Bob Macintosh's story

NL: We were in Sasebo and there was a difference in philosophy between the United States Navy and the Royal Navy. The Americans would stay in harbour if it was a secure harbour, you know, [in a] typhoon, whereas the Royal Navy, you went to sea. We went off to sea, lashed everything down, double lashings on all the aircraft in the hangar et cetera. We were caught in it.

The ship was rolling about 30 something odd degrees. The flight deck was 44 feet above the water. We lost a tractor from for'ard of the island, taken off by the wave. We lost a boat after the island. 44 feet, you know. Paint was stripped off the ship's side and the aircraft in the hangar were all secure. There was no damage at all in the hangar but on the flight deck because of the wind and waves and God knows what, aircraft were damaged and one firefly went over the ship's side, leaving its wing tips still attached to the deck by cable.

Amusing story, one of the problems is, you get numerous little fires because water going down, trunking into electrical motors and there were broadcasts being made all the time about fires in such and such a place but they were only little flash fires. Then there was a fire pipe, "Fire, fire, fire. Fire in the bomb room". The bomb room, we were sitting above the bomb room and we looked at each other, and thought, "Well I'm gonna deal another hand of pontoon", because it was all you could really do.

And the following morning we got up and we'd cleared the typhoon and the flight deck was an absolute mess, aircraft damaged. Yeah, it was an experience, I can tell you.

BM: The inner ear tells you that you're doing things that you're not. It's very interesting. If you're in cloud for a little while and you're not looking at your instruments, you'll go into a spiral and eventually into a spiral dive until you come out of the cloud or hit the ground. Yeah. Everyone does it.

NL: I once had an emergency landing in … flying in Ireland. An engine fire and I had to do a ground-controlled approach under radar, and I flew that approach with 90 degrees of … to bank on.

BM: I know the feeling.

NL: I was fighting it. My brain was telling me I had 90 degrees to bank on, my instruments were telling me I was level. You really have to fight yourself.

BM: It's called the leans.

BM: When the Meteor was first taken over to Korea, we were supposed to be top line fighters so we put them up on the Yalu River patrolling trying to keep the MIGs away from the ground attack aircraft and it was a very unequal contest. They were much faster, they could turn better, they had better armament, just a modern aircraft versus a World War Two fighter. So, they, we did shoot down a few MIGs, but they shot down more of us so we were withdrawn from that, put on ground attack. I think I told you the Meteor was the best ground attack aircraft bar none in Korea, it was really quite fortuitous. I don't think anybody even knew how good they were until we started on that. Really, you've only got to grab the controls of an aeroplane and feel the sense of power and freedom that it gives you. It's, I don't know, it's as you said, in your blood.

NL: You've either got it or you haven't.

BM: That's true. Some people don't get it.

NL: Some people. It's just a job. To me it was a vocation.

NL: Like all things that humans do, providing you have the training and are supported in the training, you can achieve, you can go to the moon.

The same with deck landing. You had to rely on the batsman or rely on the batsman to bat you in because you couldn't see the deck and that took some confidence building to land on.

Yeah, and if you missed the wires you went into the barrier which I never did. 254 straight head bangers. And then we went to the angle deck which took all the fun out of it.

NL: We went to low level bombing to actually put the bombs into the abutment of the bridge. Low level with a delay fuse, four aircraft, with a 27 second delay. Muggins, the sub-lieutenant last in, to get in within the 27 seconds, you could arrive as your leader's bombs were going off. Fortunately, obviously, that never happened. But then as we developed skill we realised it was a nonsense putting four aircraft in with two, we were putting 8,000-pound of bombs into a little Korean bridge. We ended up with just one aircraft and on one occasion we took out a bridge with just one bomb but as you developed skills. Yeah. Good fun.

BM: 77 Squadron in the media has got a good name for accuracy that we could put rockets on any target. We could take out a single truck or we couldn't actually take out a single bridge because they were only 16-pound heads, but you could knock down a building or a locomotive or any of those sorts of things. First go, yeah.

NL: Yeah, I got a locomotive.

BM: Did you?

NL: Yes, I did. On the west, on the east coast.

BM: I never had that privilege.

NL: Yeah, it was in a ... We got off two one thousand-pound bombs and I can tell you taking a Firefly with a catapult with two one thousand-pound bombs is a...