Britain At War With Germany

This story appears courtesy of and with thanks to The Liverpool Diocesan Care and Repair Association and James Taylor.

The Sunday after the war was declared I came home and joined up on the Monday morning. They said “Come back tomorrow we’re not ready yet.” So I went down to Renshaw Hall and joined the forces. If I hadn’t’ve joined then I would have been held back as ‘reserve occupation’ you see, so I got in the Airforce. I went in as skilled. I went to Padgate and did four weeks square bashing. When you go into these places you go into Nissen huts and the beds are numbered, mine was 97263, this was my Airforce number. The uniform, I wasn’t very big, I was only small, I was 8st.10lbs when I joined up, I was tall and thin you know, and they hadn’t got a uniform with a collar and tie to fit me, so I got one with a dog-collar and inside the uniform R.F.C. 1917, it had been in store for all those years. I had a heck of a job getting rid of the dog-collar.
Well I worked first on Majesters training aircraft, Tiger Moths and the C.O. on the Aerodrome, a group Captain was a chap called ‘Taffy’ Jones, he had been a World War 1 fighter ace. He was only a little fellow, he died actually, two years after the war started. I was in Oxford Green and one of my jobs was to make a cup of tea for the C.O. I used to knock on the door and walk in and I gave him his cuppa, he said “Oh by the way when you go out tell Bacon that I want so & so,” I went into the Adjutant’s office, I said “I’ve got to find Bacon” and he played hell with me, “You mean Flt. Lt. Bacon.” I had to take some papers to him I walked in and he said “Stand still” I had both arms full of papers and he bellowed “You have’nt saluted.
Don’t you realise I’m the number one, number one, look at that” he pointing to his arm “Observe World War l, I’m not having you ‘sprogs’ coming in here” And I was posted to Scunthorpe to Squadron 452 which eventually became 4552, Royal Australian Airforce. Paddy Finnigan was my leader, and a chap called Bluey Iniscott, they were both famous people in the flying world, but both got killed during the war.
I was with them for about nine months We flew down in a Harrow, down to Kenley, we were doing sweeps over France. I was working in Spits, Spits lll’s. There was a rigger and an engine man who looked after each aircraft, saw to all the oxygen bottles and strapped them in. You could always tell when a pilot had seen action because his guns had been fired, you had covers over the guns, and these would be ripped out. I Then went to Weston Supermere on a fitter’s course, another 5 or 6 months I did there. We trained there and enjoyed ourselves, out the way of all the bombs you know, every time I came home you’d see where the bombs had fallen. From there up to Scotland to Preswick. I remember Amy Mollison bringing stuff in, she was a Ferry Pilot and Jim Mollison and various others coming on Dakotas from the States. We were like a permanent duty crew.

When you went onto an aircraft that took aircrew, all the fitters and the engineers had to fly with it on its first trip after inspection, to give the aircrew confidence, to show them that it was okay. As a matter of fact one of the Wellingtons ditched outside Scotland and a friend of mine, who was a fitter, was choked to death, his tie had shrunk. It was from then on that the order came out not to fly wearing a tie. It had shrunk with the salt water and he more or less choked to death.
When the bomb doors were closed on a Liberator, to open them you had to pull a handle which opened the bomb doors, often chunks of metal would fall out. There were straps inside the fuselage which opened out traps on each side of the wheels and on this occasion this had not been done so we climbed into the fuselage to stop the aircraft from moving. We were in the bomb bay when we heard this big crash and a Wellington from another squadron landed right on top of the ammunition hut. All the ammunition was burning and exploding. One chap we pulled out had all his hair on fire. There were about 18 killed or wounded. We ran over and the pilot was still in the cockpit, we couldn’t get at him, and we watched him slowly burn to death.

‘This story was submitted to the People’s War site by BBC Radio Merseyside’s People’s War team on behalf of the author and has been added to the site with his permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.’

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