Australians at War Film Archive

I was born and bred in Grafton NSW [New South Wales] and we spent a lot of the time at Yamba at a holiday cottage on school holidays and the like. My mother happened to die there at the front

gate of the premises, which was a very sad occasion. From there the holiday ceased with her death and so my sister two years older than I

was sent to school, went to New Zealand to my mother’s sister’s family in Auckland New Zealand and I was given either a Sydney school private school boarding or Armidale and I chose Armidale because I knew some of the guys going there and there was only

half the distance from Grafton that Sydney was. During the school holidays then the short holidays sometimes we would make the trip home but we went to family

in the countryside out of Armidale and then we went on with school and the usual activities, school activities of sports and that was very well, highly thought of

highly prized. I matriculated at school and lodged an application for the air force in Armidale and

with all good signs of hope of getting in very quickly but that didn’t really occur so my parents as a result of certain reasons upgraded from Grafton to Sydney and I then followed from Armidale.

We lived at a unit at Kirribilli near the water and to placate me my father brought me a 12-foot racing skit known as Reform that I

entered into club races on Sydney Harbour. Things that come to mind is not long after that I got underway with my sailing or racing club racing and championship racing was moved from the harbour to the west under the bridge

to give space to the troop ships and cargo ships that were coming into Sydney Harbour and departing. A lot of them were anchored out in mid-stream without going into a dockage because it wasn’t deep enough for the larger Queen vessels, Queen Mary.

Armidale. It was set up by the government and the services army, navy, air force.

Having been called up for service we met at the Woolloomooloo where government buses picked us up, we had completed our

medicals and certain requirements that air crew fellows had to go through and we went up to number one at reception area at Bradfield Park in Lindfield, Sydney.

That was a period of some three months and I was categorized for pilot training and I was sped off to Narrandera I think Number 5 Elementary Flying Training School.

Flying Tiger Moths and I soloed in about seven hours which was quite satisfactory and I spent two and a half months there before being posted to

either fighter training on Wirraways or bomber training on Airspeed Oxfords or Avro Ansons. I was lucky I got my choice which was single engine training at Uranquinty No.

80 FTS [Flight Training School] I am not quite sure on that one these days. That is out of Wagga Wagga and spent virtually four and a half months there firstly in ITS [Initial Training School] learning to fly the aircraft and secondly in ETS [Elementary Training School]

putting it into a war fitting such as strafing and bombing and air to air gunnery was on drogue targets, air to ground strafing which I

enjoyed and did quite well at. After that time we were posted to, we had no choice in posting, I was posted back to embarkation depot at Bradfield Park, others went to single engine flying on

Kittyhawks and Spitfires at Mildura OTU [Operational Training Unit]. It was virtually the end of my air force career in Australia.

Four days later we were on a ship going somewhere we found out it was going to UK from again Woolloomooloo dock and then Sydney was the last port of call in Australia and we went

beneath Australia to the Indian Ocean to Durban South Africa. On the way across the only real highlight came when the ship veered very smartly and completed a circle looking for a British

airman who had served in India, going back to England, and dived out the port hole door while he was in the cookhouse doing his duties there. We arrived in Durban South Africa. Our first meeting there was

rather cold we noticed people when we were walking the streets tended to cross over the road and keep clear of us and after a lot of enquiry we found out that the AIF [Australian Imperial Force] had gone through there and did some very funny things there, such as

getting up a small Austin type vehicle and carrying it up to the steps to the Durban Post Office asking if they could post the car back to Australia. They are things that stuck in their minds and then finally they realised we were not going to wreck the place and we were accepted.

On route to the UK we called at Cape Town and Freetown in Sierra Leone and arrived in UK after some

six weeks, seven weeks of travel from Australia. In UK in Greenock, which was near Glasgow the port of Glasgow, Scotland and we then embarked on a train trip

The train was waiting for us and we went into it as a complete troop train travelling through the night to Brighton in the south of England.

At Brighton we stayed there for

something like three weeks getting accustomed to the English people and the climate and so on and then we received our posting. In my case I was posted to

Airspeed Oxfords which was

20 Pilot Training School on twin-engine aircraft. Thereafter I received a posting to Wellington type aircraft at 21 OTU and

learning to fly heavy aircraft and that took approximately two months there at Morton-on-the-Marsh it was very slushy I might add. Then

from there to Heavy Conversion Unit (HCU) at Sandtoft in Lincolnshire and I think that was 1667 or 1665 was the number of the unit.

That was on Halifaxes at the end of which we were taken off Halifaxes and put on to Lancasters. The Lancaster was part of the heavy conversion unit, but usually they sent you to a

Lancaster finishing school which was a matter of having to pack up and leave and settle into a new station and that didn’t happen because Sandtoft had a couple of Lancaster that we could convert onto. After which we reached our squadron. My squadron was

66 Squadron at Wickenby in Lincolnshire and there were a few days getting settled in and then we began flying much the same with an experienced pilot and

who was in the right hand seat who could handle the aircraft from the right hand side. We went through the training of learning to fly the Lancaster, Mark I and Mark IIIs

not much difference in them apart from the performance and the appearance of the propeller. One had pointed propeller blades and the other one had rounded like a paddle shape. Then that took a little

while, a week and a half or something like that to get us back onto Lancasters from Air Conversion Unit and then we were told that we would be doing an operation to get us accustomed but we would fly as a

sitting in the engineer’s seat which was just on the right hand side just to get us accustomed to what the action was like. We went to one of the main targets was selected.

About five months.

We were asked to go by Hamish McHaddie, he was the commanding officer of ‘Warboys’, a

training, Pathfinder Training Unit and we were asked to go there to study their procedures, the pathfinder procedures, which we did. Very little flying there and after awhile we, about two weeks in all

we returned to Wickenby to 66 Squadron.

Until I was then posted then to Lyneham in Wiltshire which had Liberators. Since the

air force required Liberators in Burma we were headed that way we learnt to fly the aircraft they were about two weeks and we were told to get ready to move on to

towards India which we did. We got our tropical gear again and we took off for a course to Castel Benito in

Tunisia near to Tunisia where we re-fuelled and then flew on then in an easterly direction to Cairo to West Cairo the base for Cairo proper which was

very much British troops there of all shapes and sizes and we used one of the motors of the aircraft and we were there for about I think seven days where we should have taken off and moved on

to our next port of call. We did our fair share of drinking and meeting up with the likes of Australians there were very many of them there from the desert and a lot of the aircrew fellows were

also there, but mainly in one big hotel which was a big bar with a lot of people so we spent a good amount of our time there.

355 Squadron an RAF [Royal Air Force] squadron.

I was with them until

‘44 until probably four months.

117 Squadron, which were Dakotas,

the war was closing down then and we converted onto Dakotas, which was not a big deal, also an American type aircraft so it wasn’t a problem. The war finished and our Liberators were

under the terms of the Lend-Lease British-American arrangements, they flew in the Dakotas and flew out the Liberators back into India where they remained and I believe even to this day there are some parts of

the Liberators to be seen there, the Americans didn’t want them so they had complied with their arrangements with the British to get them out of the way and get them back these remained in India. I can vouch for that quite well. Then we flew to the

war finished and then we flew then from Rangoon, Rangoon to east to

into Thailand with both VIP [Very Important Person] type people who had taken over some of the administration jobs and

food we had food to certain food supplies to the services where they went after we discharged them army, navy and air force.

After the war I remained

on the Dakota squadron and many of the Brits, this is all RAF, were sent home or they applied to go home and they were very keen to get there, they flew back into Rangoon which was the

the only port that was available at the time. The other two ports of Bangkok and Saigon were on rivers and the rivers had been mined pretty heavily whereas the Rangoon fell very quickly

to the Brits and without too much mining by the Japanese before they left, they left in a hurry. I flew on then we were asked if we would like to fill the gap that the Brits had left the British pilots had left

flying equipment and VIP people into those areas. We decided we would we were given a very rarity appreciation of

the type of service we would provide. Hotel accommodation was all first class hotel accommodation and meals were much improved and more than anything we received an increment pay increase from the

Indian Government to help Burma get back on its feet. We stayed on and flew then for eight months and then I was able to organise a flight back to Perth, Australia on a Liberator on one

of the RAF Liberators that took up some Lancasters, but mainly Liberators for their long range and there was sufficient space in the Liberator far more than the

Lancasters so the authorities cared for the Liberator in favour of the Lancaster.

After awhile I had some leave and I began to think about my future and I applied to

Qantas for a job, but Captain Crowther who interviewed me advised me that I had the qualifications that Qantas would require and they were full up with pilots at the moment. Some

months ahead I could reasonably be offered a position with Qantas. That didn’t seem too positive to me so I went up to Sydney University and applied there to see and I got into the second semester in Architecture Design and so on.

Yes I married after the war and had two children, two boys both of who are still living which surprises me.

I married an Yvonne Thorpe.

Peter and Graham. Peter lives in Brisbane and Graham lives in Sydney. I see him quite regularly and we see each other quite often, telephone and so on.

In Grafton?

I guess it would have been just

I liked the Clarence River, we used to swim and canoe and sail. Sailing was very highly thought of not that I at that tender age would be part of but I had that in mind.

What I have thought of getting to Grafton and we lived on the corner of Town Street, and

we had a lot of friends calling, and I played with a ball or whatever, and I enjoyed collecting eggs from the fowl house in the morning time as I got a bit older.

Being told what to do by all and sundry, including my sister and my father and my parents, we had housekeepers who also joined in the instructions.

Riding bicycles after awhile.

He was in World War I and after he disembarked form the troop ship went to

West Australia, Perth and did a lot of sailing on the river and then in Sydney met my mother Olive Matthews and they subsequently married

and applied to the Sun and the Herald newspaper companies for newsagency and he was offered several newsagencies in the country which he selected Grafton which was

a good choice I am sure it was and we all trooped off to Grafton. They, my mother and father left Sydney to go to Grafton

and I was born in Grafton, so Grafton was what I really knew right from the start of life and it was a good place to grow up. I went to the public school there in Grafton

and enjoyed that part of it and then things happened that my sister was sent to

Auckland, New Zealand to be with Mum’s sister and family.

I think he was very strict with

our growing up and in Grafton he would spend quite a bit of time to teach us to swim at an early age and by having foot races along the footpath on our walk

to the Clarence River Baths. The baths were in the river and at flood time they would be flooded away. There would be no enclosure so to peak for quite a time.

While they put the pylons back and platforms back that floated away in the flood.

Not too much because I was away from him while I went to school.

After that he had his life to lead, but he was very good in many respects and he was generous I would say.

A little bit.

He told us he went away with the AIF and they trained in Egypt and Syria in desert warfare and then they went to Gallipoli and he got struck on the thigh nearly hit his bottom and

he was hospitalised went back to the town near Cairo on the river.

Yes he had

scars on his back and had back trouble and came to Sydney and was hospitalised in Sydney for treatment, but it didn’t seem to do him that much good. Apart from that he was in pretty good health to be able to

run along the block with us kids and give us races in the early morning.

I think he did I seem to recall when later on in life he

some of the dreams were very hair raising. He went to France and was wounded again in the neck and he was treated by field, in the field hospital care and he had where it was stitched up in the neck

he had a scar there that I can in the back and in the hip.

Yes it was because we seemed to be in Sydney a lot of the time and so

Dad would march and meet his fellow friends and what have you. I sometimes in later years marched with him until,

when I was available that is, and not at school I would like to march with him in the Sydney march. It was fairly important and I recall Mum used to assist by, I can remember

fellows that Dad was away with coming into the household a bit noisy. He did he thought quite a bit of Anzac Day and I feel the same way.

She was very able and she could draw and paint and cook and look after the house with meals a very able person.

Yes. I guess we spent more time

together than Dad and I, Dad was busy in the shop and he had other interests such as the butter factory that was at Grafton where all the small boats came loaded with cream

cans of cream and milk and so on to the butter factory and Dad would often come home after meetings with large jars of cream, which we loved that, plenty of milk and so on pretty good.

I was 10.

She had a heart failure.

There was no real warning, it was very quick and suddenly without any warning she was looking out for us at the cottage at Yamba.

We had, Judy had a couple of girlfriends there and I had one of the fellows with me. It was fairly substantial place at Yamba, so we could crowd a fair amount of people into it and Dad would come down usually on

the weekend and then go back on the Sunday night or something like that. Forty miles.

Yes very much so. Speaking to the friends the Hill family,

he was a well known surveyor in Grafton and his wife just speaking with them and just collapsed that’s all, very smartly.

I didn’t really see her, I saw them carry her inside from the front

gate. I didn’t see her again nor was I invited to attend the funeral. A 10 year old I don’t know I remember just playing with some friends and

I remember the hearse and the church where I sang in the choir there on a Sunday so they were usually in choir practice in the church hall.

I can’t remember much more than that.

Pretty badly I think I felt alone for awhile. Maybe my sister

probably, being older felt it more. When I went to boarding school I just I can remember other boys saying our parents are coming here to visit and I didn’t have a mother

so I guess that had some feeling about that being left out of it kind of thing. That is life and we just had to get on with it and we did the best we could.

Dad had a live in, not a live in,

a live in house keeper and my sister took an instant dislike to her because she thought she was going to be a mother in our midst. Not really until settling in Sydney,

and I did receive an invitation to attend the wedding, but I was in Burma so I declined gracefully.

The second time, yes.

No someone from in Sydney, she was a nice lady,

I didn’t get on with her, Judy had married, I caught her, she didn’t allow me to come in the front door when I arrived home from work or wherever I was because we had a carpet out.

I had an immediate response to that by disliking her a great deal.

I didn’t see too much of him, he was very busy in what he was doing

and I think that kept him on the right track. He was in Rotary and on the board of the butter factory and bowls he played bowls, he was the instigator of the eight tennis courts that

were built in Grafton for the Council, I think, the tennis courts. I couldn’t really say I didn’t see him too much just probably sufficient.

Quite vivid I can well remember in Grafton the soup kitchen that was in Fisher Park which Dad had been instrumental in creating for

Council and for others for all competitive sports. Football and cricket and all that, the tennis courts were up and running or part of them were up and running like three or four of them and they built them as the funds became available I guess.

Dad was very much into I am sure he felt somewhat lonely and that had big bearing on the change of venues

upgrading to Sydney from Grafton.

Not much. I can remember old Dick who lived in a shed out the back, very clean, mid-European type fellow that did odd job

works, who worked for Dad in mowing the lawns and keeping the gardens tidy and things like that. I remember the Depression people, the queues in the park opposite Wiley’s Hotel, that was just another community park, not as big as Fisher Park and no sport being played there,

there was a band stand where in the early years the Grafton Bands, community bands, played there on a Sunday afternoon I think.

We had a car and we had a place to go to for school holidays and we ate fairly well. I can’t remember any really bad things, but they were the

and a lot of Aborigine people would come into Grafton, would come in for pay, for government handouts and go to the pub and drink it all and get very boozed.

No he wasn’t involved in it, it was just on Fisher Park, that is all probably Council I don’t know. They had ladies dealing out the soup, I can only remember seeing the queues and seeing the ladies doling out the soup

and I think they had their own mug for which the soup went into. That would also do for any coffee and tea they would empty the soup and get on to the coffee.

The clock tower was on the corner of Wiley’s Hotel and another hotel diagonally opposite and by this park where there was another park the Grafton where the bandstand played that was kind of more central than Fisher Park in Grafton.

I can’t really recall, we didn’t seem to suffer too much we helped out people where we could and maybe at school I can remember in the junior school

I can probably recall kids coming to school bare footed and when they were asked, “We don’t have any money to buy shoes,” and we were dressed in a kind of uniform and we were kids and

we used to play with them no matter what colour they were, black or white, they were all good kids seemed to be there until we got into the higher classes and when the old aborigines would go missing for weeks on end and when asked by

the teacher where they had been, they had been away on a camp. Once every, I don’t know how often, but they seemed to be missing quite often and they would go ‘walkabout’ out in the bush and there was plenty of it around Grafton at that stage.

Grafton and Maclean and Ulmarra you know of now.

No not really. You didn’t take them home, some may have, but I never ever did get to, they were very good at running,

they could catch kangaroos without having to shoot them first. There wasn’t any real feeling like there is today.

No not particularly. I don’t know how I got there, but I did and I didn’t like it.

The choirmaster was a Welshman and he was a very good organist and a very tough character

he was solidly built and he expected us to be able to sing and remember tunes and what have you and when he knew that we weren’t singing he would throw a hymn book at us and I didn’t think that was very courteous. I would pick up the book and hand it back to him.

Yes I was singing softly.

I don’t know I think Dad said but someone would take me over, I don’t remember Dad taking me over it was a Saturday

morning, choir practice in the Cathedral Hall. No I think just went there because the Sabiens, friends of mine Walter and Jim, Jim was in my class in the junior school and Walter was

two or three years older and he knew everything and he had a good voice and quite often there would be vocalists required and Walter would attend and after awhile Jim took it on and I thought that is the end of the Sabiens they might get me to sing solo but I

didn’t care for the choir too much and I was very glad when I was told I was going to Armidale.

I wasn’t any good at sewing. I remember that I didn’t care for that at all I thought that was a girls job and it was. There was play time and girls you could talk to

and then there was singing and people looked at me because I was in the choir but I let it be known very quickly that I wasn’t going to be in solo business. Just subjects that I can’t really remember

too much. I remember sewing and needles and they gave you a kind of cloth for a tea towel for instance, bare but it had some scribings on it such as we are expected to put the needle in it with the thread

and go up and down and make a pattern kind of thing, make it fancy but needlework didn’t get to me too much. I liked playing I was glad when play time came and lunch time the breaks.

Yes a little bit.

For talking and for marbles. Marbles were very big and I had a good collection of them from winnings and losings and

I caused a bit of a stir with the teachers by bowling them along the floor to the guy seated four or five seats away and I was called out for that a number of times.

I think I got a couple of canes on the fingertips that is about all. I think they were pretty kind the teachers and the headmaster of the junior school used to

tap when we went into the class with his whistle. He had one of those postman’s whistles and tap along the corridor. Mr Swan headmaster and he would come into the shop and I would go out of the shop very quick

I thought he was coming to give me a roasting to Dad but I kept away if I saw anyone I knew come into the shop.

Yes.

Like arithmetic, writing and spelling and things like that, I think so but I didn’t star in homework and that kind of thing, it was there and if I had time I would do it and if not I didn’t seem to

do it. I can remember Mr Swan coming in for papers and magazines and things like that and I would be out like a scalded cat.

Just ‘The Armidale School’.

Boarding, we were taken up from Grafton, Dad took me the first day and dropped me at school. I knew some kids there some older guys there so I kind of got in with them but in class you are not supposed to be talking anyway and

I had to just conform a bit more so than I had in the earlier stages. Then I got into the swing of sport and rugby and swimming. Swimming training and the girls also from NEGS [New England Girls’ School] used to go to the baths, that was an added bonus,

to be able to talk with them. That was nice thought, we were very largely country people at the school boarding school built for country people and they were very much countrified, Armidale

and Glen Innes, Inverell and all the outlying places.

No not really I had one lass who we got on well right to

the end of schooling. We would meet on dances and swimming training and combined sports days. We were invited to their sports days and we would have a bit of a chat there and

they were invited to our kind of sports days but not many turned up even though they were told they had to appear.

No fellows did really the other students there the older students I guess we got

most of our knowledge from them.

We already knew about swearing and things like that but they were just telling us about girls and the rest of it and told us we had to find out for ourselves and it was very difficult for me because of the limited times that we

had to find out these things. Even at school dances they had a Miss there,,a teacher, who would be at the dance music and so on and be watching with an eagle eye

making sure none of the girls went outside or any such thing.

Waltzes and Fox Trots and the funny ones you go round in circles

I forget now and I will think about it and tell you later.

Not much you had a locker

and a kind of a, not a dressing table, a locker and a chest of drawers to put your clothes away in .

Yes.

Birthday time was always a critical time. From assembly in the morning

it would be known that so and so had a birthday, Ross Cox had a birthday it is his birthday today congratulations Ross, the teacher would carry on and then it was a race to get out of

school grounds and if you were caught by the elder guys who could really run you would be carried back to a tap by four fellows arms and legs and put under the tap.

That was a source of joy for the elder ones they did that and got the young guys this was an initiation.

I had done a Leaving Certificate at Armidale and Dad and Judy, my sister, had moved earlier to Sydney and I was

probably ten days later I was still at Armidale and I wanted to join the air force I knew that I would have to but fellows a year ahead of me at school had gone into the air force and I can well remember some of the names of them that

said the air force was quite good, but they are pretty tough on you.

Yes I do remember the night. I remember Dad he and I sitting by the radio

and hearing such-and-such, the British Prime Minister, was coming on to announce, obviously, that war had begun. I can just kind of remember the words, that was Chamberlain wasn’t it,

that they had given Germany a time factor to retrace their steps from Poland, and they didn’t, and therefore the British and French formed an alliance and

we were at war with Germany.

Not too much I wasn’t too upset about it I was more upset about the fact I couldn’t get into the air force right away and that

I was a reserve and I can remember speaking to my very good friend after the war that, he went down every month to Woolloomooloo to the intake fellow there to see if anyone didn’t turn out and that is how he got into the air force quicker.

18.

Yes I was a bit.

We thought it was something new, I can’t, you are living from day to day and

when back in Armidale I was still boarding as I recall and nothing much was going on, the school had come to a standstill and it was then after ten days I was in Sydney and

my feelings were I would like to do something to help the country and I didn’t fancy walking with the army and I didn’t like swimming with the navy and the air force seemed a fairly good deal. At least you could learn to fly maybe.

No I didn’t care for that. One of my very good friends did join the navy and from what he told me about rolling up your bell bottom trousers and using them as a pillow and that type of thing of a night

sleeping in hammocks in the dormitories or whatever. The air force was my bit and I wanted to get into the air force.

I guess you had heard the fellows went to England, the Australians who went to England and joined a British squadron flying Spitfires that was really my real source of joy had I been able to get there.

As it was I had no choice. I can remember the postings officer squadron leader Jack Cassidy, I will think of his name,

he told me I had there was little chance for me to go to fighters because firstly they weren’t losing so many fighters in 43, 44 single engine pilots they were losing heavily in bomber operations and sure enough that is when I got a posting

to fly Airspeed Oxfords.

Firstly Britain didn’t have the aircraft, they were fully engaged in squadrons and training and the like and Hurricanes were being withdrawn and being replaced by Spitfires because they were more plentiful than Spitfires.

It was like me going to outdated Halifaxes and then going onto Lancasters. All aircraft were not perfect as you can imagine you are getting into a car and they vary in their performance and

so do aircraft but that is where the control of the aircraft comes into you have just got to keep into control the aircraft the best you can particularly when you are going out in bomber streams but that is not fighter aircraft.

I was disappointed when I couldn’t. I had a cousin who was on Spitfires and he was shot down because we were going to make it out of the RAF system where if you had a cousin or a member of the family

already in the air force and particularly in a squadron you had every chance of being able to meet up with them and fly together which many of them did. It was a bit of a, I was sad about not being able to

fly Spits [Spitfires].

I guess it came from bulletins that we read and could get hold of and

then the other senior airmen who had either been at school or you had known somewhere along the line. It all sounded fairly rosy, but hard work.

Six months before me.

Yes we were close, we took our other cousin a girl to Luna Park, the three of us went to Luna Park, so we were fairly close and would have liked to have got together, but he later was killed in Korea.

I guess I had told him that I had lodged an application to join the air force and he was already in the air force at Bradfield Park and I wasn’t. We spoke a lot about

what courses and classes that he was in. I thought that if he could do I could do it.

The Japanese submarine that hit Sydney, I was on leave sleeping on the front verandah of our unit at Kirribilli near to the wharf and looking over the wharf to Garden Island where the

Kuttabul was sunk when the Japanese, I think they followed a ferry in, the Manly ferry, through the gate of the

chain across the harbour and we just were dumbfounded when the torpedo went off. It nearly blew me out of bed it felt so close. I wondered if I knew any of the

guys who were on board or who were sleeping on board that night. They certainly my very good friend who I used to swim with he knew some of he guys that were killed by the explosion because he was in the navy.

We saw a number of tenders going towards that area, but we didn’t know much until it came over the radio that a

torpedo or similar had exploded by Garden Island hitting a hospitality vessel. We thought the war is getting pretty close so maybe they will speed up our training.

I can’t remember.

I am sure there wouldn’t have been because it took them by surprise the submarine let it go that got inside the net and fired at the Chicago, the United States cruiser, and I think it missed it by the bow or went under

the Chicago. If it went underneath it would have to be pretty deep because the Chicago is a pretty big, fair weight in the water. It surprised me, I would have imagined it would have missed the Chicago’s bow or stern I don’t know.

They say, some even heard it scrape the bottom of the keel, but that is hypothetical I think.

I think I had waited for

I was on leave from Narrandera and I was expecting a call either by telegraph, a telegram or a phone call to come back to training but

we weren’t gong to have much effect on the outcome of the war at that stage. That was what I thought might happen.

No not really. I think they lifted it out and put it on a barge kind of

thing to get it away and inspect it I can’t remember. I remember later in the war seeing something whether it was on show. I just can’t remember.

Well if I was on leave I could see the ferries running to and discharging for people onto the

landing, which was in the form of a floating barge so to speak, it was hooked onto the side of the ship and so these ferries would come alongside the barge and walk into the ship step into

the ship where a door was, they managed to get into the ship. I did it myself sailing in the harbour, we capsized, especially when a Manly ferry came by and we had the spinnaker up,

and we were there and the next minute the wind had all gone and we capsized very nicely and not far away from the Queen Mary, which was anchored in midstream and the winds whipped up a kind of high

waves and the like and we were having trouble hauling in the spinnaker and taking down the sails, so we could get the twelve foot vessel up, standing upright and then we could reset the sails again.

Not a life raft but a craft came over from the Mary [Queen Mary] and asked us would we like a tow and we said, “Yes please!” They towed us as we were, in the water, and put us alongside the barge and

my colleague and I left one having stood upright to bail it out, so we asked could we get a drink somewhere on board the ship, and the sailor took us along to the bar where, because

they could serve drinks, and they gave us some very hot brandy and we had a couple of brandies and the pain was going very quickly. That was just an incidence that, we knew you could walk across the barge into the hull of the ship.

I don’t think they would be sailing or wallowing in the water with the sails down.

Good question. I played rugby in a match

on North Sydney oval and I was tackled heavily and busted my hip bone and so I was carted off in the sin bin into hospital at the then Gallan Private Hospital across the road not far from the field

that was one thing. Skating at the ‘Glaciarium’ was another thing and speaking to girls at the skating rink, and we played billiards in the billiard salon next to the Glaciarium in George Street, Sydney

near Central Railway. What else did we do, I then was asked by a lady next door who was the junior woman’s golf champion of NSW living next door

Marie Clemenger could I teach her to sail a VJ [Vaucluse Junior] boat that her father had bought her. So I said yes. A lot of time I spent teaching her

I forget now what she was doing for a living but she was living with her parents then in the unit next to us. She could handle the craft satisfactorily and I kept on sailing Reform and

I could sail it on the harbour without going west of the bridge where the races were held, and so I got some friends who were also waiting to go into one of the services and they would be always somebody in the club room of a sailing club

who would come and meet you and had some knowledge of sailing anyway. That was about what we did.

I am trying to think what it was before it turned into, it must have been some ice works or

something like that but it was probably loaned itself to fitting or fixing pipes, freezing pipes under the surface of water that would freeze. It was a kind of a large

hall I can only imagine that would be in length probably 100 and something yards and probably 50 yards wide and all that was

frozen for skating and on either side and all around was seating for watching hockey, ice hockey at certain times and skating

and by lasses who are dancing on ice and so on and just ordinary skating. It was a big empty hall it was about that dimension and you could hire your skates.

There was another one out at the showground.

Yes the ‘Ice Palais’

it was bigger. It wasn’t controlled in the same way as the glaciarium if you started racing and tearing in and out among the people and making a nuisance of yourself as they did it at the Ice Palais uncontrolled virtually

you would become very unpopular you would be asked to get off the ice and fined in the form of days or weeks by an adjudicator.

Yes I think so, it was just

it was closer to the city easier for people to get off the train and walk across from Central [Station] and parking wasn’t too bad you could park your father’s car at the back of the Glaciarium but the control of it seemed to be better.

There was certain days when special clubs and the like of practice and training went on. Some of them took to skating like a duck to water, they were very quick,

but in the main it took a while to get your balance and be able to keep in the circuit. If you crashed in the circuit you were likely to get run over with another skater.

It was both. Fellows who played ice hockey

they had training in meal time or something like that, where they could really skate hard and with the puck and that they used. They were guys out of work and they looked to be anyway and not the type

you take home to introduce to your parents, a bit rough.

I guess the aircraft that flew over Sydney was one thing and the

torpedo that hit the town. I thought it was the Kuttabul that brought home to us and I think that the training fellows who were teaching or whatever they were very keen to get into the

action, so that kind of grew on us to, that we wanted to get along there fast but it became quite a thing to be called up. For instance, John Harvey, he went down to the centre at Wooloomooloo

and asked if there was anyone not turning up because letters were sent to you to report to such and such a place and sometimes there became a vacancy when someone was sick and couldn’t be there.

Wait for your call up you lodged your application.

Did that in Armidale. On a DVA [Department of Veterans’ Affairs] this shop where members of the air force or army

had a desk and so and so, you went along to the one that you wanted to, like in my case the air force guy and fill out in front of him and then let him know that you are in a hurry to get into the service. There are people coming and going

from that shop in the main street of Armidale. Guys that lived out on farms and so on they would come in and make an application so it was quite active.

I am pretty sure we applied for flying duties we didn’t specify single engine or multi engine we just applied to the air force

saying we would like to be included in an aircrew call up. Once you are in the air force it is up to yourself as to what category you go into.

Some of the guys who were working

who had office jobs or whatever jobs they had, would keep on working and the person who was immediately in charge of that person working would understand that a call up could be fairly soon and that the fellow would not be there and someone else would have to take their place but I don’t know because I wasn’t working but I could

imagine that would happen.

Yes in time there could be. They come round and they give you all kinds of when you tell them you are waiting for an air force call up they would be very kind and

persevere a bit and they give you a number and just say we will release you when your call up comes but that didn’t strike me as being too successful.

I think I avoided it by saying that I would be available pretty quickly. Once the torpedo went off and the foreign aircraft were flying over Sydney, it got everybody keyed up a little bit and they put their best foot forward

to get you moving. If I can quote a friend of mine who got called up in the army, he went on leave and didn’t ever come back to the army up at Maitland somewhere I think it was and finally

the air force number came up and he told them that he was in the army and he had better give the army back his uniform and all the bits and pieces issued to you.

I think they wanted us

to report to Woolloomooloo they gave us the address at Woolloomooloo I think it was a car place sales place or ex car sales and we had already had a

health examination there and stepping up and down and seeing what your heart rate was and so on and if you met the ideal of the air force for aircrew and this aircrew as I recall was every month they had an intake.

I got through. I had a bit of albumin in my urine but that seemed to dissipate after awhile. When the doctor said the next time you have

an examination drink loads of water before you come in.

Yes.

This would only be a day or two they would send you away to drink water and I did. I think I went to my

doctor in Macquarie Street, one of Dad’s friends, and I was concerned that I might not be fit he said it was only a minor matter and do what you have been told to do, drink water and it will clear up, and it did.

To just bring a change of underwear, because a uniform will be issued and bring a suitcase.

That is really what happened, and a cut lunch because you didn’t know how long you would be down at Woolloomooloo, a big mess up I thought, but they finally got us through, lots of people

were there that is all I recall.

Bradfield Park.

More mayhem. I think we were decked out in uniform there,

but forgetting your leg length right and so on was a bit of a problem, I really can’t, they had so many uniforms there they had them in various lengths, length of the jacket or the tunic and leg length

so it was only a minor matter and you may wear it for a couple of days until you went on leave or your mother or your tailor made it into a proper uniform I think that is the way we figured things out.

It comprised the tunic navy tunic and trousers button up fly. They were navy as opposed to the

British and the New Zealanders and the South Africans they were army colour and the RAF were all light grey.

A side cap and we didn’t get that funny

hat that some were wearing it, I can’t think the name of it, all these things had regular names, but I won’t repeat what the air force cap was seen as.

Yes they

called it a side cap, I think that is how it went on, but other people called it other things.

Yes.

We thought we looked funny because we were used to other clothing and this was completely different, but I think we got accustomed to it pretty soon.

Everybody wanted to tell you what to do and where to go to do it and there was always plenty of advice that is what I found. I suppose in civilian life it would be the same in companies you would get the same

treatment. That was about the only thing we looked a bit funny.

I think they held the fact that you were

going to be trained probably the way they wanted in certain aircraft so that you had to comply within reason. Certainly we went on leave illegally from Bradfield over the fence or under the fence.

That wasn’t didn’t impress me you couldn’t if you could walk out the front gate into a tarred road or a footpath it was a different matter,

but we were in trees and shrubs and all kinds of things after you got out of the compound and I didn’t ever really want to do it again. We had a long walk to get down to if you know the place

where the bridge goes across the river a long walk there and to walk up to get a train. It didn’t grab me too much.

Really I can just remember Lindfield because we used to stay with my grandmother at Lindfield and Killara

and she had a special cake shop that interested me more than the food we got at Bradfield. We complied within reason.

I think it

would be, you would be either put in the cooler or that is a bit severe or you would be leave would be cancelled, the next couple of leaves would be cancelled. I knew there was some penalty.

I didn’t mind I thought they were doing it for your own good and a lot had gone on before I arrived and I thought that

we maybe helping Australia our side win the war. I think that, how we would win the war I had no idea but you asked me what I thought of it and it did come to mind.

That is how I seemed to remember.

It was thrown at us fairly often and I think it grew on us after awhile. It did on me OK sure

that is what we are fighting for and as such we got to do the best we can and take notice of those that do know. That was how I felt.

Yes we got into classes of mathematics I and II and trigonometry for navigation

and health was pretty important. We would go for long distance runs. I can’t think of any real,

that is the way I am sure we felt that way. Can I tell you a story at Bradfield Park? A lot of marching on the bull ring

and kind of, trenches that you had to fall into, this would be in your jacket, khaki jacket and pants, so they would wash and at the bottom

of the trench if there had been some rain it would be very muddy, but not suitable for people jumping into it and lying down. We did then have to do this parade ground drill and we had to take turns in

marching like stopping. The fellows that came from the army were probably pretty good at it and in getting a group of 20 fellows over the trench was a bit tricky, so

my assessment decided to break them into a jog, it would have probably been easier to let them make their own way in a marching style rather than a jog because I think half the course fell in a trench and created a bit

of a problem with the marching. On one other occasion when we were very new to the air force we had finished a parade ground drill or something and a colleague and myself decided to walk to get back to the barracks,

the quickest way is a straight line, we walked straight across the parade ground. Little did I know the WOD, the warrant officer disciplinary, called out, “Those men walking across,” he was an enormous guy, about 8 foot tall and 6 foot wide and a big fellow with a big voice

and he said, “Come to me at the double,” we raced over to see what he wanted. “Don’t you know you can’t, it is not lawful to walk across the parade ground?” And we said, “We have just been marching on it,” and he said, “That is a different matter. If we see you walking across the parade ground again we will

what’s-a-name you,” but nothing further really happened, but that fellow with a booming voice and lots of energy came to Uranquinty as PT instructor – physical training instructor and I thought ‘will I tell him about the time he bawled us

out’, and we would go down into the gymnasium and I was keen on boxing and boxing school and I got him down there and he was teaching me certain movements and I let go a real clanger and nearly knocked him over

and he said, “Steady up you don’t have to do that.” I told him then and there that his booming voice and he chastised us at Bradfield Park on the parade ground when we walked across it and he said, “I remember that. For all the four months we were at Uranquinty he became

a different guy altogether because he knew we were going to become equal to him in the rank or higher and so, but he was a very nice guy I got on well with him and I don’t know where he ended up in the air force, but he was a professional guy and he may have stayed in the air force after the war.

Hegney, Warrant Officer Hegney.

Rude names, I won’t mention them, I don’t know.

A bit daunting,

don’t forget we had sat in link trainer boxes for our blind flying thing for our navigation we had sat in a cockpit setup where you had a stick those who had put in for single engine

had a stick between your legs and also you had peddles for your rudders and so we had a pretty good idea what a cockpit would be like but it was a bit with the instructor sitting in the front seat giving you instructions what to do and how to do it.

What were we learning?

Really co-ordination. In the final test they put us in one of those type of

cockpits and it would show up on a screen in front of you and the instructor would had a different colour or something like that and he would move his dot on the screen to a

certain position and you had to follow up. It required the need of good prompt co-ordination to get to him. For rudder control I think they did the same thing I can’t remember or whether he did it after the control column.

That was separate to a Link trainer, the Link trainer is used mainly for an instructor sitting at a desk, and he had a pointer

which he could control and he would do such and such on the glass tabletop, I am sure it was glass and to make sure that you could follow that much in the same way as we were doing

in just the open cockpit only we had the hood over our head and we just had I don’t know whether we had to follow the dot on the wall with this control column and the control column and the

rudders.

I was very lucky at Narrandera with the Tiger Moths and I got an instructor by the name of Flying Officer McLean and

he was the OC [Officer Commanding] of A Flight that meant a big thing to me, the OC, because he might make it very difficult for you if he wanted to. We got on pretty well he was of the type of instead of bellowing at you through the mouth piece

into your ear and waking you up kind of thing he would, he spoke very precisely and calmly and gave you an air of confidence rather than frighten you by bellowing. I can well remember my very good friend

who is dead now, getting he was one of the fellows that was very good at two up and all like that and had a good education and I saw him get out of the aircraft after his instructor had finished with him. His instructor was Newboldt and he was

a screamer, and I saw him carrying his parachute away his legs were wobbling and he was in a real mess we really enjoyed seeing him in that condition.

He just showed me so carefully just how the aeroplane reacted to the controls and that was something new to me and something I appreciated

and when I heard of the types like Newboldt and others who were also known to bellow that made me all the keener to try and do well, which I did do. He remained I believe in that position at Narrandera for the entire war because he must have had

nerves of steel.

What time, I soloed pretty early seven hours and that was pretty good I could

follow the instruction fairly well. Wasn’t until later on that I made a bit of a mess of things with Wirraways but that was expected anyway.

I told you about ATS

that was Advanced Training School and the other one was the minor learning to put the thing into, learning to fly it really.

Yes that is right. The Wirraway was a good aeroplane for that kind of thing. You

could roll it and do all kinds of aerobatics with it and it would answer you pretty well but on this occasion we were having a cross country solo cross country well you want to be up with your navigation and I thought I was but

the object of the exercise was to take off every couple of minutes from the flight office to grab your parachute and your navigation bag which had the

points that you had to fly from to set the aeroplane on course. To meet up, to stay on station in other words three minutes and it was a triangular course and when I went to climb to 5,000 feet

over the aerodrome and set course and reach into your bag any time and get your settings nav settings and other like railway stations and roads and things like that and I felt it and it just wasn’t there and I looked

and I thought I had come without it and I thought I won’t need it too much I will follow the guy in front, but he overshot the first mark you can imagine putting on more power to catch him up which used up more fuel and he overshot the first mark and went on where I short circuited

and run into him to catch him up on the second leg, well he didn’t appear. I had to rethink my plan and think about the railway and the roads that crossed it and things like that and I was in a real problem, even running out of fuel however

we got onto this second leg we by passed the second leg and onto the third leg it must have been and I looked at the fuel gauge and well down in fuel so I thought I had better do something and I had switched over the tanks from left to right

so I thought I seemed to remember there was an aerodrome along the way almost at the third point so I kept on going along the railway track and suddenly came to this aerodrome down below so I quickly lost altitude

and went down and landed. I can always remember a hare running out in front of me a field of grass and so on and this poor hare, I went in and told them my predicament and they re-fuelled it for me.

You needed higher octane on those more powerful engines so I had to make sure, which was Cootamundra air base, full of navigation type fellows and just staff pilots that did a terrible job of flying, and wireless operators,

so I re-fuelled and got a map and flew and got back a bit late. I told them exactly what had happened and I had the map had flown out the cockpit because I had the canopy open to see something and the map

beside me the suction flew out and that quietened the OC of the flight down. He said as a matter of a fact Cox, that was a very good thing that you did you have brought back the aircraft in one piece and yourself and we could have done without you but we could have brought you back

and I went back and it was all done it was quite interesting the reactions of some, but he was very pleased that I brought the aeroplane back in one piece.

Yes.

You had to pass all the tests the flying tests

and navigational tests and if there was any doubt about you with your own instructor if he recommended you needed more training on some particular aerobatic or something he would give it to the not the OC, but the

Chief Flying Instructor CFI and if you got into his hands you might never get out of them because they were very tough on you but I never needed to be. I was always very courteous to him when I saw him in the flight office and things like that.

Ceremony all lined up on the parade ground in your best blue and in this case Wing Commander Kernow the Commanding Officer of 5 or 8 Service Flying Training School the sergeant called out your name and you went out in your best march and

saluted him as you approached him and he just said something about, “You got a bit of a commendation from your flight office, which was very good Cox, and we trust that you will keep on the standard.”

Then he pinned on the wings to you it had a pin in it and went through and you saluted again and marched back to your place in the mob.

Pretty good but everybody was feeling good when you got your wings you were bound

to kill yourself because you think you can fly and you are only learning now that came from various guys that had gone before me.

We mainly went to Wagga [Wagga Wagga], 14 miles away from Uranquinty and we went in there because I had relatives there an uncle and an aunt and a young fellow at school and he was a senior person in

one of the banks in town the Commonwealth Bank and high up in it he was in charge of the area of the banks and seemed to know a lot of people around the township so we needed a

when we hit Uranquinty I was sure we needed a different means of transport rather than the train line that went through only now and then so I suggested we buy a car. We had no money the guys like me and so we told my uncle we didn’t have very much money and he rang

around some of his mates in town and ended up with a vehicle and he said you will pick it up on Friday afternoon because we always got leave on Friday afternoon and back on Sunday. He gave us the address to go get it and we did, but the fellow told us that it wasn’t registered and asked, “Do

you have licenses to drive it?” And he said you will need to register the vehicle. It was a 1928 A Ford Tourer and what was it we were in 1942. We thought we had better do the right thing, so

we drove it to the police station with very little fuel in it and we had brought some fuel in from ‘Quinty’ [Uranquinty] that the kindly ground staff fellows gave us, high octane, and they mixed that with power kerosene

and put the wheels in motion and so we thought we had better try this new mixture out, which we did do and it seemed to go all right to the police station and my uncle we know for a fact had rung the police station saying there is four ‘no-hopers’ coming down, don’t know a bee from a bull’s foot,

give them a bit of a fright. The sergeant of police standing at the counter and saw me go up and I said, “Sir I wish to register the vehicle and get a driver’s licence,” and he said, “Wait a minute, you have got to be tested for a driver’s licence.”

He said, “Come over here and I will do this.” So he got out a form, a driver’s licence form and they said, “What is your occupation?” And I said, “We fly aeroplanes,” and he said, “Oh well here you are,” and signed it and he said, “If you can fly aeroplanes I suppose

you can drive vehicles,” so he gave us the registration papers and also the licenses there and then, and he said, “Let us see you start up and drive off,” and we didn’t know the mixture was going to have a detrimental effect with the weaker spirit that we were using and so we started cranking and we had it all worked out that I would be at the wheel

to operate the throttle underneath the wheel so it wouldn’t stall and then someone stood by with a haversack not a haversack, a wheat sack to douse a fire if it did break out and the other one was going to crank so that took up four positions

so we started to crank and crank faster and faster and suddenly the thing backfired. It backfired and the venturie leading into the carburettor and the back firing on the heated motor it caught fire and there we were outside the police station with our car on fire. It had just been registered and

four dumb-dumbs with drivers’ licenses. We looked up and the police were out the front of the Wagga police station because it is built up high because the Murrumbidgee River floods at times they were just laughing their heads off as we drove off and we finally got it started and away we went. We took it down to my uncles,

a lovely vehicle you have got. It had a folding hood so we would fold the hood back and wave to everybody as we were going down the main street of Wagga. If you don’t know Wagga Wagga it is quite a good town. That was our means of transport for

four and a bit months. We were able to crank it up, the fuel, the petrol came from friendly farmers that uncle Bob knew and we had mixed that with the high octane that we got from the friendly ground staff and that would

provide us with our means of motion. As we were getting towards the end and we had to do something about selling it after our four and half months were up so we put an ad in and made it known around the station that it was available. We paid £40 for it

which was £7/5/-d. each we didn’t have £7/5/-d each so we got uncle Bob to lend us the money so we paid him out when we got paid out ourselves we sold it for £42/-/- after four and a half months hard work.

On one of our final leaves and we were going into Wagga I had just come from Wagga, Bill Coghlin, he was the fuelling fellow we knew he was a land lubber the four of us had passed and were going on somewhere,

but the re-fuelling tank was just outside the windscreen and in order to see how much fuel there was and we had a kerosene pump and we would pump it into a drum so it wouldn’t be stolen by unauthorized people while we were flying and so he said, “Yes there is some there”

he said, “Let me check again.” He said, “Have you got a lighter or something?” And a fellow said, “I have a cigarette lighter,” and he said, “Give me the cigarette lighter and I will see how much,” and he put the bare flame into the tube and the tank and the bloody thing caught fire again. We had some funny times with that vehicle I have got photos of that.

I will show you in a little while.

To embarkation. Not all of us did but only those of us that got a posting back to Bradfield

to embarkation it was a different section to where we had gone before.

For us going on board a troop ship we didn’t really know where we were going we could have from there gone down to Mildura where

the Spitfires and Kittyhawks and Boomerangs were for further training before going north and that is where the majority of our flight did turn up. Some went to CFS Central Flying School to learn

to instruct.

Yes there was a postings officer there and I tried to dig out his name, a squadron leader

who had been on operations and this was a plush job for him, just sitting around posting guys like us and he was the one that I appealed to, to try and get myself onto the squadron with my cousin that was about the time that

I was doing that my cousin was taken POW [Prisoner of War] by the Germans in franc he had crash landed in France in a Spit which negated all my strength to get onto singles and it was he really that

sent me to Kidlington on Airspeed Oxfords and at 20 PFU [Practice Flying Unit] pilot flying service or something like that.

We knew each other and we knew each other better later on when the war was virtually over. He then said, “Cox old boy you will have to go on twins, I am forced to do this if you want a posting,” and I said, “Of course I want a posting,” so he

said, “I have no option I will have to obey my superiors.”

No in the UK. At Brighton and he could call you up or tell you to come back tomorrow morning and I would have some news for you. We were virtually doing nothing at this stage

Only when what was a giveaway in the summer time we had winter uniforms we thought that is only the way the air force works and so we carried those onto the boat

and onto the troopship and wore the khaki.

Yes quite well I remember the wharf I can’t remember the number I think it was 3 or 4

and the surprise I received was my sister and some of her girlfriends appeared and someone had recognised her and we were looking over the rail we had been settled into the ship into our

accommodation our cabin with six in it. Someone said, “Hey Coxy there is a person there wants to talk to you,” and there she was with three other girlfriends. We just made small talk

until the ship got up steam and it pulled out. The tugs came along and tugged it out into past Garden Island into the main stream and into the deep water.

Don’t know.

Don’t know I am sorry can’t answer. We weren’t allowed to phone we were told we were going away all the phones were cut off at Bradfield Park at the section we were in and leave was forbidden they said we couldn’t use the public phone outside the place. She

must have known, mind you we lived at Kirribilli and if anyone marine type people were walking around that area of Kirribilli getting the ferry from

the Quay around to Neutral Bay and Kirribilli was the first stop and then High Street and then Neutral Bay and Karaba Point and then back to Kirribilli and back to the Quay that was the run.

I have no idea, I haven’t and I really haven’t, asked her because she is still breathing and I must ask her, but I think they saw the ship build up steam when they are just idle at wharf

they cut costs and there is not much steam coming out of the funnel. I can imagine they saw it building up steam on the day and getting ready to go. I don’t know how she thought I would be on the group that went.

Yes.

It wasn’t a hammock, small bunk beds like, we are used to 3 foot sized beds, it was 2 foot 6,

six inches smaller, but it served as a place to sleep.

I can’t remember I didn’t because I had, not that it would give me much experience but I had a bit

of a sickness on the Westralia on a cruise from Hobart that was one of the things Dad had done for me was to give me a little bit of time to see Australia and I went on a YAL Young Australia League cruise to Tasmania by

train to Melbourne across Melbourne to Launceston by the ship Taroona by rail to Hobart or coach I can’t remember.

Then back on the Westralia which was a much bigger ship about 10,000 tons from Hobart to Sydney and I threw up a little bit on the first night out and I had eaten a lot of junk at the meal time and I think that could have been one of the reasons but anyway

I was OK I didn’t get air sick or sea sick ever again.

That fellow that dived out the porthole the British Army fellow going home had been in the British Army in India

I had just read about this guy and this is when the ship turned very severely and I was in the shower in the usual form and I had to hold the shower wall to stop me from falling over it was quite

we were travelling about 25 miles an hour which was fairly fast it was a fast ship it was the pride of the Dutch Merchant Marine.

No they never found him. They only surmise that he could have been he was going home he had been court martialled and put on the ship

to go home to serve out his sentence and he could have been absolutely pre-occupied and not wanting to be seen to be his

being a British Army fellow in India was just too much he didn’t want to belittle his family and having someone court martialled in India so no we don’t know why at all why he did but he did.

We were all allocated and no one missed out on them unless they were very fortunate, we were posted on lookouts for raiders, submarines periscopes. Anything that

looked foreign another ship, smoke on the horizon that may not have been seen up on the bridge but we would just report any activity that we saw, not that there was much apart from when we got out of Freetown we thought we were going

into Argentina and across but we got a submarine scare on the radar and we remembered turning starboard and beginning to zig-zag more from the torpedoes being

aimed at the ship. I thought I mentioned to you the reason for us on board ship that was about all we did on board ship. When we went on duty we would play cards a lot of money was exchanged and fellows who were accustomed to two-up and a lot of us were very new to it,

but we didn’t have enough money to go spending it on card games some did.

Yes.

A car being carried up the steps to the post office

and asked to be sent home to Australia.

We didn’t see much of the action they had virtually left the country I think they I can’t remember whether they left on a lesser ship than what we were on, it was a pretty smart

ship. There were real lousy troop ships around. I can’t remember whether the AIF I think they left to go up the centre of

Africa to the desert to Cairo or some place like that.

That is the only one that comes to mind I thought that was pretty smart. I didn’t see much, but we were told by the girls afterwards the dove girls that

they avoided us like the plague because they knew we were Australians and the Australians weren’t very popular there, but after awhile we assured them that we weren’t going to raise the town to shambles and that everything was

back on square one, they were very nice they showed us around up in the hills of Durban where the monkeys were and stealing things and dive for fruit pieces that were thrown to them. We were most amazed at their

agility to go so quickly through the trees. We didn’t know much about monkeys anyhow not like I know now being a wild life crank. That is what really we did and we got

to go to dances and in fact that they were so good that they did put on a welcome dance for us and publicized it fairly well so that the girls would turn up kind of thing. We asked these girls would they like to come with us and they said, “Oh yes.”

I think I mentioned that we were going so far north that we had to put on our winter gear because of the cold and we thought we had passed New York

by a fair margin and heading for more like to Greenland. That wasn’t the case we then turned into a south east direction down into Scotland to

Greenock was the name of the port and that was the port for Glasgow.

There were 300 Polish WAAFs [Women’s Auxiliary Air Force] came aboard. We were segregated.

I think about a lesser number about 200 Germans and Italians they were our enemies and they were going back to Britain to the Italians still work on the farms like they did out here and the

Germans into prisoner-of-war camps. That made up really the troop ship.

We did try to like ‘jon davro’ was good morning that was about the only thing I learnt and I have tried it out

on Polish people out here and they say, “Oh you speak polish?” And I say, “No jon davro only.”

The Brits were good they saw us at rail sidings

on our way south and they would shout out, “G’day Aussie,” or, “Good on you Aussie.” They were right on side or we were on their side.

We saw lots of bomb blasts and things like that. I don’t know whether we went through some of the towns were hit and you could see the damage that they had been bombed. Liverpool had been really struck badly.

That was but up in Scotland we didn’t we weren’t in Scotland we were only in Scotland and we went in an easterly direction on the train and headed south so we didn’t see too much of Scotland or whether it had been hit. I think

Glasgow had been hit or raided. A town on the other side of Scotland had not been bombed or at that stage anyway.

Yes very vivid.

We didn’t go anywhere unless we were lectured and as soon as we arrived at the Metropol Hotel we were lectured on safety and in the event of an air raid you were to leave what you were doing even if you were on the toilet run

with your breeches in the hand and get down to the first floor. We were up about five or six floors up we had a good run down the stairs. The stairs were very wide and rather than wait for a lift we could dash down the stairs pretty quickly when we knew a raid was coming on. Then

the guns across the road opened up on the anti aircraft guns about 3 inches but we had a look at them they are more like the size of an 88 mm like the German one of their prize guns, but they made an awful noise.

We had been told by Lord Haw Haw in Germany that we would be welcomed, we would be given the usual welcome that troops arriving in Britain should be aware of, and the next night we did get an air raid and quick as a flash we were out of bed I think it was

and down the stairs to the first floor. Then we, that was the first floor, nothing really was hit on the Brighton front but German bombers were going over you could hear the whine, the different whine we were attuned to the different aircraft noises.

That was a good trial for us the other occasions were much the same.

Lord Haw Haw was court martialled after the war, stood for trial, he mentioned that

we were to be continually under bombing raids and you may as well get used to them.

He could speak English very well.

The fact that the

Australians had arrived at Greenock and you would be given a welcome at Brighton. It was very clear that we were the target, but they weren’t as good as bomber command were.

I think I heard him somewhere but no I didn’t take, he was on the air quite often at a set time I think. We didn’t have a radio in our room in the hotel they didn’t go to such lavish rooms.

Only the others were there before us they knew that he had spoken about giving us a welcome and they had lived through it any way it wasn’t that bad unless you were in the bombing area.

Yes that is for sure we got all the news from them.

Yes.

No he was captured

by the Germans not killed.

I was disturbed about that but that was the thing that was going on everybody was trying to survive he had a

an 88 mm shell through the engine and his glycol mixture leaked out and it overheated and he went down he crash landed in a field fortunately he pranged.

He was missing

he didn’t return from an operation over France and that way automatic and then some time later he became his name appeared on the POW list that was coming out being circulated.

No. We were pretty busy in learning new things about the aircraft and attending lectures and it was pretty

full on and it didn’t affect me at all as far as that was concerned, I was sorry that is about all.

Yes and we treated it as

a blessing for not being killed or being injured. The next thing he was in Stalag 3 in Germany.

I was disappointed and I told John

I will think of it, I was disappointed that he couldn’t get me onto singles.

And then Wellingtons.

There are two motors instead of one and I found it I had been used to looking out the left hand side on landing and

I was pulled up and told to look forward which when you look forward landings became better, they improved they weren’t so rough.

Yes I guess so you could check

more readily you just the feel of the aircraft that is all that was different and we had some others that came on board the aircraft that was a little bit different to what we were used to.

We did cross countries much the same type of thing. got to know England a little better. It all helped.

Absolutely. Many, many air fields

you had to sort out which was which. Railways all over the place, roads also and we had to avoid balloons anti aircraft balloons particularly around the London area

and if your buzzer wasn’t working when you were approaching a balloon you were likely to fly into it because of the chain.

There was a machine in the

balloon not in the balloon but attached to the balloon that emitted a noise and that would be picked up by our receiver in the aircraft that would cause a buzz and when you heard that you did a 180 turn

and go the other way. A lot of the boys flew through balloon barrages but they were lucky to do so.

It would you could damage the wings so much or any of the surface

of the aircraft and you could do a lot of damage to the aircraft that would cause you to probably prang.

In training not so reliable. I guess they were the superseded model that came back from the squadrons like the aircraft did such as Wellingtons, Halifaxes and the Lancasters they had at the finishing school in the heavy conversion units

in OTU were pretty clapped out compared to the ones we had in our home squadron particularly Lancasters.

It was different stations or OTUs had

different ways of doing it but our way was simply to put all the categories in a room together like a large room and let them find out for themselves. I had an English navigator that I didn’t know

but I had been told that he was OK and he knew a wireless operator from the same training area and so they agreed to fly then we had

a bomb aimer they were known to the nav [navigator] also the nav really not selected a crew, but told me that he was OK and they would obviously come through a training school somewhere along they got to know each other. Then we had

one gunner at OTU on Wellingtons and then we picked up another one at the heavy conversion unit and a flight engineer. We had five at OTU and then we had seven when we

went on to four engines.

We all seemed to get on pretty well together both on the ground and in the air. Personality wise

the wireless operator came from Middlesex, the navigator came from he was a quieter he was quite

studious type fellow which I liked didn’t say too much and bomb aimer he had done some navigation and was scrubbed and went on bomb aiming.

He was also fairly quiet guy wasn’t prone to jump around too much. The rear gunners, gunners were different what will I say, lively guys and ready to tell

you a story, they had six weeks training that is all they had but had a lot of laughs with them and that is about all I can think of. The wireless operator

was Bob Thomson the navigator was John Fidler, the bomb aimer was Bill Hastings and

the mid upper gunner was Harry and Burt. Burt was the rear gunner and Harry was the mid upper.

No you would hear when we would be down the pub about their training days. I guess we didn’t want to hear too much about it, bad things of the crew, but

after a short while they came together very well and they had a lot of laughs and we would go to the pub when we could together.

I guess I got another wireless operator who lives in Perth and I was pleased to have another Australian in the crew, Pat.

He joined when Bob Thomson got hit and the aircraft was hit and we lost a motor and we had to crash land and Bob didn’t survive the

injury that he sustained.

Yes 626 and landed on the turf rather than the runway so we wouldn’t catch fire with the sparks flying.

I think the thing was just natural you are told what you are expected to do and I guess we did it to the best of our ability and

sometimes we made mistakes and we were caught out by them but I think it was all good training for later on.

I think you have got to understand their role in it get to know their voices on the intercom and I think that was the main features and they knew that

they had to play their part also. The gunners would probably give you more trouble than the rest of the crew put together. For instance they may not turn up for briefing on time either that or if you agree with the crew that you would go to

to the pub at such and such a time and you could count on one of the gunners not arriving on time or not at all they would forget about it they were a bit hare em scare them.

Yes.

They were just a much larger and much heavier aircraft and didn’t particularly want to fly that was my intention of it you had to make it fly by following the rules as opposed to the other one the Lanc it was a delight it wanted to fly

and on landing if you left on a little bit of motor you could float across the whole aerodrome it was such a beautiful aerodynamic aircraft. The Halifax, the ones we flew were the Mark I’s and II’s and the Mark III which I did never fly, but my very good friend, had a birthday the

the day before yesterday, Ralph Chillcott, flew from a Halifax squadron in Lancashire and they had Mark III Halifaxes which were much superior aircraft than the

other Marks. Why because they had I think I am not sure they had radial motors with the III which gave them a lot of power equal to probably the Merlin on the Lanc [Lancaster]. I think

the ones we flew were a bit tired and you might find they have starter problems that the later ones didn’t have they were a more serviceable aircraft. I didn’t like the early

Marks at all although a lot of guys did fly them as you would be aware and they did some pretty fancy things with them but maybe I didn’t have enough time on them to get to know them better but I thought they were a bit of a donkey of an aircraft.

They were the mixture could be lean or they could over-prime a motor very easily and these were tips that we received from the guys that were flying them all the time at the heavy conversion unit at ‘Prangtoft’ we called it,

not Sandtoft. There were tyres and inflation sometimes you would have to U/S [unserviceable] an aircraft

because of the lack of air in one of the tyres that was all because of the age of thing that was all.

We had our procedures

the one that applied to most aircraft was PMPFF, p for priming, m for mixture, p for

f for fuel and flaps, I will think about it.

He is in control of the engines when the starting up procedure he has got to make sure that he has enough throttle on to get them to fire when they fire when the fuel goes into the

motor, set your mixture right, your flaps 15 degree flaps which is on a wheel beside you and check that all the crew had done their checks

you would call on the nav checks right, yes sir, and then go through the crew bomb aimer, wireless operator and the gunners. The story was with

on a squadron I won’t name them but my brother in law was flying from a Halifax squadron as a rear gunner and he had a friend who I knew who was a gunner on the same squadron but

in another crew and the gunners always had to check their guns and make sure they were operating correctly by pressing the trigger and just being careful where they fired. When these two Halifaxes kind of

were in the same stream and they were one was they were flying level virtually and formatting to a certain extent when they fired the guns because at night time you see the flashes of the fire and the story is that they were firing at each other.

Not a good thought.

There were a lot of prangs there simply because there was a lot of old gear, the Halifaxes were old

and the Lancs also were they had seen their better days. That was really how it got there and in landing heavy landings that kind of thing that could cause an undercarriage to give way with all the weight coming on

it and often it did in training particularly guys were a bit rough on them and would cause them to deteriorate and prang.

I can’t, you didn’t take too much notice unless you saw how seriously the prang was. It would come out in DROs in orders or someone off duty would know what

had happened and certainly those in the control the flight control officers in the tower they would know very smartly if an aircraft pranged and take the necessary precautions to get it right. Get it right off the airfield

look after the crew make sure they were satisfactory and if not get them off to the sick bay or hospital whatever the doctor thought he was always on duty. There were

a lot of bursting tyres and one thing and another probably shouldn’t have been there but once again it was a training area and therefore they got abused more than they would on a squadron.

On squadron yes,

One of those guys in the photograph Page he pranged a Wirraway and he was killed

immediately, instantly. We only saw the ones that were on the ground either landing in some way. Take off if they were careless and they swung on takeoff

anything could happen they could run into any of the buildings on the training ground but no I would say they were mainly minor things that could be corrected. That is the way I saw it. You would hear stories from others how bad things were

but I was probably lucky I didn’t see any of those things happen.

Pretty well when we got our hours up on that type aircraft.

At the conversion unit.

Yes after the Halifaxes. As I said before there used to be a number of Lanc finishing schools that the crew would be posted to but that was a bit of a problem

they had to upgrade themselves re-packing and getting all the things together again on a new station and they decided they could streamline it better if they bought the Lancs and formed a school at the other end of the runway so to speak, on the opposite side where all the

administration buildings were for a squadron and that seemed to work pretty well. We were delighted when we were told we had finished Halifax training satisfactorily and we are going to post you onto Lancasters now. It was a big sigh of relief

to get away from the Halis. We knew from other guys on the station that the Lancs were in better shape than the Halifaxes.

They were a lovely aircraft.

They had a lot going for them. As I say they loved to fly and take off in an empty aircraft which we started with it was a delight you got off the ground very smartly a shorter run on the runway. Even

with a load it got up pretty smartly also it was aerodynamically good, it was a very good aircraft for its day.

Some of the

because it was a narrower aircraft than the Halifax and later the Liberator everything was confined and I don’t know whether you can tell by that photo up there but

it was very crowded. The engineer sat right there and if you wanted to go down back for any reason once you were off the ground he had to move virtually and lift up his folding chair

to let you past. The others were wider and there was kind of a semi corridor between the pilot and the engineer and other crew. Do you ever get to Canberra at all?

You didn’t do an interview with 77 Squadron guys, single engine pilot, in the last 14 days.

The nav was behind me, there was a bulkhead between he and I and likewise the wireless operator was on the other side of the aircraft a little bit behind the navigator

the bomb aimer was in the nose of the aircraft in that bowl, that was his position. The mid upper gunner was sitting in the turrets in the middle of the aircraft and the gunner was at the tail, the tail end.

The wireless operator we would get him to hand any notes or any such thing to another member of the crew. Why because he was in the centre of the aircraft more or less and he

could remove himself from his seat.

Yes there was, by the rear

door which was on the starboard side and it had the container and the frame around it and it was pretty crude but it did the job if you needed to. We always thought we might need it and we were very sure that we made

we went before we went on board. We had a kind of a cult which we were when we assembled by the aircraft or got out of the bus or whatever brought us out there

and we would always urinate on the rear wheel. The ground crew didn’t like us very much for doing it just in case they had some service to the rear wheel and so on.

It was a thing

we were further away if the bus stayed there in the front of the aircraft we were further away from it by urinating on the rear wheel and it developed into a bit of a cult.

First of all you would report to the Adjutant Office and check in there and then we seemed to know someone who had been there for a short time and got to

know what goes on around the squadron or we could ask for someone to show us around. We were certainly shown to our quarters by the person who virtually was in charge of that particular barracks they would come and

ask for you at the office and show you around where your room or your bed might be.

Yes mainly they did so that they could relate to each other. I thought it was pretty good that they did.

I was commissioned and it was OK, pretty basic because we weren’t on a permanent station we were on a war time. The squadron was only finished and began operating in

mid 43 so we didn’t that is really how we got to find out about it where things were.

We had Nissan huts

and they were divided into rooms in our case and the barracks would be probably divided in half or something like that and you might get eight or ten in a section of the Nissen hut.

The crew could talk together and reveal certain instances that were either of a lot harder nature or a serious nature we don’t know but I would meet them at

when we were called to, if we can come back to that.

Yes we were welcomed when they knew and if we needed any advice we could always get it from someone

of the same elk. I would ask a pilot friend what goes on in such and such a case. There was always a questionnaire a briefing I would meet the rest of the crew at briefing and we would sit together.

The pilot was responsible for the entire crew being there together not part of or late comers were not accepted they had to be there on time.

Yes they got into trouble.

Be spoken to from probably the Flight Officer would give you a bit of a roasting.

Usually.

He would be ostracized also. What would be said to him?

He would just say, “Why isn’t Wooly here,” and I could only say he received the briefing notice that he was due here at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, I can’t,

he would say, “It is your responsibility to see that they are there,” and at times it was a little bit unfair because we were in different barracks and so we found it a little bit difficult to keep in touch with them

when we had returned to the squadron after an op it was very easy to get them to be on time to catch the bus to the pub, the Lincoln pub and things like that they were always on time then.

Yes but that was them and that was there and they were good guys really

and they were in a very exposed position as you know.

We had

leaders like gunnery leaders and a nav leader, the senior pilot on the squadron would be there at the briefing and any questions you could always get an answer.

Because you hadn’t been going on this trip so you wanted to make sure you knew all about it where the artillery and flak batteries were and so on. The nav and the pilot really co-ordinated on things like that

and after briefing you could stay back and go through your maps and that kind of thing and just acquaint yourself as to what you would expect.

Well after awhile yes, when you had been there on the squadron and you had convinced them you were a reliable character

you could be appointed to an aircraft.

Different times. I guess it might be after you had done about six or seven or eight trips.

With a degree of difficulty. That was as the second pilot we did three of those and if they thought you could cope you could just have two but three was the usual.

Just different targets.

Germany is a big place when you are looking for a place. In the beginning we went to Frankfurt then we

went to Lahore and that was unpleasant and I did two I think with another and then we went off as a crew.

We didn’t like it at all we wanted to get away from it and all the crew members had their positions and they could see where the flak was coming from so they could

say particularly the bomber aimer in the nose of the aircraft they could say it is coming from such and such direction turn to starboard 30 degrees or something like. You had help from the crew but that didn’t alter the fact that you still had night fighters

to get after you also.

Yes, if we were late getting back from a trip

we would be in bed and we would be called to say that a briefing would be held at say 4 o’clock in the afternoon for ops [operations] were on and everybody was alerted. The ground staff had an enormous job to get the aircraft into a

fit and proper condition to make the trip and we had free time until then 4 o’clock where you would have to present yourself with your crew

at briefing and take a seat and listen to what is being told. We would be briefed by the squadron commander as to the target for the night then he would have a list of

take off times, time across the channel, time over England and you would be writing them down and so would the nav be doing it and time on target and we would make sure that at the end of

the briefing I would always make sure that I double checked with the nav that we got the same message from the nav leader at the briefing. You would have radio which was really

the wireless operators he had to get the colours of the day. The colours of the day were given to all vessels whether it be aircraft or

ships at sea the colours of the day so that everybody knew that you were on the same side. You would be requested to display those colours if you happened to passing over a

naval vessel and if you showed the wrong colour you could expect a fair amount of flak to fire from the Royal Navy and that was all our human cry that the navy never gets their colours right we are always

right and we attend at Garden Island here a naval Corvette Association that always crops up there the fact that we knew the right colours of the day but it is a pity that the navy doesn’t take a little more care

with getting them right.

I can’t reveal any it made things very uncomfortable they could strike you on the fuselage and on the main frames.

Yes it did not in any specific time that I know, but I know reading in the journals that came around that there wanted to be more cohesion between the air force and the navy.

We waited for all the lectures and got the nav leader and the wireless, the gunners had

their own in another section. The gunners were briefed on clearing their guns and making sure they were operating satisfactorily and that all their gun sights were

correct, their Perspex on either side of the machine gun was cleaned to make sure it was cleaned that the ground staff cleaned it but you wanted to check it just in case.

It is a long time ago I can’t remember too much about the gunnery thing. They were things that they had to contend with and they had a role to play.

We would catch the crew bus out and make sure we urinate on the

rear wheel and that everybody had their equipment AOK making sure the parachutes and Mae Wests [life jackets] were in order and then virtually go up the steps

of the aircraft into the bank, I used to make sure the Elsen, the toilet made by the Elsen Toilet Company, making sure the Elsen was there

and taking my position. I would let the others get in first and get settled in position and do my own thing and waltz in a big hump in the middle of the aircraft where the main planes go through

the struts go through.

I think you wore things that you were accustomed to wearing your flight jacket and whatever I think that was as far as I was concerned. Some of the fellows

had little elephants or little dogs or whatever attached somewhere to the aircraft and they reckoned that brought them good luck and that is what we wanted so they were never refused.

No.

I was always sure that we would be back always that would be a defeatist attitude and we wouldn’t want that in the crew and if we did, I would try to sort it out amongst ourselves and I would report it to the powers that be.

Having got off the ground and you are climbing away you are then briefed by the engineer what revs and boost that you would be

flying at, your speed would be calculated by the navigator and we would just be climbing away on course and meeting and seeing other aircraft around as a rule.

Then you really got close enough to wave to a guy or whatever but we knew the numbers of the aircraft painted in big letters on the side of the aircraft so we could identify that aircraft and who is flying the aircraft we know that.

If they were from the same squadron you wouldn’t know if they were from different squadrons.

Yes indeed there was lots of colliding and hitting and damage your flight panels and what have you that

was another risk that you had to watch out for.

Yes I could say yes.

I saw and I was quick enough to pull away from the offending aircraft I didn’t have time to check whether the aircraft was from our squadron or not,

probably the gunner would probably see the big number on the side of the aircraft and that would tell you whether it was yours or one of another squadron.

As little as possible. There is no aircraft radio between aircraft, that was forgotten.

I would ask the tail gunner for any unusual aircraft or whatever and get

out of the bomb aimer looking forward and scanning his part of the sky.

He would report it the position of the aircraft

and if it looked to be one of ours we just hold our course or probably move off line a little bit to give him clearance but if it was an angry one like a twin engine Messerschmitt night fighter they

needed to be kept clear of because they had lots of guns and all kind of things and they had the and if you let them get too close to you

they could fly up and get their sheraze musac fixed angled heavy machine gun fix it into the top of their aircraft and operated by their gunner

the wireless guy and we had nothing pointing down we could point rear and front and in the centre of the aircraft so we would

be very careful to make sure that we kept away from those guys if we saw them first.

Yes. Their fixed flying gunner would go bang, bang, bang and knock out your engines very quickly and wreck the aircraft also.

If we knew we would swing away from the aircraft. It just depends on their position in the sky.

Was coming up, we saw him and we dived away and made it and left the tail gunner to shoot at him as we pulled away.

No we went so quickly

we got out of range, he waited for the next one to come by he would be flying about the same speed and he would pull his speed back and watch out for another Lancaster or another Halifax.

Yes we tried to bomb on clear nights but that wasn’t always possible because of the cloud cover over in Europe and so

we were bombing on the PFF [Pathfinder Force] flares that they let go. They had their roles to find the target and mark the target and we would mark it with the colour suitable colour agreed colour and we would bomb on that.

We had a lot of flak coming up but you had to ignore but beware of it. Just press on you couldn’t go

backwards and then drop your bombs and clear away from the target in a big arc so you wouldn’t interfere with another aircraft coming behind you. then

head for home by pre-determined plans and navigation and making sure that the route home wouldn’t be over heavy flak areas.

That was that.

Yes as soon as we cut the motors and so on the ground crew would be waiting for you because they were attached to that aircraft and they had a sergeant or a corporal in charge of them

very highly mechanized they got stuck into it. They would ask any problems and if not they would go back doing getting the aircraft ready for another sortie which they did very efficiently.

That is in the aircraft out on the hard stand and then the coach would pick us up and take us to the debriefing and there was a lady WAAF and some were good and some were bad.

They would want to know each and every from each crew member if there were any unusual circumstances.

Not much because the ground crew were really in charge of the aircraft we were attached to it because we may know one of the engines might drop revs or something

but that is about all but it might swing to the left as they usually did because the props used to go that way and pull you round to the port side.

Not really that wasn’t very good to do. I must say I didn’t see

any of that done on our squadron anyway. The Americans did it in a big way but we didn’t because the aircraft might not survive too many more sorties.

We were on our way home on return from target of

the alpine town a large town and we were between Düsseldorf and Dortman and this night fighter got on to us

and fired his cannons at us and hit the outer starboard motor and that also affected our fuel situation because there was a

one of our large fuel tanks on the starboard side between the motor so the situation occurred whether we would

go into head for a neutral area a neutral country or the motor had been completely shot out and the surface of the main plane

had been completely removed as a result of the explosion and so or I elected to head for home.

I made that with a degree of difficulty with one engine out it was I just it was very difficult to hold on course so we

opted to do a let the control situation and the starboard undercarriage

also was out so there was little chance of making a landing on the runway which with sparks and all and that kind of thing would have occurred

so I told control that I would put her down on the side of the runway on the turf and that way we avoided a fire and also notified the hospital

and the first aid people to come and collect the wireless operator who had been hit also.

He was hit over Düsseldorf.

By the night fighter so all that

put it down as softly as was possible and stalled it onto the ground and we swung to the right to the starboard and

there was no fire we just got out of the aircraft as quick as possible. The crew were a bit shaken up and we did our best to

make sure that all the others were satisfactory and Bob was taken off to Lincoln Hospital not to the hospital at the base but to Lincoln Hospital but he died

there.

(silence)

I had to get on to the family and locate them. I found it was upsetting

but that was… It took some time before we were rostered for further operations.

I can’t recall any notice that such was the case of night fighters were about we

were in a cruising situation and suddenly this enormous noise came and it kept on other

canon fire repeatedly into the wing of the aircraft on the side.

Like that together with the noise of the engines

you could just hear the noise hitting the aircraft. You couldn’t no matter what we did we couldn’t get away from them we did pull away from it but it stayed with us

for a time and I guess the pilot thought they are going to knock us down then and there but we were lucky to get away from him.

The gunner, the mid upper was offering some

information on the position of the aircraft and we were just taking that into account and pull away according to the position of the enemy aircraft.

It was coming at us from directly below because it had the speed to be able to stay in that position behind us below and behind so it is surprising that it didn’t make

more of a mess of the aircraft. The fire from the rear gunner would have stopped that I would have imagine.

The fuselage

where the crew were wasn’t too bad there was just some holes in the side of where the fire was coming from and luckily no other crew member were hit at the time.

Well it was reported that he had been hit and blood everywhere and our bomb aimer had some had been briefed in

first aid and he got the kit out and did what he could in the air, he did a good job. We were extremely lucky to get back to base.

I may have sounded calm but I was a bit maybe training that I don’t know.

No things, we moved crew members

moved around the aircraft pretty swiftly but no panic set in only trying to get Bob out of his mess that he was in.

In the head he was bleeding all this side of the head had been hit.

His station was badly knocked about and fortunately it wasn’t completely we

didn’t lose the side of the aircraft we were fortunate in that respect but it was the mainframe and the starboard undercarriage was badly damaged.

No a lot of it

was blasted out of its position. We had a rush of fuel there we lost a lot of fuel but we still had enough in the portside to make it across the North Sea and

back to base.

No the damage the hole in the wing and the material of the aircraft was

had been hit and it was strange so you had a lot of parts of the duraleum of the aircraft sticking up and causing interference with the

airflow over the mainframe. We continued on and losing height and we got we were fortunate to get across the North Sea and

it was to be able to talk to the base was a help and.

We thought if we ran out of fuel over the North Sea we would have to ditch but we still had enough as I said

to make it back home.

They got the ambulances and so on standing by and the squadron hospital was notified

and I guess Lincoln Hospital would have been notified also.

Not really we

that didn’t I can’t remember any real point where they were talking about wheels up landings and things like that certainly there was always a chance of having to do a landing but you

can’t foresee the side of the aircraft that is going to be damaged or where it is likely to be damaged or the reason for having to do a wheels up landing. It makes a bit of a mess of the turf as you can imagine.

Hard, we kind of bounced a little bit but we had our seatbelts on and we released those as quickly as we could when we stopped. As I mentioned we did

almost a 180 swing when the mess of the undercarriage hit the ground also tendered to make a swing to that side.

The fire engines and the ambulance came out they couldn’t do anything until they assessed what was the best thing to do with it whether to remove the main planes there or take it back into service where they had more facilities.

I wasn’t akin to that information.

No we made sure there was no fire, we couldn’t do much about the outside of the

aircraft if a spark had caused a fire there it would have been chaotic but we had a very seriously injured guy on board so we got out and released our seatbelts as quickly as possible and dived for the first aid kit

and tried to do something there.

While the damage was on the starboard side we were still able to force the door open and it is not right on the ground it is in the curve of the fuselage and it would stand

18 inches or two feet off the ground in that situation. We were able to open the door.

We were all pretty cut up about it but we, I now a couple of them wrote letters to the family

and I had to look up the address and so on. The adjutant suggested I ring the family before I go down and let them know the way I was going

that was they had already been informed about the loss. I just filled them in with more information on what had happened.

Such as not knowing no warning no nothing and suddenly the thing exploded.

Yes.

They were very appreciative of my visit but I think it is the usual for the Captain to go and see them

where possible.

Yes I think so.

It took some time because Pat had lost his crew

and he was a spare bod [extra] on the station on the squadron, so he was able to, between the flight commander and the

other crew members, he would be free to join us. Being a spare bod he could fly with other crews.

It didn’t worry us we would either get another one or stand down situation and miss the op which we didn’t like doing because we had to get on with the tour.

No we got another aircraft and we test flew it and I even took the

one of the service guys up the ground staff up to let him see if he was satisfied with the way the aircraft was performing. It would have probably, to answer your question, probably three weeks

or something like that, three or four weeks.

No I don’t think so. We had a figure to achieve and we, I think everybody was glad to do it again

to the end of the tour.

Yes my friend had a nasty one, there was

a creek on the approach side of the drome and he misjudged the landing one night and ended up in the creek hitting the bank on the opposite side and that made a big mess.

No one was killed it was just but they could have been very much worse.

The service police would come in and go through the proper affairs

whatever and usually collect all of it and to be returned to the next of kin. As far as

that was the main thing to clear it all out and get the bed ready for someone else to use it come in and use it.

If it turned out to be pilot error there would be talk about it and discussion amongst the guys that you know and even the flight commander would have a say in it. That was

all about all that happened we didn’t linger longer we tried to get our tour over as soon as possible.

Yes there was an occasion when one of the fellows

a gunner refused to fly and the squadron was called together and lined up and he was brought to the

squadron commander. He had his breast pinned with cotton and his rank on the sleeve and the

service police chief on the station came forward in a military fashion and tore the rank off his uniform, pretty bloody thing to do, but still that is the way the RAF

were doing it. A lot of people don’t agree with it, if you say I won’t fly they can hold up and too many of them did the same thing it would make the commanding officers job a pretty difficult one. I think they kept it on as long as possible because they had signed on to fly

when they wouldn’t fly they were contravening an order that they were to fly.

It was really forgotten pretty smartly, it was a good

example of what could happen to you if you did just that. To answer your question, no not really.

No not really. I took the view that

you were there to do a job and no matter what you were given the best equipment to do it with that we knew and as such that is all we thought about getting it over and one with as quickly as possible.

I was a bit sad about that I would have liked to have finished for a number of reasons, but the least of which I would have preferred to have stayed on with the squadron than

go to Burma, you wouldn’t wish anyone to go to Burma.

Yes it was obvious.

The amount of

servicemen in Britain was very noticeable, the Americans came in masses and a lot of European ones that had been

self engaged elsewhere seem to come to Britain and we were hitting more targets on more nights and on more occasions and it was obvious that

that the Germans didn’t have all their equipment to hit back at us. The amount of damage being done to Germany was enormous

when all that bombing was going on and homes and factories it was just knocked completely out raised to the ground so it was

I did 22 with 626 and then 16 with 355.

I don’t know I can’t answer that. There was so much talk about repatriating Australians that had flown in Britain and I thought when I was called up to

and told I was being posted I may be going home and that gave me a new lease of life but when I was informed then that I was to go down to Lyneham in Wiltshire and from there on I could be, I would be told what would be done.

That was learning to fly the aircraft.

The Liberator yes. Which was a different source altogether it was more like the Halifax that didn’t want to fly particularly but you had to make it do so. The good point

about it was the pilot seat was extremely comfortable I would say you could almost go asleep in it, and it had ashtrays in the arm to have a smoke and put out your cigarette. A big cumbersome type of aircraft I thought,

but it had a very good distance it would fly much further than the Lanc would.

I said the Lanc was aerodynamically

as good as you could get in those days I am sure, whereas and I guess the makers of the Liberator felt the same way about their aircraft but it wasn’t in the same field as the Lanc for a guy who has flown both of them.

The Liberator was very heavy carried a quarter of the load of bombs that the Lanc did but the Americans liked it because it

flew a long way and it had a lot of crew in it, it had eleven crew. It was a pretty well made aircraft I am sure.

My nav, bomb aimer

and they were the ones that would fit into the aircraft the Liberator type aircraft. We tried to entice Pat Dwyer our new wireless operator but he’d had enough he said no I don’t want

to go out to Burma and he flew on the squadron after we left. We had gunners, we picked up more.

We thought we were getting an engine leak on the first stop at Castel Benito so when we took off again and flew into West Cairo they had the lights

on and all, all good things were happening there and I spoke to an engineering officer we are not in a hurry take your time about looking for this leak and let me know keep me posted on how the progress is. He said well we can probably

do it in a couple of days so that didn’t go down too well I thought we might have had a at least a good week there. I saw him in the mess at night and ask him and again remind him that we are not in a hurry at the

moment. We did take about eight or nine days to get out of Cairo because he said you had better go or you might be asked some difficult questions if you don’t go soon so we made our flight plan

to Albania in Iraq and I only heard the other night on TV that Albania is being used by the RAF obviously for an airport as an aerodrome because it is too far out from

Baghdad.

I found some guys I knew and we were introduced to as many people as could be and

they were doing some training flights for their own crews that had been there for some time in some second pilots were training for captaincy and so that was good and we joined in

it was just the way they went about bombing as opposed to the RAF it was quite different.

They were doing mass bombing almost in formation and when the first one dropped when the leader

dropped his bombs everybody else did too, it seemed a bit wasteful to us as far as we calculated it at the speed of the aircraft and the distance between the aircraft wouldn’t really strike the target that we were seeking but still we

didn’t bother, they were getting towards the end of the war and whilst there was plenty of flying was involved no one they were all kind of preparations for landings on the Malaysian coast

but if they wanted to we could see that if they wanted to parachute troops into there, there wouldn’t be enough aircraft you know the Dakota type aircraft for that job. Furthermore what were there were completely

occupied in serving the squadrons out on the plains, out on the Plains of Burma. Goods were coming in by sea there was no real port there for any

ships to go in so they were kept out in deep water and ferries would ferry whatever and that is a pretty slow means of emptying a ship full of supplies. That is how

the Dakota aircraft came into it so well they were very easy aircraft to fly and very forgiving aircraft.

We were mainly attacking roads and bridges and stopping the supply lines of the Japanese and that was all daylight flights and I believe the rate of

success was quite high because of the way that they were bombing. They could, if the leader missed the target those behind him would surely hit it and so they worked on that theory and it seemed to work pretty well.

Terrible conditions, they were, for both flying and the aircraft would be so hot to get into in that steamy weather and the conditions to put it kindly, crook.

Yes there was their ack-ack [anti-aircraft fire], the Japanese had the ack-ack, but they had too little of it in our view and unless you were very unfortunate, and the height we were flying at it was fairly,

the risk of being hit by flak was far less than you would expect in Europe.

No.

The Japanese, as far as the anti-aircraft fire that was quite mobile they would run it, they had a great amount of road and mobile ack-ack

guns and they would be, you could pin point them in one position and then the next day or a day or two later they would be in a completely different section and they would form a sizeable barrage for bombing.

It was a hit or miss, I didn’t care for it too much. They had learnt their lessons early. The B-24 guys had learned their flying and bombing

in America and American systems outside America like there was a big Liberator School down in the Bahamas that everybody wanted to get to because it was so good there apparently. A

lot of them had been baptised into their way of flying and bombing and what have you.

Our bomb load was far in excess of

what we carried in the Liberator. We were getting a good supply of aircraft coming through from all angles from the States through the islands and into India and up into Burma

and they were causing the Japanese a lot of problems. It made it very much easier for the army to

what will I say rid them of the area and the British Army were really going forging ahead at a fair rate in Burma. Burma is a very flat country out in the middle section

of the country was hills between that and the seaboard but not the same as the hills of northern Burma where there are masses. If you go far enough you end up with Everest. On that range so the Brits had got them out

of those areas and in the main they were out on the plains and in some areas they were located in pockets of groups in amongst

all the jungle up there, the Brits were very good at getting them out of the jungles bit by bit.

We were in bamboo bashas, Hindustani name for

a cane, a bamboo hut. They weren’t too bad but electricity was short, we had punkawallahs sitting outside the basha pulling the thing that went like that.

The ‘punkas’. It was very basic and the roads were crook. Dusty in good weather and muddy and sloshy when it rained. We had, there are only a limited

number of landing places in Burma in the beginning I was told that if you’re coming back with some damage you would be lucky to make it because of the distance and no dromes that you could go into. They came

quick and fairly fast when the Brits got underway with all their equipment and they were making they had to battle the rains that came with the typhoons and one thing or another, it was a crook country.

Some like it and some don’t.

Yes the cumulo nimbus were very, very bad. I remember a very bad some aircraft lost their mainframe as a result of it the wings were torn off the aircraft if they went into some of these. I didn’t hear of any losses that way

with Liberators but with C-47s and that other big twin engined cargo plane the Brits were using they had a real torrid time with the cloud and the cumulo nimbus cloud which was almost a black coloured cloud

an enormous air currents in the cloud in the formation.

No I was

down to I think down to 117 Squadron to get a lot of the materials into the British Army the 14th Army in the centre of the country that was pretty important.

They were being held up by the lack of ammunition and food and all things like an army would be if they were in short supply so there was a rush then to do that.

Only

by demand that’s all. There was more demand in getting the supplies there and I was pleased to go for the reason that if I had some C47 experience it would be better in getting a job when I got back to Australia with Qantas

or Ansett or something like that. I was glad when they did agree to get rid of the Liberators and fly them out and fly the Dakotas in and that was really how I got onto C-47s.

I must say I found them a very forgiving aircraft and I stayed with them for at least another eight months there.

Yes the nav, that is all, only the nav stayed with me.

Bear in mind he had come out from England and most of the English crews were going back by ship to England so he was a break away from the usual pattern he wanted to stay and stay he did.

The wireless operator we had from the Lib [Liberator] he came down also to Ramrie Island.

Tents, it was terrible.

The monsoons had started and it was raining and then the sun would shine and the heat would be pouring down on you and rain again. The Douglas aircraft really withstood a lot of real

hard conditions.

We had Atebrin every meal time, we went yellow somewhat but that was part of the

job. We had some very pleasant times in hotels when we had to stay over at night in Bangkok and Saigon was we were billeted out to a French family and my school French had long gone and

the family helped with meal time mainly trying to improve my French.

The bomb went off you see.

We had a party on a day for the end of the war and they brought in mules, mules were very popular for carting things around and we had mule races

and the commanding officer he also partook and he was given a real poor mule that couldn’t race very well at all. We had

they got some kegs of beer which is unusual for that area from the supply fellow in charge and we had a day of light hearted like a big party a squadron party.

We flew in the last stages of the war, flew into captured Japanese prison camps and the

home made runways were pretty shocking, with the rain and the sun and it was a devil’s own job to avoid a puncture, the rocks and so on.

The British POWs would burst into tears when you shook hands to them and passed them onto and let them know that they were being flown out and within a week they should be on their way back to Britain, depending on how well they were really.

The sick were held in pretty basic type hospitals but the rest clambered aboard ships as quickly as they could to get away from the place. That was back at Rangoon. It had a reasonable kind of harbour attached to a river there.

Over the years

I have been very fortunate to have the opportunity to march on Anzac Day and also being a member

of a Club in Sydney that put on a very good Anzac luncheon. It was a good opportunity to meet up with colleagues that you haven’t seen for a long, long time. As for the crowds the most recent Anzac Day we had

on 25th April was full of people, I don’t know if you saw it, the young ones would come out and want to touch your hand it was I think it is getting bigger year by year and it means a lot

to the teachers who are training the children that is the good part. We have been known to go and lecture prior to Anzac Day to several schools just to give them an idea of what had happened our job was, in bomber command

and much the same asking what did you do before you took off and things like that. They knew a certain amount but they just wanted to hear from us what we felt about it.

It was.

We had our deferred pay we were provided by the government and we made sure we spent that pretty well but there were certain meeting points that aircrew guys got to like the Australia Hotel, the long bar of the Australia Hotel

we could always go in there and meet up with guys and have a couple of beers there and have a meal down below in the bistro but it is pulled down now no longer there.

I should also mention from the last question I thought I could fly with Qantas after eight months flying DC-3s so I had arranged an appointment to see the Captain Crowther who was the

person who would check the crews out but he told me sadly that Qantas were full of pilots at the moment and all I could do was wait a few months most likely they could take me on. Then I

went away with my tail between my legs and thought what next and having matriculated at school I went to Sydney Uni and I had a bit of an inkling for

architecture and so they said they could fit me into the second semester so that is what I did.

Such as?

I thought the content of the questions were very well explained and thought out and a fair amount of consideration on your part went into them I thought that was good. There is no real part that I felt,

only one that is, that was – couldn’t be helped, but I thought it went well.