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When training we had what they called circuit bumps, this helped the pilot improve his take off and landing skills. Once, while on this training, I left the transmit switch on. Jack, our bomb aimer who was a real ladies man, was telling us about his great night out. I suddenly realised I had left the switch on transmit and switched to receive. The WAAF controller was calling “ Hello Q for Queen – Hello Q for Queen, thank you for your afternoons entertainment but please keep on receive.”
On a special operation over Norway we started to come through cloud, when just below us we spotted a Junkers 88. We quickly went back into cloud until reaching our dropping zone. Thankfully we had lost the German fighter-bomber.
We were diverted to another drome one night and were put down on the wrong runway by flight control and hit a grounded aircraft. As we touched down our port wing was torn off and the plane cracked behind my wireless position. We slithered along the grass and stopped 10 feet from the bottom of a water tower holding thousands of gallons of water. We had six prangs altogether.
One day we were taxiing for take off when the bomb doors of the plane in front opened and all its bombs fell out onto the runway. Fortunately they hadn’t been armed.
At Arnhem we had to fly in at 500 feet to make sure we dropped supplies in the small dropping zone for our troops. We flew in a formation of five, , with Wing Commander Davis leading. Everything was being fired at us, small arms, everything! W/Co. Davis went down in flames, he was on our starboard but he managed to drop his supplies on target before diving into the ground. The crew on our port was next to be shot down in flames and then the crew on our far right, leaving only two of us. We dropped our supplies and veered away.
A strange thing happened when I played golf at Pinner golf course. I was walking down the fairway with my opponent when he said to me “You were flying weren’t you?”
“Yes” I replied,
“What squadron?” he asked,
“299 Squadron” I said,
“So was I” he said “were you at Arnhem?”
“Yes” I told him, “I flew along the port side of W/Co. Davis.”
“I flew on the starboard” he said, “We saw the W/Co. go down in flames.”
We were the only two crews to come back from that operation and then we met on the golf course 50 years later. His name was David Lewis, a rear gunner. (See Ministory – Aircrew at Arnhem).
We did three Arnhem trips, all were very dodgy. Naturally as we came out of each trip and on our way home we were still in danger from enemy fighters (FW40’s) so we flew at tree top height, hoping they wouldn’t see us. As we flew across fields towards a cottage a lady was looking out of her top room window, suddenly she slammed the window down as if she thought we were going in. This broke the ice and we all laughed.
On another occasion a big fat man on a bicycle was riding along a
road with dykes and trees on either side. He turned and started waving, lost control of his bike and went straight into the dyke, more laughter.
When we flew to Oslo we had to be brought in to land by radio in what we called QGH Procedure (meaning descent through cloud) and as wireless operator that was up to me. I had to contact the ground, they gave me instructions which I in turn passed onto the pilot to get us down through the low cloud. The airport was surrounded by mountains and I had to get every dot and dash of Morse code exact, there was no room for error. As we touched down on the runway the lads all cheered and afterwards they all patted me on the back. We were told later that three aircraft before us had crashed into the mountains killing everyone on board.
We were among the first British into Oslo and were carried shoulder high to the Grand Hotel. We had to be on our guard as Quisling snipers were still going about their business. At the hotel we met with some of the Underground. Knowing they were short of food we just had soup and drank pink champagne.
We were on Special Operations and would fly out on our own. When on these operations we rarely flew over 2000 feet. It was very hard, sometimes you would have a full Nissan hut and wake up next day a quarter full, the lads hadn’t returned.
Bert tells me that the time we were waiting on the perimeter for 2 hours we were actually waiting for instructions to take off for Special Operation Berchtesgaden (Hitlers Den in the Bavarian Alps). We had special troops on board to drop to assassinate Hitler. The operation was called off, Hitler had moved. Thank goodness! It was a very dangerous mission.
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