Library Reference Number: 222
Aircrew Memories
My first experience of war was as an ambulance driver with the Air Raid Precautions (ARP) Service. When the sirens went, we took our cars to various locations, dispersed over a wide area to be ready to receive the casualties expected. The cars had been donated by wealthy citizens to help the war effort, and, as a result, I drove cars which I would never have seen normally; like those with engine compartments longer than a present-day saloon. One of them had a freewheel button which overcame the need to use the clutch. With a number of kindred spirits we had races along both carriageways of the Kingsway in Dundee to see who would arrive at the dispersal point first. Apart from a few mates of my own age, the ambulance depot was composed of (to my youthful eyes) middle- aged spinsters who sent me balaclava helmets knitted in wheeling wool even when I was in India and Burma.
Eventually my long-time school friend Eddie Lynch came on leave and told me tales of derring-do which convinced me that (a) I was missing out on a war that would soon be over, and that (b) I would be enlisted in The Black Watch who appeared to walk rather than ride in the type of transport which I preferred. And so it came to pass that I presented myself at the Royal Air Force Recruiting Office at the Caird Hall, Dundee, to offer the services of a youth who had sterling experience of ambulance driving to the Air Services. It was suggested to me by an officer of the Service that I would be more suited to serve as a signaller which seemed to me to be somewhat far-fetched since I knew little of signalling. (Perhaps in a corner of my mind I felt that they maybe had a point and unknown to them my father had been a signaller with the Army in the 1914-18 war).
Nevertheless, I signed the papers and was given a date and time to report back to Caird Hall to travel to Warrington, Cheshire for attestation. That was the easy part! I now had the difficult bit of telling my mother of my decision. My father had died a number of years before, leaving her with two sons at school and three daughters still at primary school. My brother was in 5th year at secondary school and I was entering 4th year. My elder brother decided to leave school to help maintain the family. I felt that if he had to do this, then it was incumbent on me to make a similar mark. James had no chance of getting employment at his age and subsequently joined the Air Ministry as a trainee mechanic and served as an Aircraft Mechanic for the remainder of the war.
In due course I travelled to Warrington and was transferred to Blackpool where, in the cold and discomfort of the tramway sheds, I practised Morse by the hour, and for half my time I marched, counter-marched, left inclined, about turned and saluted to the front, to the left, to the right and to any police constable who came within range. My pay for those exertions was 10 shillings per fortnight. This magnanimous sum was paid in the comfort (for the paying staff) of the Winter Gardens Ballroom, and considering that the peacetime owners were still in place and had vast experience of parting the fool from his money, it is not surprising that many hundreds of fools were relieved of many hundreds of ten shillings.
Memories of ideas to raise the readies are sparse but one abides. A friend of those days, who eventually rose to the rank of Chief Superintendent of police and aide-de-camp to the Inspector of Constabulary for Scotland, liked a little flutter and was expert in making up a "line". With the entire reserves of three of us - some thirty pence - he made up a "line" of amazing complexity which, would you believe, came up. The Blackpool bookmaker decided that the "line" was not up to the standard which he had spent the previous night rewriting. However, we were given five bob as a hardship payment to prove his abiding concern for the serving Airman.
It was now approaching Christmas and five of us decided to have a weekend at home. My memories of the journey are hazy. I recall that the future Chief Superintendent of police was one, another came from his home area of Bridge of Allan, I from Dundee and another from Pitlochry. The vehicle was a Series E Morris, which needed attention at every garage we attempted to pass, but fortunately once we crossed the border to civilisation, never were we asked for payment. I have vivid memories of returning this decrepit vehicle (late) and of the owner's cries for excess hire in spite of a sheaf of repair receipts - not made easier since I who returned the vehicle was not the person insured to drive it.
Other highlights of this training period are of the effects of constant Morse on the human mind. Morse is not Dot-Dash as lesser mortals believe, but a sound heard by the listener, Dit Dah. The Real Signaller sees a street name and understands it as a series of Dit Dahs getting ever faster as his proficiency improves, and we were now at 18 words per minute. There were those whose capacity to absorb these sounds was limited and on occasion they were removed from our midst. One even took to the streets and tied up his imaginary horse to a lamppost outside the tram sheds and held up all the cowboys he could find. This was perhaps funny at the time, but became more pathetic when I found one of the characters still a patient at Liff Hospital, Dundee, when I went there as a nurse five years after the war, still showing the scars of the battles he had never taken part in.
Meanwhile Blackpool continued its duty of relieving the Lancastrian population of the proceeds of a year's labour in a week. Each Saturday brought a few thousand more young females in fancy hats to replace those who had left a mere 24 hours before. I could salute to both flanks and ahead. I could about turn, which appeared to be the most useful piece of information in view of the events overtaking the British Services. Of course, I had never seen a real live officer, had little idea of the animal to whom my honours such as my salutations should be addressed. But all that was coming to an end.
So, armed with proficiency in Morse at 18wpm, I was transported with what appeared to be the better part of the youth of Britain to the wilds of Wiltshire - to RAF Yatesbury, or to No.2 Signals School to give it its true title. The venue is important, since a few weeks before leaving Blackpool I had been summoned to a large ballroom to be addressed by a bevy of real officers of the Royal Air Force (but not having had previous experience of the breed, had not realised their importance) and told that I and the others thronging this massive building were "the cream of Britain's youth" and this was the reason why I (and the others) were chosen as Aircrew Wireless Operators. This was news to me!
However, this opened the doors of No.2 School of Signalling to me - otherwise I would have ended up at No.3 School at Compton Bassett some four miles away, and on which we looked with some disdain. Here I was definitely in the Royal Air Force. There were officers aplenty and W/Os, Sergeants and Corporals, although most of these were there purely to make life difficult.
Most of my educators in my chosen trade were civilians, and here there was variety. While I continued to rattle out Dit Dahs ad infinitum, I also joined wires with solder, made joints, tuned real sets and transmitted to an uncaring universe, messages containing useless information. Here I met my first real aircrew in the person of Sergeant Hannah VC, the controversial Air Gunner who had refused to fly again after the soul-destroying flight when he was left with only his skipper in a burning Wellington.
With typical farce, one branch of the Royal Air Force charged him with L.M.F. (Lack of Moral Fibre - or cowardice if you are in the habit of calling a spade a bloody shovel.) Meanwhile, the other branch which published material to attract more recruits had seen his exploit as nothing other than heroism of the highest order and gazetted him VC. Unfortunately Sergeant Hannah had by this time been subjected to the indignities of L.M.F. At Uxbridge he had been taken to a full parade of Military Police some 500 strong drawn up on three sides of a square. Here, after a harangue worthy of Adolf himself his tapes, previously tacked on in four places, were stripped from his sleeves and trampled in the dust. Before the higher echelons of Air Ministry could be advised of this due process of law, the news of a VC for an Air Gunner had hit the headlines, and it became necessary for the Royal Air Force to do what they had been teaching me for so many months, an "ABOUT TURN." In this case, to sweeten the pill, they added a crown to the Sergeant's stripes; and so it came to pass that my instructor in Airmanship was Flight Sergeant Hannah VC.
On 7th April 1941 I was turned loose from Yatesbury after a winter which saw training disrupted by severe icing in this inhospitable spot, but I had seen London for the first time, and Bath as well as other less illustrious places.
I had one other claim to fame. I had flown! Part of the training at Yatesbury consisted of carrying out the duties of his office by all Wireless Operators in Dominie aircraft. Part of the duty using the long frequencies of that era meant using an extremely long aerial which was unwound from a large spool inside the aircraft and trailed behind, carried out by a number of lead weights which took it out and down to an angle of about 30° to the aircraft path. Failure to rewind those lethal lengths of wire was the cause of numerous beheadings of livestock. While I would not claim to be religious in my duties, no sudden deaths were ever traced to me.
Here I was now, with the spark badge of a fully fledged Wireless Operator on my sleeve, but apparently the country's situation, while desperate, was not so to the extent of sending me out to meet the enemy. So it was that after leave, I found myself posted as a ground Wireless Operator at Royal Air Force, Castletown, Caithness, where I did duties for which Yatesbury had done little to fit me. For instance, the operations room was a remote Masonic Lodge, oil lit normally, to which the RAF had installed diesel generators and their own telephone exchange. These I was expected to service and operate but since all incoming instructions came in Morse I did have considerable experience in that medium.
However, after months (summer ones, fortunately) I found myself at RAF Dalcross (now Inverness Airport) to begin training in the other half of my specialty - gunnery. Nothing ever goes smoothly in the Service and it was not surprising that the station had not been completed. We now discovered that Wireless Operators were expected to be proficient at erecting security fencing. Having laboured for the RAF they decided to send me to an installation which had already been made secure by the Navy. At last I arrived at Evanton and saw (and heard) a gun for the first time. We flew in Botha aircraft, which were more accident prone than their civilian pilots. Here we fired camera guns in large hangars, and real guns at a long silk sock towed behind a Tiger Moth.
This course had a bizarre ending. There were two characters in my group who were both ex-public schoolboys. One was called House. The other whose name I cannot recall was a wealthy Indian. The latter and I were posted to Invergordon to serve on Sunderlands. House was keen to remain with his friend and offered to take up my place at Invergordon. I was agreeable and a short visit to the Flight Office was sufficient to make the arrangement official. Sadly, House was killed within his first week at Invergordon.
Meantime, I went home on leave to wait my fate. I was now a Sergeant. This came after seven weeks when I received a telegram to report to Prestwick to train now in the recently introduced and highly secret RADAR.
This was a very satisfactory interlude - billeted in a stately home run by an elderly Sergeant whose years of service had given him an insight into ways which made life worth living. He had over many years discovered a way to make transport easy. For instance, if I were given leave I requested a Rail Pass to Broughty Ferry and not to Dundee. This meant that by leaving the train at Dundee I was still left with my ticket. Similarly, on return, I left the train at a station before Prestwick and was left in possession of the return half. On weekends when I was not in possession of a rail warrant, I could, on application to the Sergeant have, for a small consideration, a ticket to the destination of my choice. Tuition was mainly by young physicists who had never hear of saluting to points of the compass ¬who had never heard of saluting - come to that.
War was now beckoning and my radar qualification meant the war at sea. I was to be employed in Coastal Command. I headed for No. 1 (Coastal) Operational Training Unit at Silloth on the Solway coast. We were to fly Lockheed Hudson aircraft, and so many had crash landed in the Solway and had been immediately sucked under the moving sands that the Solway Firth was known to all as Hudson Bay.
Here I crewed up with a pilot - Pilot Officer Haydon and would have normally stayed with him for a full tour of operations. However, at this time the hierarchy had a yearn to show the Boche that we could make life very uncomfortable for him by sending large armadas against him. In early July 1,000 aircraft were sent out to bomb the city of Cologne. The RAF felt that a repeat might be useful. However, they had difficulty assembling that number of aircraft. Someone had the bright idea of recruiting Operational Training Units, and so it came about that crews were taken from their pilots with a staff pilot as captain and detailed to fly as a crew. We had no idea what was in the wind but were advised that our training aircraft (yellow) had to be painted black; that we would be responsible for its armament and if we did not do it well - no-one else would, So on June 22nd 1942 under Warrant Officer Obee, in Hudson AM595 we set course for Squires Gate to collect l000lbs of bombs for delivery to we knew not where. We then flew to Thornaby in Yorkshire but on the way we broke an exhaust ring and the flames from the broken exhaust could have been seen in Berlin. Fortunately, (or unfortunately) we found a replacement aircraft AM.607 and on the night of June 25th we set off for the city of Bremen to drop our puny load.
It was nice to get back. My first experience of flak was not something I looked forward to repeating.
I was posted to No. 500 Squadron (City of Kent) in time to move with them to Stornoway. This was a pleasant interlude. We carried out anti-submarine sweeps and convoy escorts until 30th August when the squadron moved to St. Eval in Cornwall. This was the time of the North Africa landings and the squadron was on the move again to Bleda near Algiers. But it so happened that we had too many crews for the aircraft and I was left behind to attend to the despatch of the stores. In time, I was posted to 279 Squadron at Bircham Newton.
Life changed to searches of a different kind - for airmen who had ditched. A new kind of rescue gear had been invented - a boat which could be carried slung under an aircraft and dropped by a cluster of parachutes. I was in at the beginning of this new venture.
It was at this time we had engine failure when trying to return to Davidstow Moor. Things became decidedly dangerous and the crew were forced to bale out. We landed near Bodmin and all but the skipper dropped successfully. The skipper had the misfortune to damage his spine on landing but I met him later and he was still flying. On 22nd February 1943 on attempting to take off from Bircham the aircraft failed to lift due to severe icing of the wings. We went through a hedge and fence at some 150mph and I was thrown down a camera hatch. One of my friends pulled me out and with others, watched as the aircraft, which was highly flammable, burned out to a bundle of ashes.
Life continued with trips to the Bay of Biscay and the German coast, but apart from two empty rafts nothing was seen. In May 1943 I was posted to Thorney Island to transfer to Liberators. Sadly, when I was beginning to like this lumbering giant I had to leave. The powers that be had decided that there were too many Wireless Operators on the Squadron when Gunners only would do. So I found myself at Davidstow Moor again, teamed up with Pilot Officer Wallace, and sighted my first submarine. But life was not all excitement and flying; most of the time we hung about; operations were cancelled or we spent weeks of boredom because of bad weather either here or where we might be flying to.
Pilot Officer Wallace was posted to another Squadron and the second pilot, Flight Sergeant West, took over the crew. The Squadron Commander was Wing Commander Garbett whom I met many times after the war and who died when run over by a taxi in Paris. In January 1944 I relieved another Wireless Operator and captained by the Flight Commander Flight Lieutenant Press we were responsible for rescuing a crew who were in their dinghy on a very dirty night. It was a pleasant existence, but one day, 26th May 1944 when, for various reasons it was unlikely I would be flying, tragedy struck.
One of our crew members, a Canadian had applied for a Commission and had gone to Canada House for interview. It was a brilliantly clear day, not the kind of day when airmen got themselves in trouble, that the call came. We were to look for a dinghy somewhere between Cardigan Bay and the north coast of Antrim. We recruited an officer to take the place of the missing Canadian (Joe Christie).
At some time he must have seen something that no-one else saw since I heard him on the intercom say, "There is something over there." The Skipper, Flight Sergeant West, shouted, "Well, home me on it." He threw the aircraft into a tight turn and in seconds we were under the water at full bore. I got out somehow - I will never be able to explain how. I saw the aircraft with my seven friends aboard go down past me as I was going up. To make the circumstances more miraculous, when I reached the surface the emergency dinghy had released itself. I tried to climb aboard but my parachute harness fouled the dinghy safety ropes and I was unable to make it.
It was there that the crew of a naval vessel found me later. I have no recollection, since I was unconscious and came to later in a bunk aboard the minesweeper "Brimness".
On return to Great Orton (Carlisle) I was asked by the detachment commander, Flight Lieutenant Lindermere, to visit the next of kin to put their minds at rest that their loved ones had in fact perished.
I was posted to Troon to teach Morse to pilots under training at 4 wpm. A soul-destroying job. A call on the OC resulted in a further posting to Buckie to join the staff of the high speed launches, and if that duty ever reappears I will be at the head of the queue.
The war was moving to a close so I requested a return to flying and I joined 77 Squadron at Baroda. I visited most of the larger cities in India. An opportunity arose to travel from Baroda to Calcutta and back by rail, the width of the Indian continent. My finale was a cruise home on a modern liner, S.S. Canton.
But there was more to come.
In the early 1960s I had a visit from Peter Connon, a businessman from Carlisle, with a request to relive the 1944 crash for inclusion in his three-part history of aviation in Cumbria. This has not yet been printed. Obviously, when I visited the next of kin I could hardly go to Canada so I wrote to the parents of Warrant Officer Wenzel. His distraught father refused to accept the loss. My letter was found on his death and his daughter traced me.
My son set out to find details on the internet and it appears that a senior officer from Halfpenny Green had failed to file a flight plan and had landed on Isle of Man.
The skipper, Bob West, had married just before the flight and his wife gave birth to a daughter while I was at Buckie. A kind lady sent a layette on my behalf. Regrettably, I have not managed to trace Mrs West, but Warrant Officer Wenzel's sister has been here and stayed with my wife and I.
Footnote: The above eye-witness account “Aircrew Memories” was written by a former Aircrew Association member ex-Warrant Officer Wireless Operator/ Air Gunner A.T. (Bert) Connelly, who resided in Blairgowrie. The account was only discovered following his death in September 2002, and is published here by kind permission of his widow, Mrs Connelly, and son Dr.Graham Connelly, University of Strathclyde.