re just waiting for our Hurricanes to be prepared and ready. We went into Karachi and had a look around like

tourists do. Pretty dreadful place. It was our first look at India. When the planes were ready we took off for Calcutta, which was our destination. We flew across India. We landed at Alaman, spent the night there, the next morning to

the strip in Calcutta, Apal, and we there to learn and fly in tropical conditions. I took it up with Chris [interviewer] and we done all that. And we moved towards the east until we eventually got to

a place near Chudigong [?], in September. That’s when they’re stopped and explained before, when the monsoon was on, everything stopped. Soon as the monsoon lifted, everything started again. So that’s the way it was in the first campaign and the British Army were trying to push the Japs out and the Japs were trying to push their way in. And we were there as

as a combat squadrons, three squadrons. Rather than combat, much of the time was spent on army support work. Swoops over Burma. We did a lot of bomber support, bomber protection

but we generally lived in pretty harsh conditions, bamboo shacks and so forth. Food was very, very basic, and it was hot and pretty unhealthy sort of a place to be in. We did a fair bit of army patrol. They were very appreciative of the work we did.

we often did these what we called rhubarbs, which were these long range penetration, hostile penetration of the enemy territory. I remember one day I went out and I was flying around with my number two, and we got to a place called Meiktila, which is a Burmese town, and I found this Japanese six seater

bus type of thing, which I destroyed, then generally mucked around, got back home. The idea was that you were looking for targets of opportunity. Anything that moved that was Japanese. So you were all the time looking for troop movements. Shortly after that

I was with my number two we were doing a sweep up there of the Irrawaddy River, which is very wide, very high banks. We’re going across and an Irrawaddy steamer, like the Manly ferry. We sunk that, we never sunk it, we beached it and left it on fire. And then further up we had been briefed that

Japanese were swinging a horsey, you know a horsey is, a rope across from bank to bank, around this particular bend. The idea being that you fly into it, the Japanese had their gun posts on either side and if you weren’t already crashed by it they'd see that you were. I saw that, I was able to get up and destroy that. We then

went along the river a bit further and we found barges, which we shot up and got destroyed them. Then we found an oil depot, set that on fire. Then we found our way back to base. That was the pattern we were doing. Shortly after that we went down to the, escorted another F six squadron five. He had four cannons, two cannons on each wing. And down to a place

called Prome Road, which was a down that, the Arakan front, down south of Ackio Backio was a German, Japanese aerodrome, a big one, and this Prome Road was south of that and we were, intelligence had found out there were a lot of troop movements along the road. So we went down there, the two squadrons, and

we actively sought [(UNCLEAR)] cover for the 615 Squadron. And we found the convoys and they shot them up and made a real job of it. We went down and we had a go. Then we had to fly back, it was a long trip. It was four and three quarter hours, five hours flying. You say sitting in the seat was getting harder and harder and harder.

and eventually anyhow we got back. But one of the highlights of my first Arakan campaign. We were escorting bombers to a Japanese aerodrome called Magwe, M-A-G-W-E, we went across the Irrawaddy river in Burma. The bombers were going to bomb it we were riding the escort.

We all briefed that the Brennans were told that if they saw any fighters in the district they had to fire red fairy lights, because it was a Japanese fighter. I was flying number three, top cover, with the Hurricanes. Our Hurricanes were up at about 27,000 feet. I was more interested in looking at the bombers bombing this airstrip and suddenly I got bang, bang, bang.

On the plane and saw wisps going across my wing. I looked in the rear vision mirror and here’s this Japanese fighter right behind me. I thought God, this is it. I really did. So I pulled everything, pushed the stick into the corner, means that the air flow flicked over, jettisoned the long range tanks which I had on and opened, pushed the throttle through the gate, which

means I went straight down as fast as I can, turning and sliding seaward so that he wouldn’t get a good shot at me. I got out of the treetops and he followed me down. I was out pacing him rapidly. The Hurricane is a heavy machine, and going downhill flat out you really got wound up, and he was much lighter plane, couldn’t keep up with me. I felt I had to turn

I had no idea where I was. All I knew was I was in the precincts of a Japanese fighter drome. If there was one Jap fighter, there was a lot more around somewhere. So I turned towards him, did a steep turn, and as I turned he turned as well, so I gave him a burst of, out of range, but a long burst. I saw one of his legs fall down. And that was enough for me. I want to get out, get home, I want to get out, because I had no idea where

I was, I had no idea how long I'd been in full boost you might say, and we were about, oh, a fair way from home. I suppose about two hundred miles or more. So I sent back to base and I roughly new I flew north or east, I knew I would come out on the coast somewhere. I did that and the hardest thing I had to do, I always remember,

the hardest thing I had to do, was pull it out of maximum boost and get it back into cruising. I felt, didn’t like doing that, but I had to do it or otherwise I wouldn’t have enough petrol. I got back to base and I was a very relieved man. There was holes in the wing and the fuselage and the propeller had a few knocks in it. Shortly after, or the next morning the Brennans

rang to say they'd seen the accident, the Japanese plane had crashed, so that was my first confirmed victory. But generally speaking, the First Arakan Campaign was one of non-event for both sides. The British army didn’t make much progress, the Japanese didn’t make much progress towards India.

Living conditions were harsh. We had two combats with the Japanese fighter planes, they went to one of 60+ to 100+ over our bases and the radar was inadequate. We weren’t scrambled until they were over there. The worst thing you could do against a Japanese fighter. And we lost three or four pilots and planes,

plus a couple that were shot up and had to crash land. Happened the second time, this time we lost about four planes. Those pilots fortunately were able to bail out. As a campaign is was a non-event for both sides I think. The only thing was malaria, cause everybody suffered very strongly with malaria

we were very pleased to be sent on rest, that was about March April 44. Back to Calcutta. We were given leave, we had leave because when you are on active service in that area you don’t have any leave. So we all got different leaves.

We were still on readiness and we still had to do flying. We were doing this night flying that I was telling Chris about and things like that which. One day I was given, the Ops rang up and said would we send a pilot up to 7,000 feet to measure the heights of the clouds. The monsoon was coming, this was the monsoons of 43. I got up to about 30,000 feet in the Hurricane, which is pretty high,

and as I was coming down the engine seized. I ducked in and around different clouds and I managed to land on the aerodrome, what they call a dead stick landing. I got a pat on the back for that because I brought an aeroplane back safely. I was pleased to get down, I can assure you. It was unhealthy a place to be in

Calcutta was, as I said to Chris before, it was a dreadful place. Dead and dying was common, and the manner of speaking was oblivion, way different to what we were brought up to and expected. We went there and we had to go in pairs, always carry side arms, and the heat in the thing was

debilitating, so we weren’t generally getting much of a. The only time we got some rest was when I got some leave and I went to Darjeeling a couple of times. And that was a nice break. Then in September we learnt we were to be equipped with Spitfires. We’re still in Calcutta

and this was a great boost to our morale. I wasn’t very happy about going back to fight the Japs in Hurricanes. They were wonderful ground attack machine, wonderful, wonderful. But as an air-to-air combat machine they were totally out classed by the Japanese fighters. This must have got through to the British command when they found out that the

Japs were getting really serious about occupying India. Anyhow, three squadrons were re-equipped with Spitfires and we were the first ones to get them. They found that about amongst the pilots, about 8 or 9 pilots had experience on type. That meant they had flown Spitfires before. And they were sent over to Karachi and picked up eight or nine Spitfires and brought them back. We all did time on them,

then the whole bunch of us flew across to Karachi on an Empire flying boat, took us eleven hours and fifty five minutes, I remember that. We then flew back to Calcutta with our new Spitfires.

Far superior, far superior. Depending on what you wanted to do. If you wanted to be a combat pilot, that’s air-to-air combat, Spitfire. If you wanted to be an air to ground

attack plane, a Hurricane.

Well, the Hurricane was a bigger plane and the Spitfire was a beautiful plane, designed beautifully. All metal, and it had a much of high rate of climb, it had a could fly higher, it was faster, was just a superior plane, later plane than the Hurricane, not to

denigrate the Hurricane, but it was relegated from the combat role in Europe, in the more mundane roles of Hurricane bombers, and the Middle East and did the same thing out there, and Burma. But there’s an air-to-air fighting was relegated more to the Spitfire, and that’s more what we were supposed to be doing. Air fighting.

No, not at that stage. We flew whatever Spitfire that was available. They were all the same. We had to go down as a squadron. After we got it, we got the feel of it. We flew down to a place called the Mater Road, where they towards the combat flying and so forth. We learnt

to fly the Spitfire as a combat plane. The advantages were, distant ranges, then we went back to Calcutta, we were then briefed by the powers to be that we could expect from the second Arakan campaign the Japanese would make a determined effort to invade India, to get into India, cause India was welcoming

them, the lot of them. And they knew of us in there they would be made welcome. Therefore we could expect the Japanese would put on a heavy air defensive and we could expect more action, much more action, in the coming period. So we were then flown down

to an airstrip south of Churgon [?] named Ramu. Which was we operated from there, and in January, started up the Japanese raid of Calcutta. They had about eighty or a hundred plus bombers. Created mayhem. Did it a couple of times, we were scrambled twice, we couldn’t make contact with them. They were out over the Bay of Bengal and we just

couldn’t make contact, that’s to our disgust. The combat started like, I remember in my log book, the first raids we had one morning we were scrambled for three raids of 45 plus. We had twelve Spitfires so we were continually out numbered, but we were our radar had been improved. We had good radar

control and we were able to fight them in a manner we wanted to fight them, which was what the Germans did in the battle of Britain. They were always higher, they'd dive through fast, then pull up again. We did this with the Japanese. Even though we were outnumbered we dominated the scene. But that was the type of [(UNCLEAR)] for the rest of January.

and February. We were more or less on readiness for action every day. As I was explaining to Chris before, this is when you start to feel you are in a business that is serious, you know. Here you are, go down for readiness in the morning. It would be pre-dawn, go down to the airstrip,

and get the aeroplanes ready. And see that they are functioning properly and then wait. It was very nerve racking, you would wait and wait and wait and wait and wait, and suddenly the claxton'd go, you'd go and scramble, away you went. You were firing and looking, and flying around and somebody would say, bandits, bandits ten o'clock low and you'd look down and you'd see all these planes

moving around. They were highly coloured. They looked like toys. They, then the battle'd start, you'd dive down into em and all this sort of business. So the we had a few losses. We had a few gains as well. But the, what the

toll was happening [(UNCLEAR)] determined to get the superiority, which was a pre-requisite to any large campaign you had to have air superiority. And our job was to maintain, we wanted air superiority.

No. No, nothing, nothing like we did with the Germans. All we knew was they were aggressive,

they were good pilots, they had a good aeroplane which was very manoeuvrable. Their tactics were that if you went up behind a Japanese plane and you lined up suddenly he'd flick to the left and turn sharp. And if you tried to follow him, next thing you knew he was behind you, and you were gone. So you didn’t do that, that was strictly taboo. You attacked,

pull up again and he couldn’t climb at your rate of climb, and so you set up and start again. Dive and pull up all the time, paid off. We used to get quite a few. I remember one particular, we used to deal with many like that. This particular one, I was had my number two and we were flown to,

given up scramble, to Japanese seventy plus bandits we were told, over Fowl Point, so we got there and sure enough, we saw them down there. So we dived in and went down. I got onto the first Japanese and I fired and I saw it’s all over his tail plane and he pulled and I pulled up and I went up and then down again

This time I lost my number two, which you don’t like to do. I didn’t know whether he'd been shot down or what, but I was on my own. And the third time I pulled up, I pulled up and I was formatted. Do you know what that means? Forming on three other Japanese planes. There was three other Japanese planes, and me. And I looked at the Jap pilot, and he looked at me. I don’t know who was more surprised, he or me,

but as there were three of them and one of me I thought I'd get out of this quick. So I dived down, flat out, twisting and turning, pushed the throttle through the gate, went straight down to the deck, they didn’t follow me down, so I levelled out at the tree tops, then right in front of me was two Japanese Oscars they were. Flying along like this. Pulled up behind the one on the left, blew him apart, blew his

canopy off and he reared up like that, and his other partner flew across me and I almost rammed him I was going so fast, I opened fire and hit him everywhere. Went down below, I recollect I almost hit the treetops. Anyhow I got out of it all right and got back to base and landed. We'd been warned about these planes, because they used to wait for planes returning planes, like Hurricanes coming back from low level

raids, then they'd wait for them and they'd get them. Sure enough, I no sooner landed and got in and a bunch of these Japanese arrived and beat up the strip for us, [(UNCLEAR)] hit a few tankers or something. I was acting intelligence officer, because the intelligence officer had been posted, we didn’t have one, so the CO said, “You can be the intelligence officer,”

which was just one more job I had to do, but I didn’t mind. I learnt the next day from the army that the army had confirmed that two Japanese fighters, that were in the area that I was [(UNCLEAR)] in, crashed. So they were given to me as confirmed. I had one damaged in that raid. This carried on this way and

got to about March, when we were flying like this all the time, in operations and we were, we weren’t actually getting battle weary but we were getting a fair bit of it. We used to have the odd long weekend.

Off we took. We had a Harbord, like a Wirraway, attached to the squadron and we take it and fly into Calcutta for a weekend, bit of a break. Generally speaking the conditions we, we did know they were harsh, the food was dried bully beef and whatever. Any time we had an American come in and

force land with us, sometimes we had, they were full of K rations, oh, they were beautiful. Absolutely beautiful, but after you had them for three or four days they pall on you, heew, you go back to our old bully beef again. The we, also, we learnt that [(UNCLEAR)] when we had the

the, when had this delegation went to Churchill and Roosevelt and convinced them that the Japanese were going to invade India at all costs. If they did succeed they were going to control all of Southeast Asia, which would have been a blow to the entire Southeast Asian plan.

That’s how we got our Spitfires, but the same time, Lord Louis Mountbatten was appointed el supremo, commander of all of Southeast Asia, and General Slim was made the commanding officer of the 14th Army. They changed the mode. They said next time

you’ll fly right through the whole monsoon. The army will fight right through the whole monsoon. There’ll be no knocking off in the monsoon. He was a particularly able bloke, General Slim. Then one day we were all briefed, the el supremos as we called them were coming and was going to land at our strip and we were to provide escort

He was going to fly around the forward area and see where the battles were being fought and so forth. And I was one of the four that acted as these escort. We flew around. He stayed the night with our mess, with us. He was a very, very impressive bloke. We were quite impressed and we were getting pretty confident of our

fighting ability. Then in March our squadron had a lay down for about a week. And we found out that our CO and two flight commanders and some other pilots who had been on the squadron for a long time were being posted and being replaced with other pilots, and

we were going to be re-equipped with the spit 8s, which were a later version of the Spitfire and were considered to be the superior plane in all respects.

Well, the second campaign was still on

We, well it was as I described. Well, we were the winners, because. The second campaign went on a while after [(UNCLEAR)] but in general it was a plus to our side, put it that way.

We were actively engaged in combat we were engaged for. The army was doing well. A famous general now who gave morale a great boost and we were starting to make a dint in the Japanese. We got these Spit’ eights and we were very bucked up, we thought this was great. We more than held our own with the Spit’ fives

and now we’ve got Spit’ eights, we’re going to give these Japanese fighters a go. We also heard by the intelligence, we were quite well informed, that the Japanese were going to switch their attention from where the were down in the Arakan round to the Imphal valley, and they’re going to make a drive

through the Imphal valley into India up to the northern part of India. This was considered to be very serious by the British high command. We were briefed all about this. Imphal a valley of the Anaga hills.

It was about 100 ks [kilometres] long, and about 50 ks wide. And all round it were huge hills. Up to the west there was hills up to about 9,000 feet. They call them hills over there. The valley was flat and onto the western side was the spur of the Himalayas. They had range up to 12,000 feet, 15,000 feet, and that was about it, it was in the middle

It was stuck out. It’s easy to see why it was strategically very important. There were no roads, tracks, into it. We had got these new aircraft and I'd been made flight commander, B Flight, and my other Canadian friend, Ken Clarke was made

flight commander, A Flight. But we knew it wasn’t for very long, because we were flying officers and we had three or four flight lieutenants posted to us, and under the British regime you couldn’t have flight officers telling flight lieutenants what to do all the time, but we knew we had to do it because we were the only experienced, most experienced fighter pilots available in the squadron. That went all right, they were all

very nice blokes, we got along well together, then about a month after we got these, we were scrambled to a place called Wang Ging, in the Imphal Valley and we flew up there and we landed and one of the things that Slim had devised was called a box. Box was when it was whatever you had. In this case it was an airstrip it had

a squadron on either end, and slit trenches where we used to live, like in the first world war, there were the sleeping quarters, everything was underground. The only thing on top was the aeroplanes and like tankers, and all around that was trip wires, right out. This was because the Japanese weren’t terribly far away and they used to send these

patrols out at night to try and spike the aeroplanes and kill people as much. Everybody was 100% guarded, dawn and dusk. There was a few battles went off between the squadrons, down that end when they [(UNCLEAR)] straight across the trip wires'd set the things going and someone would open fire. It was a pretty rough old place

and we were scrambled several times. We had several intersections, had some successes. Lost a few pilots. One of the main problems flying in that part of the world was the dust. We were on dirt strips made out of just the dirt levelled off and if you took off early in the morning it would often be dead, just after first light,

you take off in the first two aeroplanes and the dust'd rise and just hang there. And the other two had to take off through it, not knowing what'd happened to the fellas in front. This was nerve racking, because you can’t be sure of what’s going to happen to the fellas in front. But there was no way to stop it, you had to put up with that. We did lots of patrols over a place called Broadway,

where the [(UNCLEAR)] had created a base behind the Japanese. That’s another story altogether, that’s incredible. They had a squadron of Spit’ eights landed there and they got beaten up by the Japanese in no way. We went to this place at Wang Ging and the weather started to deteriorate and we

started to, we were warned that the monsoon was approaching, so we were getting back in towards March now, 44, that’s when the monsoon starts to come, about March. What they call the ‘chater’ monsoon first, which is a little one. That came first and in the air where we were flying in. I can remember my school days, the most rain in the world. They had something like 350 inches

per year and it fell in three months, that was it, and nothing could, on the ground could move. The jungle was a mass of green, green hell you might say. The roads everywhere were impassable. The only means of transport in and out of the valley was by air. That’s where we were getting up to when we were then scrambled. All the aeroplanes

even those who were US, had to fly to Imphal. And Imphal, the big strip was the only all weather, one of the old, there was two all weather strips, all weather means that the rain didn’t affect it. So we landed there. We put the aircraft to bed as we say and we, moving was no problem, all we had was a

change of underclothing and a toothbrush. That was about all we had, and our flying gear. We went up tot the mess. The Imphal main strip was adjoining the central headquarters, of the war. So went up there and we all went in and I happened to be in charge,

the CO, Dave Davies, was ill. Asked for the PMC, who’s the President of the Mess Committee, if he could provide us with accommodation. He says we got no accommodation. You’ll have to sleep with the airmen down at the what’s-a-name. That didn’t go down very well with us. Then this air vice marshal walked in, and he come over and he says, “Is seven

squadron pilots,” I says, “Yes sir,” he says, “Glad to see you, how are you, is everything all right?” I said, “Well not very well sir, we haven’t got any accommodation.” Oh, he says, “And who’s the PMC?” And this fellow came, and he said, “Look, I want accommodation found close to the mess immediately. If you’ve gotta move one of the people, move them.” And he said, “My bungalow can accommodate five people and I'm sleeping in the war room” because of the critical situation that existed,

“And it can be occupied,” so myself and four others, we moved in. That was like moving in to the Taj Mahal. This nice bungalow. It was made out of bamboo mind you, but still fitted out with everything. So we lived there. He used to come up to see us every second or third night, and he'd break out a bottle and we'd talk about flying. He was an old fighter pilot. Not an old fighter pilot, he was a fighter pilot from the first war and that

but he was very keen and very eager to see that we did well and all that. Went through a bottle of wine. This happened twice, the first time he said gentlemen, he said you’ll have to vacate my bungalow tomorrow afternoon, at two o'clock, for a couple of hours. He said, “I’ve got to have a conference with my opposite number, General Slim, but before you go he'd like to speak to you.” So we waited for this general, of course in those days

general Slim was a general in the army, he wasn’t the very exalted person he eventually became, but he was a very fine type of person. ‘Uncle Bill’ the troops called him. He wanted to know all about our flying problems. How we were going and what we were doing and was our radar any good, and did we have any complaints. And he was a type of leader that wanted to know first

hand. He didn’t want to depend on somebody to tell him, he wanted to know first hand, what we were doing. And he said, “Gentlemen,” he said, “I’ve got to have air superiority in this campaign.” He said, “If I don’t, I can’t guarantee the outcome.”

Well, just as I said, a better plane. In every respects, faster, higher, arm number was better,

but in all it was just an improved version.

Well, it had two 20mm [millimetre] cannons and four machine guns, whereas the Spitfire had five, two cannons and two machines I think.

In the wings.

Yes. The cannons went out like that. The machine

guns were just holes in the wings. But in general the only way you could describe the spit eights were they were the epitome of the Spitfire at that time, but it had a brand new bigger engine in it which was the main asset, and it could climb faster and go faster, and that was it really.

Well it was only that when we got the aeroplanes and we got the manifest for them and all that, it had a ceiling height of 42,000 feet. Well, I'd been up to 35,000 feet in Spitfires and all that, 30,000 feet was quite common, but 40,000 feet would stretch the limit a bit. So I rang up ops [operations] and I spoke to somebody I

knew there and I said that nobody'd been up so I said, and I was flight commander, pulled my weight a bit. Said, “I'd like to take it up and see just what it can do.” So it got up there I think. Because it was a bit wobbly and I couldn’t articulate much, but it was definitely above 40,000 feet I know that. You could see as far as you could see. It was incredible really.

No, I got a bit panicky, caw, caw, caw, caw, so I let down and I got down to a lower altitude and I found I could speak then, speak to Ops. I flew around a bit more and came in and landed. That’s when they told me about the force fed oxygen. Oh, that’s why you gotta have. We didn’t have it anyway, so we didn’t fly at 42,000 feet any more.

It’s what they have today in the modern

planes. You know, force fed, against demand, demand is when you breath, force fed you’re getting it all the time. All the time. I think they might have a different word for it but that’s the way it is. That’s what they would use in the modern fighters today.

Oh no. By this time we’re pretty you know, acclimatised to flying. We could fly a Spitfire and a Hurricane like you can drive a car. There was no worries about taking off and landing and all

that sort of thing. It was just something we were comfortable in. By this time I got my own aeroplane too. It was called the MAF [Mission Aviation Fellowship]. It was available, and I was on flying, and I had that aeroplane. But that’s the best way I can describe it.

Oh, god, I can’t remember that. I got a commission some time in ‘42 and I automatically became a flying officer instead of a pilot with a back thing. But after that we just laid doggo. Nothing happened.

No, time, but when you are in the RAAF in Burma, time doesn’t come into it. You are the forgotten airforce. It wasn’t until later in the war that you realised that suddenly you got promotions and back pays and what not. But there was no, I couldn’t tell you that.

That’s right. Well it wasn’t us. It was decided by Roosevelt and Chamberlain. They'd beat the Germans first and then devote their time to the Japanese. So, it’s the army became the forgotten army and the RAF became the lost tribes of the RAF, and that was it,

cause you never got anything we wanted. We had to wait for the best. This time we were getting the Spitfires through because of the severity of the situation regarding India and the Japanese. That’s how it come about.

We didn’t, somebody away above me did. But they realised the importance of

the campaign then, but not just us with the Spitfires, but more of everything. For even the command given to General Slim, and Lord Mountbatten, showed the importance of the campaign. That was what happened. If I can go on from where I left off here, I’ll pick up what I want to talk to you about, because, as I said to you, there is general

Slim, said that we had to maintain air superiority. We were the only squadron left I the valley. Everyone flew out because everything, everything came in, everything, the smallest detail, had to be flown in. And everything had to be flown out. Whatever finished up, fuel, arms, came by air transport.

There was an aerial corridor, from outside the valley just in India, a place called Vichenaporag it was, fly down this corridor, which was patrolled by us in the dawn and dusk. Then that other squadron just come into the valley, go to their predetermined places, and fly there the rest of the day. Then when the night time come they

fly out to save the necessary storage of fuel, which was becoming important, that’s how grave it was. So if we hadn’t been successful in our campaign, the Japanese would have shot down all these transport planes right left and centre. They were vital things for a war to continue, and they were

so important that they brought a squadron wing of liberators from Italy. The Americans got involved in this. This airlift. It was the biggest airlift till D Day, that’s how much was involved in it. And that is why I have often preached that nobody knew anything about the campaign.

To continue our side of it we were in readiness, we were scrambled three and four times a day, fighting with V type, very vicious, the weather was deteriorating, mind you we weren’t. The monsoon was coming but we had to stay and fight this time. We were scrambled and I had several successes this time. Fortunately I was scrambled

and I was leading the squadron this time and I moved in and there was this chap turning slowing and I opened fire and I must have hit him spot on cause I blew him apart. Pshhh. Everything. There was just a big white thing and I saw a body falling down out of it. We learnt later that he had a parachute, which was unusual for a Japanese fighter pilot. Continued that way for quite a while, then

the battle on the ground was getting desperate, the Japanese were making inroads into the valley and [(UNCLEAR)] by the 14th Army. The success of the airdrop was of course in favour of the Japanese to beat the British. They used to drop their supplies, for the troops in the

cause there’s no way to get there, you couldn’t in or out, and they'd drop these things and they were very brave blokes, the flying conditions were terrible. It went on that way and the campaign carried on and I did my last operational flight I think it was about

May, the end of May. I was leading the squadron and we were given these [(UNCLEAR)] Japs and I went down and I shot this bloke down. Instead of going up like I used to I ducked under some more, got this other fellow. And as I opened fire I hit him and he burst into flames, pulled out his colour and went down and I didn’t wait

any more, I went back up the hill. The Spitfire was fantastic, it climbed up and up. Then the weather comes into it. If you’re scrambled you’re scrambled as I said in England. But if you were scrambled there and went out, you had to get back. There’s only one strip at you can go to and the weather was absolutely unbelievable. You'd be flying along I remember once I had royal five Spitfires with

me. We were flying along, and looked down, suddenly I saw an opening in the clouds. That’ll do me and phssssss, down I went, followed by the Spits [Spitfires]. Through the, on below the clouds, found out where we were, flew back and landed, got back to base. Anyhow, the campaign

Where are we up to, oh, last thing, eh, so I got these two confirmed and I got back and when I got back to land, by this time these supernumerary flight lieutenants I was telling you about had been on the squadron all along and they were becoming experienced. It was quite obvious that

I was going to be passed over or posted, it was time for [(UNCLEAR)] I was too expired. You’re only supposed to do three tours. My repatriation notice came through, be home in Australia. I was so pleased and I

I was still living in the bungalow. The MAF’s bungalow. He came in and he knew all about it. And he shook hands and he said, now if you want to change your mind I can arrange to get you a squadron. I said oh, thanks and I think I’ve had enough and I’ll go home. But he was very, very grateful for all the work I had done, this is me personally. But he was sure I could

do a lot more if I would stay, but I said no, but I wanted, I had enough. I decided to take up my repatriation and leave. So I teed up a flight back to Calcutta with a visiting plane and one of the pilots drive me down in the jeep to the control tower. That was when I saw my first Jap.

I'd never seen a Jap before. There were about two or three poor miserable looking Japs sitting there, with a couple of army blokes with guns. They were a terrible disreputable people. But the, I mean to say the final of the campaign came at the battle of

Kohima when Kohima was like a hill station in the Barker hills. The British commissioner for the area lived in this rather, well it was a big place, the Targa hills is around the Bundu, and there was a tennis court attached to it. The battle for Kohima was fought across a tennis court by the 14th Army.

and the Japanese crack divisions, for about ten days and eventually the fourteenth army prevailed and the Japanese withdrew and they fought all the way back into Burma. In July, which was about a month after, two months after I left, July 60,000 Japanese were killed in one month. Not ground fighting.

And it was a very bitterly fought battle. But that’s what’s happened anyhow. That was that, I was [(UNCLEAR)] by then. That happened while I was there because we did a patrol over the battlefield in the spits, but I'd left then, I was very pleased to leave, because I was getting a bit overconfident, cocky.

You didn’t have an old, bold pilot, I can assure you about that. I got back to Calcutta. It’s the first time in the whole career in India, Calcutta, I had never met an Australian representative. I never met one [(UNCLEAR)] when I was in the squadron or anything like that.

I then flew across to Bombay and checked in there told them to get a billet with a friend, a chap called Jeff Gowing, who lives up at Muswellbrook. He had a property up there and he was on his way home. So we knocked around for a while. Bombay had experienced, a month or two before me,

a Minister ship blew up in Bombay Harbour, destroyed a thousand people. We were on the way home, I was, and the ship we went on was the ship USS General Butler. It was a troop ship, and it was dry, and I got to like iced tea. There was nothing else to drink

until we got to Melbourne. We disembarked at Melbourne and that was the end of my career as a fighter pilot in Burma. From then on I came back to Australia, still in the air force.

I seriously got involved with that

I suppose I got home and I got married on January 31st and I was back home by then for sure. But I didn’t do much instructional flying until I got posted to Ballarat for a while and I didn’t know why I was there. My DFC was promulgated at that time.

They couldn’t understand what I was doing there and I couldn’t understand either. It was cold and I was sick and felt sick. I felt sick but I wasn’t real sick, miserable. Then one day down at dispersal, sitting in the sun this Wirraway landed and a Cas Mann got out, an old

friend of mine from Burma. He says, “Wilf, what are you doing here?” And I said, “I wouldn’t have a clue, no one else does either.” He says, “Well come down to Cressy with me.” I says, “I can’t come down, you know that” and he says, “Well I’ll arrange it,” so sure enough, within about three weeks time I got a posting to Cressy. And that started me on what you might call my career as an instructor. Flying combat [(UNCLEAR)]. Then I got posted to Mildura the OTU, TFOTU

and I become the PGI instructor there and I became responsible for all gunnery and bombing. I served the war out there and I remember I was flying a Mustang, a new Mustang, which we had the privilege of

doing, which we did a lot of. I loved flying and I could fly anything I wanted to, and I did. Anyhow I was flying around at 25 27,000 feet and the loudspeaker, the radio came on. This is the prime minister speaking, they switched it on at control. This is the prime minister speaking, Chifley [Joseph Chifley, Prime Minister of Australia] I think it was, the Japanese have surrendered and the war with japan is over, so I did a

couple of rolls, loops, went down and landed, and that was it, we had a big party in the mess. We decided we would spend as much money as we could, because it was all accumulated mess funds and we weren’t going to be here very long. So we had a nice big party in the mess, all free. And then I came back to eh, back home. I discharged at Bradfield Park and came back to Newcastle.

Yes. When we do get involved with the Japanese. Once we lost three pilots, killed. Three or four were crash landed, got out of it. No, all the, what I said later was that the Hurricane

was not a match against the Japanese Oscar, no way. America found this out too, the Zero [Japanese fighter plane] the Japanese Oscar was only another Zero. Army version of the navy Zero. It was a very superior fighter plane, better than a Hurricane. The Hurricane was an excellent air to ground

army support plane, heavy, strong, high power, good gun platform. But when you got up into combat you had to do turns and all this sort of business. Unfortunately a lot of the pilots came out to Burma with the idea that the Hurricanes were the most manoeuvrable plane in the world. And they got involved with the Japanese and found they were in real strife. So that’s

the analysis that I made. That the Hurricane is not a plane to get involved with the Japanese.

That’s right. The Japanese had, they had the

Japanese airforce was army airforce and they had these army version planes and the Japanese had a big noble there of course and you know, and the navy Zero became very world famous. Well the Zero was the same as the Jap. I don’t say it was exactly the same, but it was equal in performance, looked the same, and was heavily armed, not heavily armed but

had cannon and machine guns, point five machine guns.

Oh, well it could out turn you like this. There’s no way you could stay with it. You had to dive high, go down and go up again. We learnt this the hard way, but if you thought the Hurricane was as manoeuvrable as it had the reputation of being,

then the battle'd be more manoeuvrable in a [(UNCLEAR)] 109 and all that. When they tried that out on the Japanese they found that completely wrong. The Japanese were by far the most manoeuvrable. And they got rid of a lot of our pilots too. And planes.

Very aggressive. Very good. They were typical Japanese

manner, they were press on types. Yeah, well that’s all I can tell. We never had any other contact. One thing that used to perturb us a lot. We used to discuss this a lot when we were on the First Arakan Campaign,

the [(UNCLEAR)] of the scuttlebutt that went around was, if you were a British fighter pilot and you got shot down and taken a prisoner of war, they'd behead you. As the code of Japanese warriors. We didn’t like that idea at all, if this was likely to happen. It wouldn’t matter if you were shot down or if you crash landed or whatever, if you were British

fighter pilot, you got the chop quick smart. But that didn’t always work out that way, that wasn’t always true, but that’s what they cleverly fed you, into the system. It didn’t make for very happy. I remember one fellow, Benny Benson, I never knew what happened to him, whether he survived the war after that or not, he used to state categorically, if he got into

serious trouble he was jump out, he wasn’t going to be taken prisoner. I believed him. Then again I got a friend who lives now in New Zealand, ‘Chook’ Ferguson, he went out with us on the ship, back to Burma, flew with us, and on December 26,

1941, think it was, he was shot down over Burma, probably this was about 42. He was seen to crash into a mud hole in Irrawaddy, and boom! Bang, blew up.

It was, poor old WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK you know, he’s had it. The story goes quite involved, because WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK was about two years younger than me, he'd be about 82, 81 now. Those days in England he become very much in love with an English girl, and he wanted to

marry her and she wanted to marry him, so they wanted to get married so they went along and saw the local minister, and the minister said you can’t do that because you’ve got to get your parent’s permission because you’re under 21. Well I can’t do that because they’re in New Zealand. He said we’re not going to be around very long. He said well, we’ll get around that and he got in touch with arch bishop of Canterbury and the arch bishop gave ‘Chook’ and

his wife Pat this beautiful engraved, there was some out she kept, gave them a special dispensation for marriage. So WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK , when he went to Burma with us, was a married man. So he got the chop over with us, in Burma, in December 42, that'd be right, yes,

and his when they recaptured Rangoon, British in 45, they found him in a gaol in Rangoon. He and other RAF pilots, in the prison, the civilian prison that was in Rangoon.

The Japs had attacked and open held these pilots. They didn’t tell anyone, no one knew. We had three pilots there that we thought had all been killed. Anyhow, WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK eventually got out of there. He had been badly beaten up and tortured. But that was so far as I went. And his story was, I'm jumping the gun,

how he got out of that and they put him on to a medical ship and got him to Calcutta to a general hospital and got him on his legs and he could walk. He was over the worst of his troubles. He ran into one of our pilots. This fellow said, “You’re dead. Look, you’re dead, you’re Chook.”

and ‘Chook’ had to convince him that he was who he was. The funny part about it was all the time that Chook was missing, believed killed, his wife was receiving a pension in England. And Chook was a pilot officer when he was shot down, and for the time involved, which was what, 43, 44, 45.

His promotion went up. When he got out he got all this back pay. Which was more than his wife’s pension, so anyhow, he came back to New Zealand, brought his wife with him, her name is Pat. I met them about 18 months ago. They come over, poor old Chook was on his last legs, he’s got everything wrong with him.

That was an amazing story, I think. Get the pension all those years, lose it all. I'm sure they were quite pleased, WAS DOUBLE QUOTE CHOOK . He said the aeroplane blew up, it must have blown him out. He was picked up by the Japanese army that was there. And they treated him pretty well, the soldiers.

they dressed his wounds the best they could. And they carried him carefully back, back, back, until they got back to their base. Their bases, headquarters and they still looked after him until the what they called the Kempire [Kempei Tai], which is, the SS [Schutzsaffel guards] in Germany, they took over. They pulled all his bandages off and mistreated him and they were the ones who were responsible for the

interrogation of him when he got down to this prison. So there was two sides to it. The Japanese soldier himself in the field was another soldier, and the Kempire [Kempei Tai], which was the Japanese SS, were [(UNCLEAR)] people.

No.

Oh well, I mean we all went through the old drill that went through here. The Japanese couldn’t fly because they had slant eyes. And they couldn’t do this because they were so and so. Their planes couldn’t be any good because anything you import that’s made in Japan is as cheap as you can get. Fall apart if you looked at it. Couldn’t build aeroplanes. The surprise we all got, everybody got.

Well, we all, that, ‘made in Japan’ signified that it was cheap and nasty. That puts it in a nutshell, whatever it was.

No, talking about the planes, we’re talking about the equipment. And they had the best planes and the biggest

fleet in the world, and they were the best. Now they also said that they couldn’t have pilots, they couldn’t fly because they were slit eyes and they couldn’t do this, all a bit stupid things. But they were all so wrong, as America found out and we found out. Yes they were good pilots, they had to be.

That was their code of ethics. You know, they'd rather die than give in.

The other pilots saw it.

The other pilots. See, you always had to have something confirmed. Even if he shot it down like the other one I told you about I saw it go down in flames. I left, I didn’t confirm it. I, all I can claim is a probable. But another two pilots saw the plane go down, hit the ground, blow up. It’s confirmed. Except when you get a flamer like I did, it just disintegrates. Then that’s just automatically

confirmed. But they did see the pilot. I saw the body come out of this white thing. I got out, wanted out, and they saw the parachute open. That’s how they knew. Cause they all [(UNCLEAR)] never heard of the Japanese wearing a parachute. That happened.

Well, not with Japanese I don’t think. They are very motivated individuals if we had no. The Germans were different because a lot of them had been educated in [(UNCLEAR)] and a lot of the British had been educated in Germany. Or they had a close affinity. And there was a respect there and they treated each other with respect.

There was no you’re a British fighter pilot shot down and taken down as a prisoner of war, the story goes about how [(UNCLEAR)] Baker, he was shot down and he was entertained by Galland, who was a top German fighter race. There was a big dinner and party. And to this day, they'd be dead now, they become close friends after the war, close friends.

but that was different. Nothing existed, only between the British and the Germans. I'm sure it didn’t exist between the Russians and the Germans. And the Russians and us. And certainly not the Japanese because we, they had a code of ethic so different. It was honour to die, not to live.

you never had the opportunity really.

Well, there’s one aspect about the fighter pilot, really and truly. You don’t shoot the person down. You shoot the plane down. And that’s all I ever thought about. This was quite amazing to me to see this body come flying out of the thing.

because you don’t think about that, you don’t do that, you go to shoot the plane down, you don’t shoot the fellow in it. He doesn’t see you in your plane either. But I think that would be in general accord by every pilot. Your job was just to destroy the plane. Not the pilot so much.

I had five confirmed, two probables and about seven damaged. I had fourteen claims at all. It all happened fairly quickly at the end. As I said when we were in England it was long drawn out battle to put into being what you were trained for.

That’s how I said I can understand how these air 14 pilot fellows when they were going to do Iraq. They wouldn’t be too worried about it, they were hoping to get into some action. What they’re trained for.

Well, much of the, I think there were probably was,

there was one fellow, Jack Benny, he had six I think. And I had five. I think I was about level with everybody. We didn’t have a large scoring aces they had in Germany, against the Germans, or the Germans had against the Russians, the Germans had against us.

the Japanese had some high scoring aces and we had a few but not many, cause the battles were wider spread, it was only the air battle for Imphal, that if anybody'd stayed there long enough we would’ve got a bigger score, because as I was saying, if you’re a fighter pilot, you can score if there’s something to shoot at.

You could be a good fighter pilot, good pilot, fighter pilot, and have nothing. You’re doing different exercises. These fellows doing PRU, photographic reconnaissance unit, they never shot anything down but they were the bravest of the brave, flying along unarmed in enemy territory.

Well we didn’t have any feeling about that. You mean, you were, we were told by eminent people how important that we were participating in the battle of Imphal was and we really believed it, but I don’t recall making

much, not feeling any grand commission we were involved with. It was a job we were doing and we were had the better aircraft and we were quite capable of making use of it.

Well,

incredible. As I said, there was no way I wanted to go into combat with a Hurricane against these pilots. Cause, eh, we wouldn’t’ve been here, but the Spitfires were a different matter altogether, and that’s the way it went. See Hurricane was, you must remember by this time of the war the Hurricanes were a forgotten aeroplane. You didn’t put that into

the front line for air battles any more. Was started in 1937 or something, so it’s getting a bit old.

Yes. We were very, very, not cocky, but we were very keen to get into it. We knew we were in a better plane and we were fairly successful in the other one, Spitfire, which was equal to the Japanese plane. This one was far superior again. We felt very confident.

Not till we go to the battle of Imphal. Down in Arakan it was physically [(UNCLEAR)] because the Japanese were moving all their forces up to Imphal. Same with us, so nothing really happened down there after that time, March. We moved in in April so that’s when it started again. [(UNCLEAR)] on the other side as well.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, there were 24 pilots roughly in the squadron, and each flight, A and B, had 12 pilots. So I was in charge of twelve pilots. Could be more, could be, not much less.

Twenty four was the average, might have been a bit higher.

Only that you had more responsibility. You had to lead your squadron as well as be flight commander, lots of things you had do as officer, whatever, censor all the mail, do all things like that. And you had to show that you had to

recognise the serviceability of the aircraft. See that the ground crew are happy and working well. That was the most important part of the campaign, good will that existed between the ground crew and the pilots. Maintain that.

Well, I got to the stage that I was the last one left of the old squadron.

so I used to get all the mail, just sign the outside of it, I didn’t bother to open it, to read it. I don’t think I got past that. You’re supposed to open it and read it, and Christ, I didn’t do that. I got all the mail.

Well, yeah, it was promulgated in September I think, 44, 45, 45 I think,

but initiated I'd say probably when I became flight commander. The procedure’s gotta go through. I was moving around a fair bit and it probably didn’t catch up with me until I got established in Australia. The air board have gotta sign it and do al that. It was about then, in September 45 I'd say, no, earlier than that, September 44, came through

Well, for outstanding fighter work and the claims that I made, and the citation, can’t find the number said I was a gunner fighter pilot and inspiration to all those who flew with me. And I guess for the successes I made

I had that contributed to it.

Well I was in Australia first time and I was sent a letter to attend the governor generals at Longley House in Sydney for the presentation of my decoration. And I was allowed to bring two guests, so we arrived at Parliament House

at Longley House, and I had my wife and my father. My mother had to carry my son. She was a bit cranky about that but she couldn’t get a seat. So we all went in and they just, the Governor General. My name was called out and I got out and saluted, and he gave you a gong, shook your hand, went back and sat down and when it was all done and we went outside and it was mixed weather,

cloud I think. Ada Comp, his wife. She was very nice. Came around and made polite conversation, that was it.

Ooh, well I never expected to get one so I did it with a great feeling of achievement. As I said before I was by nature a

introvert in a sense. But I found that my successes far exceeded lots of people who I thought were pretty crack off fighter pilots. Yeah, I was very pleased, very proud, still am. Don’t make any bones about that.

It’s a long time ago now.

Oh no. Just people who were decorated, could have been from anywhere, army, navy, air force, a theatre of war. When you received a decoration like that. In England you

go to Buckingham Palace. Out here we go to the Governor General, so that’s the way it went, protocol. That’s the word, protocol.

Well, the decoration I got came from the Royal Air Force, through the Royal Air Force. That was the only way it could be implemented. It was awarded to me by the British government or whatever, RAF. It was presented to me out here. Yeah, that’s the way it would have been.

Oh no. DFCs are a dime a dozen. You know. When it happened, most of the bomber pilots who did a couple of tours, they all got their DFCs. Oh, I wouldn’t say dime a dozen, but we didn’t look upon it as being, there were

different degrees of, well if you got a DSO [Distinguished Service Order] you were really up in the gods. Oh no, I was satisfied with the DFC.

Yep. I was. I never expected to be, do as much, achieve as much as I did, so I had to be.

The air battle for Imphal. That part of it. That was all, I suppose you gotta expect that you would get an involvement. I remember our wing commander said, “We’ve got our own Battle of Britain here.” That’s what it was.

up and down, up and down.

No. Not really, not really. Oh, ah, after you hear about these things after the war and you think how sad it is, but I remember one

friend I had, a French Canadian in Jolligo. He joined the squadron in England and went to Burma. I think he was there when I left, one of the few pilots and he got repatriated to Canada, and the plane was missing on the way over. So he was killed on the way home. That’s a sad thing that is.

You find out that a long time after the war. You don’t find that out straight away.

No. We didn’t look at it as [(UNCLEAR)] war, we

yes, we didn’t see it, I mean the German war was Hitler, we were against Hitler. The Japanese we were against the Japanese, and their atrocities were enough to make you pretty determined. Win and win at all costs. I think we all felt that way.

No, I can’t comment on that. No idea. You can’t, you weren’t privy to the decisions that were made and why. I mean, nor do we want to know them. Well as much as I'd like to carry on,

I feel as though I’ve about had it by now. What do you think.

No. Just that I appreciate all your interest and all that. You’ve done it pretty well, particularly Kathy [interviewer] behind there. So if you don’t mind, we can call it quits.