Australians at War Film Archive Ian Murray
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Australians at War Film Archive Ian Murray - Transcript of interview Date of interview: 8th October 2003 http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/1043 Tape 1 00:38 So Ian, if you would just like to tell us about your early life? How early? To start off with, what I was doing before the war and where I went to school and all that sort of thing, is that what you want? Where were you born, where did you grow up? Oh, well, I was born in Toowoomba on the 19th 01:00 of November 1921. My people were on the land but I went to school in Toowoomba at the Boys’ Prep [preparatory school] and the Toowoomba Grammar. And after that I went jackarooing and I think I was doing that for about three or four years anyway, at western Queensland. 01:30 I used to work for a big firm called Clark and Tate and they owned a lot of properties in the west. And it was a good job because they used to change you around and you had a change of managers and bosses and all that sort of thing. Anyway, I, ‘41 I decided I’d join up. Why did you decide to join up? 02:00 Oh I don’t know. It wasn’t patriotic or anything like that, I’d never been that way at all. I thought, ‘Well, everybody’s having a different life so of [what about?] me.’ So I settled for Toowoomba, which is sort of my home town sort of thing, and I met a friend who used to go to school with me, and I was intending to go to Brisbane to join the navy, I don’t know why the navy either, 02:30 but we were having a few beers in the pub and this recruiting officer for the air force turned up and he shouted us a few beers and so we signed up, we weren’t for him but we did sign up with him for the air force. So we went to Brisbane the next day and had a medical and my mate failed so he left me on my own to go in. Anyway, they found something wrong with my nose and I had to have an operation 03:00 before they confirmed they’d accept me. So I went back out to Blackall where I was working and I eventually went down to Rockhampton and got this bit of bone taken out of my nose and then, anyway, I had the certificate to say it’d been done so they said, “Right you’re in.” Then they sent me on correspondence courses for six months or more. You know, a course 03:30 in navigation and all sorts of stupid things like that. And we had a Morse key – do you know what a Morse code key is? – and I used to have to go into the Post Office every couple of months and get the postmaster to get the speed of transmission. I didn’t go very fast, about three words a minute or something. But anyway, they eventually called me up and I went down to 04:00 Brisbane but the course had closed, at Sandgate in those days, which was the initial training school, but it was full up. So there were 10 of us that were dispatched to Bradfield Park in Sydney by train and they were a wild mob, like I knew a couple of them. Anyway, we played poker all the way down and 04:30 two-up in the train with this corporal or whatever he was supposed to be, escort or whatever you call him. Anyway, we were pretty good at it and by the time we got to Bradfield Park he had to borrow a tuppence [two pence] to ring up to get a tender to come and collect us. And they we were in Bradfield Park and just marched around and did all sorts of silly things like 05:00 discipline and marching forwards and backwards. And from there they decided, well, they asked me what I wanted to be, you see, and I said, well, I had no preference about what I going to be, you see. So this old fellow that was the recruiting officer, he was in the Royal Flying Corps at one time and he was also a polo player and he thought anybody who rode a horse could fly 05:30 a plane so his recommendation on this thing [was] that I become a pilot. Anyway, they took his recommendation ‘cause I’d been with horses all my life, sort of thing. So I was sent out to Narromine to fly on Tiger Moths. And I forget what the course, how long it was there but anyway, I eventually get through without any crashes or accidents or anything. And then they ask you again what you want to do, ‘Do you want to 06:00 be, do you want to fly on fighters, single engine or,’ you know, ‘multi-engines and bombers?’ and what have you. So I said, well, I didn’t have any preference, so they said, “Oh well, you’ll go on the multis.” So then they sent me to Point Cook and from there I was flying Airspeed Oxfords, you know, twin engines. And this instructor on those things was an old time pilot, he used to go gold mining in the Northern 06:30 Territory with a [Tiger] Moth or some damn thing, he was as mad as a snake but he was a very nice bloke and he taught us to fly pretty well, actually. But, anyway, I got through there. When you do your service flying you get a rank then, I became a Sergeant Pilot, and you lose your little white thing out of [your] hat, which indicated you were aircrew, because you weren’t aircraftsmen second hand 07:00 in those days before you started off. Anyway, I got my wings at Point Cook. They again asked me what I wanted to do, bomber command or transport or coastal command, or whatever it is now, and I said I didn’t have any preferences. I’m not one of these people that put my foot in it, let somebody else make the mistake, you know. So I said I didn’t mind, so they said, “Well you can do coastal command.” So on 07:30 I went, down to Barnsdale in Victoria for this coastal course, you know, the Naval Reconnaissance Course they called it. What did that involve? Well the idea was, they were all pilots down there but one pilot flew the plane today and he navigated the plane, like, the next time, so you were learning, as a pilot, all about navigation which you had to deal with, you know, in coastal command, apparently. 08:00 And anyway, we were flying Avro Ansons, which were terrible old planes, you know, when you took off you had to wind the wheels up yourself or get somebody else alongside you to wind them up and let them down. And when I finished that course, we use to have to, the course consisted of trying to learn 08:30 by, you were, a silhouette all the ships in the Japanese, the German, the Italian and American and British Navy. And, of course, I never, you know, I could tell a three funnel battle from a single one but that’s about all I could do. Anyway, from there we got posted to Bundaberg in Queensland on 66 Squadron and again flew Ansons. 09:00 And we had three in the crew, a pilot, a navigator and a wireless air-gunner. And our job was, from Bundaberg we’d go out with this old Anson with two World War I depth charges on and machine gun, a .303 machine gun out the back, and we used to go out and meet convoys and escort them up the coast from, you know, fly round and round all day and come back again after about four or five hours, 09:30 that’s about the capacity of the fuel we had. And we used to operate that from, the base was Bundaberg but we used to go as far south as Evans Head. We’d escort a convoy or something down there and then we’d land there, spend the night and refuel and then catch another convoy and go right up, we used to go, right up to Townsville we went, swapping over. 10:00 And when the Americans started arriving, we used to go and meet these American convoys coming in, they had soldiers and things on board, you know. And you couldn’t go anywhere near, they, they’d shoot you down if you got within about 20 miles of them, they’d let fire, even if you gave them the signal of the day and everything else. So we were wasting our time, we were going round and round, it was too far out to see anything. Anyway, 10:30 a funny thing happened at Bundaberg one day, they gave us some practice bombs which, they were smoke bombs and you used to have to carry a couple just for practise. And they used to give you some aluminium sea markers which, you drop them and they burst and they put a big aluminium patch on the sea, for half an hour, I suppose, and you used to pretend that was a submarine.