WWII Flying Stories from my father

[imcarthur]

I was sifting through some papers & ran across a speech my father had given in the late-80's. He obviously was addressing a flyer group - possibly veterans. If their is any interest I will post some of it. He labeled it: Strategic Bombing 1941 - 1942. It covers his time in England, Egypt & Malta. I have lightly edited it . . .

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The author in England - Neil M. McArthur - middle back row - June 9, 1941



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W/OP AG IN THE PRE-GEE ERA

Perhaps I should explain my rather cryptic title. Its actually one I used in a slightly different talk to another group two or three years ago. W/OP AG was the RAF's designation of Wireless Operator Air Gunner. It was used throughout the BCATP for some time, too. Later it became WAG, at least in Canada. The Pre-Gee era refers to the time before sophisticated electronic devices became available to assist navigators and to aid in bombing precision. We generally relied upon Dead Reckoning navigation aided, usually, by map reading, astro, and high and low frequency direction finding devices. Partly this reflects the state-of-the-art of that period, and perhaps even more the ability of the RAF and other forces to produce more elaborate equipment, and to properly train their people to use it effectively.

I was an NCO in 1941 and 1942 during the period of the incidents described here.

A ditty from our earliest training days ran something like this:

We don't want to march like the infantry,
Shoot like artillery, ride like the cavalry,
We just want to fly over Germany,
We're in the Air Force now!

Bomber Command fortunately had some good basic aeroplanes available to them, but of course they were always too few in the early years. State-of-the-art British equipment compared very well qualitatively with the German force, but once more the numbers of first-line bombers had to be drastically increased. For strategic bombing in the early 1940s, the Vickers Wellington was to be the most successful, once it was realized that it was basically a night bomber, and that there were no suitable long-range fighters that could provide support for day operations. Not only did the Wellingtons bridge the gap for offensive bombing in the early years, but they also continued to serve in a variety of useful roles throughout the entire war. Despite the fact that they remained fabric-covered in the age of monocoque, they were upgraded many times and ably shared the skies with the best high-technology could provide. In all, more than 11,000 of them were manufactured, and many older ones were recycled as later marks. Unfortunately only one Wellington was preserved, as a static display at Hendon, and another, retrieved from Loch Ness, is being laboriously restored at Weybridge. Despite the fact that several thousand Canadian aircrew served in them, none is available for display in Canada.



Vickers Wellington Mark Ic

Not all of the anecdotes included here necessarily involve Wellingtons, and some relate to non-flying incidents which stick in my mind. One, in fact, took place shortly after I arrived in Britain in February of 1941. The RAF discovered that many Canadian BCATP wireless ops were not proficient on British equipment, so we were sent to Cranwell in Lincolnshire for a refresher course. This involved a lot of lectures and classroom training, but no practical air time. It also involved a lot of drill, for wont of anything better to do, and Cranwell was, I think, the largest RAF aerodrome in Britain so there was plenty of room to drill. On one such occasion we observed some interesting activity in a far corner of the flying area. A small aircraft, emitting a terrific noise, took off after a very long run and climbed away. One keen-eyed member of our group suddenly shouted, "Its got no (expletive deleted) propeller." The aircraft circled the field a few times, and when it passed overheard we were all forced to agree that, "It had no (expletives deleted) propeller." We all had to sign a waiver that we had seen nothing unusual, and until tonight I have observed that admonition, on pain of being reduced in rank to AC2. The event was, of course, one of the initial air tests of the Whittle-powered jet fighter, so I guess we saw history being made that day.

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Ian

[imcarthur]

cont'd

We eventually were posted to No 20 Operational Training Unit at Lossiemouth on the Moray Firth and began OTU training on battle weary Ia and Ic Wellingtons. The Loch Ness Monster did its final flight from here a few months before. In earlier life it had been OJR of 149 Squadron, and had survived the ill-fated Wilhelmshaven daylight raid of 18 December 1939. As some of you will know, Lossiemouth is located near the famous Lossiemouth championship golf course, and had a tall lighthouse just off one corner of the field. I remember that one morning there was dense fog down to perhaps 25 feet of the deck which delayed our training flights for a while. Apparently it was just a thin layer, though, so the top of the lighthouse was above it. While we waited at dispersal we heard an aircraft circling overhead. Suddenly two skinny wheels and a hull appeared through the fog, and a Navy Walrus landed alongside the hangar line. The pilot knew where he was relative to the lighthouse. He had several sailors aboard who were going on leave, and there was no way they were going to turn around and go back to their station at remote Wick!

We lost 60 % of our course aircraft and unfortunately, a number of crews on the night of 30 July 1941. We were on a long cross-country with an experienced screen crew when the weather closed in over all of northern Scotland. We iced up and eventually lost an engine. The screen crew naturally took over, but even then we barely found Lossiemouth and had to ground loop to avoid running off the field. The gear collapsed, but there fortunately was no fire. I don't think there was enough fuel left to properly start one. There had been no question of going around even if we had had both engines. This proved to be a useful lesson for neophytes like ourselves. The astro hatch was out, the pilot's top hatch open, and probably the rear gunners turret was turned abeam and the doors jettisoned before we stopped sliding. Most of the screen crew were long gone, fearful of the fabric-covered Wellington's nemesis; fire. A couple of months later we had to use the quick exit technique when our flaps were shot out and we hit an unplotted bomb crater at Mildenhall. That one didn't burn, either. Mildenhall was then a large grass aerodrome, and it was normally safe to land fast and use up a lot of space beyond the flarepath. Apparently the intruder that dropped the bomb had just left the area, and without voice communication no one could quickly inform us of the problem. Besides, no one knew where that particular bomb had fallen, anyway, No one was hurt, other than bumps and bruises, in either of these episodes.

One slightly humorous incident occurred when my brother and I went to visit some aged relatives who lived in the original McArthur homeland on Loch Awe. After being entertained there we went to the Younger's Brewery, then located at the foot of Loch Lomond. Foreign servicemen were still something of a novelty in Scotland since the Vikings stopped coming, so we enjoyed the Brewery's products for a while. We then set out in the rain to row a short distance on the Loch in a rented boat as sentiment required. This was the day after the major Clydebank raid of 1941. Suddenly a dark-coloured fighter appeared under the very low cloud. It did tight turns over our end of the Loch. Being the supposed expert I first identified it as one of the new Mustangs, because of its nearly square wingtips. On the next pass I noted the struts on the tailplane, and Don saw the black crosses on the wings and fuselage. We found out later that it was a 109 photo reconnaissance aircraft, and that the City of Edinburgh squadron had chased him down beneath the clouds while they remained on top waiting for him to emerge. He was probably sent to assess the Clydebank damage. Needless to say he had no interest in two wet Canadians in a rowboat. He is supposed to have got away, and presumably brought his intelligence safely back to Germany.

We had formed our six-man crews at the OTU at Lossiemouth. Two pilots were required for the Pegasus Wellingtons because they had to be hand-flown during the long climb out with their 4,000 lb bomb load. There was usually a heating problem in the climb, even to the normal 12-13,000 foot cruising altitude. It was a laborious step-climb process; which required two people. The more powerful Merlin and Hercules Wellingtons of that period normally coped with single pilot, and some of them could carry a 4,000 lb Blockbuster, which we could not do. Our normal load might consist of a 1,000 lb general purpose of armour piercing bomb, some 500 plunders, several canisters of 4 lb incendiaries, and perhaps some 2501b or smaller anti-personnel bombs. In the desert we often used a full load of 250s with rod extensions on the fuses. This was to make them explode right at ground level, but unfortunately they could not be carried safe. On one occasion I checked the inaccessible bomb bay through the inspection panel after bombing, and discovered, to my horror, that a rod-equipped 250 on the bottom row in the bay, had hung up. The one above had caused the lower bomb to swivel on its single hanger so that the rod, with its 1/16 inch shear pin, was firmly wedged against the cabin floor. We finally got rid of it by doing rapid pull-ups, but we all had our fingers in our ears while this was going on!

We also might carry delayed-action bombs with antique acid bottle delay fuses, apparently relics of RAF stores in the Middle East dating from the early 1930s. No one liked these bombs very much, and I hope the enemy was equally put off by them. We had to carry them from Shallufa to LG 09 at times, and hope that a rough desert landing didn't break the acid bottle. If it did the time delay became critical, and a short delay might mean that the bomb would go off in the air before it was dropped on target. We had some unexplained losses, and liked to blame the acid delays for them.

Wireless instruction at the OTU normally involved supervised or unsupervised flight with the Wellingtons, or, occasionally, Mark I Ansons. The wireless sets were 1082-83 transmitters and receivers of early 1930s vintage, and they involved the use of plug-in coils which had to be changed for frequency changes. Woe betide the operator who dropped a critical small, round, receiver coil, because it was almost impossible to find it again in a blacked-out aircraft. One interesting and rather crude exercise we practiced there was known as the ZZ landing. We did this with the main set using Morse, and with the aid of the unreliable TR-9 set using voice. The ground facility had a loop, and the air operator would send long dashes to make a loop target. The pilot was told when to begin final, if the communications system worked. As he neared the flare point the ground was supposed to signal, "Motors left", or "Motors right", or nothing at all if the alignment was OK. Fortunately we were never desperate enough to have to use this method in an emergency. Few stations were equipped to provide the service, anyway. It was just as well!

When we were posted to 149 Squadron at Mildenhall they were using Ic Wellingtons with 930 hp Bristol Pegasus engines. We had only two Browning 303 calibre guns in each of the front and real turrets. Some of the aeroplanes were beginning to be equipped with non-hydraulic Browning beam guns fired by the Wireless Operator from a swivel seat in the narrow waist position. These guns had reflector sights. This was a mistake, because one could shoot off both one's own wingtips and the tips of the tailplanes, and the reflectors made it very difficult to determine a safe arc of fire. Open sights would have been much better. Four gun rear turrets, as on the later Wellingtons, would have been much more use.

We flew a number of operations from Mildenhall in the summer and early fall of 1941. Our longest, I think, was to Stettin northeast of Berlin on the Baltic coast. That one took nine hours and ten minutes. Another long one was to Nuremburg. I like to tell those who suffered through the infamous March 1944 raid to Nuremburg that no wonder they had difficulty finding the target; we had obviously obliterated it three years earlier.

[imcarthur]

cont'd

One of our senior Intelligence Officers at Mildenhall was S/L John Cobb, who then held the world land speed record. He wore a WWI Observer's badge. After a night on the town I was hitchhiking back to Mildenhall in the dawns early light when S/L Cobb and one of the flight commanders stopped to give me a ride up the great North Road to base. He had a souped up Lagonda, and he, like me, was late and in a hurry to get to Mildenhall. I think that ride was more exciting than the trip to Brest Harbour that evening. He would shift down for the roundabouts, and go round them at close to a hundred miles per hour.



1936 Lagonda

The Brest trip is worth noting. A recent speaker noted that he was shot down while photographing the ships there in the early summer of 1941. We attacked it a month or so later, the prime target supposedly being the Sharnhorst and the Gneisnau. It turned out they had actually gone to St. Nazaire, and camouflaged merchant ships were left in their place. We carried a rare camera that night, and proved that we had hit the Battle Cruiser Prinz Eugen. I expect others hit her too, on these and other raids. In any case she was out of commission for some time. Prinz Eugen survived the war and was a target ship at Bikini Atoll. She initially survived that, too, but foundered in a storm when under tow shortly afterward.



Prinz Eugen coming into Brest in 1941

In November of 1941 we picked up a brand new Wellington Ic, and departed for the Middle East where the desert war was gaining momentum. This aeroplane had a British Marconi 1154-55 transmitter and receiver combination, with a crude radio compass. We still used interrupted continuous wave (morse) for all of our communications, but the set was a considerable improvement over the previous 1082-83 even though both sets lacked precise crystal tuning. The unreliable TR-9 was supposed to provide short range voice communication. Over Britain they were mainly useful for listening out for barrage balloon squeakers.

We arrived in Gibralter just as Ark Royal was sinking a short distance outside the mooring area. All of her sailors were rescued, and many of her Swordfish were flown to Gib. The next morning we departed for Malta about 1,000 miles away. We were leading a vic of three. All went well until we reached a position south of Pantalleria where we were intercepted by six Italian CR. 42s. We went down to sea level and turned south, to lead them farther away from their presumed base. They formed a counterclockwise endless circle behind us and raked our formation with their .5 inch syncronized guns. We could not use our front turrets or even the beam guns in this situation. From the astro hatch I had the best view of all, and I remember the ridiculous thought that "Gee. this is just like Hell's Angels." Biplane fighters and the sparkle of syncronized guns firing through the props. All that was missing was the late Jean Harlow.



Fiat CR.42

Vic Walklyn, our rear gunner, got one, and he turned north emitting heavy smoke. The others continued their attack and a lucky shot knocked out the starboard engine of Sgt. Barlow's Wellington, which was in tight formation on our port side. The prop assembly came off, and Barlow had to ditch almost immediately. We were coming into scattered low cloud at this point, but we were able to circle and see that all six crewmen had got into their dinghy. The remaining Italians broke off at this point, too; probably low on fuel with a long way to go home.

We were very much out of our element with unescorted Wellingtons in daylight, as had been proven two years earlier in the North Sea port and shipping raids. I think, too, that we were the very last of the Delivery Flight Wellingtons to fly down the Mediterranean in daylight. We had obviously been spotted the moment we left Gib, and had probably been monitored all the way to the ambush.

I was in communication with Malta all the way in, and actually had to land with my trailing aerial out because I was still working the ground station and didn't even know we were landing. Amazingly, from our altitude of some 100 feet, Birdlip in far away England was the first to answer the distress call I sent. The other stations in the HF/DF chain all came in right after. The Navy sent a Swordfish out from Malta to the reported position and they found the dinghy without difficulty. The RAF sent out its high speed rescue launch and picked the crew up that night. Bert Cameron, the front gunner, was painfully but not seriously injured. Because of the fluorescent dye around the dinghy, the boy's uniforms were a brilliant yellow every time it rained for the next two months. New uniforms, and just about everything else, were scarce in Malta at that time.

We lost our new aircraft to bombing in Malta. I was attached for a time to a DWI Special Intallations flight for a time, but did not do any real operations with them. They had primitive airborne radar, then called Radio Allocation, and were able to detect enemy ships at sea.

[imcarthur]

I never heard most of it. Only the odd story here or there. I was pretty thrilled when I found it last night. It's been in my basement for 5 years.

Ian

[fingpilot]

That is got to be so special to you. All of my father's stories were verbal, and only to me, and only when he was around his father, who was a tanker at the Battle of the Bulge.

Wish I had them written in his/their hand, I have tried to put them all down, as well as some of my own, but have no one to pass them on to.

Thanks for sharing.

[J1NX3D]

that is awesome. I'll have to have a read when i get a chance. do you mind if i share with like-minded individuals on my local forums?

[masraum]

Those are fantastic, thanks for taking the time to share. I really love reading accounts like that. I had a grandfather that was in WWII, I think in Asia/Pacific. Unfortunately, as far as I know, he never liked to talk about it. When my mother told me that he'd been in the war, I asked her about it, but she didn't really know anything and told me it was because he would never discuss it.

fingpilot, I know it's not the same, but if you ever feel like it, I'd love to read the stories that you have some time. I don't really have any stories that have been handed down to me from my father or grandfathers.

[imcarthur]

I will post the rest tomorrow.

Ian

[Tobra]

that is pretty cool, thanks, I like the ride with the LSR holder in the Lagonda.

[Joeaksa]

Very nice to see that he passed this down to you. Like Singpilot my family did not record any of their experiences during the war and really wish that they had.

[mike55]

Ian, to have it all in writing is great. You'll be able to pass it along through the generations as well. Please do post more.....

[Jim Bremner]

Guys,

Any chance that you can write this stuff down, or record this in some form please do so!

I had a customer back in the mid 80's that fought in WWI ! Sadly I've forgotten his name. As a young man in Ireland he had been drafted at 15! His hatred for the Germans was only second to the British officers he had told me.

I had a neighbor that flew P47's. I wished I would have learned more from him. His name was Ben and he told me that he had 14 1/2 kills.

He died in the late '80's

[porsche4life]

How do you get a 1/2 kill... Looks like a good story. Will read it tomorrow when I have time...

[Jim Bremner]

2 allied vs 1 enemy

[s_morrison57]

Thanks Ian, thats great stuff.
My great uncle was the ADC to Gen. Cere(sp?) who was in charge of all Canadian forces in the European theater, the War Archives made a video of my uncle with some of his stories and it included some still pictures of him at these top secret meetings while planning D-Day, Churchill, Eisenhower, Cere, Mountbatton and my uncle, cool stuff and I was totally blown away by his contribution when I saw the video.
Please consider contacting the War museum in Ottawa, I'm sure they would welcome copies of your Fathers notes and writings so that all Canadians can benifit from his contribution.
Post more, I love this stuff.

[imcarthur]

cont'd



The author in Europe 1941 (age: 20)

Just to back up a bit, the 1941-42 interval was a rather desperate but certainly an interesting one, though, and I think that generally a much greater laissez faire prevailed in Bomber Command than was possible in the massive and more regimented operations that followed. Contrary to popular opinion, in Canada at least, RAF squadrons of the period were very democratic, and generally an excellent esprit de corps prevailed within the operational aircrews. During my tours in these early years, I took the stick on numerous occasions although I hadn’t had official pilot training yet. The pilots were very casual about these things and were always grateful for relief during the longer flights.

Germany's invasion of Russia in June of 1941 obviously changed the dimensions of the conflict, if not its geographic range, and was certainly one of the major benchmarks affecting the ultimate outcome. Six months later I was in Malta when we received word of Pearl Harbor, and feelings ranged from relief that the US was now a full-fledged ally to apprehension that there was no real sanctuary left in most of Eurasia as the Axis continued to expand. One did feel rather isolated in Malta at that time.

1942 saw the tide begin to turn. The US Navy's success at Midway, albeit at enormous cost, did wonders for Allied morale. Following severe reverses in North Africa, Allied forces were able to hold Rommel at the El Alamein line, and then force a massive German withdrawal. This finally ended with the surrender of the Africa Corps at Tunis some eight months later. In Russia the defeat of the German forces at Stalingrad in January of 1943 marked the limits of Axis expansion, and the beginning of the long and bitter campaigns to regain and restore the vast territories occupied by Germany and her allies. No one realized just how tenacious and resilient the enemy would prove to be, and the enormous costs of final victory, as it turned out, still some two-and-a-half bloody years away. No one said "Over by Christmas" any more either.

Allied bombers were to play a substantial role in the ultimate victory, and indeed for several years were among the few really aggressive forces the western Allies could deploy against the largely land-locked Axis powers. This air campaign has been the subject virulent attack by later-day armchair critics. Like it, or not, it was one of the very few avenues open to the west, and without it, it is doubtful if Allied morale could have been sustained. Aside from the growing material damage it achieved, the morale factor alone would have justified it. Besides, what else could have provided so much marketable material for Allied apologists for most of the half-century since the conflict ended?

The burden of the aerial response fell largely upon the shoulders of an ill-equipped RAF in the early years of the conflict, aided by the Royal Navy and some remnants of friendly European forces that managed to escape the continent. The Commonwealth responded, particularly with personnel. Following Pearl Harbor the Americans rallied their aerial resources in both Britain and the Pacific, so gradually a formidable response was mounted against Goring's vaunted Luftwaffe. For some time, though, this response, however resolute, was very much touch and go.



In January of 1942 we ignominiously sailed to Egypt aboard HMS Breckenshire, an armed merchant cruiser which was the mainstay of Malta supply until she had to be beached on Malta the following summer. I should mention one of the big tragedies that occurred during the siege of Malta in late 1941. The island’s only brewery was bombed by the Nazis leaving us with nothing but a supply of gin and crème de menthe. I still can’t face either one.

We had a brief and inconclusive air attack when passing near Crete. The whole of the famous K Force of the Royal Navy was accompanying our lone merchant cruiser at that point, so the attackers were loath to press their attack home. It was on this voyage that a German submarine sheltered under the convoy, and was able to penetrate the submarine boom into Alexandria's outer harbour. That night they surfaced and severely damaged several warships sheltering there before surrendering.

We next joined 37 Squadron at Shallufa, a permanent RAF base a few miles north of Suez. They flew Ic Wellingtons, too, and the main targets were German supply ports. The main eastern one, Benghazi, would have been about an 11 hour trip from Shallufa, so we had to use an advanced landing ground, LG 09, located near Alemein. Eventually we moved out to LG 09, which made us true desert rats, I guess. Aside from the well-defended port of Benghazi, we also went to Crete, and twice to bomb ports and shipping in Greece. Much later a somewhat stuffy colleague asked me if I was familiar with the ruins of Piraeus. I was able to respond, "I should be, I helped create them." Crossing enemy-held Crete on one occasion we observed the interesting phenomenon of fires, apparently remote-area signal fires, which would suddenly emerge defining our path over the island. A change of course meant that the double pathway of fires would change as new ones were lighted. We assumed that it had to be a very labour-intensive signaling device for fighters, but fortunately we were not intercepted. Benghazi usually involved bombing ships and docks facilities, and once a low-level mine-laying operation inside the boom of their harbour. We had no parachutes for the long, cylindrical magnetic mines, so they had to be dropped at slow speed and from altitudes of less that fifty feet. The slow speed was no problem for the Ic Wellington, but the fifty feet was difficult to determine. This also involved going, still at slow speed, right across the major defences, since trying to suddenly climb out of that position would have been even more dangerous.

[imcarthur]

cont'd

One morning, after a Benghazi raid, when our home base was still Shallufa, we were crossing the Delta when a Hurricane came up alongside, dropped his gear and flaps, and slowed to our speed. I was in the astro hatch, and the fighter pilot was abreast of me about sixty feet away. The pilot opened his coupe top and waved, and then proceeded to gently put his port wing tip down on our starboard one. The air was perfectly calm, and we flew that way for many miles. Our skipper couldn't see any of this, and I kept saying, "Hold it steady" in case he tried to turn to take a look.



A Hurricane



The Wellington rescued from Loch Ness



Inside a Wellington



Crew positions in a Wellington bomber

[imcarthur]

cont'd

On another such flight we had F/O Chapell, an Intelligence Officer, as a passenger. One engine was running very rough, and eventually cut out completely several times. Ic Wellingtons didn't fly very well on one engine, so we landed at Heliopolis while we still had power. The engine was checked, but not properly repaired. F/O Chapell mentions this incident in his book, Wellington Wings. Operational crews were never very popular at Heliopolis. Some of their people were so unkind as to say that every time any of us had a minor mag drop, even five hundred miles away, we would make for there in hopes of having a couple of nights in the fleshpots of Cairo. On this occasion Brum spent some time carefully running up our sick engine before take-off, and a WO 1 objected furiously because they were painting a damaged Wellington downwind of us. Better he should have had his people service the engine properly! They were very inhospitable people at that major station!

In the spring of 1942 our crew was detailed for a special trip to Malta with an important passenger. We were misdirected to a soft spot on the Kabrit airport in Egypt, our departure point, and the aircraft nosed over and damaged the props. It is interesting to note that a USAAF Liberator squadron had assembled there, the first we had seen. This, I think, was the ill-fated unit that attempted the first Ploesti raid, a full year before the major successful attacks upon this vital target were carried out.



B-24 Liberator over the Ploesti, Poland oil fields

We picket up another aircraft and set out for Malta, with marginal weather forecast all the way. This episode points out the limitations and hazards of R/Nav in the Pre-Gee era. The Germans manned an excellent HF/DF station in Sicily which used our major navigation chain's frequency. We still had no crystal tuning, and had to rely upon back-tuning to make contact. Their technique was to use very powerful equipment, and gradually back us away from the British frequency. Our ground stations would realize what was happening, and would try to get us back again, usually to no avail. We could have used a modern-day scanner but of course they hadn't been invented yet. Mainly, we should have had accurate crystal tuners. On this trip Sicily came in loud and clear, and began to give us false QDMs (courses with zero wind). On a trip like this their bearings were plausible because Malta is only 50 miles from Sicily. I challenged most of them, but our challenge code changed every hour, and as the hour progressed the enemy would have recorded most of the challenges and could give the proper answer. They were pretty well organized, and we had little alternative but to use their bearings, given the adverse weather. QDMs could be misleading if there was a severe cross-wind, because a succession of them would give one a spiral track, tightening as one neared the ground station. In this case we realized our error, and in a brief break in the cloud saw flak and searchlights over Malta which was undergoing an attack. Determining winds on a long trip over water was difficult, although we could drop flame floats and use the rear turret guns to measure the drift; if we could see the water, that is. We also had some medium frequency direction-finding capability. Beacons were largely non-existent in that Command, and where they existed they were useless because of enemy jamming. Oh for a GPS.

On the return trip to Africa a few nights later we carried several senior officers. The weather was still bad, and there was a lot of Delivery Flight traffic, including a couple of crews that were having a bad time (Wellington Delivery Flight was flying at night by this time). The result was that it was very difficult to break into the HF/DF net, and since all we had to do was make a landfall in Egypt I let them have my share. One of the senior officers wasn't so confident, and while I was patiently waiting to get a DF slot he came up and demanded ,"Are you getting bearings, sergeant." Of course I lost my place in the queue for contact. I could scarcely tell him what I wanted to say, given the difference in rank, so I went to the S/L second pilot (the skipper was still a sergeant), who was with us to get Wellington experience, and asked him to get the SOB off my back. He did so, and all was well thereafter.

[imcarthur]

cont'd

In the summer of 1942 the German advance into Egypt began, and we found ourselves embroiled in the battle which later became known as the Little Alamein. It was a hectic time, and many of the Egyptians, and possible others too, hoped or feared that Egypt would be overrun. We continued to do some strategic bombing, but also shifted to low-level tactical operations during the high moon period. This involved actually tracking enemy desert armour columns, and attacking them when we could find them. Armour leaves a very visible trail in a sandy desert which we could see from about 3,000 feet when there was moonlight. They usually wouldn't fire at us, until they were sure they were detected, and by then we probably would be making our bombing run. It was quite exciting, and gave me a chance to use the beam guns in shoot ups.

There wasn't much radio work to do, but I at least had a chance to use the beam guns. Otherwise I usually kept a fighter watch from the astro hatch. On one occasion an aircraft suddenly appeared close astern and closing us rapidly. We had been operating without sleep for some time, and the rear gunner didn't even see him. The pilot had to lift his starboard wing over our high fin, and the two aircraft seemed to hang there for an intolerable time. I could actually see the rows of rivets in the moonlight. It was a Junkers 88 night fighter, so close I felt I could almost touch him. There was no sign of the remotely-controlled gun some of them carried alongside the fuselage, though. We would have been a perfect target for that. It was a hectic time for everybody, and presumably the enemy crew was just as startled as we were, and probably just as tired. All I could do was say "Steady, steady" to our skipper, and the 88 banked and climbed away.



Junkers 88

I was then flying with a recently-arrived crew with no operational experience, a situation no one liked to find himself in when one has had some 40 trips. We had left LG 09 and retreated to Abu Suier in the northern part of the Canal Zone. We were operating with several other desert Wellington Squadrons and a variety of other aircraft types. Most of our ground crew were still adrift some place, and we actually had inexperienced sailors rescued from the sunken battleship Barham doing some of our fuelling and maintenance work.

[masraum]

Thanks again!