Selection as navigator
I wanted to be a pilot, of course, but they did tests. Actually, you went in for the first three months and that's when they classified you to what you were best suited for and they had examinations, you know. It was like going back to school the first three months, lectures, physical exercises, you had to be in bed at a certain time.
It was pretty strict. It was like being at school and they had the classifications and three officers would interview you with the results that you'd achieved and said 'We've decided to make you a navigator'. So, you had no choice, but a part of the test was on your depth of perception, you know.
It was that angle between your eyes and the ground and mine was defective and they said, 'You'd be trying to land the aircraft about twenty-five feet in the air and that's dangerous for the aircraft and the crew'. So, they made me a navigator and I was quite happy with that. I liked geography and that sort of thing at school and I think they were quite right. Well, I think I had to be a good navigator to make thirty trips.
Training in Canada
I joined up in 43, no 42 and I spent most of 43 in Canada. Navigation course was pretty strong. We would start at 7.30 in the morning and not finish until 5.30 at night. Initially, lectures, all day, like a high school, and you had to be there and be ticked off and so on and then we started to fly after a month or so you're flying schedules, daytime, and of course for astro nav, you had to fly at night because you couldn't see the stars in the daytime, but yeah, it was full on, a lot of subjects.
Putting the crew together
Sam was 31. He was an old man. We called him the 'old man'. He was trained by Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith. He took up flying before the war. I think about 1938 and he learned to fly from Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith. He did it at his own expense before he joined the air force and he was posted to a training place at Cootamundra so he gained a lot of hours training navigators and then when he put in top go to England that was when we met up and he was looking for a navigator and I was looking for a pilot and we both met the bomb aimer, the one who was later injured and we sort of palled up in the mess and said 'Well, we'll stick together'.
Okay, we want a couple of gunners and a wireless operator. Well I had trained with a wireless operator in England and I said 'Well what about him?' So we met up with him and he said 'Oh yeah' he'll go along with us and the two gunners were from Western Australia and they came as a package deal so we picked them up.
They were both ex-army. They got sick of the AIF. They were in Australia and hadn't got mixed up in the front lines and they were getting edgy and transferred to the air force and this was, well we crewed up in early 44.
Mission assignment
Well, the navigator and the pilot always had to go first. All the crews were required for a briefing at 1600 hours which was 4pm and we would go down, the pilot and I would go down to the briefing room and I'd be issued with my maps. They had what the target was on a board covered by a sheet. They'd pull that back when you came in and you'd say "Oh God. Berlin".
And then they'd issue the maps and quite often you'd have maybe three maps you had to join up say Berlin, Nuremburg, where ever and there was a pot of paste and you had to paste them together and then, of course, they were a bit damp, you know, and you'd have to wipe them to dry them off a bit and then you'd follow the tapes on the thing.
Point A would be on the Dutch coast, then point B would be here but you didn't go straight in, of course, because that was a giveaway to the German radar so you'd have maybe three points and then the bombing run maybe north and south. We'd be coming in from the west and then you'd do the same on the way out and there was a time at each point and you were given.
You had to do it in three minutes. That was part of the navigator's job to be at point A within three minutes at a certain height and they would stipulate what level we're on, they were tiered back. This would be 21,000 feet, 22,000 feet and 23,000 feet and in slightly different times. Three minutes or four minutes between each. When you have 800 bombers going out just for safety.
Some were good Lancaster's and some were faster than others just like Ford cars some were better than others and if the pilot had a good one, he'd say 'Ah well, damn the speed limit. We'll head in'. And they'd be at 23000 feet and you'd be at 21,000 over the target together. Now that happened a few times to us. Actually, the only one who could see the plane directly up above us was the mid upper gunner and several times he yelled out. 'Hey there's a plane with its bomb doors open twenty feet above us'. And I remember the comment by the pilot, 'Aw, that's dangerous'.
Bombing runs and being coned
There would be a bombing run when you went straight and level. You couldn't deviate at all and if something happened, well you could but you had a full bomb load and the whole aircraft was a bit heavy even to do evasive action but you'd be straight and level and say that was the target and the bomb aimer would take over.
There'd be no navigation, of course, but yeah, you could relax for three or four minutes, maybe five, depending. I used to stand up and have a look at the target. There was a side window and, of course, if they had been bombing it was like a good Christmas tree, you know, lights and fires and bombs going off.
There was plenty of searchlights and that was what we tried to avoid because one searchlight would get you, next thing, you know, you've got ten, then twenty, fifty and they called that being coned. Of course that drew all the ack guns because all they had to do was fire at the apex of the cone and the night fighters, any night fighters around said 'Oh gee, there's a butterfly over here'.
We were coned a few times. There was a manoeuvre, you side slipped. The pilot knew it of course. He'd side slip away and if you had twenty of the lights or thirty, some of them might pick you up and get you again. Then you'd do the same thing again. We always managed to get away.
Bomb aimer wounded
Well we were on our 26th trip and having to do 30 was the finish. Well not the finish but you had a rest after 30. They gave you six months off. We were on the 26th and we were about 10 minutes from the target which was the Dortmund-Ems Canal just near the Ruhr actually and this was a regular target because the canal banks were raised above the surrounding.
The water there was about 20 feet above the surrounding and if you breached the banks the barges are all left high and dry and it flooded the rest of the farming countryside. This Focke-Wulf 190 came up. It was one of the newer night fighters. It was jet assisted and could take off and get up to our height which was anything up to 25,000 feet but they could do this pretty quickly jet assisted.
Anyway this bugger came up and he was in front of us, like this, and the only one who could see him was the bomb aimer he was lying down here and he opened up with his tracer and you could see the red tracer and that was interspersed with high explosive ammunition like one and three or something.
It was so he could aim he could see his red tracers go and he must have hit the bomb aimer and broke away of course and after an engagement like that the pilot used to contact everybody on the intercom and say, you know, 'Are you alright?' 'Oh, yes' you'd answer. 'Is there any damage in your area?' 'Yes' or 'No', depending.
Anyway I was given a request to go down and have a look because he hadn't answered, the blo0ke down, the bomb aimer and he was flat out spread on the bomb sight which was all set up ready to drop the bombs. He'd done that before and apparently this night fighter got him with one of the early bullets and it went through. Which side? Left side and came out here. When I saw him, boy was he a mess. His eyes were sticking out on his cheeks and there was blood everywhere and I wasn't too sure if he was dead or alive.
Anyway we put him back in, there was a temporary bed that you could pull down and we had some medication and I left the wireless operator to shoot some morphine into him because he was starting to struggle. 'Oh I've got to drop the bombs' and, you know, blood all over his face. So I Ieft him with the wireless operator and he gave him some morphine and settled him down but we never thought he'll get back to England again but he did.
Well of course I had to get back then and start navigating because you couldn't let it go too long you know. You're doing about 300 miles per hour and in five minutes or so you've gone about six miles or so and I'd been occupied with this guy for ten minutes and the engineer dropped the bombs because all he had to do was press the button, open the bomb doors. On that night we breached the banks.
Mistaken for a buzz bomb
Anyway, on the way back we lost an engine. We had three left of course and just near the Dutch coast we lost another. Well, we had several more attacks whatever happened with two engines coming back over the North Sea and the pilot said, 'Oh I think we better make for a crash-landing drome'.
There were special dromes if you were injured on board or the aircraft had been damaged which it had. There was two engines missing and there was flames coming out of the wing. I worked out a course for this other aerodrome which was a crash-landing drome near Norfolk right on the coast and our radio had gone and we were losing height and they set a place for you to come in over England.
There was a span like that, and you came in at a certain height, if you were okay. We were none of those. We were down to about 2000 feet and behind time. There was a stipulated time because the gunners on the English coast would be looking for buzz bombs and night fighters and all sorts of things.
So, we were over the coast about the time I had predicted but we were in cloud and suddenly all Hell broke loose because the English gunners had picked us up and having a flame coming out of the thing, they thought we were a buzz bomb. You'd know all about buzz bombs, wouldn't you?
They were like a pilotless bomb really that would fly on its own and they had a pipe coming out the back and they thought we were a buzz bomb and they started to shoot at us, but we couldn't tell them who we were because we had no radio but what we did have was the colours of the day. They gave you a Very pistol which was set in the astrodome actually, so Pat, the wireless operator, was handing me these things and I was closest to the astrodome, putting them in and shooting to let them know down below.
And the colours of the day were changed every day. The Germans wouldn't know the colours of the day, and this was red, yellow today, green the next day, but anyway they saw them when they drifted down through the clouds and they stopped. It was right on the coast, and we landed in a crosswind and the pilot was quite angry about that.
There was about a 40 mile per hour crosswind and a damaged aircraft with a sick crew member. Anyway, we landed at the end of the runway, and we were out of oil. We couldn't go any further any way and the English ground staff all came and an ambulance for the bomb aimer, but these English blokes said, 'All the gunners on the coast are having a field day today. They've shot down five buzz bombs and two night fighters'. We said, 'Yeah and you almost got a Lanc too'.
'You had to be young and stupid'
The first trip the Germans had camouflaged Peenemunde. They had a spoof place quite apart from the main target and that's what we bombed. Well, they marked it, the pathfinders marked it so we bombed it. But it was galvanised iron and cardboard.
It made a Hell of a mess and we came back to the briefing and they knew and said 'Oh you've missed it. You've bombed the wrong target'. They didn't blame us. It was the pathfinders. Well even the barmaids in Lincoln said, 'You'll be back within a week'. They knew more about it than we did.
They were dead right. Eight days later up on the boards Peenemunde again. Unfortunately, we were on that same, an 11-hour trip, the same trip. We got it the second time. The second time and this was rather a worry. We knew that if we went back they would have accumulated their ack ack, their searchlights, night fighters would be brought in around the target.
That was dead right and that's what happened. That's the time or one of the times we got coned. A million searchlights, there's a million candle power and we got caught. We were waiting for the ack ack to go off and what not but the pilot side slipped about and side slipped again and we lost it. I was 21 on operations, on the squadron and the oldest apart from the skipper, was 22. I think he was the tail gunner, was 22. The mid upper gunner was only 20. You had to be young and stupid.
Leave and food coupons
You'd be briefing at 5 o'clock. Take off at 7pm when you're doing a night trip. You came back at 3am and you'd have a meal. They always put on a meal when you came back, usually eggs and bacon or something like that. They treated us pretty well because there was food rationing in England.
The locals didn't get what we were getting and we could go back and have second eggs and bacon, cereal or whatever. It was completely free. There was fruit on the table which wasn't available for the general population. When we are on leave they would give us food coupons, meat mainly and we'd be billeted out, you could put in for a billet, from people who were willing to have you on leave and boy did they like those coupons.
Emergency landing
When we were on this DC3 up around the Pacific. One time we went to Manus Island, we're taking off for Morotai or Biak or somewhere. We're out over the ocean and there was a fire in one engine, we only had two engines and the pilot said, "Oh, we better find a drome to put down." And he said, asked me, he said, "Is there a drome handy?" and I looked at the blooming map and the maps in New Guinea were a bit sparse, you know, they weren't, of course, accurate.
And I said, "Well looks as though there's a drome on a little island just out of the North of New Guinea, Auki Island. So he said, "Give me a course for that?" So away we went and on the way, we put the fire out actually, but we landed this little island, and it turned out to be there was 2000 Negro Americans here, containing 5000 Japs holed up on the mainland, just a mile or so of water.
There was no fighting. It was about the end of the war. Starving the Japs out. They weren't being supplied with food. So there was no fighting, it's just a matter of them giving up. Anyway, to put the story into perspective, we had twelve little nurses on board, British nurses fresh out from the UK, pink cheeks never been overseas before.
Ferrying POWS
There was a lot of POWs to come back that we would load up these POWs and that was pathetic and some of these guys they'd been there for years and we'd be full and it was up to the pilot to get a load and if he thought you were overloaded he wouldn't take any more and they were hanging on to the wings, you know, POWs.
You know the poor buggers had been up there in the POW camps for two or three years and they just wanted to go home but we couldn't take them all.
A piece of Lancaster memorabilia
This was our Avro, we had, Lancaster, lovely aircraft fast, reliable and it had done about 70 trips or something. So, we considered a bit lucky when we took it over. We did eighteen, which is on the back there, which took it up to around 87 trips over in Germany and we'd finished it, handed it over and another Australian crew and I think it was on about their fourth or fifth true.
There was quite a mystery about it. Or perhaps I should tell you how this came about. I had a friend and RAF who lived in Nottingham, I think it was, and he rang me up and he said, "Would you like a piece of your old Lancaster?" I said, "Yeah, that'd be great." He said, "They've discovered it, outside of Peterborough, about 10-foot down."
They were excavating for a building or something and they'd had the bulldozer down and they discovered all these bits and he made inquiries as to what Lancaster it was. It turned our Avro that we had flown and he said, "Would you like a piece of it?" I said, "Could you get seven because all the crew were Australian scattered around.
And he said, "Yes, I think I can get seven pieces." The mid upper gunner had a big workshop in Western Australia. The mounting, of course, is Jarrah, he set that up in the workshop and we got, each member of our crew got a piece of this. So it is memorabilia.
