Phil Elger/Bill Evans - D-Day support and diversion

Transcript

Bill: We must have had 14.000 pounds of bombs on board including a big one, I guess, and we couldn't see a ruddy thing. All we could see on the radar was lots of little blips and these were ships, boats, anything on the water showed up, you see, and it was a mess, an absolute mess. We had pathfinders. They were the men who came in first, dropped their markers, and they would tell the rest of the bombers to bomb a certain coloured light and we would do that. Anyway we dropped our bombs on these lights which we were told to do. We couldn't see what was below and it wasn't until we were coming home that, across the channel, we saw visually all the blips and they were boats, you see an when we got back we were told we were the first to bomb on D-Day and that was quite interesting and then again, that night, we went on another one and did the same thing.

Phil: We had to go on diversionary plans up North of D-Day and made ourselves as nuisance as we could to draw all the fighters and Germans away from what was happening. We were quite excited by the whole thing. From the air we could see in the distance all the water craft there. It was amazing and then there was a 1050 planes went over.

Bill: That must have been a sight. Of course you'd seen them before but not that numbers.

Phil: It took them hours to go through. All the planes and then these huge gliders. They'd carry a couple of hundred men, about three tanks. They used to let them go and where they landed that was it. I wouldn't have liked to be in them. They were only made of plywood.

Bill: They tell me on the continent there, you know, as the troops were assembling and going along, there were hundreds of these just left there, you know, and they were strange things. If they were lucky enough to land at a drome then of course they would come in and stop, no running along. It looked very strange.