Australians at War Film Archive

Noel Sanders (Sandy, Skipper) - Transcript of interview

Date of interview: 16th June 2003

http://australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au/archive/526

Tape 1

00:42 Noel. We’ve got the tape running. We’re ready to start. Could you begin by telling me a bit about where you were born and brought up?

I was brought up on the Macleay River, up on the North Coast on New South Wales. I was born at Kempsey, in the town there,

01:00 in Hollywood Private Hospital, the 4th of December, 1923. And my parents were farmers. I spent most of my early childhood in the lower Macleay, on the farm down there, and I attended primary school down there. And that was the extent of my formal education, primary school, I never did manage to get to high school.

01:30 But in later years that was, of course, detrimental to me joining the air force, so I had to work pretty hard to get on with that. How’s that?

That’s good. Why didn’t you go to high school?

Because in those days, farming, as it always has been, was a hard life and Dad couldn’t afford to have labour so I was the born labour. Being the eldest son. I was to

02:00 come in, and….I was quite happy to, at the age of fourteen, to join him on the farm and learn about the farm.

What sort of work were you doing on the farm?

The bulk of it was milking cows. Because we had a herd of between sixty and eighty cows. And it was twice a day, seven days a week, milking cows. So that put me off farming pretty quickly. There was other stuff

02:30 to do, as well, on the farm. We had crops, of course, and ploughing. I had to learn to plough and do all those sorts of things. But that was only a relatively short period of my life, because the war came along, you see, and I had an opportunity to get out of it. I never went back to it. Not really for any extended time. I did go back for a short time, but that was it. No, I wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. Let’s put it that

03:00 way. I just wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. I enjoyed cropping and things like that. I enjoy the crop, I’m living now, I’m growing crops and things in our gardens here, but I wasn’t cut out to be a farmer. I was always dead keen on flying, and in the early days they tell me that when any old biplane used to come across, I’d say “Up there! Up there!” And Dad would say, “Who’s that?” And I would say, “Smithie.” Kingsford Smith, you see. And then my uncle was involved

03:30 with the early airlines on the North Coast. He started Airlines of Australia, and then he changed to….well, they finished up as part of Ansett. George Robinson was well known in the aviation field, and I always thought it was a great thing if I could ever be a pilot. So that’s the situation there. When the war came along,

04:01 I thought, ‘Well, I like that. I wonder if I can get into the air force and become a pilot?’ So one day, when I was around the tender age of seventeen, a train came through the Northern rivers, recruiting people for the air force. And I said to Dad, “Can I go up and have an interview and see if they will accept me?” He said, “Oh well, you may as well. You won’t get in.” He said, “You won’t be well enough educated for them. But go

04:30 up and see them anyhow.” So I went up and saw them. They must have liked the look of me. They said, “Look Noel, your education is against you. But if you’re prepared to go and work hard at night school, what we’ll do, we’ll send you a course of lessons from Sydney, and you’ll do those by correspondence until you’re seventeen and a half, and then we’ll set a test for you and see how you are. And if at seventeen and a half, if we think you’re aircrew material, we’ll 05:01 put you on the Air Force Reserve and then you’ll have to attend night classes at Kempsey high school. How do you feel about?” I said, “I’m all for it.” So I had a very accommodating headmaster down at the Jerseyville public school, and I told him about it, and he said, “I’ll take you in hand, Noel.” So the subjects like algebra and mathematics and all the other things that I found a bit tedious and difficult, I took to as easy

05:30 under his tuition. And when I went for my tests at age seventeen and a half, they said, “Righto, you’re right. Now you’ve got to go up to high school now and continue and then we’ll put you on the Reserve and we’ll call you up when you’re eighteen.” So that’s what happened. I got a way out of the farm and got up to a job, in Kempsey, as a cycle mechanic with my uncle, and I went to night school there four nights a week

06:00 until I was eighteen. And the air force were quite happy with my progress, and I was called up.

Do you remember when the war first broke out?

Yes I do.

Can you tell me where you were on that day?

1939. What age would I have been in 1939?

06:30 About fifteen or sixteen.

I’d be on the farm then, in that case. I remember them all talking about it and that. My Dad said it would be over in no time. But it certainly wasn’t over in no time at all. But one of the things that stands out in my memory was listening to my father, who was a First World War veteran, talking to one of his old confederates, who had been a captain in the army, and they were talking

07:00 about the style of young men that were coming into the forces, in those days. And one said to the other, “Well, Bill,” he said. “You know they’re not up to our standard at all.” And I thought, ‘How dare they talk like that.’ And my father, God bless him, never excelled himself to any extent above the rank of private, or trooper as he was, in the artillery, and in later years he would find his son was

07:30 a long way further up the field than that. These are the sort of things that stick in your mind.

Did your dad talk much about his war years?

Not a lot to us kids. No. Anzac Day came around regularly of course. He was secretary of his local RSL [Returned and Services League], and we were expected to go into the Anzac services. It didn’t mean much to us, but it did to Dad and his family, because his brother next to him was

08:00 the first man to be killed from the Lower Macleay in World War I. He was lost at Lone Pine, at Gallipoli. They didn’t rub it into us, but they expected us to go to the Anzac services. We found it a bit tedious, but we used to go along. I suppose that’s where we got it. But if he ever had an old mate, staying overnight at the farm, they’d often

08:30 talk into the late hours of the night about their experiences. And we kids, would stick behind the doors and listen to what was going on. But he didn’t force it down our throats or anything at all. And I think it was, knowing now at my age, it must have been quite hard for him to expect that his sons would have to follow him into the war.

09:00 And they didn’t really ever think that I make the air force, because of my lack of education, but that proved to be wrong, and I got through there pretty well.

What was your parents reaction when you were accepted?

Resignation as much as anything. They were amazed, but resigned to it, I think they were, that I should be accepted for air crew. Air crew in those days was, of course, under the Empire Air Training Scheme.

09:30 You signed up for air crew but you were not guaranteed to become a pilot. You had to have many more tests to find out if you were suitable to become a pilot. But ambition’s a great thing you know. If you want to do a thing, you just work towards it, and I got through with flying colours, to become a pilot, so…

What was the main thing behind your ambition do you think?

I was just fascinated with this new business of flying, I think.

10:01 In retrospect, I probably left a good career behind in later life to go into menswear. I didn’t follow the air force after the war at all. I was just a natural flyer, I think, because I loved it.

How important was the Empire to you at that age?

10:30 Oh, much more important than it is today. We always had our Empire Days, which was the 24th of May, at school and that, and you sang good old songs, and we had old diggers come along and tell us about our heritage. You were well educated towards the Old Country. There was no doubt about it, we had to be involved in the war. There was no antipathy, on our side. There would have been in other families, probably, I don’t know. But

11:00 not within our family.

Did your father have expectations that you should serve in some way?

Oh, I think he quite expected it. But he never, ever said, “You have to go, Noel.” Or anything like that. I think he just, quietly, expected it. It’s a hard thing, isn’t it? To have your sons have to go off to war. A really hard thing.

How about your mother? What was her reaction?

Her’s was one of loyalty, of course, but

11:30 resignation again. My sister, who followed me, as soon as she was old enough, she got into the WAAAF [Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force]. When they asked her she was joining the WAAAF, she said, “I’ve got a brother over in England flying Lancasters and I want to be supportive of him in the only way I can, and that’s to be in the services here.” So it was in the family. We were the only two. The others were younger, of course, coming through and

12:00 they didn’t, fortunately, have to join up for anything.

Tell me about the day, then, that you were accepted into the air force?

The day that they called us up?

Hmm. How did that happen?

The main call up?

Well, when you found out that you were accepted.

Well, the first acceptance was to be put onto the Reserve, and you got that by post, and your little badge. A lovely little badge like the Air Force Association badge now, that

12:30 you wore, to let everybody know that you were a reservist for the Royal Australian Air Force. Quite a thrill to wear that. And then they called us up, on the 28th of February, 1942. I was eighteen on the 4th of December, ’41. And there’s a lot went on about that time, Pearl Harbor and all the rest of it, you see. And I thought, ‘Well, they’re bound to be

13:00 calling me up straight away.’ But they didn’t. They had to wait until they had enough fellows for the courses to go through. The warrant came and I had to come down to Woolloomooloo to be tested, and checked again, medically, and that was quite a thrill for a young boy from the bush. I really thought I was going to be sent to Bradfield Park, which was an initial training school for New South Wales.

13:31 Quite surprised when they said, “Well you and eight of you fellows, we’ve got too many down here for our course at Bradfield Park. We’re going to send you up to Sandgate in Brisbane.” Outside Brisbane, another initial training school there. So the result was that I had gone down on the train one night, to present myself at Woolloomooloo for the (technical fault)

14:00 train going back to Brisbane, which was the beginning of my world trip really. Got me away from…And it was a good thing. Had I been down in Sydney I might have been tempted to sort of lead a looser sort of life, I don’t know. But, up there, in Brisbane, I knew no one, and I needed to work hard to keep up with the other fellows who were

14:30 academically better off than me. And better equiped than me, and I had to work really hard to keep up with them. And keep the course going. So that was good for me, from that point of view.

Was it a struggle?

It was a struggle, a continuous struggle, right up until the day I got my wings, I struggled all the time.

So what sort of things were you taught at Sandgate?

I think there twelve ground subjects we were taught there.

15:00 Memory doesn’t help me a great deal, but I think there were twelve different subjects. Naturally enough, amongst them were navigation, hygiene…you know, I’d have to look at a book tell you how many there were. I’m sure there were twelve. And you had to pass everyone of them. And of course you learned the dah-dit-dah-dit, the old Morse Code, and all that. You had to be proficient up to a point, in all these things.

15:31 Physical training was fantastic. They really got you up into good nick, there. And of course the “Square Bashing”, as they called it. Everything to nail you into shape, well and truly. Initially it was six weeks. And depending on your selection then, whether you were going to be a navigator or a pilot,

16:00 you were kept for another four weeks, then you were sent off to initial flying school, elementary flying school. We used to work a full week. I think we got every Friday night to Saturday night off. Friday six o’ clock, and then back in the base Saturday, at six o’ clock, that night, sort of thing. We’d go into Brisbane for a bit of a release from it.

16:31 Where did you go from Sandgate?

Sandgate? They posted me to Narrandera. We got there a little ahead of time, so they said, “Well, we’re going to put you onto tarmac duties. So you can learn a little bit about the aeroplanes before you start the flying course.” So our duties there, we were

17:00 responsible for moving the aircraft around. They were Tiger Moths and fairly easy to move around. Learning how to swing the props for the student pilots, and various things like that. That was fascinating. We got to know these big flying fellows who are only a course ahead of us, and they were already flying solo and that. One day I had to swing the prop for the squadron leader.

17:30 The CO [Commanding Officer] actually. He said, “Sanders, will you swing the prop for me? I want to take this aircraft up on a test.” “Yes sir.” He said, “What are you going to be? You’re going to be a pilot aren’t you?” I said, “Yes, I hope so, sir.” He said, “You like flying?” I said, “No, I can’t tell you honestly if I like flying, but I’m sure I would.” I said, “I’ve never been up in an aeroplane.” He said, “What? And you want to be a pilot?” I said

18:00 “Yeah.” He said, “Well, go and get yourself a parachute. I’m going to take you up now and make sure you’re adaptable to it.” Which is good. I got the old parachute and swung it on, and got in the seat in front of him….No, he sat in the front, I sat in the back, and he took me up, and swung around a bit and all over the place. He kept on saying “How do you like it?” I said, “Love it! Love it! It’s great!” He did everything

18:30 he could to upset me, and he came back down, and he said, “You’ll have no trouble.” He said, “You liked it, did you?” I said, “Oh, I enjoyed every minute of it.” He said, “That’s fantastic.” So then the course started and we learned to fly. I went solo at about nine hours, I think it was. It should have been seven, but they took me up for a check, and by the time I finished the check and got back, the

19:00 wind had strengthened up so strong that they wouldn’t let a learner pilot go out. So he said, “Well, you’ll have to do it tomorrow.” Tomorrow came and it was still blustery and rough and nobody flew that day. And the following day he said, “You’ve got to have another check.” So I had another check, then he said, “Right, off you go. Just do one circuit and down again and that’s your baptism on your own.”

So how many flights, approximately, would nine hours be?

19:31 Now, if you allowed me to see the log book, it’s got every bit of detail there.

When you’re learning, how long do you go up for?

Up to an hour, at a time. So it would have been….I suppose it’s ten. We’ll have to have a look afterwards.

That’s interesting. Would you go up more than once a day?

Oh, very rarely. It was very tiring. Extremely tiring. We were always worn out at the

20:00 end of the day. What happened at the elementary flying training school was that you had a morning, one day, a morning from first light, eight o’ clock, till midday on the ground subjects, you had to follow on with all the ground subjects. And then in the afternoon you had your flying and vice-versa the next day, you had the flying in the morning, and in the afternoon the ground subjects. But it was extremely tiring, very, very tiring.

What was tiring about it?

I think

20:30 it was the new environment and the fact that we were learning, learning the skills. That must have been as much as anything, the new environment of it all. Everybody was tired. Down on the old bunk and get off to sleep. No trouble sleeping at all.

Was that the mental tiredness, was it?

Yes, I suppose so. More so than physical I think. Because we were pretty physically fit. Just mentally tired.

21:00 Tell me what the more experienced pilot did to try and upset you in the air?

Oh, he didn’t really, I don’t think, upset….bear in mind that he was taking that aircraft up for a test, so he would have to put it through certain manoeuvres. He’d have to do a loop and a slow roll and a few other things, a stall turn, and things like that. Just try her out and make sure she was quite a…because they were sending up pilots, and this aircraft had been in for a

21:30 servicing, a major servicing, so they wanted to give it a thorough test. I just happened to be the boy in the front there, that had to make sure he didn’t get sick, but it didn’t worry me at all. Once I was nicely strapped in the front there, with the old rev counter in the front running. No, he didn’t do anything silly at all, he did just manoeuvres which we learned to do, fly afterwards.

22:01 Narrandera. Narrandera was a lovely place to learn to fly. It was nice, open fields, with one or two railways to follow if you got lost. And generally speaking the weather was beautiful. Except in the mornings. Very, very cold in the mornings, it was winter time when we were there, and very icy, but the days were beautiful clear days.

What sort of planes were you learning.

22:30 De Havilland DH82s, the Tiger Moths. They were the initial trainer for us in those days. We all learned on those.

How did you find handling them?

Very, very sensitive. Extremely sensitive. I heard one day somebody say you had to have the hands of a doctor to fly a Tiger Moth. Probably pretty close, too. It was very sensitive. The joystick, you only had to move it very slightly.

23:00 You could move it with your finger like that, and very, very slightly. And a lot of us had to wear sand shoes on our feet for our rudder bars, just so we could get a better feel of it. It was the most sensitive of the aircraft that I’ve flown. And you could fly a Tiger Moth, if you got her up in the air and you just set the throttle, you could put your hand out the side and she’d turn around to the left and the right. You could put your hand up like this,

23:30 and up she’d go. You could do it all like that, that’s how sensitive it was. It was wonderful.

That’s extraordinary. Where did you go after Narrandera then?

They sent me on, together with all my course, on final leave. So I went home and I had to say my fond farewells. That was hard, very hard, indeed. I well remember the day. Poor old Mum was out in the front garden,

24:00 waiting for the local bus to come and pick me up and take me to the railway station to come back to Sydney. She was hiding the tears, you know. It was very hard. I was stoic, up to a point, “It’ll be all right, Mum. It’ll be all right.” Dad had already said his farewells, was down the farm.

What did they say to you?

It’s not so much what you say, it’s how you react

24:30 to each other. They blessed me, of course. They said they’d pray for me. And at that stage, you’ve got to be reminded, well, they had accepted the fact that I was an Army Command pilot. Up till I actually flew, they hadn’t accepted that. They thought I would be scrubbed, as they say, but even so, they didn’t know

25:00 what I knew, that I could still be scrubbed before I got to….Wings stage. And talking about that, on the side, there was a big chap there, at Narrandera, when I was on tarmac duties. A big chap of Jewish extraction, a much older man than me. And I got to like him very much, and he always asked me to swing his prop for him. He come from Brisbane, and he was way ahead

25:30 of me, so he was a big pilot. In later years, he became my bomb aimer. Because he got up to Amberley and he was scrubbed. Scrubbed means they said, “No, you’re not suitable for flying.” I didn’t know that until later on. But anyhow we got back to Sydney and they said, “You’re off to Melbourne.” Down to Melbourne.

26:01 We stayed in Melbourne, a couple of nights I think, out at the racecourse there. And then they put us across Bass Strait, over to Tassie, on the overnight ship. Across to there. And we waited there, at a place called Brighton, just outside of Hobart, and then the move came through

26:30 to us that we were on our way. So we got on the train and went down, and here’s this beautiful big liner, up there, a great monstrous thing, and we knew then we were off to Canada. We didn’t know, at that stage, where we were going, but we were definitely off to Canada. And this big ocean liner called the Ile de France. A big French ocean liner, second to the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth.

27:00 And we got on board there and there was hardly anybody on it. The only people on board were about three hundred German prisoners of war from the Western Desert, with their guards and that. And they put us in lovely cabins. Stacks of cabins. They put us in these beautiful cabins. We were just settling down that night, she was underway, and settling down nicely, and people started to complain about itching. “What’s going on?”

27:30 And finally they found out that the place hadn’t been fumigated properly. It was full of bed bugs. So the bosses came down, the captain, and said, “Out! Everybody out, down onto mess decks, down below, and pick yourself up a hammock.” And they put us on hammocks. We went across the Pacific on hammocks instead of these beautiful big cabins. Lovely cabins. It would have been a first class trip, but we didn’t get it.

28:00 So we travelled across. We called at New Zealand and picked up some more New Zealand trainees and then we disappeared into the depths. We must have gone well South, somewhere well South. It was very cold, very windy, very rough. And finally we came up in the quiet, and went through what they call the Doldrums, where the Pacific Ocean is flat and oily, through that. And then one morning we got up and we heard this aeroplane.

28:31 “Where are we?” We must be in America. We were. It was an American plane that spotted us and came round. And through the mists we could see the islands of Hawaii, and then we came into Pearl Harbor. Right into Pearl Harbor. And of course that’s just after the big Japanese attack and there were ships all over the place.

29:00 We weren’t allowed to get off the ship, we could see it from where we were, and it was still a heck of a mess there. Of course it was only a few months after the big Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Sunken ships?

Yeah, sunken ships all over the place. Oh, it was a mess. So they rebilleted us, I suppose, and away we went and came out of there and finished up under Golden Gate Bridge in

29:30 San Francisco.

Was there any threat of submarine attack?

Oh yes, that was apparent from the word go. On the Ile de France, we had a choice of two sets of duties, we could pick whichever ones we wanted. We had to do that right across. We had a choice of doing what we called Messing Duties, that

30:00 was looking after everybody in the messes, feeding them and that. Not cooking, just distributing the food and clearing up after. You could do that, or you could take your turn on duty, throughout the night, on guns. Because she had a gun or two on her, with watches on. I thought, ‘No way, can I go through the night. I’ll take the other job.’ So that was

30:30 pretty good, because you got pretty well fed on that, too. So I had that job, took that job on, amongst others. That was right across. And we landed at San Francisco, and then we were in trains….What do they call those trains? The Pullmans, aren’t they? The big American trains,

31:00 took us up through Portland, Seattle and up to Vancouver. And by that time, it was getting pretty cold. It was the end of November, by the time we got there. And we weren’t equipped for cold weather stuff, so we were finding it a bit hard. We had a day off in Vancouver, then we got another train which took us across the Rocks to

31:30 Edmonton. We landed at Edmonton at about ten o’ clock at night, and got out off the train, which was beautiful and lovely and comfortable, and out into this cold. There was snow everywhere and there was ice on the ground. We didn’t have snow shoes or anything. We just had our ordinary leather soled shoes. And we couldn’t stand up. We had our kit bags to carry and everything, and we had

32:00 about a quarter to get across…They had a siding which they brought us into by the holding station and we got out and we had to crawl right across until we got inside. They said, “It’ll be all right fellows. Tomorrow we’ll fit you up with snow shoes, and the covers to put on. Then you’ll be able to keep your feet then.” So that was our introduction into the Canadian winter. Which Edmonton is pretty well up, of course, and it gets

32:30 very cold. And we were just skating on…not thin ice, thick ice. That was their winter. An interesting thing happened, there, at Edmonton. We got in about the end of November, and the 1st of December, word came through that the CO of the station wanted to see me. I thought, ‘Oh, what have I done?

33:00 What have I done?’ So he called me in and said, “Oh, Sanders, thanks for coming.” He said, “Sit down.” I thought, ‘Sit down?’ He said, “I’ve got some bad news for you?” I said, “Sir? What’s the problem?” He said, “You’re government have just been on to me, or the people in Australia, and you’re to return to Australia.” I said, “Whatever for?” He said, “Because you are still not

33:30 nineteen years of age. And they have a rule out there in Australia, that they are not allowed to send young men like you overseas until you’re nineteen.” And quick as a light I said, “Sir, I’ll be nineteen on the fourth of this month.” Now I said, “Can’t you lose those papers for a little while? And when you call me in on the fourth, you’ll find that I’m

34:00 nineteen? And you’ll be able to tell them that I am nineteen and entitled to be overseas?” “Oh, that’s a very good idea,” he said. “Yes, you’ll do that.” And that’s what happened. Otherwise they would have sent me back home. And I wasn’t for that. I was already on my world trip, you know. And added to which I wasn’t too keen on going up north. The Japs and that. I had heard a few tales about that. So I thought I’d do that.

What had you

34:30 heard about the Japanese?

We heard all about the atrocities and things like that. The mere fact that that sort of war was on, we knew it was pretty rough. Nothing specific, but we knew it was pretty bad. They weren’t nice to us at all, as it turned out. So on about

35:00 the 10th….now there’s a memory now, by about the 10th of December, they called us and said, “You fellows are on course number seventy. At service flying training school at Claresholm, which is an RCAF, Royal Canadian Air Force station, sixty miles south of Calgary, and you’re to be on the train tonight to go

35:30 to Claresholm.” I think it must have been about the 9th of December. So we travelled down. One of the things that sticks in my mind was the fact that the sun didn’t get up much before about nine o’ clock. And when it did get up in that area, it only got up over the horizon about two or three inches and then dropped down again, very early in the day. That’s how far North we were. But anyhow, as we went through the South it opened up

36:00 a little bit more. So we got to Claresholm. So that was my home then, until the 1st of April, 1943. And there I learned to fly the twin engine Avro Anson, but it was different to the Australian Avro Anson. It was the Canadian Anson with was equipped with Jacobs engines. It also

36:31 had an ability to, if you pressed a lever the undercarriage went down. Whereas on the Australian Ansons you had to wind them up, with a winch. It was a fatigue sort of thing, you had to get your under cart up. That was the only real difference with them. They flew exactly the same. Well, they were heated, as well, of course. I don’t know whether the Australian would have been. I don’t know.

37:00 I looked in my log book, I’m quibbling a bit there, but I looked in my log book there, I wasn’t aware of just how short a time I had before I flew on twins. I got there on the 10th, I flew on the 11th, I flew for three hours on the 11th and 12th, and I flew solo that day, on the twin. So I must have adapted

37:30 pretty well to the twins. She was the most beautiful aircraft to fly, really, for a learning. She didn’t have any bysters. And of course she came out of the Arrow stable, which was the stable the Lancasters came out of. And in later years, when I flew the Lancaster, it was just as easy to fly as the Avro Anson was to fly. Amazing. Same characteristics about it and everything. The most beautiful aircraft to fly.

38:00 Was there anything different about flying in the Northern Hemisphere?

Oh, quite a lot. You’d get into the aircraft and see minus five or something on your thermometer. Quite a lot. All cold crisp air. And then, of course, you got your snowstorms. You had to learn to fly through snowstorms, and get back home quick before the ‘drome closed, you see. It was quite different. But

38:30 the spaces were the same as Narrandera, but they were covered in snow. No leaves on the trees, much. Nice, as I say, crisp clear air. And it, in turn, was an ideal place to fly. We were just under the shadow of the Rockies down there, you could see the wind blowing the snow off the peaks of the Rockies. Magnificent. And we had a most enjoyable time there.

39:00 And I was taken in tow by a family who I’m still keeping in contact with, after all these years. They looked after me very well in my leave times. That happened to the parents….They’re post passed away, but I’m in touch with the rest of the family. My first instructor, who was unfortunately killed later on in service in England, he took me over there, and that was my Canadian family. They were wonderful to me.

Thanks Noel, we might just stop there.

Tape 2

00:38 We’ll come back in more detail on your training later on. Can you tell me how long you were learning in Canada?

Yes, well my course finished on the last day of March, 1943. By that time I had passed all the necessary

01:00 flying and ground exams, I passed all those. There was quite a few up to wings. That is wings standard, when you get your wings pinned on you. You’ve got a lot to go through there in those last few weeks. You’ve got all your ground subjects to go through, and in that respect I nearly missed out, on a ground subject, because although I had done extremely well…or what I considered

01:30 extremely well, and most of the others thought I had done, too, on flying, we had to fly, first of all general flying, then we had to fly as a navigator. That’s, in other words, sit in the navigator’s section and navigate somebody else around, (UNCLEAR) took a turn at flying another pilot around, then he had to navigate me, for instance, and that was part of it there. We had to

02:00 pass instrument flying, blind flying. They were the main flying tests, I think. But on the ground we had all the twelve subjects, right through, even the old dit-dit-dah-dit and all that, even though I wasn’t using, we had to be able to do anything that other members of the crew could, up to a point. But my 02:30 navigation was the important one, and that was the one that usually sorted out the boys from the others. And it sorted me out. I had missed by a few marks, and I failed my ground navigation. I passed my air navigation, but I failed on my ground navigation…

03:02 Tell me about, you found the navigation aspect of it the most difficult?

Yes. I missed by a few points. And there was another young fellow, as well. A very nice young man from out of Coolah, and he was an exceptionally fine pilot. He and I had both been up doing formation flying that morning, when they told us that we both failed. And he said, “Well, what’s the score now?” They said

03:30 “Well, it’s like this. We’ll allow you to sit again, but it’s either a pass or a fail. If you fail, you won’t get your Wings. You will have to either go back home to Australia, or you will have to take one of the other courses. Like a gunnery course or something, to stay in the Empire Air Training Scheme.” He said, “That’s tough.” They said, “Well, that’s the way the law

04:00 is with us. So you’re set for, to have your examination tomorrow morning, the both of you.” You wouldn’t read about it. I passed and the other fellow failed. To see a man crying. Oh, a wonderful pilot. I thought, ‘How ridiculous, only for a few marks.’ And he wouldn’t ever possibly be called upon to navigate an aircraft in the normal way, because you once you got onto the big fellows, the bombers in Bomber Command, you had your navigator anyhow.

04:30 And you would either fly or you navigate, you can’t do them both. Well, you can, within reason, but not to the same extent as the navigator. So that poor man. He was a great strapping lad and he finished up as an air gunner. But he got through the war, praise the Lord for that, he went right through. Did a tour of ops as an air gunner. A marvellous, marvellous airman, he was, really. So we

05:00 got our wings. We had our wings parade on the 1st of April, 1943. What a day, getting wings pinned on you. A day to remember. Bit like a wedding. We all paraded in front of the whole station. All the rellies and any friends that you had were all invited to come along and watch it. And you were called out, one after another, and they pinned the coveted Wings on your left breast. And that was fine,

05:30 and that evening we were bundled onto a train to go right across the other side of Canada. Three days and four nights, I think it was. Or four nights and three days, I’m not sure. A nice comfortable ride in Pullmans right across Canada. And they finished up, they put us into a place called Monkton, which is on the shores of the Bay of Thunder, which is near Brunswick. And we were there for six weeks, waiting around for

06:00 a ship to take us across to Blighty, or the UK. And then the call came, and they put us on another train and away we went to Halifax. And we got onto a ship there called the Empress of Scotland. Which is one of the Canadian Pacific ships. They used to run ships, apparently, in those days. She was called the Empress of Scotland. But apparently she had been named the Empress of Japan and they changed the name.

06:30 And we got on board her. And of course it was interesting to be in Halifax Harbour, to see all the convoys getting ready to sail. With all the ships around, ready. We thought we would be convoyed, but no, we were off on our own. By the way, going back on the Pacific, they did say something had been shot at one night, but we never ever heard properly. But then that’s just hearsay.

07:02 When we got out onto the Atlantic, it was a different story to the Pacific. The Atlantic was absolutely littered with the flotsam and jetsam of the ships that had been sunk in that period of the time when the U-boats [Unterseeboot, German submarines] were very active. We said, “We’re on our own?” They said, “Oh, we’re too fast for them. We’ll beat them.”

So was there any escort?

No escort

07:30 at all. None whatsoever. And in mid-Atlantic, they said we had a very near miss one night. It missed us, it went across the front. We were able to see it coming and get around, manoeuvre out of ….They told us that. They said, “We had a very near miss last night.”

What was it?

A U-boat. A U-boat torpedo. But that was the only time they ever told us

08:00 that happened. And I think the fellows on the duty had seen it, seen the wake coming across. But in mid-Atlantic as well, we got the news that Guy Gibson had sunk the….Guy Gibson had taken the 617 [Squadron] into the dams, when they hit the dams, right in mid-Atlantic. In due course, we travelled around the top end of Ireland.

08:30 The beautiful green fields of Ireland. After Canada…there was no greenery at all in Canada, because it was still the end of the winter there. But in Ireland, green trees, beautiful. We came into Liverpool, got off there, onto a train to go down to Bournemouth, in Southern England. Loved England. Beautiful, all the greenery. The first sight of 09:00 England…If you’ve never been there, it’s fascinating, it really was. And we finished up in Bournemouth. That afternoon, while we were travelling down over the lovely English countryside, the German Luftwaffe [Air Force] had come in and stealed across the….very low and came in over Bournemouth and made a heck of a mess of it. And quite a lot of casualties. So that opened

09:30 our eyes for us, and saw the first signs of the war. And they’d done that in retaliation for the bombing of the damns, earlier on they said. And there were a lot of people killed. They were still taking them out, so it sort of sobered us up a little bit. But we weren’t there very long. We were in digs in one of the suburbs of Bournemouth. They used to take big old houses over and put us in barracks there.

10:01 As soon as they found accommodation for us, they sent us over to Brighton. Which is still on the seaboard there. Two big hotels there, the Metropole and the Grand, and they put us into great big room in the Metropole, and it became the Australian holding station, and from there we were being directed out to the rest of the RAF [Royal Air Force]. And we ate in the Grand, and the Grand

10:30 was….I think we ate in the Grand, I’m sure we did. And the Grand was also the headquarters for the Australian Air Force at that time, I think. But anyhow, we weren’t there very long. They sent me then, or several of us, up to an airfield called Fair Oaks. Which was is in the Windsor Great Park. And

11:00 there they put us back on Tiger Moths. And the instructor said, “You’re here to get you used to the English countryside from the air. Because you’re going to find it vastly different to Canada.” And my word, we did. Villages and houses all over the place. Railway lines running all over the place. Green fields, trees, the whole lot. Quite different.

11:30 to anything that we had been used to.

What sort of adjustments did that require?

Well, you had to learn that instead of having only one railway line running east and west, and one running North and South, if you ever got lost, you’ve got a multitude of them. Because in those days, all the little villages were serviced by railways. So you’ve got them all over the place. So if you ever got lost and wanted to know exactly where you were, otherwise you’d finish up anywhere. It was quite a bit

12:00 of adjustment. Also the weather was different. A lot more low cloud. The weather is a shocker in England. Sunny one moment, and raining like anything the next. Quite different to the open areas of Canada. The first thing the instructor said was “Well, Sanders, how do you like the Avro Anson?” I said, “Great.” He said, “What about the Tiger?” I said, “I love the little Tiger.”

12:30 He said, “Any troubles with her when you were going through on Tigers?” And I said, “As a matter of fact I did.” I said, “I couldn’t do inverted flying,” that’s upside down, “I never seemed to be able to hold her in there, always fell out of it.” And I said, “The other thing is I never seemed to be able to do a nice tight slow roll.” I said, “I well remember the squadron leader who took me up for my Wings test. He said

13:00 to me, ‘Well, you’re a bit sloppy on that slow roll Sanders.’” And I said, “Yeah, but you don’t slow bombers do you, sir?” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, I want to be a bomber pilot.” He said, “A young fellow like you? All you young fellows want to go on fighters. Spitfires and Hurricanes.” I said, “No, I want to go on bombers.” He said, “Oh well, forget about that then.” You know, that’s on my wings test. And the chap said, “Well, come on then, let’s have a go at it now and see what you’re like now.” Well, I had no trouble at all.

13:30 Slow roll to the Kingdom Come. I could turn her upside down and go along for miles. It’s amazing really, just that little bit more experience in bigger aircraft. And that was real fun in the Tiger, but we were only there for a week. And then they sent us off to a place, Kidlington, which is just north of Blenheim Palace, which is north of Oxford, just outside of Oxford.

Before you tell me about that.

14:00 Tell me about this decision you had already made to get into bombers?

Oh, right from the word go, I always wanted to be a bomber pilot. There was something behind that there, though. It must have been the fact that all the airliners that were in service then, and of course Uncle being in the airlining business, they were all twins, and you didn’t get many twin engine fighters. If I was going to get experience in the air force, it wants to be in the heavier stuff,

14:30 you see, if I want to come back and get into airliners. I think that was in the back of my mind.

So you were already thinking of flying as a long term….

Oh, yes. Things do change. Life gets along.

How early had you fixed on flying as a career?

Right from the moment I got into that Tiger Moth at Narrandera for the first time and thought, ‘Gee, this is great.’ It never worried me the least bit. I felt a different person in the

15:00 air. I was never scared, never scared of flying at all. I just felt a different person. I became one with the aircraft, as far as I was concerned. I had more fuss and bother driving cars than I did flying an aeroplane. Added to which, of course, there is a background there in the family in the airline industry. And I thought a man would have to be a bit of a mug not to be able to get a job in that, if worse comes to worse.

15:31 But it didn’t work out that way.

Tell me about Kidlington.

Kidlington. Kidlington we flew Airspeed Oxfords. Now they put us onto Oxfords because I’m pretty sure it was in their wisdom that they had to sort us out. Because the Anson was such a docile aircraft. It didn’t have any vices. And

16:00 most aeroplanes have vices in one way or another.

Like what?

Like stalling, at different points. Lots of little idiosyncrasies that make it, for you, not to take it for granted. A bit temperamental, sort of thing. You’ve got to know exactly what they’re capable of and how to treat it. If you were a bit laxidaisy with the Anson, she would

16:30 almost….She’d take you in, just about herself. She was almost a knowing old aircraft. Also, if you stalled an Anson, you pull the nose, you closed the engines down, you pull the nose up, she got up to the point of stall, she’d start shaking herself silly, letting you know she was pretty close to the point of stall. And then she’d docilely, she’d just drop her nose down and gradually gain her speed, on her own account,

17:00 without the engines, and when she got enough flying speed she’d sum up again where you’d put her again, after the stall, and she’d keep on doing that. And no troubles. Not so with the Airspeed Oxford. If there was a port….the port was the little covers on the wings or anything open, that would cause turbulence enough to cause her to drop a wing, as easily as anything. You’d pull her up into a stall and she’d just kick her wings straight over, one way or the other. And she’d catch student

17:30 pilots very much unawares, you know. That was very important to know how the aircraft was affected by stalling, because after all when you land, you stall your aircraft. That’s the last thing that happens. It stalls onto the runway. In those days. You can go pretty well running in now, I think. But in those days, we stalled them on, more of less. We came in, got her in the flying position, eased everything back and she just dropped straight on.

18:01 Lots of little things. And, as a result, we buried quite a few of our fellows. One of my mates, he flew straight into the side of Snowdon, the big mountain in Wales. It was one of the hazards in the area, flying, because it was the tallest mountain, and it was often covered in cloud,

18:30 and if you were lost and you went through that cloud and you hit that you were a goner. That finished him. So we spent a lot of….well, three or four, it seemed a lot at the time, on burial parties for our mates. And that’s all part of the hardening process. You harden up. You’re not me, I won’t get like that, sort of thing. But anyhow, while I was on there, they sent us over

19:00 to, for a week’s training, what they called Beam Approach Training, that’s blind flying. So we can learn to manipulate the beams, work out the distances across, and all the rest of it. Indicate to us how we were coming in, to come in to do a blind landing in bad weather. Very important, instrument flying. And that was all done under the hood. You didn’t see out.

19:30 If you’re not familiar with beam approach….are you familiar with that at all? In the old days, it’s probably very similar today, you have what you call a….there’s a beacon, which if you go down the middle line you get a solid buzzing sound. Like that. And if you go on the left hand side or the right hand side, you either get dashes, or you get dots. But when you get across…

20:00 you knew you were somewhere near a beam, when you went a long way out from the airfield, you’d try and find out where the beam was, you’d cut across it, you were on your earphones, you knew where you were across the beam. And then you’d get onto the other side and say, “Ah, dashes this side. I’m on the left hand side.” Or on the right hand side. And you’d gradually come in until you got back onto the beam, and the dashes and the dots all came in together. Then you’d start coming in, and when you came into what they called a Cone

20:30 of Silence, I think it was, where nothing happened, you flew straight over that. Then you got another beacon, and you started to drop down, and you got another beacon with a different signal, another, and you come straight in to land. That’s it roughly. It’s a long time since I’ve done it, and it maybe quite inaccurate, today as I’m telling you about it. But it was important that we knew how to do these completely, when the whole of our part of the cockpit was completely covered in.

21:01 So we had to do that for a week, pass that course, and come back and finish at….Kidlington. The other funny thing that happened at Kidlington, I’d brought myself a brand new bike. A lot of these places were dispersed a bit, and it was handy to have a bike. And I left it at the railway station at Kidlington while I went into Oxford and came back and my brand new bike

21:30 had gone. I’d lost my bike. I remember that distinctly. From there we were posted to RAF Lichfield. Now RAF Lichfield was just north of Birmingham, and it was the Australian station for training crews for going on to the Australian squadrons. And they were flying Wellingtons there. That was the big heavy twin engine bomber

22:01 And it was also the place where we crewed up for the first time. Up to now I had been flying on my own. Now I was getting a crew.

How does that process work?

Well, you’ve got a corner there and a corner there and a corner there and a corner there. They put navigators in that corner, bomb aimers in that corner, wireless operators in that corner and gunners in that corner. And then they put all the pilots in the middle, they

22:30 said, “Go for it, fellows.” So you picked your navigator first….No, I didn’t pick my navigator first, because I looked over at the bomb aimers and I saw this tall fellow I was telling you about, and I said, “Rosey?” And he said, “Sandy?” “What are you doing here, Rosey?” He said, “Oh, I scrubbed at Amberley. They didn’t like me flying, so I took a full observers course.” He said, “I’m on

23:00 bomb aimers here.” A full observer was a navigator bomb aimer, but he was taking on the bomb aimers course. I said, “Well, heaven’s sake, would you like to fly with me?” He said, “Bloody oath I would.” I said, “That’s a compliment, thank you very much. You didn’t even know I could fly.” He said, “Ahh, but we know each other.” I said, “Come on then, let’s find a navigator.” So we went over….because he could already navigate. He was a boon for me as far as I was concerned. He was an older man, he was 32,

23:31 whereas I was only 19, coming 20….Well, I was 20 then, because I was 19 before I went out. Yeah, I was 20…..no, I probably wasn’t 20 then. Time gets away, I might still have been 19. Anyhow, he was a navigator, a fully qualified navigator and he could fly a twin

24:00 engine aircraft. And I thought, ‘I don’t get a second pilot. He’s going to do me fine. If I lose my navigator, he can do me for a navigator.’ And the fact that he was 32, he was a good stabilising influence for us. So we went over and we found this young fellow, quite young man, with a shy look about him, and we said, “What’s your name, son?” “Maxy Reesen [?].” “Where do you come from?” “Tamworth.” “Oh, that’s not a bad place to come from. Would you

24:30 like to be our navigator?” “Oh well, if you’ll have me.” And he turned out to be exceptionally good. Poor chap has passed away since. Both of those two gentlemen have passed away. The only ones in my crew that have passed away. We said, “Righto, come on, join us. We’ve got to find a wireless operator.” So we went over to the wireless operators, and we finally saw this chap and looked at him and said, “Yeah, he looks a likely type.” That’s all you had to go on. You had nothing else to go on. And he

25:00 saw the three of us and he said, “What are you looking for? A wireless opp?” We said, “Yeah, we are. We’re looking for a wireless opp.” We said, “Are you available?” He said, “Yeah.” We said, “Would you like to come with us?” “Righto,” he said. “And what’s your name?” He said, “My name is Cyril Davis and I come from Perth.” I said, “Good place to come from. Right.” So he was there. I said, “Now, what have we got? We’ve got those three. We’ve got to have another one. A gunner. A rear gunner.” That was the full crew for a Wellington.

25:30 And we finished with a chap by the name of Gordon Elliot, he came from Bristol. An Englishman, a little Englishman. And he was one year younger than me. Very shy young man. Didn’t know what to make of these Australians. This crew of Australians. He’s going to fly with Australians. He didn’t know what to make of us. Finally, he warmed to us and he found we weren’t too bad at all. He thoroughly enjoyed it with us. We

26:00 lost track of him, too. I can’t find him, wherever he is. I don’t know. We’re trying to, but we can’t find him. Anyhow, we flew on Wellingtons. That was an interesting course, we learnt to fly together. And there’s some interesting happenings there. Which you may be able to deal with later on. There’s something there I can tell you about on the Wellingtons that stands out in my mind.

26:30 Tell me how you became….You wanted to be a bomber pilot. How were you selected for that?

Oh, the moment you get onto twins. I was selected from…It must have come in with my records, because the squadron leader would have made me….who took me on my wings test, would have made a report on that, I would

27:00 think. I think that’s where it must have come from, because I never said anything about it. Or it might have been the long arm of coincidence, I don’t know. Most of the Australians who went to Canada were trained on twins, with the Bomber Command set-up. That’s part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, you see.

So it was really an inevitable step?

27:30 I think so. It was just the way things go. The moving hand moves on, sort of thing.

How long were you training on the Wellington?

On the Wellington. I think the average of most courses was about three months. I think it was, I would have to refer back to my log book again to tell you accurately. There’s a lot of time in between courses.

28:00 Wasting time, doing very little. The whole machinery of the training thing, they had to have these courses coming and feeding, then they had to have them all ready to go in, one after another. It was a magnificent effort that went on, during the war. We used to blame them, because we were just sitting around, doing nothing. They’d often send us on leave and things like that, to acquaint us more with England and that.

Tell me about getting used to being in England then. What was that

28:30 like?

Oh, I found it lovely. I had no trouble with it at all. Most of us did. The girls were nice, and everything else. I never got any attachments at that stage. I didn’t want any attachments….get the chop, if I get the chop, anybody will. If anybody was going to get it, I’m going to get the chop. I more or less said, oh well, it’s getting a bit real. But no, it was good fun really. So much to see. So

29:00 much historically about the place. So many places that you’d only read about. If you got a few days leave you were able to go and have a look at these places. And everybody was very kind to us. They loved the Australians, the Pommies. They thought we weren’t too bad at all, in our navy blue uniforms. No, it was good.

Were there any particular challenges or difficulties in learning to

29:30 fly the Wellingtons.

Oh yes, there was quite a lot to do, for a pilot to do, just on his own. She’s quite a big aircraft. I was glad to get off them, in a way, really. Although I had no problems with her. Once I’d learned to know that if she got her nose down, she didn’t want to get it back up unless you got it back out with the

30:00 twins and that, to get it back out, because she got progressively nose heavy. Not like the old Ansons where you dropped the nose and it came back up again, she just got progressively nose heavy. A few of our fellows were killed in them, lost a few crews in them. A lot of skill attached to flying that aircraft. More than what had been on the others. But you do get used to it. You’ve got the balance of a crew, too.

30:30 Learning to fly as a crew is the thing. It’s a bit like learning to live in a retirement village. You have to learn how to live in a retirement village. You have to learn how to fly as a crew and work together. Anything like that. We were rolling ourselves into a crew, we had our ups and downs, but we learned quickly, we learned very quickly. I often wondered how these fellows

31:00 would ever dare to fly with me. They knew nothing about me. Gee, I’d want to know whether that fellow could fly or not. Well, we’ll take him up for a test and see whether he can fly suitable. I mean, some of them got the raw end of the stick, I’m sure. But my boys seemed to think that I was pretty good.

Were there any narrow escapes in the training?

Yes, but they’re yet to come.

31:31 There was one or two little things that didn’t amount to more than scares. But the next part of the training it became more real.

What was the next part of the training?

The next part was onto the Stirling, which is the largest aircraft in the Royal Air Force at the time. The Stirling was intended to be the big heavy bomber for the Royal Air Force. But

32:01 she had one fault. The new electronics in her weren’t always working effectively. And also, she wasn’t very happy flying above ten thousand feet. She was quite happy to be at eight thousand, ten thousand, she flew very nicely indeed. She was an enormous aircraft.

32:30 Four engines, she was the first four engine job. But before that, I’m jumping the gun a bit. Before that we were posted to RAF Scampton, for a while, and that was aerodrome the 617 Squadron, the Dambusters flew out of. And there’s a bit of history there. And it was at RAF Scampton that we picked up the last two members of our crew. And that was our

33:00 flight engineer and his name was Don Brett. He came from just outside London. And we picked up Jeffrey Swindels, as our mid-upper gunner. So that completed our crew. We had our full crew. Having a flight engineer was a boon for me. Because I couldn’t have possibly handled four engines on my own. There’s so much to do. So he really became virtually

33:30 my second pilot. He looked after all my engines. Looked after the changing of the petrol over from the various tanks, and everything else. And they were terrific. They joined us in the crew pretty well. We had a bit of trouble with Jeff at one stage, but that’s minor. We soon got him into shape.

What sort of troubles?

He was a little bit inclined to do his own thing. And he had to learn to take into 34:00 account the crew that he was with. But he was a fantastic fellow. It was just the early bits and pieces. So then we were posted down to RAF Wigsley, and we went onto Stirlings. RAF Wigsley and Stirlings. We had one very interesting thing. I came back from a cross country one night, and we

34:30 used to have a trailing aerial for the wireless operator. He put that out once we got up to height, trailing aerial down the bottom. And he’s supposed to wind that in when you were coming in to land. We were coming in just on dawn, we went out all night on a big cross country, because they were getting us ready for squadrons then, you see. All of a sudden all the lights in the aerodrome went out. The rear gunner said, “Skipper! There’s lot of sparks behind us.” And the

35:00 wireless operator went “Oh God, Skipper, I didn’t pull the trailing aerial in.” And he shorted all the lights in the station, everything went out. Got into a bit of trouble over that. He did, I didn’t. It was his duty to get that in as we were coming in. Everything went out, but it was just on dawn, so it didn’t affect my landing. I was able to see enough to put her in all right. I didn’t have any trouble with her.

35:31 I enjoyed flying her, really. And then we finished that course, and then we were waiting for the magnificent aircraft we were promised, the Lancaster. We’d heard so much about the Lancaster. “The only aircraft to fly, boys. If you can get on a Lancaster, she’s a beautiful aircraft.” We used to get that.

When did you first see the Lancaster?

We’d only seen them flying. But we were posted to

36:01 5LFS, Lancaster Finishing School, and we were only there for about ten hours flying, but the idea was for us to adapt to the Lancaster before we went to squadron. And we got down there, and we clambered all over this aircraft, and we learned all our drills. And we got everything okey-dokey. You had to be spot on for her. And we all fell in love with the machine straight away.

36:30 And then we had our first flight. And my instructor was another Australian, Johnny Forsythe, from up in Mackay. An accountant from Mackay. And he was in the instructor’s seat, and I was in first pilot’s, or captain’s seat, under instruction. And we had another chap in there putting my flight engineer through the routines. So we had a crew, that day,

37:00 of two extras. So we had nine of us on board that day. And it was about three o’ clock in the afternoon, and we’re racing down this runway, at RAF Syerston, when all of a sudden, the inside wing, a part of the wing flew off. And we were up to the point then of just about getting off. We were past the point of what they call “No Return,” where you’ve got to go on. You’ve

37:30 got nowhere to go, otherwise to go on. And this part of the wing, between the starboard inner wing and the starboard fuselage, flew back. And a bit of it flew off and took the top off the canopy of my mid- upper gunman’s turret, and just missed his head. And it caused the effect of having a diving brake, or an air brake, on, that part of the wing.

38:00 So between us, we pushed the throttles right through what they call “The Gate.” You’re only allowed to put that through there in an emergency. And you were only allowed to fly for about three minutes on that because the engines were at their absolute capacity. And having two pilots on was a boon in that respect. And we pushed it through the gate, and we got off, and at the end of the runway at Syerston,

38:30 there, there was the River Trent running. And the River Trent was about two hundred feet below us. And to get her off we had to jump her off, over the fence, and she came down and she was shaking, everything was shaking, and we already…we hadn’t been able to do anything about the crew. They were still in their crew positions. But with that two hundred feet, we were able to get flying speed. Just enough flying speed. And we were able to pull her out of the

39:00 Trent, and get up to around two hundred feet or more. We called, “Mayday, mayday.” “What’s your problem?” We told them, they said, “Can you bring her around? Do you think you can get her in again?” We said, “Well, we’re going to try.” In the meantime they said, “Well, see what you can do.” So everything was cleared for us, to come in. And we made a very nasty, little circuit around and came in, aimed on the runway….

39:30 We’d had to pull the wheels up, you see, to get off, because there was a fence in front of us. So the wheels came up, just over that, and then down. When we came back around….in the meantime I was praying, and I was telling the boys, I said, “Pray fellows, because it’s close.” They were all put in crash positions, except the engineer and us two pilots. And we were both really well strapped in,

40:00 heavily strapped in. I mean, I’m sitting up like this now, but my straps were so far, I was right down like this. So tight I could hardly move, but I could manoeuvre. Everything went. All the escape hatches, everything was jettisoned out. Everybody was in crash positions. And we came round, and we headed in on the runway, and the instructor said, “I think we might try for a wheels down landing.”

40:30 And we had to make our decision quickly, that was the one bad decision we made.

Can I stop there? Tape 3

00:34 Okay Noel, we’re coming in to land, you said this decision you made..

We made the decision to drop the wheels. We would have been about a hundred feet from the top of the runway, we put the wheels down and that was the worst thing that could have happened because we stalled her, straight away. We were only just flying above the point of stall. And bear in mind aircraft was really rattling

01:00 like mad, all the time, all our way around. And also we had no option, we couldn’t go around again, because the engineer said all the engines are off the clock. That meant they were overheated, right off. He said they could blow off any time. So we had no option, we had to do something. We had to go in on this. We were lined up on the runway, and as soon as the nose dropped down, the screen said ‘Kick on left rudder.’

01:30 And we both kicked on left rudder together. And that was just sufficient for us to get us off the runway, which is a hard surface, onto the grass, at the side. One wheel hit the grass first, and it blew off to the left. That in itself created a disturbance, which pushed the other wheel down, and it went off the other side, and I don’t remember much more except the fact that we skated across this grass, and

02:00 I must have been knocked out, because when I realised what was happening, I found myself the only person left in the aircraft. All the others wee scuttling across the field, and there was a slight little dip in the air field, and they were getting there because they expected it to blow up. And they hadn’t realised

02:30 that I hadn’t got out. So I snapped a little thing here which released everything, and I went out the top and I was only a matter of three feet from the ground, because that’s how close it was, it had squashed all the aircraft up coming across. Had it been on the runway, we would have no doubt blown up. The sparks and that would have pushed it out. I got out, and I was

03:00 just getting out and I heard them yelling, “Where’s Skipper? Where’s Skipper?” And I think a couple of the boys turned around, “There he is! Come on, Skip! Come on Skip!” And I jumped and I ran like mad, and I hadn’t got the parachute on fortunately, because it was a seat type parachute, and doing that released me, you see. And I got there, and they said, “Where have you been?” Funny.

03:31 We laid down there, flat as anything, taking as much cover as we could, because we really did expect it to go up. And meantime, those wonderful fellows in the fire engines came out, and they covered it with foam and that and stopped it. Needless to say, the aircraft was a complete write-off. We were taken then, in the ambulances to sick bay, and they said to me “Well, how do you feel?”

04:00 I said, “Well, I’m all right,” I said. “But what’s wrong with my nose?” And right across here, was a big cut across there. They said, “Well, you’ve hit the front of your cockpit, once you hit.” I said, “But I was so firmly strapped in, I wouldn’t have thought that I could hit it.” And they said, “Well, you must have done.” But in those days, they didn’t think about my

04:30 neck. It wasn’t paining then, at all. They didn’t try and ask me about whiplash or anything like that. They just passed us all. They said, “Okay boys, the sooner you can get up into the air the better again,” sort of a thing. I think they put a bit of plaster over my nose, and that was all. But that distance there, from where my head was here to you, would be that far away. And that was how far I moved

05:00 in the crash. The whole of the seat and everything must have gone forward. And that’s the sort of thing that just temporarily knocked me out. I was the last out. I wouldn’t have been the last in the normal way, because the hole was straight above me. If you had to get out of a Lancaster at all, that was the best way to get out. Because I never ever thought I’d get out if

05:30 we were shot down, you know. If we had to get out of the burning aircraft, I never thought we’d never get out, because of the Gs and everything else, the forces that are active on an aircraft when it’s in a bad way, you wouldn’t get out of your seat. But that’s it, so….

Was that a lasting injury to your neck then?

It gave me trouble off and on, and I’ve never really associated with it, this crash.

06:00 And in later years it gave me quite a lot of trouble. So my doctor said, “I think that you’ve got a good case.” So he put me in for a pension, and they gave me a pension on it. I had the backing there, it’s in the log book, and also the crew backed me up on it. But, off and on, it came. And I never took much notice of it, until, as you get older, these things catch up with you. So I have to watch how I sleep,

06:30 and watch how I throw my neck around. If I throw it around too much talking to you, stop me, will you? Because I’ll know about it for sure. So that’s it.

What was the aftermath of the crash then?

The aftermath? A court of enquiry, and they established that this aircraft was one of the first of the aircraft to be built. And she was old enough to have been put onto a training station. She was no good for

07:00 being used on the squadrons, you see, she wasn’t up to scratch. And there had been a modification to the clips that hold that part of the wing. It was just like that section, it flew up like that, you see, and the clips underneath hadn’t been modified. They said it was no fault of yours at all. These modifications hadn’t been done on this particular aircraft. It was just time for it to go. It could have happened anywhere, anytime.

07:33 So they exonerated us all completely.

How did your next trip on the Lancaster feel, then?

Not really any trouble. We got confidence back very quickly. As a matter of interest, that night, the boys said, “You’re going into Nottingham with us tonight, Skipper.” Because Nottingham was only about eighteen miles away. “You’re coming in, we’re going to into town.” They took me into town, and they took me to a place

08:00 called Palais de Dance, where all the lovely girls are. A dance hall. And that night I met my wife, of nearly sixty years. Fifty eight years just next week. Amazing, isn’t it?

Can you tell me a bit about the meeting?

Yes. I had these two girls up, this mate and I, were just together. And we talked to them. And

08:31 we had a very interesting evening, as a matter of fact. And that was it. The lady, later on when I came back to Syerston as an instructor, I re-introduced myself to her and we got on very well. I was in Syerston for a long time, you see, so…

When did you get posted to an operational squadron, then?

At the end of the course there on the Lancaster.

09:00 We learned to fly the Lancaster on one engine, on two engines, on three engines and on four engines. Never had an aircraft like that, where we could fly it on one engine, big four engine aircraft. And you could fly on one engine, as long as you had plenty of height, you’d keep her flying. Marvellous.

So did you like the Lancaster?

Oh, marvellous. Wonderful. Not a word against her. No vices, just like the old Anson. A beautiful aircraft to fly. I say no vices.

09:30 In normal flight, no vices. But, if we had had to ditch in the North Sea, for instance, we would have been very unlikely to get out of the thing. They sink in three minutes. Some of them would last a bit longer than that, floating, but she wouldn’t. She’d sink in three minutes. But she was a marvellous aircraft. She carried the heaviest bomb loads of the war, and she

10:00 was a pilot’s aircraft. You could throw her around, and she’d take more. It was good. And so we were posted to 463 RAAF Squadron, at Bodington, outside Lincoln. And we came in there on April the 10th, I think, of ’44.

And when did you fly your first

10:30 operation?

I flew my first operation as a second pilot, to a pilot who’d already got a few opps up, just to give me familiarisation. They’re all in my log books, and I can’t tell you those dates, accurately. But they’re all in my log book there. I went and that was so I could know a little bit about what was going on over the other side.

11:00 And then I took my crew and we did thirty-five trips together. But on the squadron. Do you want to know a bit about the squadron life? It was a life so different to the rest of all your training up to that stage. We were now….We were

11:30 warriors now, more of less. It was our job now, we were in the war, well and truly. And we had to get used to losing our mates. We had to get used to flying in terrible weather. We had to put up with a lot of things we didn’t have to put up with all the time in training. But

12:00 we had a comradeship which was second to none. And morale in the squadron was wonderful. And right from the person who made you a cup of tea in the morning, and brought you a cup of tea in the….right the way through, they were all fantastic. It was a whole station that worked together as a unit. And flying types of course, they were the kings, I suppose, or the

12:30 princes or whatever you like to call them of the station. But it all…the station all revolved around the flying of the squadrons. On our Squadron, we had 467 Squadron, which our sister squadron, that was in the Royal Australian Air Force squadron as well. And RAF Waddington. And my first wing commander was wing commander Rollo Kingsford Smith, nephew of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith. Excellent man, then I had, 13:00 he finished his tour of opps, and I had another excellent wing commander, wing commander Billy Forbes, the late wing commander Billy Forbes, because he was shot down after I left the Squadron. And he, in later years I found, I came in contact with his brother, and his mother and father, of all places in Hornsby. They had a shoe shop in Hornsby, and I had a menswear shop in Hornsby, and I never associated them with that same Billy Forbes until we

13:30 started talking. Wonderful man, he was. But the…On the squadron, it was a life that, had we not been shot down, or had the chances of being shot down, or not coming back, would have been superb, really. I got my commission actually,

14:00 at Syerston, came through. I hadn’t been commissioned at that stage. The commission came through and then I was made up to flying officer very quickly. From pilot officer to flying officer very quickly. Because all captains of aircraft had to be flying officers, and they assumed that I was a pretty good captain. I think I must have been.

Tell me about the first opp you flew then as a pilot?

14:30 The first opp was with the crew. The first opp with the crew was to Brunswick, in Germany. And the thing I remember most about Brunswick, was not only the fact that the crew were with me, but also the fact that we got up to around fifteen thousand feet I think it was,

15:01 and I lost my air speed. Now the air speed is….There’s a pedo head, what they call a pedo head at the side in the front. And that feeds in air to a series of things that shows you your air speed, your actual air speed. It’s very accurate. And pilots rely on the air speed, because if you get too low an air speed, you go down,

15:30 don’t you? It’s most important for navigation, too, to be on a set air speed, and everything else. And it disappeared, completely. We had been travelling along very comfortably at a certain air speed, so all the throttles and the boosters and everything else were all set right, and they were running quite well. And that was going

16:00 into the target. So I said, “Righto, we’ll stick to this. We’ll set those settings. As long we don’t do anything silly, we should be right.” Which we were. We got to the target, and that was his first time to get us to a target. Right on time. We dropped our bombs. And whilst we were over there, we realised that our poor little rear gunner wasn’t

16:30 very well at all. He was very nervous and he was sick as anything, and he was stuck right back in the tail. So I made it the rule there and then, that one or other of us must keep on talking to him. And we did that, on that trip, so if I didn’t talk to him somebody else would be talking to him. “How you going out there, Gordon?” And all the rest of it. So he didn’t feel he was stuck right out there. But he was very sick, and he wouldn’t be much use to us at all.

17:00 But my mid-upper gunner, up top, was right on. He said, “I’ll watch out for you, Skipper.” So he was all right. So we came back, and I can’t recall much more about that except….The only time I can recall things fairly accurately is to look at my log book. Because I’ve got notes in there, pilot’s log book. I’ll show you that later. And I can tell you then pretty quickly. If I had that in front of me now, I’d tell you straight away, but I haven’t got it in front of me, so it’s coming from the

17:30 top of my head. But we got back over the North Sea and we were dropping down. We dropped down out of icy conditions, and I got my air speed back. Because I wasn’t looking forward to coming in to land without an air speed indicator. But that was the only option. You had to come in and hope that we would be able to come in all right. And it was a well known fact in the squadrons, that most crews were

18:00 lost in their first five operations. So it’s a dicey time for everybody. Some of them only ever made one trip, and they were lost on it. That was the terrible thing about it. So you were very keen to get through your first five ops, because you were right then for ten, and then you had a bit of a period then up to thirteen and fourteen, then you had another period….it seemed to go like that. Bit of a superstition, I suppose. But it was backed up by statistics, it turned out. And afterwards we went through them all.

18:30 But my air speed came back. What a boon. So we came back and we landed beautifully.

How had it gone?

It had gone because we had got into icing conditions and there had been water in it, and it had frozen, and had stopped the air getting through. We couldn’t get out to do anything about it. There’s a heater on it, too, now the heater must have gone bust, too. Because the heater was supposed to stop it freezing up. We never had that trouble again.

19:00 So….

How do you mentally prepare then for such a dicey job?

Those conditions?

No, just the fact that your first five are the most dangerous missions. How did you mentally prepare? Most of us differ in how they feel about things. As far as I was concerned, I prayed every time I took an aircraft in the air.

19:30 I prayed for guidance and for care. I believe, now you might laugh, and others might laugh, too, but I believe that I had a guardian angel. Because there are things that happened in the air, and things that happened to me, that couldn’t be accounted for, otherwise. But I never failed to offer a prayer for guidance and safety. For me and the crew. So,

20:00 that was probably my only preparation. If it was to be otherwise, it was to be otherwise. It was sort of ‘que sera sera’, what will be will be. That’s the attitude I had to take, and I think it got me through.

Can you give me an example of one of the incidents that you couldn’t really account for?

I can do, but it’s operation number thirteen.

Oh, that’s okay. We’ll jump to number thirteen.

20:30 This is only one of them. I want to tell you beforehand, that my aircraft was JOU, U for Uncle. She was one of thirty-two aircraft which finished the war without being shot down. She finished with a hundred and fifteen, a hundred and twenty trips to her credit. And she’d been knocked about pretty horribly. And a lot of fellows wouldn't fly her. They gave her to me because I was the kid in the squadron. They said, “You can have her Sandy,”

21:00 so I had her. She was renowned for not being flyable above eighteen thousand feet. Now a good Lancaster, with a full bomb load, would go up to twenty-five thousand feet and still be flyable. What I mean by flyable, you could do evasive actions and things like that. She wouldn’t fall out of the sky. But I could take my JOU Uncle up to twenty thousand,

21:30 which was as high as I got, and the moment I did an evasive action, getting away from a fighter or something, she dropped down to eighteen thousand feet straight away. So I used to say, “Well, this is my bombing height, eighteen thousand feet.” Now this meant that above me, the bulk of the force were up there. Up to seven hundred aircraft sometimes. Above me. Up there.

22:00 There might have been. They might have been twenty thousand, twenty-two thousand, twenty-one thousand, various heights. I couldn’t see them, because it was night-time, but I sure could see the bombs if they fell down in front of me. And nobody hit us. They all said, “How did you get through?” I said, “Well, there you are.” That’s the way it goes. I’ve been so close to bombs. I saw them, I watched them go down.

22:34 That was more on daylights we saw them, then. But poor old JOU Uncle, on this, our thirteenth trip, we were running down the runway, we were going to a target called Rennes. It was a marshalling yards in France, just behind the lines. Just after D-Day. And we were

23:00 backing up the army, sort of softening up these places, where the Germans were bringing in their reinforcements. Taking off down this runway, and bless my soul, I lost a wheel. And I was up to the stage where I couldn’t stop. I had a full bomb load, full load. What happened was she blew out, the tyre blew out, completely. And then she lurched over like that, and I was able to get her up again. And I called for

23:30 full power through the gate from the engineer. He realised it too, and he had it through the gate. This is the same as when we had before. And I bounced that aircraft along, to get up speed, I bounced her on one wheel, and I’d pull her up, and she’d drop down again, and I’d pull her up. And then the end of the runway’s coming up. Once again, at the end of that runway, there was a dip down. A dip down into…it wasn’t into a river, but it was an escarpment,

24:00 and the airfield was built on top of this escarpment. And the dip was down the end of this main runway. There was a fence there, and this main runway. And we got along, and the reports that came back to us later on, there was a lot of big brass in the control tower watching all this, and the only one that was able to tell them when I got airborne, was a little WAAF [Women’s Auxiliary Air Force] on control. She stayed at her post,

24:30 all the rest of them were flat on the ground because they expected me to blow up. I bounced her along, and I got her down for the last, and I said, “Well, we’ve got to get off this time, Don.” And she bounced and she bounced, and the fence is coming up and the end of the runway. And I bounced her again, and up she went over it, and she dived down into this and I got air speed. Amazing. Amazing.

25:00 That should never have happened. I should have gone in at the end of that runway. But we got air speed and away we went, flew out, pulled the wheels up, there was only one. And I broke radio silence….You’re not allowed to break radio silence when you’re in operations. I had to tell them that my tyre was on the runway, because there were other aircraft taking off after me, and it would have been a hazard to them. So all I did, I pressed my button and said

25:30 “Tyre on runway.” And a voice came back, “Thank you.” And they were able to get somebody out there and move it. And so we got over there, now this is not the end of this, this is my thirteenth trip. We got over there and we couldn’t identify the target. We made four runs across that target before we could identify it. Because we didn’t drop bombs indiscriminately over occupied 26:00 country. It was a different story when we got over Germany, if we had them, we dropped them, and we got out of the way. He was the enemy, but as far as we were concerned, we had to save as many lives as we could over occupied country.

Where was the target?

Rennes in France. In Northern France. It was just behind the lines actually, where they were on D-Day. The last

26:30 run in, he got a bead, he said, “Right, I got her, Skipper. Right.” And I said, “Just as well, I can smell that cordite.” They’re shelling up at us. And one hit us. It didn’t hit anything particularly to do any damage, but my navigator, he wasn’t doing anything because he was already waiting for us to leave. He got us over the target. The navigator would normally be over his table like this,

27:00 but he was sitting back, like that, and a big bit of shrapnel came up there and took the side off his shoe, off the side of his leg and went out through the top. Now had he been bending over, I’m sure it would have gone through his body. Amazing. When we got back to base….no, we didn’t go back to base, we were sent to a crash base to land on one wheel. We got in there just ahead of a

27:30 front coming in that would have closed the base. We got into that. They said, “Righto, take number three.” Now there were about six runways all in parallel with each other, and as an aircraft crashed on one, they opened another one up and so forth. It was a crash ‘drome, purely for that. Up in Yorkshire, at a place called Carmody. He said, “Righto, pull up opposite the control tower.” I said, “You’re kidding.”

28:01 One wheel, and I’ve got to pull up outside the control tower. We did. We landed, the boys again were all in crash positions except my flight engineer, and he stayed to his post there, and he did exactly what I told him. I said, “When we get in, I want you to hold that wing up as long as you can, and put as much motor on and I’ll try to jiggle it with my other the controls.”

28:31 We came across, and we landed, and she came down and then she dropped, and she hit the….there was no tyre on, just the metal there, and we went along on that. And the propeller was just missing the runway, they were all spinning away. And there’s a control tower, right in the middle of the runway and we were right opposite it. So they put a wheel back on.

29:00 We didn’t fly back on her, another crew took us home. And somebody else went over and brought her back, and they counted forty odd holes in our aircraft. Besides that, we lost a tyre. So what do you reckon about that for number thirteen? That was the hairiest, for sure. That was one of the hairiest ones. But I never lost an engine. (BREAK)

29:38 I got a green endorsement for that, by the way.

What’s a green endorsement?

From memory it reads, “Instances of avoidance of damage to aircraft and personnel by exceptional flying skills.”

30:02 And in the air force you used to get either a green endorsement if you did something good, or you got a red endorsement if you did something that was bad. I never got a red endorsement. I got a DFC [Distinguished Flying Cross] later on, but the green endorsement meant a lot more to me than the DFC, but I suppose that had something to do with the DFC.

Did you fly all your operations out of the same base?

Yeah.

30:30 Yes. That was our home base.

Can I ask, when was your last opp?

My last op? Now, we got through our tour of thirty five opps rather quickly. Quicker than the average. It would have been nice if we had taken twice as long to get through them, because the life on the squadron suited us. But it was around D-Day, and we were backing up the troops. So we had a lot of shorter trips, and we were in and out a lot more often than we would have been had we been doing

31:00 the really big, long hauls. But my last trip with my crew, the last time we flew together as a crew, was August the 30th, I think…. Königsberg. Königsberg was in East Prussia.

31:30 And we took off with the sun at about four o’ clock in the afternoon, that position where we would be at four o’ clock and when we returned the next morning, the sun had risen and was about where it would be about eight o’ clock. I had been in the seat, just like this seat you’ve got me sitting on now, for ten hours and forty minutes, I think it was. And very little petrol left. One of the longest trips we ever had.

32:00 That was in to back up the Russians coming in onto the outside of Germany. That was our longest trip.

Were you aware that it was your last flight? Yes, yes. We knew. We wanted to get home. That was our last trip. They said, “You’ll be finished after this trips, so the best of luck.” Because some fellows went in on their last trip. It’s a great pity, to get all that way. After the thirteenth,

32:30 things settled down pretty well. There were other instances, but if I told you, you would need two or three tapes, you know the things that happened. Because what’s happened to me has happened to other people as well. But I thought I should tell you about that number thirteen with us. So we don’t worry about number thirteen anymore. Some of them said, “Well, that’s a pretty lucky number for us, Skipper.” I said, “We got through it, didn’t we?” That’s the thing.

Tell what happened

33:00 after your last operation? The war was still on?

Oh yes, it was definitely still on. After we got in, early that morning, so they let us sleep that day, and the next morning I was instructed to go to, what they called the base station, to be interviewed by the base commander, who was an

33:31 air commodore, I think it was. Very high brass. Big brass. And that was about…well, between…Syerston was beyond it. It was closer to our station than Syerston. So I went down to him and he seemed an old man, to a boy. I was still only twenty. But today, of course, he would look like

34:00 a young man to me. But he was the Old Man. To an expired man, a lot of servicing, getting to that rank, air commodore. And he said, “Congratulations. Come and sit down.” There again, normally you would have to stand, and wait. “Come and sit down. Tell me about it. How did you go?” I said, “Oh well, I’m here,

34:30 sir. That’s the main thing.” He said, “How do you feel?” I said, “I’m very shaky.” He said, “Well, you’ve been through a lot, haven’t you?” I said, “A fair bit. I’ve got the shakes.” He said, “Any other problems?” I said, “Not at this stage, really.” He said, “How do you like the Lancaster?” I said, “I loved it. It’s a beautiful aircraft. I loved it.” And I never lost an engine. They were Rolls Royce engines, and I never lost one engine in all the

35:00 time. A lot of them had to come back on one or two engines. And he said, “Well, what do you want to do now?” I said, “Well, what are my options?” He said, “Well, you’ll have six months supposedly getting over all this, instructing others.” He said, “You got the choice of going to LFS, a Lancaster Finishing School at

35:30 Syerston, or you’ve got a chance to go to Wigsley, where you’ve been through before, on the Stirlings.” He said, “You can please yourself which one you want to instruct on.” I said, “I’ll take the Lancaster, thanks very much.” He said, “I thought you might.” He said, “Righto, best of luck.” He said, “You’ll be right on Lancasters. If you like them that much, you’ll be able to instruct on them.” And so I finished up the war instructing in Lancasters. Because the war finished before it was time for me to do another tour of ops.

36:00 The second tour of ops would have been shorter. But a lot of them still bought it on their second tour, you know. There’s no guarantee for anybody on ops, if you’re going to get through. That’s just the way it goes. I mean, the most experienced people were still lost on ops. Sometimes very close to finishing their second tour. Sometimes finishing their first tour.

Were you looking forward to a second tour?

No. I wasn’t looking forward to going back to war, at all.

36:30 I’d had enough of war, thanks very much. I was pretty well in love then, too, with my wife.

When did you renew your relationship?

When I went back to Syerston. I was instructing there, not to the end of the war, I was instructing there to the end of the European war. Then I was sent to another station doing the same job.

37:01 And then…..that’s right. I had been moved from Syerston, Syerston was changed and they put it back onto squadron use, I think. They sent us all over to this other station, which was RAF Bodersford [Bottesford?], still flying on Lancasters and instructing. Basically our job was for purely for me to ask the pilots what the Lancaster could do, and then it was up to them after that….

37:39 The European war finished and we decided to get married, because I knew I would be coming back to Australia. And in the meantime, Bomber Command asked for volunteers to stay in England and instruct Tiger Force. Now Tiger Force were the people who were going to be changing

38:00 over from Lancasters onto the greater, the bigger job, the Lincoln, to come out and fight the Japanese. There were already people on the squadrons, and they wanted instructors to convert. Now I hadn’t flown the Lincoln, but they chose me, as one of them. There were six or seven of us, I think. And we were going to be going to various stations to convert on the Lincolns. We first had to be converted ourselves 38:30 on the Lincolns, but we were already established as screens, and so they chose me. So I was there, and we were sent to another station ready to do all that, and the atom bomb went down, praise the Lord, and that was the end of it. In the meantime I’d been married and was quite comfortable. I thought I was bringing my wife back to the land of milk and honey, but she soon had me back to England.

How long did you stay back there?

Sixteen years.

39:04 That was the extent of it. I learned to fly the Lancaster properly when I became an instructor, because I never had to feather an engine while I was ops, at all. But once I got on that, I was feathering engines right, left and centre. Starting and stopping in mid-air, you know. Showing them how she reacted to it, it was very good.

Thanks Noel, we’ve come to the end of this tape.

Tape 4

00:35 Noel, we’ve established an overview of your career. I would just like to go back now to your early life. Can you tell me was your childhood affected by the Depression at all?

Oh yes.

Tell me about that.

It was. But there were so many that affected likewise.

01:01 I was a child of the Depression. We were fortunate in one respect. We were living on a farm which would support us, bodily. We always had a meal. We always had milk to drink. We always had some vegetables which we grew, which I’m growing now for the fun of it. But all those things were

01:30 there, and if we didn’t have them, we would share with our friends. I felt terribly sorry for my Dad. One day he came to me and he said, “Noel, I can’t do any better for you than we’re doing.” He said, “But look at this cheque that I just got.” It was for twenty eight pound for one month, for all of our milk that we

02:00 worked hard at getting. The cows produced well. Dad was a fairly good dairy farmer. He wasn’t much good at cropping, but he was very good as a dairy farmer, I think. We had worked hard for that. We didn’t have milk machines in those days. We couldn’t afford anything really, anything other than the basics. Their farm was heavily mortgaged, so they had great trouble, heavily mortgaged to the bank, as so many of them

02:30 were. But we plodded along, and he said, “This has got to feed you all, and pay all my bills and pay my mortgage and everything.” Twenty eight pound. To me, even then, it was a pittance. I remember in 1935, Ford brought out the V8. A lovely saloon car, and there was a lovely one in the showroom.

03:00 Sam Mason’s showroom up in Kempsey. And for three hundred and sixty five pound. And Dad had been running an old T-Model Ford. She was pretty old. And I said, “Dad, that car there. We can afford that. Only a pound a day.” And that’s when he, sort of, gave me the lesson on economics there. Three hundred and sixty five

03:30 pound. And believe it or not, my best mate who I lost in the war, his father bought it. His father was a bit better, richer than my father was. And I did manage to drive that car one, just once, before I went away to the war. And it was a nice car. We had one pair of shoes. Never wore shoes to

04:00 school. Never played cricket in shoes. Just couldn’t afford it. The shoes were there for special days. Church, or going uptown, or going to the doctor or something like that. And Mum didn’t have any of the lovely things today which are necessities of life. A copper in the back there, with a dolly stick.

04:30 There was no central heating, no nothing. There was no electricity on the farm even, then, in those days. Oh, it was pretty tough. But, we caught a few fish occasionally. There seemed to be more fish about when were kids. There’s not so many fish up there now. Because we were surrounded with water, on our farm. We had the salt water and….We used to catch quite a few fish to help along with the budget. And

05:00 that war.….The economic situation in the country would have had a great affect on the number of young fellows joining up into the Services. Because then, they had a security, not only for themselves, but up to a point, they had a security for their family if they were killed. And these are the sort of things that had a great influence on the boys in the bush.

05:30 More so probably than the people in the city who weren’t so highly affected.

How important was it for you? For me? Oh, that didn’t worry me at all. I had no commitments, only myself. That didn’t worry me at all. That didn’t come into account at all. It did give me a chance to get away from the farm, I’ll not deny that. But it didn’t worry me from the point of view of the

06:00 benefits, the after care benefits. Even the benefits I’m accepting now from the DVA [Department of Veterans’ Affairs], I’m very grateful for them, really. But they didn’t have any affect on me. I was only a boy, really. I was green.

So what was your motivation for enlisting then?

I think as I said before, I’ve always wanted to fly. And I thought if I can get in the air force…I wasn’t interested in any of the other

06:30 services. And I think I probably could have stayed on the farm as a reserved occupation. But I got out of that, quietly. But I wasn’t interested….Dad always said to me, never get into the infantry. Little did he realise, of course, that we were the infantry of the air. We had to take it right to the front, all the time.

07:00 It was quite different…I know that the infantry down on the ground had it tough. But we had it tough up there, too. We had to go a long way to find our enemy, and fight him in the air.

Did your dad tell you about his infantry life?

Not a great deal, personally, no. As I say, the only times that we could find out much was if he had his mates around. And they talked into the long hours of the night, probably with a couple of beers.

07:30 And talked about the old days. I do remember distinctly hearing him say that he was on his horse, and he was raiding this big artillery gun up, and this shell came down and landed just under the horse, and it didn’t go off. He said, “My name wasn’t on it.” And that happened to me. That happened to me as well, because in later life, later on, we came

08:00 back from one of the trips and we had been harassed by a fighter, for some time, and we did really think that we might cop it that night. He was getting very close. We could see the tracers going across the top of the wings as we evaded him. And they called me out of bed and they said, “They want you down at the engineers office.” All right. He said, “Come down and have a look at your aircraft, Sanders. Come and have a look.”

08:30 He said, “See that hole there?” And there was just a weeping hole in the petrol tank, because the petrol tanks were self sealing, but they used to weep a little bit. And it was the main petrol tank. And he said, “You’ve got an unexploded round in there.” He said, “We’ve got to get that out.” Yeah. Sort of thing, akin sort of to Dad having that one land under him, yeah.

09:00 But, no he was like me, I never spoke to my children about the war. We didn’t want them to know anything about the horrors, that we knew about.

Why was that?

We wanted to protect them. There were horrors there…You don’t want to put people through that. It’s in the living rooms now. The old servicemen from the First World War, Second World War, would have the horrors

09:30 to see what they’re showing in our lounge rooms to all these innocent young minds. We’d never show them terrible things that were happening. Weird. It’s not good for the development of the person. Most of us feel the same way. It’s nothing to skite about, going and

10:00 killing men. When you think, and I think sometimes, I don’t allow myself to think of it too much, I’m responsible for having put a lot of people to death. After all, the buck stops somewhere. And I was the one who piloted the aircraft there. I had a very interesting experience….Perhaps I shouldn’t talk about this, this is since the war. Perhaps I shouldn’t talk about this….

10:30 Will you be cutting it, I suppose?

So is that something that occurs to you from time to time? The fact that the dropping bombs did kill a lot of people on the ground?

It does. You do think about it. And you do think of

11:00 the horrors of war. As opposed to that, when we were doing it, we were never too worried about it, because after all, they started it. And we had seen what had happened in England. You know, “You fellows started it. We didn’t have to come here and do this.” We didn’t want to come and do this. I think most of us felt this way. I mean, the

11:30 job had to be done, and we were the chosen ones for it, you see. Praise the Lord, he won’t hold it against me when I get up to the pearly gates. And a few of them allowed it to get to them. And I know one or two friends who committed suicide, because they allowed too much of that thought

12:00 to get into their psyche, into their brains. And they shouldn’t have done. Re-reading their notes and things like that. I put all those books of mine away for years and years and years. The log book and everything else, they were all just stacked away. I had to get the dust off them, later on, because people started asking questions, and I thought I better find out a bit of what I’d written down there. Specially when I started to write the memoirs for the kids. Because they said, “We want them, Dad. You’ve got to hand these on.”

12:30 So I’ve got them all written down, more specific, than probably talking to you, because I’ve had time to think now, ‘What else goes in here?’ Now it’s had to roll on, and I’ve omitted to tell you a few things. Not because I’ve wanted to, but it’s just the way it is. The way it goes.

So it is possible to be comfortable with having been in that situation, of having to drop the bombs?

Oh, I think so.

13:02 Specially so, after the war, when you become aware of all the facts. We weren’t aware of the facts of what was going on in those concentration camps, and that, you know. I had the question put to me, “Why didn’t you drop a bomb into the concentration camps because the poor fellows are going to get killed anyhow. And you would kill all the Germans perpetrating these acts.” I said, “We didn’t know. We weren’t told these things. We were only told what was necessary for

13:30 us to know.” We didn’t know about those. It’s only since the war, since everything has been brought out into the open, that it’s shown up in the light of it. When I went back to…I took my ground crew back to have a look at Cologne after the war finished. I flew over there at two thousand feet and I dropped down to a thousand feet at one stage, to get even lower….

14:02 We couldn’t believe the damage. The damage to that city. And that wasn’t the only one. Several of them, I took them round to these various places. And that was our lot, to be able to do that. Something to show them what they had been fighting for. I went to Cologne, about twenty years ago I think it was, less than that.

14:30 Twelve years ago. And that’s not the Cologne that I saw last, from the air. Beautiful city. The big cathedral was still standing there. Which was standing there when we flew over it. Because we missed the cathedral all together. As you come into Cologne at that low altitude, whereas before we had been way up there, and it’s different, it’s flat. But as we came into Cologne at low altitude, you could see the cathedral rising up out of the ground with nothing else around it. He said, “I wonder what’s that

15:00 building there?” I said, “Well, there’s a city around that.” And the city was flattened. Oh yeah, they did a lot of damage.

What was the feeling at the time, though, when you were going in and causing the damage? What was on your minds at that point?

Self preservation. That was the uttermost thing. Self preservation. Getting it done according to

15:30 the way we were instructed to do it. Getting it done, and getting out. With the least possible effort. It was a long way, away from home. Not only from Australia, it was a long way from base. And once you got out, you’ve still got to get through all those searchlights and that, that were right across the country. And the fighters and all the rest. They were all out there waiting. Oh, she was a jungle. A big black jungle one moment, and

16:00 full of light the next. Yeah, I had about nine or ten searchlights on me at one stage, and one big blue fellow, he came straight onto me, held me. And then the others circled all around me, and then they let go with all their guns. That was all right, all the guns were going, and the shells were coming up, we were getting around a bit. But it was so blinding, it upset my sight. I couldn’t drive a car at night for ages.

16:31 It upset my sight terrible, the night vision. The white light coming at you. The fellow had it on full beam, and you just had to look away from it like that.

Did that affect subsequent lights?

No, if you accept that I had red eyes. No, it was just a gradual thing that was, I think.

One thing that you said earlier

17:00 I wanted to ask a bit more about. You said that your Lancaster couldn’t get up to the altitude of the others…

Yes.

And so you were at risk of being bombed by your own friends. Tell me about that?

The risk of having bombs dropped on you was greater the lower you are. I mean, if you were on the top echelon, you wouldn’t get that.

17:31 You can imagine the number of aircraft they’ve got over a target, in such a short time. Twenty minutes or so, and they’ve got hundreds of aircraft right across, on a corridor. Just imagine them all outside here, trying to get through this door. And they’re all coming in, and they’re all going, and they’ve all got that target down there, because the target is only as a wide as the door, sort of thing. And they’re letting it go. The chances

18:00 of a collision were very high. The collision and bombs being dropped on you. I was more worried about bombs being dropped on me, because I had my boys looking out for any possible collision. It was everybody’s job to keep an eagle eye out. If you saw the movement of an aircraft anywhere pretty close, you made sure you were out of his way, if he was cutting across in front of you. Pretty active sort of life, for those hours that you’re up in the air.

18:30 You wouldn’t go to sleep on those trips, believe you me. No chance of it. I can recall that even on a training flight once, in the early days, diving away from the great big greeny coloured star, which I thought was the starboard light of an aircraft coming straight at me.

19:00 I came out of a big heavy cloudbank. And above it was clear sky, stars all over the place. And one of those big planets, it was a greeny colour, and it was right in front of me, and I stuck her into a dive to get away from him. And the boys said, “What’s up, Skipper? What’s happened?” And I said, “Didn’t you see that aircraft there?” Realising as I went around, that it wasn’t an aircraft at all, it was a star.

19:32 Dived her straight down to port, and it slowly slipped round over to that side. And I thought, ‘It’s still there, the beggar.’ If it was an aircraft it would have been gone, well and truly. But that was over England, that was. That was a funny thing. All these different things that happened.

So you were in a plane not being able to get as high as the others, yet the squadron thought that was an acceptable risk?

Oh yeah. That was acceptable.

20:00 Because some of the others would probably be bombing at that height, too, you see. They had different heights to bomb at, but mine was constant. You’d sometimes get different heights to bomb at, and other times you were told to get as high as you could.

20:30 So you can imagine them all getting up above me at eighteen thousand feet. They’d get up there, those fellows who would probably be bombing at low altitudes at other times. But not so me. Bombers, on a general bombing run, they used to make light of it. “Okay, Sandy, get as high as you can get.”

When you first began to learn to fly

21:01 what were the most difficult things to master?

That’s a difficult question. See, you’re flying a Tiger Moth, as I think I said to you earlier on, the fact that she was so sensitive on the controls, you couldn’t be ham-fisted on her. She was very, very sensitive. The slightest little movement of the joystick

21:30 and she would react to it straightaway. One way or the other. Now, I think learning to fly relaxed, because if you’re relaxed, you can do it right. But if you’re not relaxed, you hit them a bit hard. I don’t know. It’s a combination of so many things initially, when you’re learning to fly. But if you haven’t got

22:00 that inbuilt co-ordination in your system, I don’t think you would even get to first base, in the old days. One of my eldest grandsons, he and one of his mates just flew up the coast in a Cessna. And I’ve been in a Cessna, and I’ve had a go at a Cessna, and it’s just like driving a car. I said it doesn’t bear any resemblance at all to flying a Tiger Moth. The wheel is just like driving a car.

22:30 Same sort of feel to it. Of course, they rectified all these things, but the Tiger Moth, she was very, very light. And you’ll find the same thing happens if you ever do any gliding. Gliders are very, very light in the touch, because I’ve been up in a glider, had a go, and the chap says, “Well, you might have flown a Lancaster all right, but you’re pretty ham fisted on a glider, aren’t you?” So, that’s in the early days. You learn that.

23:00 What about landing? Is that a difficult skill?

It’s a feel. It’s a feel, really. They tell you everything, they show you how to do it, this is what you do, you check here, you’ve got to be able to judge the height you are….There’s a lot of judgement in it. You’ve got to have good vision, to be able to judge how high you are. All landings, there is a height assessment there, which comes into it. The moment you get down to very low altitudes,

23:30 height assessment is extremely important for a pilot. He’s got his instruments, fair enough, but if he can assess it visually, so much the better. And it’s sort of a sense you develop. See, it’s all training, really. The whole thing. It’s all about training. You get a raw recruit, but you get the boys….The boys from the bush were always good on long sight. And that’s what you very much

24:00 needed. Good long sight. And they were always exceptionally fine on long sight. My wife will tell that, up until recent years, I was exceptionally good on long sight. I could read things miles away without glasses, which she said, “It’s only a blur to me.” And I think they made quite good pilots, a lot of the country boys. Well, I know they did. Quite a few of them I’ve known personally. Exceptional. 24:30 See, if you’re used to see a lot of buildings around you, you have to train your eyes to see sheep right over in the far corner, or something over there that takes your eye. (UNCLEAR) you don’t develop that long sight, quite the same. And you learn distance, too. You learn to assess how far a thing is away. And that’s important flying.

What was the physical training like

25:00 in the early stages to get you into shape?

Oh, pretty good. Plenty of it.

What did they do?

Everything that came to mind, I think. All sorts of things. Ranging right through from swimming right through to boxing, things like that. And you get all these physical jerks and stresses and strains. Oh, it was pretty good. And long runs. Long….

25:31 Up at Sandgate there, there’s a highway called the Hornibrook Highway, it goes right across the Moreton Bay, and it’s a couple of miles long, I think. They used to run across there. First time, puff, puff. By the time we had finished our course, we could run that with no trouble at all. Then they’d whip us back and push us into….off the road a bit in amongst the mangroves. “Get in there and have a swim.” Back out again.

26:00 No, it was good. And it was a gradual growing thing. And you don’t appreciate it, until you find that you are able to do things that you probably didn’t ever think of doing before. And I tell you what happened, too. We got less colds, we didn’t have colds and things like that. We were able to stand up to things pretty well. Mind you, once we got into the Squadron, they pushed the vitamins into us. There were always a lot of vitamins there.

26:30 Cold Liver oil, and all the other things to take with our meals and that. Poor old Sydney Street couldn’t get them, but we had them there. The best of food, as well. Yeah. That was all part of the fun. It was fun at that time.

Were there many accidents in the early training?

Oh yes.

27:00 Yes. Every training station that I was on there were accidents of one sort or another. Casualties from the squadron were low….Were the highest, of course, naturally. But the causalities in training were the second highest. Casualties on the squadron could be accounted for by the weather, and by the serviceability of the

27:30 aircraft….Although, not so much from serviceability, because Squadron serviceability was spot on. They were very keen to keep their aircraft right up to scratch. It used to break their hearts, if you scratched them or you put a hole in them or something. The ground crews, they loved their aircraft. But when you got onto training stations, then the levels of serviceability dropped. And so you tended to get problems arising from that.

28:00 And also, on training stations, like anywhere else you were training, if you haven’t got the oversight, you can get into trouble pretty quickly, sometimes. Because of the lack of experience, you see. So I suppose, in a way, it has to be. In the annals of the RAAF, I’m sure you could go right through and you’d see no end of accidents that shouldn’t have happened, but they have

28:30 happened. And that’s it. And you can only put it down to pilot error, in some cases. In a lot of cases. But anyhow….

What sort of errors would trainees make?

Well, I’ll just give you an instance. There’s been several instances where an aircraft’s been waiting to take off at the end of the runway, just getting revved up, and another one’s come and landed on top of it. It should never have happened. Terrible things happen.

29:01 They’re under control from outside there. They’ve got their visual sight to see, they can see an aircraft there. If they see an aircraft on the runway, they’re not going to land on it, surely. What did they think they were going to do? Go over the top of them or what? These are the sort of things. It’s like driving a car. You have to drive ahead all the time, you fly ahead. There was a saying in the air force, “If you don’t fly this aircraft, it will fly you. So make sure you’re well in front of it.” Well in front of it,

29:30 and you’re thinking and everything, because it’s really fast. Imagine what it’s doing now? They whip through the air now. We were only little toys compared to the way they’re flying today. They’ve got a lot better instrumentation than we had. But, that was one of the most important things. Keeping alert all the time. Watching out for any possible chance. Of course, the early training in the Tiger Moth, the first thing we had to learn was

30:00 to always have in mind, somewhere that we could make a forced landing. The instructor would say, “Where would you land in a forced landing?” And you’d have to point to a paddock, or tell him where it was. Down below, keep an eye on it, so you know where to go. “All right, then make a forced landing down there.” And he’d take you right down to the very end, and he’d say, “Righto, overshoot, away you go.” These were all

30:30 part of training.

Did you witness any accidents in the training days?

Yes, from a distance. Before I got onto Wellingtons, I was at Kidlington. And were going to Wellingtons, on the next from there, you see. And there was a

31:00 place about….it might have been ten miles further North from us, where they were flying Wellingtons. And we just happened to be….you were always watching out for planes. In England, during the war, there were planes everywhere, but anything that was a bit close, you watched out for it, see what they were doing. And this Wellington was coming around, just in a normal circuit, all of a sudden one side of the wing dropped off.

31:32 It just dropped straight down, just like a poor old starling, if you took off his wings, down she went, great big pile of smoke. That was a bit sobering. We were supposed to be flying those in the next (UNCLEAR). Half the wing fell off. Terrible thing. That would have been one of the closest, except for the ones that we were in. That was close

32:00 enough. Of course, on operations, I flew on one trip to a place called….I’m not sure of it now. Down near Lyons, somewhere down that way. And we were told before we left that we would have to fly through a storm belt, going across the middle of

32:30 France. And we said, “Well, can’t we go round it?” They said, “No, no. It’s important you hit this target, because it’s clear over the target. And it’s important you go there, so you will have to fly through the storm.” And I’ve always been very scared of storms, because I’d seen a bull in our herd, struck by lighting, right in front of me, when I was a boy. So I was a bit scared of that. It killed him, just as a dead a dodo.

33:01 And aircraft will explode if they’re not properly bonded. All the metal parts had to be bonded together so there was a continuity of all the power that’s…If it’s struck by lightning, it will absorb the power within the framework of the aircraft without upsetting anybody, until it reaches the ground. What happens when it reaches the ground, it’s got this big

33:30 charge in it, it’s discharged the moment the wheels hit the ground. So you’re safe in that. But there were a few on that that blew up. And they blew up the moment they were struck by lightning. They blew up right in front of us. We were in that storm for three hours on the way in, and three hours on the way back, and I knew all about storms by the time I got out of it. It chucked us around, all over the place. It was terribly hard to keep

34:00 on course. And every now and again in the lightning, you would see another aircraft in front of you and you’d say, “God! He’s too close.” And when they blew up, you always knew it was an aeroplane, because it was a different colour to the storm. It was an orangey colour. And the storm was always a bluey- silvery colour, as you get with lightning, that sort of thing. And when you were in those conditions, as we were, your aircraft absorbed this charge, and you got

34:30 what they called St Elmo’s Fire. And that was all around the propellers. All the propellers were shimmering with this beautiful fluorescent glow. All the electrical gear, the wireless operator in particular was getting shocks from his comparitors. His sets and that. And anything at all, any extremities of the aircraft,

35:00 all had this pretty glowing light. They called it St Elmo’s Fire. And that was nearly always, they told us, an indication that you’d been hit by lightning. But that happened on that trip, several times. (UNCLEAR) happens quite regularly, apparently. There only had to be one wire missing, and you would go. You were so loaded up with everything else. Pretty powerful bolts, those electric….but they were

35:30 jumping from cloud to cloud. The lightning was jumping from a cloud over there, onto your aircraft, then off, jumping onto other aircraft. You’d see it doing it. And it was black as pitch, in between. It was such a bright light when they happened, then they’re gone and it’s as black as pitch, and you’ve got to try and concentrate on your flying. At the end of it, I said to the boys, “What do you think about storms?” They said, “Well, we don’t think we’ll worry about storms in future.”

36:00 Yeah, it was a shocker.

So the atmospheric conditions were a big part of your adjustment to flying?

Oh yes. It was another dimension up there.

How were the weather conditions different from Canada to Europe?

In Europe, the fronts,

36:31 the weather fronts move over in quick succession. Very quickly. Especially over England, being such a small island. They move over so quickly. They might have been out in the North Sea, or they might have been out in the Irish Sea, or be in the Highland when you went out, but by the time you got back to base, they were over your….That same front, which wasn’t apparent when you went out, was back over your base. And you had go and get in through it. Whereas over

37:00 in Canada, and likewise Australia, they see the front from a long way, away, and they can tell how long and how big it is before it hits. But that seemed to be the problem with Europe.

So how does the pilot deal with that?

Well, you get your weather forecast beforehand, and you get your heights to fly at,

37:30 of course, and sometimes you fly under them, and sometimes you fly over them, and sometimes you fly through them, of course, no other option but to fly through them. But they’re not all troublesome, but they’re weather conditions which mean you must fly on instruments. You’re in clouds. People who are not familiar with aviation laugh at me when I tell them that when you’re up in an aircraft, in still air conditions, and you’re flying

38:00 in formation, you look up at them and say, “Look at them. Aren’t they beautiful, look at how close they are.” But they’re actually moving up and down just as though you’re in a boat at sea. There’s air currents up there that are moving them up and down, so the aircraft you’re formatting on the right, she’s there one moment and the next moment she’s down there. So you’ve got to watch your up and down movement all the time, and those sort of things.

38:33 It’s interesting. It’s an interesting phenomenon. Because some clouds are ice-bearing, and others aren’t ice-bearing. If you’ve got a cold aircraft, and you get into conditions where ice will form, and say you’ve got a cold, wet aircraft and you get up into the conditions where the ice will form, it will form straight onto your aircraft all together. Lays it all over, sort of thing.

39:00 So there’s problems you’ve got to be well aware of there. Icing is quite a big problem.

What does it do?

It creates instability in the aircraft. It upsets the airfoil sections of your wings and things like that, so instead of getting a nice flow of air across which give you the lift, it breaks it all up so you lose your lift. It’s a bit akin to stalling them. And with

39:30 the propellers, the first indication I found, the first indication that you were getting icing conditions, you probably wouldn’t see it on the wings, because they’d just glaze over. But if it got onto your propellers, and don’t forget they’re spinning around at terrific speed, those propellers, it will build up on a propeller, then it would come off with a thud against the fuselage.

40:00 And it’s not very comforting when you’ve got a propeller just over your left hand shoulder, and great big chunks of ice. But they weren’t very funny at all.

Thanks Noel. We’ve just come right to the end of that tape.

Tape 5

00:33 Noel, I wanted to start our conversation by asking you about your early family life. Do you know when your family actually came out to Australia?

The original family Sanders? 1849, I think it was.

And were they from England,

01:00 originally?

From Devon. Both, on my father’s side, both could read and write. He was twenty-six and the great grandmother, or the great, great grandmother she would be then, she was nineteen. Both could read and write. It says on the New South Wales state archives, that he was

01:30 a butcher. And he came out to take a plot of land they gave him up in a terrible place called Kitchener Creek, up on the Macleay there. And I’ve had a look at it. It was mostly swampland, the poor man. And terse comment on the bottom. “Complained of short rations on the trip.” You can imagine that. He was on the ship for over six months.

02:01 So they were farmers? Were they farmers in Devon?

He must have been a butcher there, and she was a lady’s maid or something there. They lived on either side of Exeter. That’s where they came from. And on my mother’s side, they came out a bit later. They came from the North country. Up around Newcastle somewhere there. The Sanders side came out earlier than that, yeah. 02:31 So the farming and the move to the North Coast, up around Kempsey area….

Well, he was given this sort of settlement block, as a new settler. They could read and write, and they were almost assisted migrants, the first assistant migrants, I suppose. And they were given this block to settle in up there. And of course, they had to work there way from there.

And was this the same land that you were born into?

03:00 Oh, no. It’s passed out the family. Many years ago, I think. He couldn’t have made a living on it. I’ve had a look at this spot. I’ve got a map of it, and it was terrible sort of land. But at least he got Australia, I suppose. I think he stayed on as a butcher, but not on that bit of land.

So how deep was that farming life in your family, before it came down to you? Is there a couple of generations there that have been farming the land?

03:32 Well, the farm that I grew up on had been my grandfather’s, on my mother’s side, land that he had squatted on or settled on, say what you like, and cleared. In those days, they could take over all the land they could clear, more or less. The lower Macleay at that time, was covered with timber. And he was gifted with some very

04:00 strong young sons, and them, between them cleared quite a bit of land there. And so they had quite an extensive property there. And my mother, who was the youngest in the family, inherited part of it, only part of the original property. So it would have been on that side, not on the Sanders side. And on Sanders side, we were considered to be the poor side of the family.

As you were growing up as a young boy, did you feel that was what your destiny was? Did you feel like you were going to just take

04:30 over as your father had?

It seemed that way, and I think Dad expected that way. And it was generally expected of the eldest son to do that. But things weren’t quite good enough for that, really. As we all found out to our sorrow, really, in many respects. Had the war not come, and had I not married Joan, my wife from Nottingham, I think I might have finished up there. Having a go at it, and being poor forever.

Did you have an

05:00 inkling, or a drive or ambition, to see more of the world? Did you have a sense of that there was more of the world that you’d like to get out and experience?

Not at that stage, no. But it always interested me. I was always greatly interested in things. I’ll give you an interesting point, and it may or may not have some relevance for you but…..You won’t remember, but you have heard of how the Sydney Harbour Bridge was due to be opened the then governor

05:30 Sir Philip Game? No, it wasn’t. It was going to be opened by the Premier, Jack Lang. We’re in the middle of the great Recession then, call it what you like, but it was tough times. He wasn’t very well liked. And there was a fellow by the name of Captain de Groot, rode up on his charger and cut the ribbon before Jack Lang could. And created

06:00 terrific furore. Now up in the country there, radios were few and far between. But one of my uncles was pretty keen on building up little sets, and he built up a little two valve model for me. Almost a Cat’s Whisker, but a little bit better than a Cat’s Whisker. He said, “Noel, take that down, and get yourself a good aerial up, and get yourself, if you can, a pair of earphones, and you might be able to pick up Sydney with that.” So

06:30 we strung bits of copper wire together, but we made the mistake, we found later, of not soldering the joints. So they corroded eventually, after a while. But at that time, they were relatively new and we got them up onto the highest possible poles, and I was listening in this Saturday afternoon…I think it was a Saturday afternoon, I’m sure it was, or a Saturday morning, I’m not sure, and I was listening in, and I picked up this signal,

07:00 from Sydney. And it was talking about the opening of the Harbour Bridge. And then it all came through, the whole action came through on my little earphone, I could just hear it. And I went out to Mum and I said, “Mum!” And I told her. And she said, “No, no, you couldn’t have heard that. Jack Lang was going to open that.” I said, “No, Mum, it was Captain de Groot. And he rode up on his charger.” “Oh no, you’re imagining things.” She was of the old

07:30 ilk, of course, about the radio, “Oh, you wouldn’t have heard that.” The Sydney papers come up pretty regularly up the coast, and they picked up the Sydney paper the next day, and she opened it up, and there it was. And she turned around to Bill, my father, and she said, “Bill, Noel heard all that on his radio set.” And that was interesting, wasn’t it? And that’s how far ahead of my parents I was at that stage. And those were the little things that

08:00 we were able to pick up. It was just an insight, that is. I was in on that, right from the word go, right up there, right up in the bush. Others might have heard it too, but not on a little two valve set like I got.

That’s wonderful. That’s exactly the sort of insight that my generation finds difficult to understand.

It’s very hard to understand.

The immediacy of that communication. You heard the event taking place, and that was unusual for that time. Now we watch the Iraq War as its happening,

08:30 don’t we? Twenty four hours a day.

You can’t believe it, can you?

You had your wireless set which you obviously listened in to a bit. But do you think you had a good grip on the politics and what was actually going on and the reason for the war?

No, no. No, I didn’t understand. And what is more I didn’t want to understand. I mean, youth doesn’t want to understand those sort of things. That’s a long way away. But we were well aware of the goose stepping that went on, with Mussolini and

09:00 Hitler and all the rest. It was very frightening to see it. And you see it now in Korea, of course. The same sort of strutting around, and it’s very, very frightening, to think that that’s going on. Where are we going to go?

And what about in those early days of the war, the early years, before you became directly involved. Was news of what was going on in the war filtering through to Kempsey, quite regularly?

Oh sure, we were updating our radio sets and things at that time.

And did you take an increased interest in the news once the

09:30 war was on?

Oh yes, constantly, constantly. And when people said the war will be over before you have to join up, Noel, I used to say, “Oh yeah?” Almost under my breath, I hope it isn’t. So I could try and get into the air force. It was still a (UNCLEAR) in the air force for me, at that stage.

Were you listening to your wireless when news of Japan entering the war, came through?

10:01 When they hit Pearl Harbor I was in my new found occupation as a cycle mechanic, up in Kempsey. And the radio was on, and I heard it all. And at that stage, I was in my latter stage of night school, ready to go into the air force.

Did that change the way people in the community felt about the war?

Oh, it sure did. It scared the living daylights out of us. Especially when they came in down through the Coral Sea, and all that.

10:31 It’s just as well we didn’t know too much about Darwin.

Why then did you feel that you wanted to go to England to fight, rather than defending Australia under its direct threat?

We had no option. Australia, with the countries of Canada and New Zealand and South Africa, parts of the Empire, were committed to the Empire Air Training Scheme. Now that was

11:00 purely an affiliation of all of them, and they committed so many of their youth to go and be trained for the air force. Because they knew they would need these crews for future fighting.

Was there ever any frustration, about being in Europe, when Australia was under direct threat? Or was there a….

There was a tendency. But it was under direct stress before we left. Because I was up at Sandgate then, still going through my initial training. Square bashing, all the

11:30 rest of it. And we were taught unarmed combat. And we had broomsticks. And how true it was. Our forces were under-armed, and everything else. The Americans were the ones that came in there and the Battle of the Coral Sea, that turned that around for sure. There were people coming out of the north in droves.

Let me take a quick step backwards, a little step backwards, to the recruitment train. Can you tell me a bit about

12:00 what that was? And what was the show around it?

It was just one railway carriage, emblazoned on the side with the great roundel of the Australian Air Force. With “Join Up Here” or something on each side of it. And recruiting. And it came through all the country towns and stayed so many days. You got a notice in the local paper that the recruiting train for the Royal Australian Air Force would be in Kempsey at a certain time, and if you were interested in the air force, come and 12:30 see us on this train, which would be on the siding in Kempsey station. So that was the thing, to go up, and we went up there, and fellows like myself would go along, and sit down and talk to them about it, and what the score was. It was a good PR job, and it did the job, for sure. And it probably moved from Kempsey up to Macksville, Macksville up the Coffs Harbour, Coffs Harbour all the way through. And that’s all that was. It was just

13:00 hooked up to a train and away it went. It had recruiting officers in there and everything else all involved. And it had a local recruiting officer within the town, who worked in conjunction with it. And he had a knowledge of a lot of us young fellows. Maybe not a direct knowledge, but some sort of working knowledge of us, sort of thing. One way or another, he would be able to advise them. Specially if a fellow went in there, he had a bad reputation, he wouldn’t have a chance. Because they were only looking for the cream.

13:30 For sure, I’m telling you, they were only looking for the cream. They weren’t interested in the….I mean, the army could have them. To get in the air force, you had to be just a bit better than that. A bit better? Much better, on the average.

So did the train create a lot of interest in the town? Were there a lot of young lads out there?

Oh, the Kempsey Valley, the Macleay River Valley, oh, there were about…we lost a lot. We lost a couple of cousins. We lost a lot of good friends. But,

14:01 we must have collected, between us, on the Macleay Valley, upwards of a dozen DFCs, that were involved in the Air, well and truly. Some of them are still alive up there, and I go up see a few of them occasionally.

Were there any family friends or personal friends of yours who were signing up in those early days? Who influenced your decision in any way?

Well, I had a cousin Allen Marriott, he signed up before me. But he was eighteen

14:30 months older than me. He signed up, and he was already in training. He was right or wrong, he had been a clerk on Uncle George’s airline office. And he was, right or wrong, going to be a pilot. But he was short a person. I was fairly tall in those days, not anywhere near like my grandsons are. But tallish, taller than I am now, for sure. But Allen was a shorter person, and I

15:00 remember him coming home and he was going through his training, and he was telling me how fast he could take Morse. And I twigged it. What’s he doing, thirty words a minute? That’s pretty fast. To take Morse and send it, he sent it out quicker than he could take it in a lot of cases. He said, “Oh, I’m enjoying it. I’m going to be a pilot.” And I thought, ‘Well, he’s going to be a pilot for sure.’ And when it came to, he became a wireless operator, air gunner.

15:32 And I didn’t see him for a long time, I saw him in England. He did a tour of ops and Coastal Command out in West Africa, on Hudsons. I said, “Allen, I’ve got a theory about you fellows, you wireless operators. I figure that when you were going through initial training school, and you got a really good mark in Morse Code and that, then you,

16:00 no option, that they would whip you straight in on a keyboard.” He said, “You’re pretty right.” He said, “I was a fool.” He said, “What did you think?” I said, “I got up to twelve words a minute,” I said. “And I’m not going faster for anybody.” And of course there were fellows way above me, and they all became wireless operators. And I thought, ‘A pilot doesn’t have to take it. As long as he can take it up to what they saw was the minimum, and that was all.’ So there was a bit of nouse there, somewhere along the line. Because it was the exceptional ones in every branch of the

16:30 air crew that got those particular jobs. The poor old pilot, he was good at most things, but not real good, you know what I mean? I was better at flying than able to do those things, gunnery and those things. You’ve got these chaps who could strip a gun down and put them together, almost blindfold. That’s the Brownings, the guns we were using in the air force in those days. If you got a number one or number two stop, they knew exactly what

17:00 it was. I was struggling. I couldn’t put those….I’d always have a spare part left over, sort of thing, so I wasn’t too keen on the gunnery. They got gunners, for sure. That was my theory anyhow. It worked with me.

So do you think you directly influenced your sister to join the WAAAF?

I tried otherwise. I tried otherwise, and my wife would back me up. But

17:30 she didn’t think much of me, when I’d write back to my sister and say, “You mustn’t join the WAAAF.” I didn’t want her in the services at all, anyhow. But it was wonderful for her, just as it was for me. It got us both off the farm.

And what did she do?

She was a teleprinter operator, down in Frogmore or down in the headquarters down Melbourne there, most of the time. It was a coming out for her, just as it was for me. Getting away from the farm and not having your background at all. And quite an opportunity

18:00 for women at that time? Being allowed into all sorts of jobs that they didn’t have before?

That’s right, yes. When I went to war, and saw her, she was a dumpy little thing, a lot of extra body fat and all the rest. When I came back on the trooper on the demob, she was on the wharf down there, in Melbourne to greet us, slim little thing. The air force knocked her into the shape.

How did you guys feel about women being in the air force, being in the services?

18:30 Well, we welcome to it, mostly.

So there were some that didn’t?

Some were a bit cheeky though, and they took advantage of their sex. Some of them, some of them, even though you were an officer, if you gave a WAAAF an order she didn’t want to, and you weren’t… you didn’t have anyone to back you up, they’d tend to sort of call your bluff, sort of thing. A fellow wouldn’t do that. He’d know he’d on a charge straight away. And have to go through the man, you see. If you put a WAAAF on charge, it wasn’t worth your while.

Were some of

19:00 the men unhappy about that sort of development? Of having women in the Services?

Maybe, there might have been. But generally it was nice to see them about. They did a fantastic job. They really did. They did work there, and they worked well. I’ve got the greatest admiration for them, all of them. Right from the cooks through. Terrific. And my little batwoman [officer’s servant] was very

19:30 nice. I had to share her with two other fellows, though.

Although you left school at fourteen, did you do quite well at school before you had to leave?

I was in the top ones. I could have gone to high school. The entrance to high school, I got that, but Dad wanted me on the farm. He said, “No, I can’t afford to send you to high school.” It would have meant going twenty one miles on the bus everyday, or else staying up in Kempsey, staying in a room, Money was hard for him.

20:03 There were several of us there, we bowed to that for our fathers, but the later members of my family, my sister next to me couldn’t go, she went on the farm after I left. Because she was doing her war work then, before she joined up. But the other three, all got a high school, all got everything we couldn’t get, you see.

But although you were struggling, you clearly had to be

20:30 academically inclined, or have an aptitude for that to have pulled through all that difficult stage?

You had to have an ability to absorb information….I must have been fairly bright. I don’t think I was ever down the back-end of the class sort of thing, I think I was pretty right up the front there all the time. I’ve seen brighter ones than me, were faced with the same predicament, they never got to high school. Only because of the time of life and the way conditions were railing at the time.

21:00 When you were at Sandgate and you were struggling a bit to keep up, or certainly there were a lot more academically suited people there. Were people helping each other out? Were the lads assisting one another in their studies, and helping through areas that they struggled with?

The ones that helped each other out were the ones that were struggling. Now the other fellows had the education, they had better things to do. We found that. There were several of us who were struggling. We’d joined together, and we’d get the odd tutor who’d come and give us a hand,

21:30 and that. Because we were working long hours of the night, you know. We’d have all this homework to do, and catching up. And there were constant exams, all the time. It wasn’t a case of one every half year, or anything. It was every week, checking out to see how you’re going. There was a lot to absorb, especially because there was so many different subjects. You could do one with flying colours, and another one you’d be struggling with. That’s

22:00 why I probably couldn’t get up to the math, with my math, that was my weak point. and that was the point that let me down with navigation. Later on, you see. When it came to getting it all down, and working out your angles, co-signs and all the rest of it you had to do on your navigation.

There wasn’t….I guess you’re describing an element of teamwork that was being developed at that early stage of your learning,

22:30 in terms of helping each other through the course, but there were some who were a bit elitist. They were basically going to be pilots?

Oh yes, yes. Can you describe to me the fear of being scrubbed?

The fear of being scrubbed? Constant.

Was that a constant concern?

Constant. Constant. If you were keen, and most of them were. I mean we had got to that stage that we were keen, we were getting something there from the air force that we could never had in civvy street.

23:00 We were getting an education, we were getting a skill, which we would never have got in the air force, never in a month of Sundays, conditions prevailing. And we were getting that. If we could survive, we were home on the pig’s back, weren’t we? If we could survive. The whole thing was survival, being able to survive. Not that you could go around hiding from things, you had to face things. You couldn’t just say

23:30 “Oh, I’m not going to do that. I might get knocked about.” If you were told to do that, you did it, and you faced into it. Yes.

Was there a stigma associated with those who had been scrubbed?

It’s only the immediate people on the course with you that you know have been scrubbed. But often, and in the case of the Empire Air Training Scheme, anyhow, they were offered an alternative which stood them better. And it

24:00 was the wisdom of the air force that put them in that better position. I mean you might have had a man training to be a navigator, and but he started with a bit of trouble, and they’d say, “Well, we can offer you bomber aimer, or wireless operator, because you’re not too bad on the dah-dah-dit-dah-dah, and all the rest of it.” Or if they weren’t any good at that, they’d say “We’ll, we’ve still got an alternative for you. You can be a gunner.” And mark my words, you

24:30 had to be good to be a gunner, too. You had to get the bead on, quick and lively. And it was a very lonely life, being a gunner, because you were right away from the rest of the crew. The main part of the crew, the working cell of the crew, were all bunched all in together. You were neighbours. No further away than we three are. I’d be here, turn around the other way, navigator’s there working, behind him’s the wireless operator, and just down below here is the bomb

25:00 aimer, and just over this side, standing up, looking after all this gear is the flight engineer, all in a cell. The gunners, one was halfway down the back stuck up on top, with the wind blowing around all over the place, and the other fellow is right in the tail. He was looking backwards all the time, sort of thing. And very lonely for them, way down there.

Was there a stereotype, or a personality type, that was common to all gunners, or all pilots, navigators? Was there a type of person who was best suited to those

25:30 roles?

I don’t think I can honestly answer you, there. Because they were a variety of fellows. Because you had tall, you had small. One would say that, to be gunner, you have to be small. That wasn’t the case. I’ve seen great hefty fellows squeeze themselves into a gun turret and spend all that time in the gun turret. And this chap, this friend of mine who got scrubbed on his final wings test, he was a tall, big, young, tall, ranging

26:00 young man, but he became a good gunner. But they put him up in the mid-upper. There was a bit more room in the mid-upper than there was in the tail gun.

I was interested that during your time at Sandgate, you mentioned occasionally on the weekends you’d get in a couple of days’ leave in Brisbane?

Yeah, just twenty-four hours.

Brisbane must have been a hive of activity around that time?

Oh yes, it was starting to fill up with Yanks, and all sorts. Yes, it was really. There was a few ups and

26:30 downers going on in there. The blues that were going on. Most of the blues going on, that I witnessed, were between our army and the Yanks. Oh, they used to get stuck into it. Because they were pinching all our girls. See, they had plenty of money the Americans coming in. Not just the fact that they were fighting for us, they were making hay while the sun shone, while they were down in Brisbane. Air force fellows, I never heard of any of our air force fellows getting involved with them.

27:00 There might have been the odd skirmish, occasionally. But not very much. I certainly wasn’t looking for it anyhow. I’d get out of the way. Talking about Sandgate, and can I tell you an aside of Sandgate? Sandgate was a non-flying school. It was our high school of the air, more or less. We were taught how to salute, we were taught how to

27:30 march, we were taught how to hang onto guns. We were taught all these things, everything that was needed on the ground. There was no flying, whatsoever. We had a parade ground, which bordered on the Morton Bay, a big bay that comes right out and around there, and that parade ground would be about…probably two acres, I think. It’s not a very big area. Consider that to be an airfield? No way. I might have got a Tiger

28:00 Moth in there, with a bit of luck. Well, we went on leave….And it was gravel covered, and there was one solitary mangrove tree at one end, right in the salt water at the end. Otherwise it was just open to the ocean. The Morton Bay. And we came back from leave, and it had been raining all week, pretty wet sort of week,

28:30 but the Saturday had fined up very well. We came back, from leave, my mate and I. We used to go in two and threes together, and take on a room together and things like that, to get dressed for the night, and go the pictures. We used to go the pictures. In probably about twenty four hours we’d go to the pictures three times, you know, just to do something. But, come back and got off the buses, “What’s that stuck out there?” And we could see the tail fin of a Fortress.

29:02 Rising above the roofs of all these barrack huts. We knew the barrack huts were the ones around the parade ground. So we raced down there, and half the station were down there, all down there. And this had probably happened only an hour so before we got back. This American crew, only a skeleton crew, came out of the wild blue Pacific on a delivery flight. And they were told to land at the air force station at Brisbane, which was

29:30 Archer Field at that time, you see. Not Amberley. I think they were supposed to go into Archer Field. And they came in and looked round, came in below the low cloud, which was still fairly low, but it wasn’t raining. He swung around and he saw this air force roundel flag flying, the air force flag flying, and they said, “Wow, this is it! Boy! Boy!” One of the crew members was telling us later, this is what the Skipper said, “Boy, these Aussies have sure got small airfields.” So he pulled

30:00 around, and he came in across…They couldn’t see a wind sock, because we didn’t have a windsock. And he came in across the bay, and he just got over the whatsitsname, and he put the wheels down onto the gravel, and she sunk down, right down, but she was going so fast, she finished up, with the propellers still wind-milling, just with all the barrack blocks, right along there. And that’s where she was, stuck in there.

30:30 And we said, “Well, this is fun, isn’t it?” They got out of it and apologised for what happened. And I said, “Well, this is going to be fun, how’s he going to get out of this?” And he said, “Arrr, it’ll be all right boys, we’ll get her out.” The way they talked, you know, swanking around. Well, they stripped her down. They took everything possible that would move off her. They kept a little amount of petrol in her, just enough for him to get over to Archerfield, and they waited for a few days of hot weather.

31:00 And then the CO said, “Well, all the station can come out and watch you take off. We want to see this feat of airmanship.” So he turned her around, headed her out over Morton Bay, not quite in line with this one Mangrove tree which is just over to the right, I think it was, and he got in there, and he tied up the tie wheel with a big thick rope, onto a big stake, tied it up, and he put his engineer out,

31:30 and just the skipper himself got in, and he revved her up, and the vortices were coming off the windmills, they’re flying around, she brings her tail right up, and he went like that, and the old engineer got his big axe, had his big axe ready, and he just chopped it, and away she went. And she bounded down there, and bless my soul, he pulled his wheels up as he got up there, and while he was pulling his wheels up, he turned towards

32:00 the tree, how he missed it we don’t know, because he must have pulled up his whatsitname, and inadvertently pulled her over, and off she went. Now you wouldn’t have thought….It was akin to him taking that big aircraft off an aircraft carrier, without the benefit of going into wind, you know, you had to rely on the wind that was there. And then that night, he was back in that mess, drinking with the officers, and the CO said to everybody assembled, “Now

32:30 you can see what can be done, if you’ve got the right idea.” He said, “That’s an object lesson for all you trainees.”

Were you all cheering as he took off?

Oh, we couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. And then that same day, or several days later it must have been, we were on parade, and a couple of the American Airacobras came around, in close formation, and it was high water in the Morton Bay and they swung around us,

33:00 and while we were watching them, they both dived into the sea. Killed the pilots, naturally. Of course, the lead man went in and the other fellow followed him straight in, straight into the sea. Beautiful bit of airmanship until they went into the sea. Dived into the Morton Bay. That was in the early days of my airmanship.

What were your personal feelings towards the Americans then?

Oh, having spent a little bit of time

33:30 in New York, and I was very impressed with their hospitality.

Before, at the time, you had already been to New York by that stage? Yeah, yeah….No, later on.

I’m wondering at that time during the war….

Oh, very impressed. Very impressed. But we were so grateful they were coming….Pearl Harbor was over….was Pearl Harbor over? It wasn’t, was it?

34:00 Yes it was, because they weren’t in the war before that, that’s right. But the thing is the Coral Sea was on, that was in the middle of that, then. We all knew it was up to us. We hadn’t got the troops back home from the Middle East, and places like that, to do much. And those that they were home, weren’t properly equipped. It was an Act of God that, that they came in there, as far as we were concerned.

You mentioned that most of the brawls

34:30 going on in Brisbane were between the army and the Americans. What was the Air Force lads relationship like with the army, the Australian Army?

We were Blue Orchids. Sarcastic mothers, aren’t they? We were Blue Orchids. And they still don’t really like us that much, the army. Due respect, the RSL….they’re definitely having a go. They say it’s good natured, but they’re always having a pot at us. (UNCLEAR).

35:02 Yeah, we were supposed to be the glamour boys, Brylcream Boys and things like that. There was a certain amount of that went on.

And did you reciprocate those feelings?

No we didn’t. No we didn’t. That was the silly part about it, we didn’t. We had a healthy respect for them. I never knew of any reciprocation at all. We just had to take everything, just like little brother, you know.

What about the

35:30 Navy? Did you have anything to do with naval personnel?

Not very much, no. We liked the WAAAFs. Especially the English WAAFs. They had silk stockings.

You mentioned Pearl Harbour. When you did arrive there on the ship, and see all the sunken ships in the Harbour, and saw the devastation that had been caused, was that a wake up call for you? Did it change the way you felt

36:00 about the war that you were going into? Did it have a lasting impression on you?

Oh yes, you couldn’t but have that feeling. But you’ve got bare in mind that we already knew about what havoc they had done in Pearl Harbor. We hadn’t seen any films on Pearl Harbor, by then….

And you wouldn’t have seen any real war damage, would you, until that time? You wouldn’t have seen anything that was a direct result?

That was the first war damage we’d struck. Yes. That’s the first. We could see the

36:31 city of Honolulu. We didn’t reach there. That was further over. But there was a lot of devastation around the Pearl Harbor area. It wasn’t into Honolulu city itself.

And you didn’t actually disembark the ship, did you?

No.

So you didn’t have anything to do with any of the Americans there?

They entertained us on the wharf. They had big bands and things and entertained us. And we all had top seats on the side of the deck watching them, you know, applauding them.

37:00 And they provided us with a lot of amenities which we had been deprived of. They were very generous. And they were interested in us, as were people in America, in New York were, very interested in us. One fellow came up and thought I was a guard. He said, “You don’t talk like one of us.” I said, “No, I’m an Australian airman.” “Oh, sorry brother, I thought you were a guard.”

37:30 Once they knew we were Australian airmen, they couldn’t do enough for us. You’d get the rich fellows there that would say, “Come on back to my club. You like to swim? Well, pop downstairs into the athletic pool.” And all that. They were very, very good. There was no side with them at all.

Did you notice major differences in the way that the American public felt about the war than the Australian? Or the American news to the Australia news? Was there a different attitude…

38:00 No, you see we spent most of our time in Canada.

But when you went through San Francisco?

We entrained there. No, you passed through. I wondered if….

No, we got off the ship, got onto a ferry, went across to Oakland. From Oakland straight up onto the trains. So we didn’t really spend any time at all in the vicinity of anybody like that. You could see the big buildings and things like that, but no….

38:30 The big thing was the Golden Gate Bridge, which we found was rusty red anyhow.

Alcatraz?

Yeah, passed Alcatraz, yes. Pulled around, then we just got off the big ship, straight onto a big ferry, which took us right across Oakland Bay, and landed, and put us into the Pullmans and away we went.

You’re going under the Golden Gate Bridge, and seeing Alcatraz. You’re on the other side of

39:00 the world. Were you feeling excited? As though you were on your big adventure?

Oh yes, all part of the great Cook’s Tour. You see, I had a complete Cook’s Tour. I left Australia, via Port Phillip. And I came into Port Phillip from the other direction, right around the world. At the expense of the Royal Australian Air Force.

A long way from a farm in Kempsey.

Absolutely. How you going to keep them down the farm? That’s what they said. Long way from the farm.

Okay, mate, we’re right on the end.

Tape 6

00:34 Noel, I’d like to move now to your time in Canada. Before you mentioned there was a family that you were particularly friendly with? Who entertained you?

Yes.

And showed you around when you were there? Can you tell me a bit more about that family and what that relationship was like?

Now, we started….Just before Christmas started the course in Claresholm, in lower Alberta.

01:00 Any my first instructor was a pilot officer Scott. A young man of about eighteen months older than me. Canadian. He had three Australians as his pupils in this particular course, and his parents were farmers, wheat farmers, with a few cattle and hog, as they called them. About twenty miles up country, towards Calgary, a place called

01:30 Nansom. And they had the family, his sister, his eldest sister was running the farm with her dad, and his younger brother was waiting to join up. Lawrie Scott, his name was, he was our instructor. And when it came to Christmas, and this was Christmas of 1942, it had to be, he said, “Now you boys,

02:00 you get a bit leave, just a few days for Christmas, then you’ll get a few days for New Year, leave.” He said, “My mum and dad would like you three to come up and spend Christmas with us, as a family, since it’s your first Christmas away from Australia, and your people.” So we did. We thanked them very, very much indeed. We went up there and they made us so comfortable. It was a lovely big farmhouse,

02:30 and it fully warmed up. They had the boiler down underneath the house. And there was no snow about at all. We said, “We wanted a white Christmas and there’s no snow.” Just the stubble in the wheat fields all around us. And that was on the Christmas Eve. By ten o’ clock Christmas Eve the snow was coming down. And it snowed and snowed and

03:00 we got up in the morning and the whole place was covered in snow and we were out having great fun. We had great fun, throwing the snow around. Our first white Christmas. They put on a beautiful Christmas lunch and dinner for us, and then we had to return for Boxing Day. We had to start packing Boxing Day. But we had that. And they were exceptionally wonderful to us, all the time. It was a place to come to. And then,

03:34 to carry on with the Scotts’ story, when we graduated of course we all moved away. And a little later on Laurie, got a chance to get away from instructing and he got onto coastal command, and I was constantly in touch with his mother. Not with his sister Vivian, still alive, I got a lovely letter from Vivian the other day, as a matter of fact. I had to written to her,

04:00 because it had just gone April 1st and I asked her if she could remember fifty years ago.…it would be more than that, wouldn’t it? When they were out there to see me get my Wings and she had written back. She’s a lady much older than me. Lovely letter. But that’s by the way. And they met Joan, too, because I’ve taken Joan back to see them. But Laurie was lost on coastal command. It broke his mother’s heart. 04:30 And they wrote to me and told me in England, and I resolved then to keep in touch with them, to always keep in touch with them. And they, likewise, reciprocated, and we have kept it up. And unfortunately Mr Scott and Mrs Scott have both passed away. Mrs Scott had Alzheimer’s in the latter part of her life. But Vivian, when Joan and I went over there a few years back, Vivian took us to see her, and she had been

05:00 telling all the nurses in this dementia clinic she was in, that her Australian son was coming to see her. Now that lady was the same lady who didn’t recognise her own daughter, who went to see her every week. Much to Vivian’s unhappiness, but yet, she knew that her Australian son and his English wife were coming to see her. So when we got there, she

05:30 come and put her arms around me and she hugged Joan, and there’s Vivian in the back. And she said, “I can’t get over this.” She said, “She hasn’t known me for ages. She doesn’t know who I am. She couldn’t care less who I am.” Sort of thing. But that’s the way it was with the Scott family, and so we’ve kept up with Vivian and her brother. Her brother passed away, only the last few weeks ago. So Vivian’s still alive. But

06:00 strange thing happened on that. Joan stayed with Sue, her name was, Mrs Scott, Sue Scott, and they sat down together and Joan talked to her, and I walked around a bit, away from them, with Vivian. And she said, “Joan, who’s that lady walking around with Noel over there.” That’s her daughter, her own daughter, who had been looking after her. But that’s the way it’s been with the Scott family, it’s been marvellous. And the letter I had from Vivian just said the same thing. Her mother

06:30 always loved her Australian son. Because I was the only one who kept up the contact, the other two didn’t. I kept up the contact, all the way along, even when I lived in England and everywhere else. She knew all about our wedding and everything else. But that’s a wonderful contact which I value very much indeed. Now to come back to the next time was the Hogmanay. The Hogmanay was upheld, of course, amongst the Scotsmen. The New Year. And the big Scots community up in a place called Nelson, right in the heart of

07:00 the Rockies. Which is about three hundred miles from Claresholm, and the people of that place issued an open invitation for us fellows to go and spend a few days with them over the Hogmanay, so I went over there. I said, “Righto” and took the train over. And had a wonderful time with another family over there, and they were called the Hamilton’s, and we have just lost our last link with the Hamilton’s.

07:31 Mrs Hamilton passed away. As she didn’t answer our Christmas letter last year, so we instituted enquiries and a good lady from the local said she had passed away. So we have lost contact with them. But that kept up, too, and they met Joan, too, on that same trip, you see. So that was wonderful for that time that we had. We had a great time out there with the Scotsmen at the Hogmanay, and skiing with the girls up

08:00 on the slopes, you see, and things like that. Very good.

It must have been wonderful to have that sort of warmth, because it could have been an incredibly lonely period over that Christmas and New Year’s period, being so far from home, and on your way to a war.

We weren’t the only ones being hosted. There were families all over the place were doing hosting. The Scots got in first with us, then the Hamilton’s got in. We didn’t know who we were going to see when we got over to Nelson.

08:30 We were there and they said, “We’re Charles and Dorothy Hamilton, and we’re your hosts.” They had a great big beautiful home, too. When we went back to see them, Joan and I, she called me Bill, she said, “Bill, you’re in your old room.” Great isn’t it, hey? She said, “I’ll put you back in your old room, where you were.”

There was a strong national link between Canada and Australia?

09:00 Oh, very.

….between Canadians and Australian people?

Very strong. The only thing that the Canadians differed to us in as much as every time you went past the Canadian flag you had to salute it. And there was an instance there, while I was there, where a couple of our fellows got the axe in the middle of the night and cut the flagpole down. And oohh, there was hell to pay. I don’t know if they ever caught them, but no, they didn’t like that at all. No.

Were there any other major differences between

09:30 the air force culture of the Canadians and the Australians?

No, no, it was just like one and the other. Talked a little differently. Used different expressions. They ate better. Oh, the beautiful food they got, compared with ours. Ours was pretty basic. Well, good for it. But their messes were terrific, just like the Yanks. They ate very well.

Were there quite a few differences, though, between

10:00 the Canadians and the Americans? Oh yes. There was not a lot of love lost there. There wasn’t in those days. No, there wasn’t a lot. Still isn’t, I don’t think, from what I gather. From the little bits they say.

And you mentioned your parade and about having contacted your friend just recently about whether she remembered your Wings parade?

Yes.

Tell me about that day? It must have been a great source of pride for you, to have made it that far?

Yes, that was April the 1st, 1943.

10:31 It was a lovely day, a beautiful day, and we were all in our best blue. We had to have two little press studs put on either side, just above the breast pocket. And the counter press stud was on the back of the wings. And in order of how we passed, we were called out, marched out, saluted, and the CO of the station, in this case it was,

11:00 pinned the wings onto us, congratulated us, for getting our wings. And all our friends were all sitting down around the area, and then we finished formalities, we formed up, and being true servicemen, we marched very well indeed. Very proud of each other. With the band, and the whole lot. That was something for the locals. Then we all went back to the sergeant’s mess and had

11:30 afternoon tea together. And then within a few hours we were bundled onto trucks. Taken to the local railway section, which was going over right across, from Calgary over through Medicine Hat, Saskatoon, and places over that way. And we got on that I think it was for four nights and three days, I think it was, or vice-versa. One or the other. That was just sheer luxury that was.

12:00 Pullman luxury.

You must have been a little bit sad that your family couldn’t have seen you at your Wings parade?

Yes. In honesty, I think it may be so, but we didn’t allow it to interfere with it. Because we knew once we left Australia that we shouldn’t dwell on that side of it at all. We kept up contact…

Were you regularly writing to your family?

Oh yes. We had little

12:30 things called air letters in those days. Little things with a photograph that you sent through the post. You could write so much and make sure you didn’t put anything in it that you shouldn’t. But they knew where we were. They knew we were in Canada, once we were in Canada. They knew where we’d be going after that, too, so any differences between they’d say, “Oh well, they must be on the sea.”

Did you tell them that you had got your wings?

13:00 Oh yes. Oh yes, yes. I kept them informed as to what was happening.

It would have been great to have seen your dad’s face?

I think so. I think it made local news, anyhow. I have a habit of getting in local papers. Wait till you see this thing I’ve got in the local paper here.

There was one more point I wanted to cover in Canada before we moved on, and actually just before you got your wings….The trouble you had with ground navigation? You failed your initial tests and then were

13:30 given….

Yes.

What was the ground navigation as opposed to air navigation?

It was a bit more in the way of the science of it all. A lot more questions. In the air, it was a case of you had your maps, you had to plot your courses. Work out your wind speeds and directions. Alter your courses as need be….You might have been flying, say, due East,

14:00 and you’re flying directly into an easterly wind, and you’d have to work out your ground speed as opposed to your air speed, which would be far less, because you were going into the wind, and then, all of a sudden, you’d get a build up of wind speed, and it might veer around, and alter your ground speed, which made a difference to your ETA [Estimated Time of Arrival], at the place, because you had certain points to go to. It was usually a triangle of course, you go down and around like that,

14:30 all on strange country. You never knew beforehand where you were going. But you were given your course out, and then you got your map and it showed where you were going, so you had to plot those….And you worked, as all navigators used to in those days, they worked on a plot every so many minutes. A new plot. Different to the chaps on board the ocean liners. They could work on a plot, and go and finish the plot the following morning, because the distance covered wasn’t so great, but we were covering,

15:00 quite….was noticeably different, in a given time, so you had to be sure you got your aircraft turning in the right direction to keep on course.

So that was aerial navigation. What was ground navigation?

Ground navigation was the same, except it incorporated things like meteorology. There’s another subject it incorporated….They were all things you had to know about.

15:32 There were about three or four different things that all came under navigation. Offhand I can’t tell you. I don’t have any records of that. That’s the beauty of the log book. I’ve got records of the things there, so I can quote you pretty well, but I can’t on training….But I didn’t keep any records of training at all, because officially they were supposed to be handed in as we left the station to go onto the next one.

Do you remember what it was you struggled with?

16:00 What element of that ground navigation that you….

I honestly don’t know what it was. They didn’t tell us. They just said you’re going to sit again, so they reset the course. I honestly don’t know. You just had to work at it. We had about….well, several…We must have been given a few days to just swot up again, so we swotted up generally, on anything. So we don’t know. The fact is my air navigation was spot on, because I was back on ETA

16:30 and everything else. But there was something there that was technical, which probably wouldn’t have any effect at all on my flying ability. And certainly didn’t on my friends, I’m sure it wouldn’t have done. But that was the way it was laid out. It was all laid out that way, and…..so it happened.

Had you seen newsreels, or anything like that, of the Battle of Britain and the sort of aerial combat that was going on in Europe?

Oh yes. I saw lots of them.

It must have been

17:00 inspiring. Was it?

A bit lonely, I thought. One man and one aeroplane, against the rest of them. I was still in favour of having a few fellows around with me.

Tell me about what sort of effect hearing about the Dambusters mission had on morale, as you were travelling over by ship to Europe, hearing about that. What sort of effect….

That was incredible, we thought.

17:30 That was incredible to think they would be able to go in there and shatter one of those. Almost as incredible, in its time, just as incredible as September 11. That was incredible. Just the same sort of feelings….That’s the similar feeling I had, anyhow. “How could they do this?” Because we had no knowledge of the bouncing bomb, or anything else, and the fact that these dams were such great big walls.

18:00 What’s to stop them getting up in Sydney here? Putting one through the Warragamba? Imagine what would happen down on that plain, down there, if that came down? That’s what we all thought about, being surrounded by water. We thought, ‘What a surge of water. How would you get out of it? You wouldn’t have a chance.’

Was there ever a sense of being overwhelmed by the technology involved?

Oh yes.

Because you were in the heart of the technological development.

18:30 Radar coming in, and bouncing bombs….

They were coming in, but there were a lot of things we didn’t know about, too because not all squadrons were treated alike, when it came to the technological advances. Some people had….which in retrospect, I think, has been to our assistance, in our squadron. It brought the H2S, which was brought in. We were all complaining we hadn’t got it. Our navigator’s were complaining they’d got the G box, but they hadn’t got

19:00 the H2S. But on the records we’ve read since, and the way the Germans found about it, they could pinpoint us leaving our bases. The moment they switched the H2S on. Well we didn’t have them on ours. Neither of our squadrons had H2S when I was on them, so that might have helped us a lot with the losses, you see.

Were you constantly learning? Were you constantly on a steep learning curve in terms of the technology? 19:31 It was an absorbing circuit, but it wasn’t a steep circuit. You absorbed it. You had periodical soirees all the time. You absorbed it by the very fact that you were involved with each other, and that you talked about these things. But whilst we were on the squadron I don’t recall us ever having been….No, they couldn’t. They wouldn’t have sent us away on courses and that. We had to stay on the Squadron because we had to keep Squadron up the strength.

20:00 But the courses came thick and fast once the Squadron life was finished. They’d send on a course for next to nothing. “I wonder what I’m on that for?” The first one they sent me on was public speaking.

That’s come in pretty handy today, hasn’t it?

It’s taken a long time.

The fruits of the labour finally paying off. But there was a lot steps that you went through in your training before you reached the squadron. As you moved

20:30 through each of those steps, was there an increasing intensity, or an increasing seriousness with which you approached your learning?

Not really, not really no. I think the initial training got you straightened up like that. How did you feel about your own school work? Did you find you had trouble going up the top end? It’s a bit different, of course, now, I suppose. I think myself, with due respect there, that there’s

21:00 too much time wasted on education in the lower sections. I think when we were on course we didn’t waste any time. We worked long hours, and it was thrashed into us. I think that’s the important thing, that you’ve got that background there, behind you. If you missed out…I was fortunate enough not to be ill at any stage, because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss a week, and then try to catch up. I might have found it a bit difficult then. On the ground

21:30 subjects, not so much on the flying. Because you’d pick that up pretty smartish. On the ground subjects, it would have been difficult for me. The absorption content, or whatever you like to call it, of my brain isn’t very great. That organ over there has taken me a long time, a long time. I didn’t start until I was sixty and I’m still in the A, B,

22:00 C, D, E, F, G range. The Dog Sat On The Mat, The Cat Caught The Rat, and all the rest of it. Down in that section, reading music. I can read it, but I can’t read it straight out, I have to practise it as I read it. Whereas as in those early days, most of the stuff you’d pick up pretty quickly. But that’s the way it is, yeah.

I was interested in your early impressions when you arrived

22:30 in England, as to how the English public were reacting to the war or how they were responding to the war threat and how that may have differed from the Australian community. Did you notice any dramatic difference in the way they were responding?

Oh yes. Wonderful, wonderful. You see, my wife’s often said, when people ask her, “How did you get through it?” She said, “We had no option. When you’re in it, you just face into it, and you

23:00 get on with it.” You’ve got no option. It’s not a case of just putting up with it. You’ve got to say, “Well, we’ve got to get on with it.” They were marvellous. They were marvellous to each other. She could walk down the street, in the pitch-black of night, and never be molested by anyone. It didn’t matter what hour of the night. You can’t do that now, in peacetime. The spirit of decorum,

23:30 of the people was phenomenal. And that impressed us straightaway. Now when we got over there, if we went to London on leave, and there was an air-raid, we’d be diving into the air-raid shelters. And they’d be looking at us, “Oh yeah?” And we’d get down the air-raid shelters, and we’d probably be the only ones down there. All the others were getting on with their job. They accepted it, and that’s it. When it got really bad I suppose they scuttled in, but they seemed to have a sense about it, with living with it,

24:00 and knowing just when to say…Brinkmanship, we call it, these days. I’ve often said, if I had to fight a war I wouldn’t mind being alongside the Pommies. They had a spirit there, a balance. I suppose we’re just the same once we get into it, but we were pretty green to it, when we got over there. That war had been going on for a while, and they’d had some terrible air raids. Joan, my wife, had been under them.

24:32 They just knew that they had to face it. Of course, they had a wonderful leader, in Churchill. They adored him, most people did. And yet they threw him out in the first election after the war. Could never get over that. We couldn’t understand that over there. We just couldn’t understand what had happened. That man there got them right through, you know, through perseverance. He held them up. And the Queen, and the King, too, as well. They were good.

25:00 Would never have a word said against them. They used to pull their legs around. And I’d say, “You don’t know them. You want to live amongst them.”

Did you experience any prejudices towards the dominion colonial forces, from either the English public or within the RAF?

No, I have never, honestly, had anything but good will extended to me. And that’s during the war, and the sixteen years

25:30 I lived in England. They all called me “Aussie.” “There’s old Aussie coming.” There’s something about it….We did leave a good impression with them. The war time fellows that were over there. Because I lived there, and I lived…not by my wits, I was a representative, and I was accepted by all sorts. And I reckon most of it was because I was an Australian. One fellow said to

26:00 me early in the piece, when I started working over there, he said, “You’ll do all right over here, Noel, because you’ve come from Australia.”

During your war experiences in England, did you cross paths with any other dominion air crew, from Canada or South Africa or Zimbabwe?

You did, but you didn’t cross swords with them.

No, cross paths with them.

Yes, yes, you did. The ones we didn’t seem to get on very well with,

26:30 but I found them after the war were not bad fellows at all, were the Poles. They were a bit more womanisers than we were.

We’ve heard they were great pilots.

They were good pilots, apparently.

Cowboys, though.

Cowboys, that would be the right thing. We had a Polish station not far from Syerston. They used to cut right across our flight paths. No bay or leave or anything, just cut right across. They were bitsa cowboys, as you say.

Did you have any contact

27:00 with the Poles at all?

No, not really. Not during the war. I met quite a few in Civvy Street [civilian life], nice people.

The other interesting thing we have heard about the Poles, is their motivation, their passion, or their hate for the Germans, that they were far driven far more than other people that they met because, obviously, that their homeland had been taken over.

Oh yes, definitely. Yes. Those people, they lost a lot.

How did you personally feel about

27:30 the German enemy? Did you have a personal hatred?

No, not as such. You did for Hitler, for Goebbels, for Goering. All those other bigwigs there, but the man in the street, no. I’ve got a very great friendship with a Luftwaffe pilot. He lives not far away from here.

At the time…

At the time I didn’t. We didn’t meet up with them. The first time I met up with the Germans, as such, as individuals, was on the troopship going across the Pacific.

28:00 They were in there, and I was in the messing section, you see, and we used to, together with the fellows that were looking after them, we used to rub soldiers picking up the….the great big things full of soup, it was in a great big container, or you had to pick up rolled oats, in these containers, and you’d meet up with them then. And they’d talk,

28:30 some of them could talk English. They were all our age group, they were all and sun-tanned as anything, because they had come out of the Western Desert. And one fellow said, “What are you doing here?” I said, “I’m training to be a pilot.” He said, “Oh, they’re sending the boys to fight us now.” How little they knew. Because they had the boys fighting us, too. But they were army types. They didn’t try any funny

29:00 business or anything. It wasn’t worth their while to do anything like that. There weren’t enough of them. We were balanced out pretty well, really.

So did you have an opinion or an actual feeling toward the Luftwaffe pilots, or against the German people, per say, or was it more of an abstract feeling…

It was an abstract. Oh yes. No, I didn’t have any feeling like that at all. There’s an old saying, you’ve probably heard it. “Its not

29:30 not the knighthood of the air, it’s the chivalry of the air.” People are gallant, and those people quite honestly told us how many of us they’d shot down. They must have been damn good pilots, so you accepted that.

30:00 Some, what we called Krauts, they were obviously very, very much indoctrinated. But if you got a man, like my friend who’s out here now, and his lovely wife, he was a Luftwaffe pilot, but he had never been indoctrinated. He told us about what they used to do. They were a different kettle of fish, they were cruel, cruel people. But the average man? A very, very nice person.

30:30 I’ve met quite a few, and I’ve been through Germany since, and they were not bad.

As you were going through your training, then, did you learn much about the Luftwaffe? Did you know what you were up against?

Oh yes. Yes, you were constantly kept up to date with them. Oh yes.

And was there a healthy respect for their fighting abilities?

My word. They were enemy, well and truly, my word. We never belittled them. They were real strong fighters, them.

31:00 Oh, they were good.

Were there particular aircraft or weapons that you were most concerned about?

I would honestly say I was concerned about all of them. They all were lethal, the whole lot of them, if you were on the wrong end of them. You didn’t have much time when you were flying to sort them out individually. But if you saw one coming at one, with anything blazing, you’d say “Look out! It’s a ME [Messerschmitt] 109,

31:30 this one!” But his bullets were just as lethal as the one behind him might have been. The 110, or a Heinkel, or one of those, the JU [Junkers] 88. The big JU88, that was the one that worried us more than anything. That was the time they fitted what they called the Schrage Musik, and that was the upward firing gun. That one caused us a lot of damage, until we found out what was happening. They had the gun….If you can imagine

32:00 the fuselage of the aircraft, the pilot’s up here, they had this gun mounted behind here, and it came out on an angle like this, not like that, like all the other guns. He came up at an angle like that. The pilot could sight it, from his cockpit, and he got in underneath us and let us have it. Straight into number one and number two petrol tank, up they’d go. One fellow boasted he had eight one night. Just like that.

32:31 We didn’t find out about that for a while. They were probably the ones that frightened us most. I constantly, when we found out about those, I was consistently….Actually, before then, too, I had adopted a policy of every minute of telling the fellows, “Search, we’re looking under, boys.” Just a short thing. And they knew I was going to turn her on her side, just for a moment, to have a search down underneath,

33:00 see if there’s anything down there.

You’d bank it up on ninety degrees?

Yeah, just turn her straight over. Just for a short time, you’d stay like that, then back again. Still on your same course.

You were never equipped with radar, during this time?

Yes, we were. But some areas the radar didn’t pick it up, you see. And he knew where he could get. That was the one, we had a blind spot. And it was that blind spot that was the undoing of a lot of our fellows.

33:32 In the build up to your joining the Squadron, and you were going through your crewing up….Sorry, you went to the Airspeed Oxfords first?

Hmm.

You mentioned before when you were talking about the Oxfords before that they had vices. And in a lot of ways that was good. The Ansons before had been so smooth, but the Oxfords had vices and it was important to learn the vices and how to deal with them. Was that period also about learning also more about your own vices or your own weaknesses, and

34:00 knowing how to manage and deal with them?

Yes, really. I’d say so. It taught us that no two aircraft were exactly the same in their flying characteristics. Just because you’ve got a nice easy going little Cessna…they’re a piece of cake to fly those around. There’s no guarantee. You get out of a Cessna into another one, it might be quite different. And you’ve got to get that feel of that aircraft to know just what you do. They’re all ladies you know….

34:32 But it was very necessary. I can see that, in retrospect. Very necessary for us to have that period on the Airspeed Oxfords, to knock out any ideas that all aircraft were the same. Because she did tend to stall very quickly, and she’d flick over. What they call a flick-stall, where if a wing…There might have been a port on the wing, a little

35:00 hole like that, an inspection port, that had been left open, And that would create a disturbance in that wing, as you’re going forward. That was sufficient enough, at low speeds, to tip her. You’d be getting up, and you’d be getting a bit close to the point of stall. You might be in a steep turn, for instance, where that part of the wing is pretty close to the point of stall, that would be sufficient to tip her straight over. And if you were down low, you couldn’t get out of it. There was no way you’d get out of it,

35:30 at all, because you couldn’t go up in time. All these things. And also she had a nasty swing on take-off. And that’s caused by the torque of the propellers, you see. But the Anson didn’t have that. If she did, it was a very flaccid one. But she had a nasty one, so you had to open up one engine quicker than the other to counteract that. To keep her running straight down the runway. Because some of those runways weren’t very wide, so it taught you to come right down the middle.

36:02 So what were your vices, or the weaknesses in your flying? Were you conscious of them? Were there areas that you had to work on?

Yes, they used to put it down after every test, what you had to work on.

What were your weaknesses?

I noticed in the log book it said, “Needs more practise on precautionary landings.” That was early in the piece, that was on Tiger Moths. And the precautionary landing was one where

36:30 you had a limited airfield to get into, or a limited field to get into, and you had to get into that, so you had to get right close to the point of stall before you got over the fence, or whatever it was which was stopping you from getting into there. So that’s getting onto there, and as you came around, you had to get your aircraft right back and get her down into that almost landing position, just above the point of stall, so when you got over into the field, you dropped her straight in.

37:00 Bit like me getting a stone and throwing it over that fence. Same sort of thing. You had to treat your aircraft the same, you had get her in, over there quickly. If you didn’t, and you went in to fast, she was well above the stall, she wouldn’t drop. She’d finish up down there, and you’d run out of a place to land, and you’d also have run out of a place to get up again. She couldn’t get off. That was all part of the training scheme. You find out your weaknesses there, like that.

37:31 Was there a moment or a turning point for you where you finally felt confident and comfortable that you deserved your place there? You said that you had always been struggling in those early days of your study to keep up academically…

Yes, yes.

Was there a point where you felt like you were where mean to be and felt a confidence in your ability?

Oh yes, your confidence got a great boost, once you got those wings on your chest. They don’t take those off you for no reason.

38:00 I have a friend who’s living not very far from here, who lost his wings. Very close to me. He lost them in Canada, because he had done something silly. Very, very silly. And they stripped him, of his wings. They can do that. Or they could do it. I wasn’t intent on letting them do that to me. Once you got your wings, it was a standing there, then. I’ve been through the mill and I know what I’m doing sort of thing.

Do you think that was a turning point in your life, overall?

38:30 I think so.

Being granted those wings?

I’m sure of it. Yeah, up to that stage, you were struggling through. But that was having your eye on the goal, set the goalposts, and I was up there. Ah, yes, definitely. It’s like you getting your academic cap, isn’t it? Same thing. You set your sights on it, and you get it. And you’ve got every reason to be proud, and I was pretty proud, I’ll tell you. To think, a little

39:00 country boy from primary school managed to get up here with the rest of them. And I was even prouder when I got my commission. When I got my commission, it was the most amazing thing of the lot. To think that I hadn’t had a secondary education. When I went for my interview, that was in England….it’s a funny story, this one.

We’ll pick it up on the next tape. We’re right on the last….

Tape 7

00:32 Right Noel, you were just about to tell us about an amusing story associated with receiving your commission?

Oh yes. Well, I had attained the rank of flight sergeant, and I was still in charge of…I was still a captain. I had been a captain every since I took the crew. And I was in charge of this big Stirling, and the word came through that I was to present myself to the group captain, to be assessed as to my suitability

01:00 as to being recommended for a commission, which is the ultimate. Because, on our wings course, one third of the course were commissioned, and two thirds were non-commissioned sergeants. And we had to work our way through to get up to commission rank. The one third that got it, of course, were the academics and the likes, who had everything going for them, and they got their commissions. So I presented myself down to the group captain, who was a very

01:30 very stickler, old school type. “I say, old boy,” and all that. He was really one of the old school. And he talked to me at long length about things, and one thing and another, and what I was like at cricket. I said, “I was mediocre, sir, as a batsman, but I had a pretty, good, slow bowl.” And we talked about that and we talked about other things. Nothing much

02:00 about the Air Force, as such, and then finally he says to me….Well, he talked about the Air Force then, and how I liked it, and was I happy in it, and all the rest of it. What did I think of the Royal Air Force. A whole lot of things. “And now Sanders,” he said, “Where were you educated?” I said, “Jerseyville Public School, sir.” “Oh, public school. Jolly good show. Jolly

02:30 good show.” He clasped me by the hand, and said, “You’ll be right, son. You’ll be right.” I said, “You may not know, Jerseyville Public School was a school with one teacher and thirty pupils, primary school.” I said, “That was the end of my education.” I walked back to our barrack block where the rest of my crew were, and the RAF types

03:00 in there, and they said, “How did you get on, Skipper?” I said, “Blown if I know, but I think I might have got it.” “Well, what did he say?” I said, “He asked me about my education, and I honestly told him. I told I was educated at Jerseyville Public School, and he was ecstatic.” The Australian fellows said, “What’s up with the old goat?” That sort of thing. And

03:30 the RAF fellows said, “Oh no, don’t you think so much about that at all. Public schools in our country are Eton, Harrow and all of those. They’re the great public schools.” Now how about that. Unconsciously, I told him, truthfully, that was the end of my formal education. I had been to night school. I could have told him, if he had asked me. But he was quite happy.

Primary school education?

04:00 Primary school education. And he came through. He came through, and my commission went through in no time. While I was at Syerston, after the crash. I got my commission. I was a pilot officer for six weeks, it was supposed to be for six months. And an airboard instruction came through that all captains of four engine aircraft were to be flying officers. And they went up to

04:30 flying officers straight away. And I got my flight louie [lieutenant] just before I came out of the air force. But I was robbed of that, too, because I was entitled to be a flight louie on the squadron, but when the vacancy came up for a flight louie on the flight, I only had four ops to go, so they put a junior officer to me, and gave him the promotion. And I said to the squadron leader, “Well, that’s a bit unfair. Why aren’t I getting it?”

05:00 He said, “Sandy, you’ve only got only four ops to go, and we feel we want somebody who’s got a few more.” And I said, “But he might get shot down tomorrow. What’s the chances? Like the other fellow had gone?” They got the chop rate, just the same as the others. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles, you see, so I never did get it then. Had I obtained it then, on the squadron, I would have retained that right through. So I had to wait until I was just about out of the air force to get the flight louie.

05:30 On a slightly more sombre note, I wanted to ask you about your time at Kidlington, and you mentioned the burial parties that you’d have for people that were lost at training, or….

Yes, they were all training accidents.

What would a burial party involve?

They were fairly simple, although there was always a nice funeral service in the chapel on the station. Sometimes they selected a party with rifles

06:00 to fire guns off. Other times they didn’t have time for that. It was always the pallbearers, and the pallbearers were selected at random, more of less. If you happened to be free, they’d pip you for that that. And usually six of us. And you would take the coffin out from the church. Usually you went to the church, where you’d first meet up with it. It had been placed in there by the undertakers.

06:30 I’m assuming it had been civilian undertakers who had put it in there. And then we would carry the coffin out, and slip it onto a truck. An open sided truck. And we would sit alongside it to the place of burial. And then carry it down for the burial. One of the loveliest ones was in the Kidlington Church cemetery. I often thought about that in later years when I passed through there, as I was

07:00 travelling through there, about that burial party there, that we put one of our fellows down there. In amongst all the other old ancient headstones. But a lot of them were taken to the nearest military section of a great big cemetery in Oxford. Which was a bit further away. But this particular one that I can remember distinctly. It made a big impression on me, that one. Being buried in this 07:30 lovely little churchyard, out in the country. In a country town.

Was there something specific about the air force or the RAAF to those ceremonies? Were there any particular verses or rituals within the…

They were all pretty much straight forward, I think. I don’t think there was much difference at all. Always covered with the flag. Always had your native flag. The Australian flag,

08:00 in our fellows’ case, and the Union Jack for the others. Or Canadians…We didn’t want too many of those. When we knew there was one coming up we tried to make sure we were on flying duties. Self- protection, basically. We knew they’d brought it. We didn’t want to get too deeply involved, you couldn’t afford to. Same on the Squadron, when you lost a mate. You couldn’t

08:30 grieve for him. I grieved for my dearest friend, who was lost over Italy. And he was on Wellingtons, over Italy, and he was my dearest friend. A great lad. Trevor and I had been mates all the way through from childhood. And he went on the Wellingtons, and he was just a bit ahead of me, and he took his crew, and on his first trip with his crew, he never returned. I don’t know what happened to him. So I grieve for him,

09:00 still do. I named my eldest son after him. Because my eldest son was born on his birthday. Amazing, isn’t it?

Tell me a bit more about him? You actually did your night school at Kempsey with him?

No, no. He was ahead of me. He was a bit older than me. He was already in the Air Force by the time, before I got in. He was ahead of me by about one course, I think. He nearly caught up with me in Canada. He was in

09:30 Calgary, and he knew I was at Claresholm, which was down the line, and he was on a free run in a Cessna. He was flying Cessna Bobcats, and I came back from my training run, and as I was coming round on the circuit, I could see this Bobcat lined up to take off. And it took off just as I came in to land. I thought, ‘That’s strange, we’re not a Bobcat drome.’ We were all Avro Ansons.

10:01 So, I said, “Who was that fellow over there?” “Oh, you’ve just missed him, Sandy. It was your mate Trevor Judd.” And I said, “Oh good grief.” I missed him just like that, in Canada. So we never did catch up with each other in Canada. But we did catch up with each other in Oxford, when I was at Kidlington. And I’ve got a photo there, which his sister sent along the other day.

10:30 But he and I were great friends. We did everything together. He was a lovely looking boy. But the other boys, I never got real close to them, after I lost so many. You couldn’t afford to, otherwise you’d get too wrapped up in death and things. You couldn’t afford to do that.

Did you invest a lot of emotional energy then, in your own crew?

11:00 That crew were blood brothers. Your own crew were blood brothers. It didn’t matter how bad they were, they were still blood brothers. If you didn’t agree with something, they were still your blood brothers. We went through so much together, you could never stop that. And since then, a few of them have played up a bit, and Joan doesn’t think much of some of them, but no….They’re still my blood brothers and I will stick by them through thick and thin. They stuck through me and

11:30 by me.

So it was safe to have that relationship with them because your fates were so tied…

We were tied up together. Our fates were tied together, well and truly.

Did you feel a particular burden of responsibility for them as the pilot? Is that something that played on your mind?

There’s a degree of that. I don’t think I had it, initially. I was aware that they accepted my rulings,

12:00 on most things. Sometimes they didn’t, and we all had a little confab quick and lively to get it all sorted out. But generally speaking, it was pretty democratic, from that point of view. But on one of my training trips, I vacillated a bit on a decision. I couldn’t make a decision whether to carry on with the training trip or to return to base because we had a break down in the communications between us and base.

12:30 And according to the rules of everything, you’re entitled to return. Likewise, we’re entitled to return if you’re on an operational sortie and you weren’t already over the target, or within hailing distance of it, to return. Because you were putting everybody at risk. And I had this one, and fortunately it was over Wales at the time, and I decided to return, and I started to head back.

13:00 And one of them said, “What are we heading back for? We’re still pretty close to them.” (UNCLEAR) maybe not, maybe we should go on. I said, “Righto, we’ll resume course, we’ll go back.” Go straight on. So around I went. And I had second thoughts, I thought, ‘I make the rules here, they don’t make the rules. I’ve never taken any notice of that fellow.’ So I turned around again, and the same thing happened again. They all jumped up and down. So I said, “Right. Okay, then, press on 13:30 regardless.” That was the motto of our Squadron. Press On Regardless. So away we went, did our duty, did the whole course around, on the cross country, came back in. Walking back to the…..mess huts, and that, and Rosie, my

14:00 elder statesman, 32 years old, said, “Skipper, you made a big mistake tonight.” He said, “You’re the skipper of this aircraft, of our crew, when you make a decision, you stick to it. It’s your decision. They won’t respect you for vacillating the way you did tonight. So just remember that. When you decide to make a decision, okay if it’s a wrong decision. It can’t he helped. But you

14:30 weigh it up yourself, you make the decision.” He said, “You’re the boss.” He said, “They will not respect you if you do that again.” And that was a great lesson for a kid. An old man telling the kid.

Were there ever any instances where you were forced to go ahead with an operation, or go ahead with an order or a procedure, against your better judgement?

15:04 Not in the air. No, not in the air.

On the ground?

Odd instances. Because it would have got me into real trouble.

Can you give us an example of that?

I’d prefer not to. I could have got into real trouble. No, I think we’ll leave that be.

15:31 I’ve answered your question there. It was a minor thing, as it turned out, but I could have got into real trouble. Never in the air, never had any problems at all.

Could you tell me about the relationship or the dynamic between the pilot and the second pilot? How does that relationship work?

We didn’t have a second pilot.

I thought you referred to that a couple of times.

We never had a second pilot.

16:00 I never flew with a second pilot. I only flew with the flight engineer. He was the man who took the place of the second pilot. If I wanted to go down to the toilet at the back, I had to rely on either her flying straight and level without me, or the George, which invariably didn’t work, would work, or to get my bomb aimer up and put him in the seat, which is a tedious thing, because by the time I’d got him up I’d have to get out of the seat, and hold her in

16:30 position, while he got in and that. And I’m bursting myself to get down the back. So consequently, I never had that real problem. I tried that once. I got halfway down the back, and blooming thing tipped up. It was my weight, you see, changing the weight ratio or whatever. The nose went up, the whole thing was crooked.

17:00 It was a bit of trouble there. See, the Royal Air Force in their wisdom said that we will dispense with the second pilot with the Lancaster. We’re losing too many pilots. There we were. They’d rather lose one than two. The only time, as I said, I went for second dicky myself, I did take a few fellows, as they

17:30 became more experienced, as second dickies, but we didn’t class as second pilots. They were there, sitting there as second dickies, as pilots, but only as observers. They didn’t have any controls. There was only one set of controls, and that was with the captains. When we got back to instructing, of course, the instructor sat on that side and there was a set of controls there for him. They put them in especially for those. But in the Squadron aircraft, we always had

18:00 only one set of controls. So you couldn’t in any shape or form call him the second pilot.

Did you have an opportunity to drop a bomb load during training? Did you actually drop a range? On a bombing range?

Oh yes, constantly.

When was that first opportunity? That would have been in England?

Yes, it would have been on Wellingtons. We had to do that regularly. If we didn’t drop practise bombs, we used to have what they called….

18:32 infrared, I think. They had an infrared. You went across that, and bombed that, and registered on a photo, to tell you how your bombs were going. We won a prize, just before D-Day. We were out on a big range. There was always a competition going on for practise bombing, who would get the closest. And we went out this particularly day, and we came lucky.

19:00 We hit the jackpot. We got very, very close range with about half a dozen bombs. They said, “You can have an extra weekend off. When do you want to take it?” And we said, “Oh well, we’ll worry about it next weekend.” This is about the 1st of June, you see. Little did we know we were crossing right into D- Day. So we missed going over on D-Day. Our plane went,

19:30 with a crew of squadron leaders and others. She was empty. We were all on leave. And we heard about D-Day, and all these fellows going out, and we raced back and got to Rennes, took us over there.

But you missed the big event?

The actual big D-Day, we missed it by a day. Yeah, but only because we had won our bombing range competition.

Does that take some getting used to? The

20:00 control of the plane as a payload is dropped? The shift of weight and….

Oh yeah. Very dramatic.

What do you do with the controls?

Well, you try and stop her from climbing like mad. So you push forward on the control column, to try and keep the nose down. Once those bombs go, boom, boom, boom, boom, sometimes they all went pretty much together, but other times, they’d go boom, boom, boom, boom, that wasn’t too bad, you could keep on pushing her. But they gained quite a bit of height, once you dropped that

20:30 payload, there.

And if it wasn’t a consistent dropping of the bombs then that would be more difficult?

Yes, if you let the whole lot go together. Bingo. She’d jump up, way up, like going up in a lift, out of control. You had to hold her, you couldn’t allow her to put her nose up. So you had to push her like mad and keep the nose down, so she went up that way, instead of up that way.

It must have been quite exhilarating that feeling?

21:02 Everything over the target was exhilarating. It was all part and parcel of it. There was nothing, no particular time over the target that wasn’t exhilarating and frightening. No part of it. Anybody who tells you otherwise is not telling you the truth, as far as I’m concerned. Because that is what you went for. It wasn’t the excitement of going and killing people, it was an excitement of getting rid of that load, and getting out of the way. Most importantly,

21:30 you didn’t want that going up with you.

The 463 Squadron was an RAAF Squadron within the RAF. So working to the command of British Squadron leaders?

No, no, we had our flight commanders and wing commanders, squadron commanders. But the base we were on was controlled by the RAF. And so the really senior officers on the base were

22:00 all RAF.

That’s at Waddington?

That’s at Waddington, yeah.

And there was both 463 of which you were a part, and 467. Were you the only two squadrons at Waddington?

Yes, at that time.

And you were all Australians.

All Australians, yes. Two Australian Lancaster squadrons, yeah.

Were they established purely for the war?

Yes.

So there’s no real history or tradition to those particular squadrons?

No. 460 was the first Australian Lancaster Squadron, then 467

22:30 was formed. She was a three flight squadron, A, B and C. As was 460. 460 remained a three flight squadron, so as a result she handed out the heaviest payload of bombs of all the Australian squadrons. And a lot of the RAF, too, because she was a three flight squadron. She had another…..I’d only be guessing….I don’t know how many

23:00 she would have had. I’m trying to remember the number of aircraft in the squadron. I think there was twenty in each squadron, so there’d be sixty aircraft. I think we had twenty in each flight. But, she was always the key one. The highest number of operation sorties and operational payloads. But

23:30 467 was made into a three…when she was formed, she was formally a three flight squadron, and very shortly after that, they took C flight away, and they formed 463, so they both became two flight squadrons. And that was good.

So on an average night of operations, both flights of both squadrons would be all flying?

Oh yes, they had to get them off. It was a maximum effort. They’d get very few aircraft left on the ground when they

24:00 all got into the air.

Would you all be briefed together?

Yes, squadrons were.

You wouldn’t be briefed with 467 as well?

You got me to think about that now. I think we were briefed together. I’m sure we were. There was only the one briefing room. I think we were all briefed together, as our crews. Individually, as squadrons, the pilots were briefed separately to the 467s.

24:30 There must have been quite a camaraderie with them?

Oh yes. Yes. We still have it. All our reunions are together. Our squadron associations, the 463, the 467 squadron association. Oh yes. We might as well have been one squadron. We had about four flights (UNCLEAR), so they cut it down to two flights.

Did you have a sense of being part of the history and tradition of the RAF?

Yes.

25:00 Yes, we felt part of it. We didn’t have a great deal of tradition of our own, so we took part in that. We were pretty well involved with the RAF. We found the RAF very good. I can tell you a lot about the RAF, I thought they were pretty good.

Can you describe Waddington to me?

Waddington?

How it was laid out? And what the countryside was like around it?

Well, Waddington was situated

25:30 on the Wolds, the Lincolnshire Wolds, which are a high escarpment running right along the middle of Lincolnshire. And Lincoln itself, the big city of Lincoln, with its magnificent cathedral, is sitting on top of the Wolds and down underneath the Wolds there. And we were on the Wolds about five miles from Lincoln. So on our

26:00 stationary and all that it showed Lincolnshire cathedral. Because there were all these big red lights and that as we came in and across. It was, and still is, a permanent RAF station. By that, it means that all the accommodation is all double bricks, and the officers mess and the sergeant’s messes are just like top class hotels. And

26:30 we’ve back since to several reunions, and they were beautiful. Compared to what they were during the war, because they didn’t spend money on them then. But even so, the officers’ mess and the sergeants’ mess were very nice in the squadrons. We were lucky, from our point of view, because we had these accommodation which was all central heating and everything else. And she had all these facilities. But some of the other stations I was on,

27:00 we were in Nissen huts and things like that. They were wartime ‘dromes which have ceased to be aerodromes now, and have gone back to the farms or whatever they were beforehand. They take up a terrific area, an airfield. Fantastic area. Big farms, you could have a big farm on the site of an airfield.

Something that comes up time and again, when I’m reading about Bomber Command is, that kind of bizarre double

27:30 life that you have. Where you’re off on a sortie, or an operation, in the freezing cold, flying at night, in the thick of the battle, or the thick of the attack. And a few hours later you’re back at home in a nice warm bed, or having a drink in the ward room. Compared to maybe, I guess, being in the trenches, or being in the Desert Air Force, it’s quite a bizarre double life, isn’t it?

Oh yes. Quite.

Is that something that struck you at the time?

The nice idea of getting

28:00 back to a nice warm bed, and clean sheets, and a bat woman to look after you…Oh, yes. If you’ve got to fight a war, I’ll tell you, boy, that’s the….I got it everywhere. To be able to go to a station like that? That was terrific. Yeah, it is wonderful. There’s no doubt about it. There’s a few of them, all over England, these permanent stations, which are operating now. All the big fighter bombers are all operating out of them.

28:30 And they’re fully active. They’re little cities themselves. They did tell us how many people were on that station. Two thousand, two hundred I think. There’s so many airmen and airwomen to one flying man. To look after, to keep the station running, in every respect.

Tell me a bit about the relationship between the aircrew and the ground crew? Or I guess, in specifically, your

29:00 crew’s relationship to the ground crew?

Oh, on the squadron, it was marvellous. They really had the raw end of the stick. They worked on those aircraft all hours, in all conditions, to have them ready. At operational strength. Squadron had to be kept at operation strength. The moment that a call came out from group headquarters that we were out on a sortie, ops were on, they had to

29:30 have those aircraft, as many as they could possibly have, in perfect running order. And they worked through terrible conditions. They had their little huts, with their little oil burners, trying to keep warm out on those bleak airfields. And they can get very bleak, the airfields in England, in the winter time. Terribly bleak. And they’d be out there. “How do you fellows stand it?” “Oh, you get used to it, Skipper. We get used to it.” But what they could never get used to, they told us, was

30:00 losing a crew. Because if they lost a crew, they lost seven friends. And they adopted the crews that flew their aircraft. And my boys, there was six of them, I think, or seven of them, I can’t remember. I called them “The Boys”, they were all older men than me, most of them. Some were younger. But the sergeants and the others were all fairly older, much older men.

30:31 They would take us under their umbrella and they were so keen to look after us in every respect. And showed us the greatest respect. And we showed them the greatest respect. Because they were really first class. And you know, there was always one or two that wouldn’t go to bed until we returned. To make sure that their baby was brought back into the hangar, nice, and put to bed,

31:00 before the other started work on it. Stayed up hours and hours. They’d been working all day, and they’d stay there by their little old cozy fires way out in these dispersals. It might only be a shed about the size of this, made out corrugated iron, whatever they could get. There was nothing of a permanent nature supplied for them on these dispersals. A dispersal was a big round pad with an entry into it onto the main runway. Sort of a perimeter track which led

31:30 onto the main runways. They were just off the sides. They were all over the airfield. You’d go three or four miles, sometimes, to get to your aircraft.

Were there hangars though, for the Lancasters?

Oh no, they were out on side. They only went into hangars for major servicing. All the time they were on service, they were outside. She was on her own particular pad, and they stayed out there. Snow, come anything. These fellows, if you bent

32:00 their aircraft, oh, they were upset. “What have you done to her? Look at her!” I’d go out sometimes, just on my own, and they’d be clambering all over her, cleaning the Perspex and cleaning her up. And making quite a thing of them. And these were weapons of war. They were marvellous. They were the salt of the earth, they were, really.

That must have been inspiring for you, in a lot of ways?

Oh yes. Humbling.

32:30 Humbling. As I say, if they lost a crew. My fellows had two aircraft to look after. We lost a crew, and he said to me, “Keep going, skipper, keep going. Keep coming back. We don’t want to lose you.”

So in a lot of ways you were kind of carrying them into battle…

They were family.

…as well as your direct crew?

They were family, well and truly.

You said there would always be somebody who would wait up for you to come back.

There was always somebody.

33:00 Would you pilots or air crew wait around until everybody got back?

When we got back? As soon as we got back, we called up, because we broke radio silence when we came back, we called up control. Control would ring down transport and say, “Jay? Your uncles on the circuit.” And by the time we got down and back into our allotted spot, they’d be there with their big bus, 33:30 or truck, to take us back in. And jillywaps [?] on, that hour of the night. Four or five o’ clock in the morning.

How do you unwind after such an intense experience?

There is an unwinding. The general unwinding begins the moment you touch terra-firma again. Those people who smoked, would be

34:00 straight into the cigs, straight away. I never smoked. There was no grog out there. But if they got an opportunity to have a drink, they’d take it. But usually the cigarettes came out, and there was smoke flying everywhere.

Smoking was banned in the air?

We weren’t allowed. No smoking, in the air, at all. The WAAFs, or

34:30 whoever was driving us, would take us back into the main briefing room, where we went through debriefing. And usually the padres, and the station commanders, and the base commander, were all there waiting for us. And the intelligence officers. And the girls with their cups of teas. And everybody was checked in, we’d sit down and then we’d talk about the….

35:00 like you’re doing to me now, there was an intelligence officer, finding out everything that they could about what happened to us, something we hadn’t written down.

So would you have to wait for all the other crews to come back? Or would that start automatically….

No. You took your turn as you went in. If you went into the big briefing room and there was a table empty, with an intelligence officer waiting, usually WAAFs, WAAF officers, you sat down straight away with your cups of tea, mugs of tea, or coffee or whatever you had,

35:30 and your cigarettes, and you just talked, talked. They let the skippers make their statements and others were all encouraged to say their piece. Then you went back to the mess, and you had your second meal of bacon and eggs. Because you got a meal of bacon and eggs before you left. But sometimes it would be up to eight to ten hours you’d been away, so you were ready for another good meal when you got back, so you got another bacon and eggs.

36:02 Would people go for a few beers afterwards? Was that possible?

The mess, the bars wouldn’t be open at that hour, no. During they daylight hours they would be. Yes, they’d do it then, yes. They might have had their own about. Most of my boys were pretty good from that point of view. The two officers I shared with, none of them drank in their rooms or anything, so….

36:30 Did you find the winding down process quite natural, and you wouldn’t have much trouble getting off and getting your rest after your operation?

No trouble, you were so dog-tired you just went straight off. Sometimes you couldn’t even get your boots off. Your were so dog-tired. Tired eyes. Eyes were red, peering through the darkness all the time. Because not only did you have to peer out through the darkness, then you had to peer in, further beyond, into the lights as you came onto the target, because they were well lit

37:00 up with the fires and that. And also, you had no lights, or very little lights, on your cockpit, so you had to rely on the iridescence, showing up on your instruments, and that was hard on your eyes as well.

Were you issued with tablets to help you stay awake, on the longer sorties?

I think the gunners did, but I don’t recall that I ever had any of those.

37:31 I did go to sleep, on the long trip, the last trip. Ten hours, four minutes. I said to my flight engineer, Don, “If I go to sleep, make sure you don’t go to sleep, too.” So we’d watch each other. And it’s a bit like watching television, you don’t know when you go, but everything goes very…You don’t know when you go, but you do know

38:00 when he’s hit you, “Wake up, Skipper!” And there’s a roar in your ears, because it roars like anything. But only on that long trip, did we ever go to sleep, he and I. None of the others went to sleep, we made sure they didn’t. We kept giving them wakey-wakey calls, all the time. Making sure they were all alert. So that’s interesting, too. I hadn’t thought of that.

38:30 We have heard of people who were given, what I presume, were amphetamine style waking tablets. Like what the truckies take to stay awake on their longer hauls.

They might have been. The doctors might have given them to them. But no knowledge on my crew. Not at all. The only ones that would have been likely to want them, I would think, would be the rear gunner. Rear gunner, mid-upper gunner, they were the outside boys. But the others inside, they kept in such

39:00 close proximity to each other, if one was dozing a bit, the other would wake them up pretty quickly. Because we can see each other. Just like we can see each other now, in the cabin. Were you able to take flasks of coffee or anything?

Some of them did, I don’t think we did. We were more interested in having a tin to pass around when we came down low. That was important, because your bladder,

39:31 it started to squeeze a bit when you came down to the lower altitudes. We had orange juice and chocolates and things like that. We always got those rations to chew away at, but I don’t think anybody in our crew took along flasks. I’m sure we didn’t. There would be nowhere to put them, I don’t think.

Right on the end.

Tape 8

00:33 Noel, I just wanted to start this tape by clarifying the make up of your Squadron. You were an RAAF Squadron within the RAF? And yet, most of your ground crew were actually Englishmen? Is that right?

That’s right. Most of them were. I would think, possibly, one in

01:00 four. One Australian to four Englishmen. It was about that ratio, I think. That may not be right, but just on a rough guess. The servicing of the RAF Waddington, was basically RAF servicing. We didn’t have any WAAFs or anything like that there at all. But the squadrons had their individual officers and things like that,

01:30 and they’d rely on the RAF as such. They were dead keen on us, too. They liked us. I’m sure they did. The way they reacted, yes.

So those ground crew were in the unusual circumstance of being on an RAF base but being part of a RAAF Squadron, that were being paid and provided for by the RAF?

That’s right, yes. They would be

02:00 pretty much under the direct control of RAF officers and everything to do with it. We were paid by them as well, but we were paid on our rates, not on the English rates. And we didn’t pay tax. I know a lot of those fellows had to pay tax, and they found that very hard to accept. Even my own crew members, flying on operations, had to pay tax.

02:30 The RAF members would, yeah.

You mentioned before that the move to 463 Squadron was like you were warriors now. That once you went to that, you had become a warrior. Was there an actual change of approach, or a change of the way you viewed your flying that came with coming to an operational squadron?

It became very

03:00 real. By that I mean, you knew the odds. We had learned some of the odds. If we had known all of the odds, I don’t know whether we would have been quite so keen. In retrospect, when you found out how the odds were stacked against us there….There was a definite pride in our squadron.

03:31 Both squadrons. And there still is, a definite pride to them. In many respects, I think we were so far removed from Australia, that we were orphan squadrons. And people back here have taken a long time to acknowledge us. It’s only in recent years, after much pressure from our ex-wing commander, wing commander Rollo Kingsford Smith and others, that they

04:00 are starting to acknowledge that we did fight a war over there. We know the war was going on over here, we knew that. We knew that. But we knew that we had been trained for that war, so we had to do our best for our country and for the general war effort. But to come home, and they say, “Oh, well, you had it cushy over there.” That went a bit hard with us, with a lot of us, and we tended not to talk too much about it,

04:30 in the earlier years. Because they didn’t really, the majority of the fellows that served in the Pacific area were not too interested in it. And I understand that from the boys who came back, from the officers who finished their tours and came back to the parent air force back here, weren’t given a very good reception. I didn’t receive that, because the war was over when I got back. But the fellows who came back

05:00 before, they were….Well, there were people who got the white feathers, on our squadron. Sent from Australia. That was a well known fact. That’s a great pity. Because when you see the casualty rates, they were very, very high. Our casualty rates were the highest of anybody. That’s the way it was.

05:30 We gradually outlived….A lot of them, unfortunately, have passed on without ever knowing that they’re fairly well accepted now. I’m fairly well accepted now, amongst my peers, and in recent years I have often been asked to take Anzac services and things like that, or speak of my experiences, but that was an unknown thing in the early part.

06:01 That’s because you’re getting older, you see.

Did that sentiment largely come from those that had fought in the Pacific theatre in the air force?

It seemed to be.

Or was it from the media or the general public?

It might have been a combination of both, I don’t know. But it was definitely there, and most fellows would probably tell you the same. I went back to England, with my war bride

06:30 wife, in ’48, so I didn’t have many years here, to sort of acknowledge that. But I did find it at the first reunion they had of air force personnel up at Kempsey. And there was one or two fellows there who were prepared to have a fight with me. “Oh, you fellows left us here, and we were fighting the war, and you weren’t.” And that was amongst air force personnel. You only have to look at the casualty lists to see the number of

07:00 boys that didn’t come back, from Bomber Command. Most of them were Bomber Command. But I went back to England, where I was very well accepted. Very well accepted. Extremely well accepted, but it didn’t upset me too greatly.

You talk that enormously high casualty list. The ratio that was proportionally

07:30 enormous for Australia’s services during World War II. Did you come across people who were unable to cope with that pressure? Or whose nerves just couldn’t hold up to the fear?

Not in our Squadron. No, never struck it at all. They just stuck it out. I went to the doctor at the end of my tour, and the doctor said, “How are you going?” I said, “I’ve got the shakes, doc.”

08:02 I said, “I’m not real happy.” He said, “Good grief, man, what you’ve been through, you should be shaking all over.” He said, “You’ll be right. Once it settles down.” We didn’t have any after care. These fellows in the wars today, they have been getting all this after care, and looking after them, and getting over their traumas and all that. We didn’t have that. We came back, we discharged, “Righto, look after yourself.”

08:31 And I personally couldn’t stand in a queue for any length of time. If we went to the pictures, and we had to wait outside, I had to lean up against something, because I would get terrible stomach pains. It was purely nervous sort of things. There were one or two things that upset me greatly. It took me a while, to settle down. To get back onto an even keel properly. A logical even keel, you know. And these

09:00 fellows today they get it. They’ve all got to have their…They probably haven’t even seen a shot fired in anger or anything. But they get all the assistance. “We must look after you, and make sure you get back to Civvy Street, and have a good trip.” But we boys, coming back, I don’t think any of us got it back here.

So what then was your coping mechanism? Both while you were there and following the war?

I beg your pardon?

What was your coping mechanism….

Coping?

Both at the time, and post-war? What did you rely on?

09:30 Did you have religious faith?

Yes I did. Yes, I’m very certain that was my greatest standby. People say that is something to lean on. Well, okay, occasionally something to lean on. But as I’ve said before, I was thoroughly convinced that right throughout my service career I had a guardian angel. There were things that had happened, and circumstances, and

10:00 the way they worked out. There’s no way that this ordinary little fellow from the bush, would have got done what I’ve done, in that short time, in my life. There’s one of our friends, or my mate’s father who….my mate who was killed, Trevor, when his father met up with me when I got back, and of course, that was terrible. But they would put on a brave face, as I was coming

10:30 back and their Trevor hadn’t come back. And Dad was there and he said, Trevor’s father said to Bill, to Dad, he said, “Well Bill, he left us as a boy, but he’s come back as a man.” and I felt, ‘Oh dear.’ And there were one or two instances like that. I went to see every….I had three different families to see.

11:00 The fourth, I didn’t make contact with. The people from the river, that I mixed with over there, and had gone through with, and they hadn’t come back. Great fellows. Great fellows, every one of them. Absolute young gentlemen. Anybody would be proud of them. What can you say to their families? What did you say to their families?

Well, you just tell them who you were, because some of them didn’t know me. I said, “My name’s Noel Sanders,

11:32 and I was with….” And I’d tell them. “Oh come in, come in. We want to talk.” And they’d talk. One family I missed. I missed them not on purpose, but I felt I had nothing to communicate to them. And I came back from England, having lived over there for a long time, and I came back in 1960,

12:00 I flew back. I was one of the first fellows to fly right around the world in the air. But I took the trip, I got the leave, and I flew back on four different types of aircraft back to Australia. Went up to my own people up the coast, and Dad had died the year before, so I felt I wanted to come back and see Mum. It was quite unheard of, for a fellow to travel around the world, in my time. But anyhow, it was wonderful. I came in the Comet,

12:30 came in the Constellation, came in the Boeing 707, and the Electra, and the Fokker Friendship. I got some really good time up in those different ones. On the coming out, the Skipper of the Comet saw my name said, “Would you like to send Mr Sanders up to the cockpit?

13:00 Tell him he would be welcome to come up in the cockpit?” I went up there and it was Dusty Miller, my old mate, in the cockpit. He said, “Why aren’t you here, Sandy?” I said, “Oh well, things changed. I didn’t take it on.” He said, “Well, this is a beautiful aircraft.” And it was, too. He said, “You know, Sandy, on this aircraft, if I lose an engine on take off, I don’t know about it unless I look at the instrument panel

13:30 at the time, see it’s not working. There’s so much power in this aircraft.” He said, “But this is the last of the jets that will have so much excessive power in them.” And I always remember that. But anyhow, I got back to the little town of Gladstone, which is not far from where I lived, and I stopped over to see a cousin. And he had been in the Air Force and I hadn’t seen him for some time, naturally, with living in England. And he said, “Noel, my next neighbour would like to

14:00 meet you.” Well, he told me her name. I said, “Oh, oh.” I said, “I think I know what it’s all about.” He said, “She’s got her son’s log book, and she thinks it’s your name in the logbook.” And he had been a pupil of mine, at Syerston, and

14:32 I said to him, “Where do you come from?” And he said, “The northern rivers of New South Wales.” And I said, “So do I.” That’s all we said. And he was a good pupil, but he tended to use his brakes too much, and if you use the brakes too much, you tend to overheat the wheel rims and you could get a blow out. So I said to him, I said, “Now listen, son,” I said,

15:00 “Make sure if you can possibly, cut your speed down so you don’t have to use the brake around on the ground, because they’ll get very hot, especially on hot days.” I said, “I think what I better do is show you how to land on one wheel.” Bobby Egan’s his name was. So I took him and showed him how to land on one wheel. I said, “If you ever get stuck without a wheel, that’s the way you come in on one wheel,

15:30 on these machines, because I’ve done it.” He said, “I can see you’ve done it.” Still none the wiser that he lived within ten miles of me, on the Macleay. So I went in and his mother said, “I’m sure you were Bobby’s instructor at Syerston.” And I said, “I was. I’m sure of it. I’m very, very sorry that I haven’t been to see you before when I was out here. I had

16:00 not associated Bobby with this river at all. I’d associated with another Egan’s family up on the Richmond.” And I said, “I’m terribly sorry about that.” And we sort of talked about it. Now that same Bobby Egan’s, I went back to the squadron, because once you leave the squadron you feel as though it’s home and you went to go back and see it. So every chance I got, I used to go back and have a meal in the officer’s mess and see the fellows. And Bobby

16:30 went to my old Squadron. And I was sitting there and he came over and said, “Sir.” Sir, and he’s only about the same age as me, but of course, he came in after me. He said, “I wanted to see you, I had to land on one wheel today.” I said, “Bobby, how’d it go?” He said, “Pretty good.” I said, “Well, have you learned your lesson yet?” He said, “Oh, I think so.” And then he was lost. And

17:00 I knew he had been shot down, because I saw it in my records, that he had been shot down, or lost, somewhere. And yet he was a near neighbour. That’s the coincidence of war, you see.

Did such dramatic losses make you question your faith at any point?

No. No, I was more certain than ever. And a lot of people will vouch for the same thing. There’s lots of wonderful,

17:30 wonderful quotations and things from fellows who feel so sure of it. Some people say they used to see gremlins. I never saw anything like that. But I certainly had a….specially when you get up high, and you’re in beautiful conditions, you sort of feel your communion. Somewhere up there, there’s a Heaven somewhere about, I don’t know where it is.

How then does the moral question of the bombing, the carpet bombing, the blanket bombing of Germany 18:00 fit into your understanding of your spirituality or your religion? Was there difficulty for you rationalising that within your faith?

No, it wasn’t. It would have been had we gone in cold-blooded, though. But you’ve got to bear in mind that our nation was threatened, by bloodthirsty people. By the Japanese on this side, and by the Germans and the Italians on the other side. I didn’t hold much against the Italians. They didn’t last long. But the Germans,

18:30 and our whole way of living would have come to nothing. We would have lost all our heritage. I never had any doubts about that at all. We didn’t instigate the war, we didn’t start it. But we had to stop it. And that goes for most dictators, and people who rule it over others like that. If you don’t, if good men do nothing,

19:01 then they overtake. You see, so many good men will do nothing, but you’ve got to reach that stage where you are prepared to fight for what you believe is right. If you’re a religious man and you look through the Bible, you’ll see that’s happened all the way through. It’s a great pity that we have to fight, we hate it, but you must hold that, otherwise

19:30 you lose your heritage. Imagine what would have happened to us, if those Japs had got in there, through the Top End there, they’d have walked through us here. What would have happened to our women and children? They’d have exterminated the men. The Jerries [Germans] were just about as bad, in certain places anyway, for sure. No, I can live easily with that.

So your faith was, in fact, strengthened by your experience of war?

Definitely.

20:00 Because when I prayed to the Lord, when I was on that last run around before we crashed, I said, “Lord, I’ve done all that I can. But if you get me out of this scrape, I’m your man forever.” Now I’ve let him down sometimes, but I’ve always come back to him, and he’s been there waiting for me. Now that’s the essence of it. He’s a very forgiving God. Yeah. But I,

20:30 I have no doubts about it whatsoever.

Did the padres then play an important role, in the squadron?

The padres did. The padres were there for those who wanted them. And they were there for those that didn’t want them. And for those that didn’t them, they were there to issue out the comforts that were sent from home. All the cigarettes and all the tinned fruits and cakes that were sent out to us. We got a lot of things through the Australian Comforts

21:00 Fund. Came out to us. We had an issue of cigarettes. I didn’t smoke, because Dad had been a chain smoker, so I decided against that. But I may as well have done, because some of the crew rooms you couldn’t cut your way in through with a knife, with the smoke that was in the crew rooms, when you opened the door to get in there, in England, because of the conditions prevailing outside. It was so cold and miserable, they’d get in these crew rooms and they’d smoke away. “Where are you? Are you over there?”

I know they

21:30 use to smoke in submarines?

Did they really? I suppose they’d have to. They were given the issue, I suppose.

For people who didn’t have a religious faith, or have other events, was alcoholism ever a problem?

Well, there’s no doubt about it. Alcohol was consumed in great quantities. But it didn’t seem to upset them too greatly. But I noticed, in my career, that the pilots, especially, who hit the

22:00 grog too hard, not too many of them got through. I know they were drowning their thoughts and that. But the ones who kept pretty stringently to teetotalism, and sort of had the odd drink, but knew when to stop, they were the ones you could rely on when it got into a tight spin outside. That’s when it showed up. Some of those fellows, you know, I’m quite sure were still under the influence when they took the aircraft into

22:30 the air. That just wasn’t on, as far as I was concerned. My boys drank more than I did. I only had the one sip, every now and then. That was one way of showing that I would take care of them, if I could. I didn’t find that a hardship. But the English beer was pretty watered, they reckoned, more so than it is now. They used to hit

23:00 the booze. There were terrible, rowdy parties.

What do you think went wrong for you friends who committed suicide, post war?

I think they tended not to release that part of their lives and try to get on with the everyday living. The only way that I found that you could release it, was to put all that behind you, and put it on a shelf, and leave it there and let the

23:30 dust settle on it. The log books, all the other bits. The old uniform was hung up, never to be worn again. Mainly because I grew out of it. But also it’s got moth holes. And all the other bits and pieces, I kept those separate from my day to day living. You had to get on with living,

24:00 the life you came back to, and building that. You couldn’t allow it, too. A lovely lady that came to me at one of our reunions. And she said, “I want to talk to you about my Dad.” So she talked to me, and I said, “What happened?” And she said, “Well, it’s terrible. He committed suicide.” I said, “Tell me about your Dad?” And she said, “Well, Dad used to disappear into his

24:30 office for ages, and he used to open up all his diaries and that, and go through all them.” And I said, “That’s the worst thing he could possibly do.” I said, “He’s opened up old wounds, you see. He’s relived them again, and it’s made him maudlin, and it’s gradually got to him.” She said, “I thought that could be so.” I said, “Oh yes, it’s a great pity.” I said, “I’ve never known anybody, if they’ve kept it there, to make much of present day living.”

25:00 Had he been a pilot?

Oh yes. (UNCLEAR).

Do you think then it’s actual denial that’s necessary for a while? Or it’s…

I suppose it is a denial, yes.

Was there a point for you when you felt comfortable to revisit that?

Yes, it

25:30 became more comfortable when the children started to ask. When they grew up and they were trying to find out things. Early on in the piece, my eldest son came to Joan, when we were living in England, and he said….So and so, who was a very fine organist, his son was with him on a scout thing, and he said, “You know his Daddy was in the navy?” And

26:00 Joan said, “Well, your father was in the air force.” He said, “Was he?” She said, “Yes. You go and tell him that your father was a pilot in the air force.” He didn’t know, and was a boy then of ten or eleven. But that was the first inkling that he started to want to know a little bit, but as they grew into their teens and that, and they got to learn more at school, they said, “Well, you must have a story to tell.”

26:30 But they never….my own siblings, have never marched with me on Anzac Day. I’ve waited for them to ask if they can come with me. But my grand-daughter has marched with me, twice. So there you go, you see? She wanted to come. So I didn’t push it onto them. And they have grown up without the fear of war, or getting involved in war, and they’ve got their own children now, so they’re thinking

27:00 seriously now about what goes on.

Was that important for you to shield or protect them from that?

Oh yes. Yeah. That was the way it was. I didn’t want them to be brought up in a home full of nothing but war. I wanted peace in my world and my home, and a belief in God. Jesus Christ. That’s important for them. They’ve all got that. That’s important.

27:31 Has it become more important for you then, later in life, that your story be recorded so it’s not lost? Even though it’s not focused on, perhaps that it’s at least there to be learned from in some ways?

Yes it is. It’s there, now, the first draft copies are up to date now. They’ve corrected a lot of the spelling errors and things like that. It’s all done in freehand, and they’ve got it on sloppy disc,

28:00 floppy disc, on that part. And they said, “When are you going to finish it?” And I said, “It’ll finish the day I die. If it’s unfinished then, then you’ve got to finish it.” And I said, “That’s for the family to have, if you want it for your heritage.” And it’s been handed down to me. I’ve got the heritage in my father, and my grandfather. And I’ve got them all there. But that’s minor compared with mine, because mine’s a full chronological. A bit like today.

28:30 I’ve never been through this before.

How important is your Squadron Association? Or how important has that been for you since the war?

Not as important to me as it is to some of them. They meet more often than I ever get to meet them. I always march with them, I always go the reunions. I’m well known amongst them all.

29:00 What do you get from it?

Well, on the average year, a couple of hours of comradeship and lunch together, and a march. I won’t be marching much more I don’t think, on Anzac Day, but I will be going to the lunches as long as I can, so we can have a luncheon together. And that’s good comradeship, and you meet a lot of interesting fellows, and some of them you mightn’t have met before, but they’re all ex-Squadron members,

29:30 so we all have tales to tell. On this last reunion down in Melbourne, I accidentally came across the pilot who took over my old aircraft from me. Old JOU, on the squadron. He flew her for a bit. And then she was taken out of service. One of the pilots had a pretty nasty turn with her, and she…

30:00 They took her out of service. I don’t think she ever went back into active service on the squadron. But he said, “I flew the new JOU.” And he said, “It’s called Uncle Joe again.” And he said, “I flew her.” So we talked about her, and I had never met him before. And he came from out where all you folk are, out Orange. Very active out there. He said, “When you’re out, come and see me.” So it was good. So you get a bit of that….

30:34 It’s there, but as I say, some of them would like to….well, they do meet up more regularly, and they do have a little bit more drinking than I do. I said, “Well fellows, I don’t drink much, and I’m not going a round to pay for your drinking.”

For what achievement did you receive the DFC?

Survival.

31:01 Does that seem funny to you? Commonly known as a survival medal honour. They could hardly not give it to me, when you see what I’ve told you, and what’s in the logbook there. As I understand now. At the time I thought it was magnificent. Fancy giving me a gong? When some other fellows are doing similar sort of things. What I overlooked was, a lot of them were dead. They hadn’t survived.

31:33 As far as I’m concerned, my DFC is a crew medal. It’s crew honour, and I being the captain have received it to wear. And wherever possible, when I’ve been marching with a crew member, I’ve taken it off my breast pocket and put it on theirs. Because without you fellows, I would never have won it. It’s as simple as that. I’m honest about that,

32:00 and they appreciate it, too.

Was that acknowledgement important for you when you did receive it?

Oh yes. My word it was. It was a great honour for the family. We’d never had an honour like that in the family before. My word. It was a great honour for the Macleay River Valley. Oh yes, it was. I’m not doubting that at all, it was a great honour. But I was back in England before it was ready to be presented, so they sent it to me back to me in the post.

32:32 You talked about survival and making it through, what you have been through. There was one particular operation you were telling us about. Mailly-le-Camp.

Mailly-le-Camp.

Mailly-le-Camp. Can you briefly tell us about that particular operation?

Yes, it will be brief, because to tell you properly I’d have to look at the records. Of which I have got a lot of records. There are always things that happen

33:00 on a trip like that that you don’t always take in, yourself, at the time. But in retrospect, when you sit down and see the reports coming in from various points, you realise that this is a true story. The policy with Bomber Command is we were a night fighter force, to fly only in the dark of the moon. That’s why our aircraft were very dark on the bottom, and very dark on the top, too. They’re grotesquely

33:30 black monsters, really, when you looked at them, in the half light. They were really evil, I think, really, because they were packed full of venom. No doubt about it. Now we were sure….You saw the night last night, no doubt, and the night before? That was the moon that we flew to Mailly-le-Camp in. Now, we were ready to go into town, on leave.

34:01 And all leave was cancelled. Report to your squadron officers. We got down there and they said, “We’re on ops, boys.” And we said, “No! We’re not! It’s a full moon, we can’t go out in that.” It was like the light of day, especially if you had to fly over with the cloud, and you’ve got the moon hitting that cloud below, you stood out like anything. You may as well be in daylight. “No, we’ve got to

34:30 go, boys. Because we’ve had information through, from our sources in the underground, that there is a Panzer Division on its way up to the front, to fight against us on D-Day. A whole Panzer Division are over-nighting by Mailly-le-Camp.” Which was a French army station. And the Germans had taken it over during the war. It covered over a very big area.

35:00 And it was out in the countryside, between two towns. But the nearest village was May Lee, but the camp was Fecamp. “And we’ve got to go tonight, or we’ll miss them, because they’re only over-nighting and they’re going up to the front. So they’re all huddled up together in this one place overnight, so we’ve got to hit them tonight. And we’re aware that it’s going to be dicey, but you’ve got to go, boys.” And we had to go.

35:30 That was the last time I saw my friend Col Dixon, who I waved to. He had gone to night school with me in Kempsey. He was on 467 Squadron and I was on 463. And I’ve been to see his sister many times to talk about him, up there. I saw his parents as soon as I got back. He was shot down. Our crew saw fifteen aircraft shot down that night. And coming back from

36:00 that target, we didn’t need a navigator, because the fighters were all along the route out, and they were picking us off like anything. Not only our squadron, but all the others. There were forty four odd planes shot down. You just had to follow the burning planes on the ground, to take you out over the coast, and back to England. That was a horrific show. But there was a bit of a

36:30 hitch at the beginning. We were on the first wave in. And we didn’t get our message. It was a garbled message we got to attack. We were to attack the southern end, I think it was. One end or the other. Somewhere along the line the electronics all went funny. And we put it down to a American Forces network, cutting across our wavelength. But since then they’ve decided,

37:00 most people have decided it was the Germans, they’d be able to jam it effectively, with an American Forces network tape or whatever they had. They jammed us and it took us a little while to get the proper message. Anyhow, we got a message to come in and bomb, a lot of fellows didn’t. But we hoarded on ours, we went in and we bombed and we got out as quick as we could. A lot of them were milling around, waiting to get the message, and they had to

37:30 change to another network, and finally they decided to go in on their own. But they all knew what they were doing. And in the bright lights, the fighters were moving in and picking them off, right, left and centre. So all around the target they were shooting them down. And the net result of it was, we pretty well annihilated them. We did a fantastic job. We were highly commended on it, but forty-four planes, seven times that, that’s how

38:00 many fellows we lost. But they lost the greater part of their Panzer Division. They lost a lot of their engineering works which they had in on the whole thing. A little of the local village was hit, but not much, unfortunately. We tried to avoid it altogether, but some of them were hit. But as a raid, to do what it was supposed to against the enemy, the common enemy, it was fantastic.

38:32 And it will go down in history. There’s a lot written about it. That’s the brief narrative of it, as far as we were concerned. But it was a raid that we would have preferred not to have been on, and I wish that my mates hadn’t been on it, too. But it was a bright moonlight night. They flew by night, by moonlight, that night. And the fighters, they had fun. They moved in, just like hornets, onto us.

39:00 You didn’t have a fighter escort, because it was night time?

No, we didn’t have a fighter escort, no. We didn’t get any fighter escort at night.

Did the plane sustain any damage?

No, we didn’t. We were very fortunate in getting through the first wave. We heard it, just faintly, we got it through just before they were jammed out. When the

39:30 master bomber said it was okay to go in and bomb.

What did you do when you got a sense of just how large the losses had been? Once you were back on the ground and just what a devastating operation it had been, do you know what you did?

We all agreed…..If we hit the target correctly, and our photos assured we had, the next morning. But we didn’t know when we got back. But our photos assured

40:00 us we’d hit the target correctly. That it wasn’t a spoof. It could have been the wrong target we hit, and it would have been for nothing. On a moonlight night, that would have been terrible. The losses sustained were, as one would expect, under those conditions….We just had to go. That was it. You just don’t say, “I’m not going because it’s moonlight.” Not in the Royal Australian Air Force. That was it. That’s where discipline comes in.

Right on the end of this tape.

Tape 9

00:36 I wanted to move, Noel, now onto your instruction. You finished your thirty five ops and then became an instructor in the Lancasters….

Yes.

I’m wondering how you enjoyed that role, given the important role that quite a few teachers and instructors had played in getting you to where you were. Did you enjoy going to that next step and passing on to the younger pilots?

Yes. 01:00 I enjoyed it because it was relatively easy. As opposed to the earlier instructors, especially the gentlemen who taught me to fly, I didn’t have any theory of flight to give them. I didn’t have to go through that. And explain to them why she does this, and this way that, and how you get two thirds lift on top of the wing, and one third underneath, to lift her up….that sort of thing. I didn’t have

01:30 any of that to do, because officially it was a rest period. We were sent back, onto these stations, to rest, to recuperate, from our experiences in the war zone. And as some officers said, “Some rest, isn’t it? We’re flying as much as ever. More so, even.” But we were flying with experienced crews. They were crews that had already been flying, as we had been, before them, on the larger

02:00 aircraft. On the Stirling in the main or the Halifax, and they were coming in there to be converted, if you like to call it that, to the ways of the Lancaster. Which was still one of big four engine aircraft. It was the aircraft which all through the war, carried the heaviest bomb loads. But it was slightly smaller than the other two. And as a result, she felt

02:30 nicer because you didn’t have all that mass around you. She was more inclined towards the feeling one would get in a Spitfire for instance. The compactness of her, sort of thing. Once you were in her. Although she looked big enough outside, but you compared her with the Stirling. The Stirling was a big ungainly aircraft, and the cockpit was very much smaller than on the Stirling. The Stirling had a seat there, a big console here, and a seat there,

03:00 so it was almost twice as wide as the Lancaster. The Lancaster didn’t have a lot of room for crew. They were pretty well stuck in. Our responsibility was to show the pilots and crews that were coming through, in our hands, only for a matter of ten hours flying, we were told, how the Lancaster reacted. How she flew. Basically,

03:30 as a salesman, selling her to them. She was already practically sold to them before they got it. But they didn’t know how she handled on one engine, on two engines. I mean, most aircraft, you can’t turn towards a dead engine. The Lancaster you could turn towards two dead engines, and she still didn’t play up. That was the marvellous thing about it. You could come around in a stink, and turn with two dead engines. In a normal way, the others,

04:00 you power from those other engines, and you would turn her upside down. So there was all those sorts of things you taught them, and gave them the confidence in the aircraft. And as a result, they’d only need a couple of hours before they’re off solo, and away they went. And then you took them night flying and made sure they were all right on that. And that was only a very short period. So it was, apart from the fact that you had so many pupils to put through in each course, it was pretty good. It was the weather that slowed us down,

04:30 sometimes, and we had to work a bit harder, some nights than others. But if the weather was crook, we’d all hop into Notty [Nottingham], and go and see my girlfriend and things like that. I had a car, a little car, to run around, and we got a petrol ration. And we always had a crew car, so we had our little petrol ration. And we were always able to, with a couple of tins of peaches or something, managed to get a little bit extra from the old petrol attendants. They always had something up their sleeve. We weren’t dependent on

05:00 public transport to get us back and forth to Nottingham, or the old Notts, as we called it, so I’d either go on my own, or send somebody with me, and they’d go one way and I’d got the other, so, yeah….

It was just that ten hour block in which you had the students. Was that enough time to take on a mentoring role in any way?

Yeah.

It was more than just flying the actual aircraft?

You were talking all the time.

About ways to cope? And ways to handle things?

Yeah. But they

05:30 knew that pretty well. And we knew from experience that they wouldn’t have any trouble with the Lancaster. To instruct on a Lancaster was a piece of cake.

Did you find that personalities sat quite comfortably with that role as well? Did you have an aptitude for the teaching side?

Yeah. And in between that we did a bit of ground instruction as well. And, of course, it was important, of course, to put through crews, to make sure they, the pilots especially…..

06:00 You blindfolded the pilot, and put him in his cockpit and put him through his cockpit drill. So he knew exactly where to put his hands, in the case of an emergency. You did all that sort of thing. That was all training, part of the training. That was good, I enjoyed it, really, right through. I was quite happy to stay over there, as I say, if the war carried on. Doing that task. That was what they called in the air force parlance, “a screening.” Rather than instructing. 06:30 But it went under the general rule of instructor. You got an instructional rating for it, and everything else. You had to go through an academy first before you were allowed to do it. The academy taught you how to fly in the right hand seat. That’s another thing which you’re not aware of. We always flew in the left hand seat. You got used to do that, like you do when you’re driving a car. You get used to which side you’re on, and we wondered how we were going to get on flying in the right hand seat. But, after a couple of hours, piece of cake, and you just change from one seat to another, and

07:00 still can do on an aeroplane, but I’ve never tried it in a car yet. Too many roundabouts.

You made a comment earlier that you learned as much in your time as an instructor as you had on ops?

Yes.

What sort of new things were you learning…

Well, you were learning how to feather engines. I didn’t do any of that at all. I didn’t lose an engine. So you had to go through the fire drill. How to stop an engine, how to feather it, so the prop was dead still,

07:30 and how to get her back again. There was a quite bit that I picked up. It was wonderful, really. For me, it was cleaning up a few of the things I omitted to sort of practise on while I was on the squadron. Others used to go up and do those practise. I never did. While I had engines running, that was good enough for me. And my ground crew made sure they were running all right.

08:00 And was that period successful in its intended aim of bringing you back to Earth, and calming you out, and providing that relaxation after your operational period?

It did help. It did definitely help. But there was still deep seated things that you had to get out of your system.

Tell me about hearing of VE [Victory in Europe] Day? Or about hearing of victory in Europe?

Oh, victory in Europe. Well, we had the two victories, of course. We had victory in Europe….I remember I was in the air,

08:31 and it came over, so I circled around where my future wife was living, and I waggled my wings around, and I circled right around and around. And I always feathered one engine when I went to see her, or her parents. So they’d come out. They’d hear this Lancaster circling around, because it was on the outskirts of Nottingham, where they lived. And they’d hear this Lancaster circling around, they knew if one engine feathered, “Oh, that’s Noel. He’ll be down shortly.” Yeah, but I

09:00 raced in and I said, “Well, what about it, love? When are we getting married?” And she, “Well, you’ll be going home now, won’t you?” I said, “I hope so. So we better do something about it.” So on the celebrations of VE Day, we went to see the Vicar.

Let me get this right. You met your wife the day that you crashed your Lancaster and nearly died. You met her that night. And then you decided to get married on VE Day?

Oh, we decided before that.

09:30 We were engaged then. But that could have been a long term thing, the engagement. But when that happened…of course, the atom bomb, wasn’t it? No, it wasn’t the atom bomb. There was the victory in Europe, and the atom bomb was over here, in the Pacific war. “That was the real war,” as they said to us. But in Europe, the jubilation was just as terrific. It really was.

Describe that for me. Did you aircrew react

10:00 when you heard the news in the air?

Oh yes, everybody was….up to all sorts of tricks, yes. Oh, no, it was great. General jubilation and relief, to think that at long last we had got the so-and-sos.

Had you been anticipating that?

Yeah, we reckoned it was getting pretty close.

Had you noticed in terms of the aerial combat? Or the dominance of the Luftwaffe, I guess,

10:30 that they were….

Oh, the Luftwaffe were nothing. They were a no-no in the finish, as far as we were concerned. Towards the end of our time, they just couldn’t keep up with us.

So you felt it was just a matter of time, and when it came…

Once the ground troops got in. We could do so much, but we couldn’t win a war, in those days. They might win it now, in the air. But in those days we couldn’t win the war from the air, and we all realised that, but we couldn’t soften it up instead, which made it easier for the ground troops to get in there and take control. You’ve got to have them in 11:00 there. You must have them there. I think there’s a war going over there now, where they think they’re going to win it from the air, but I don’t think so. You’ve got to have the men on the ground.

So you actually married her on VE Day, or you made the arrangement?

Oh, no, we just went to the vicar. And we had to call special band and everything. VE Day was May, wasn’t it? The 8th of May. We were married on the 19th of June, which is next Thursday.

11:30 And were Joan’s parents happy enough for her to be marrying a colonial?

Well they seemed like it. Probably about as happy as my Mum and Dad were letting me come to England to join the Air Force, I don’t know. She was an only daughter, and it was probably a bit tough for them. Hence, the reason we got back there to live after a while, I think. That’s another story.

And how long was it until you did come back to Australia?

12:00 We carried on, of course, because we were still getting our act together to come out and carry on with the Japanese war, on our part. So our fellows were coming out….See, there was only two months between VE Day, and the atom bomb. Two or three months…

And you were doing your conversion course to the Lincolns at the time?

No, I wasn’t. didn’t get on it. I was waiting to get on it. We were all in this special station, about to start it,

12:30 and the Bomb went off. We said, “Oh, we won’t get another type.” We wanted to fly another type.

Did you understand what the atom bomb meant?

Oh yes, we were amazed at it. Wasn’t the world amazed at it. You couldn’t comprehend it. That so much could happen with one bomb. I’ve spoken to people who’ve been under those bombs. It’s fascinating. What happens. Oh, don’t think about it.

13:00 Purely hypothetical, could you imagine yourself dropping that bomb? Being the pilot of that bomb? Would you have any particular issues with that?

Oh, I think I would have done in that case. The devastation…I wonder, though, in retrospect, whether those crews knew how much devastation those bombs would cause. They knew it was something very powerful, but it was beyond human comprehension to know just what that would do.

13:30 What that would do to the whole world. I’m sure it would have been. It must have been, because Leonard Cheshire, was on the ship that dropped the second bomb, I think. He was on one of them. Leonard Cheshire had been an agnostic, on his own understanding. basically, he was non-religious anyhow. But that changed him completely. That man, for the rest of his life, he did

14:00 everything that he could for people, to make their lives easier. He never missed a beat, as far as his faith was concerned. He learned a faith. That settled him well and truly. He used to go out and open the Cheshire homes all over the place. Did wonderful work, till he died. And at that time, he had been one of our aces, a big ace.

14:30 An English ace, of course.

In what ways did the war change you? Or in what ways were you different after the war then you were when you began your journey?

I grew up. I suppose in the normal way that people grew up, it was probably a little bit slower. But I never had any youth. My grandchildren have all had youth. Some of them don’t know how to

15:00 how to handle it. My youth was taken away from me. The war took that away from me. They started knocking that out of us from the moment we got in the air force.

Were you pleased for that or do you regret losing it?

At the time, we knew it was the way it was going. Really and truly, it really didn’t worry me.

In hindsight, do you regret losing that period or was it a benefit to you?

I don’t think so. I don’t think I worried about it. It doesn’t worry. It was four years of lost life in one way, but a gain in others.

15:30 No, I mean, I’ve often thought about it. My wife Joan says she had more of a youth than I did, and she was in a war zone.

Did your personality alter in any way?

It did in the beginning, oh yes. You ask her. I was not easy to live with for a while. It was all part and parcel of it,

16:00 I think. We didn’t have that help to get over the trauma of it all, and settle down properly. We had to fight our own way through. We were supposedly helped there, but you had to go and look for it. And a lot of us had talked about the same thing, “Well, we didn’t get any of that, we had to work our way through it.” So, that’s not sour grapes, but that’s the way it was.

Did you notice any ways

16:30 in which….Actually, it would have been difficult, you going between countries, but ways in which the world was different after World War II? Whether that be Australian society or English society? Not getting a lot of time back in Australia, but did you notice any real changes to Australian society as a result?

In the time I was away, I did.

Yeah. Between leaving and your return? Between the beginning of the war and the end?

Between the time I went to England for sixteen years and came back, there were terrific changes in my country then. I missed all the

17:00 ham and beef shops. You didn’t have them. You had all these beautiful delicatessens. That’s one thing. All these new things that were happening. All these new people that were coming in and taking over my country, and I was over there, in somebody else’s country. Yeah. It was really amazing. I came back in ’60, and I wrote back to Joan and said, “You wouldn’t recognise Australia, it’s throbbing. There’s flags flying everywhere. Everyone’s got money in their pocket, they’re doing very well. I’m a pauper out here, in my own country.”

17:30 That’s the way I felt. And they wouldn’t let me put my hand in my pocket, any of them, “No, you’re not paying, Sandy. You’ve come out.” I’m just as glad I didn’t pay, I didn’t have the money to pay. It was going real well. And when I got back to England, Joan said, “Well, what do you think about it?” I said, “Look, love, you’ve still got a mother. As long as she’s with us, we have a commitment to her.” And that was our understanding when we first went back.

18:00 That she would like to be with her aged parents. But I said, “If anything happens to your mother,” I said, “I want you to seriously consider to take our children back to Australia.” I said, “Because it really is throbbing.” It really was. Tricky to be in it, couldn’t believe it, in that time.

Can I ask you, on your first return, immediately post-war, of December ’45,

18:30 what sort of challenges were there for Joan coming back as a war bride?

Oh, they welcomed her with open arms. They were all ready for the war brides coming back. There were no challenges at all there. Especially because I hadn’t left any problems before I left. Some of them might have had challenges. It depends on how deeply involved they were with girls before they left. And I wasn’t. I was fancy free.

What about challenges for her as far as adapting to a different culture?

19:00 A great lot of challenges for her. The challenges were too great for her to accept. Yes, the culture was….she wasn’t prepared to accept it. And she will honestly tell you that, so I said to her, “Look, we’ll go back.” And people would say, “Well, what are you going to do?” I said, “Well, I had a commission. I might go and ask the RAF to give me my commission back.” But a

19:30 friend of hers that married a major for the English Army, who had a menswear store, a very thriving menswear store and he said to me, “What are you going to do, Noel?” And I said, “I’m thinking about going and seeing if I can re-enlist in the RAF on a short term commission.” “Oh,” he says, “do you really want to?” I said, “Well, it’s a thought. I’m toying with it.” I said, “I don’t know how my eyes will stand up.” Because I had a bit of shrapnel in them, and

20:00 I thought they might have packed up. He said, “Well, for what’s it worth, would you like to join me? And I’ll teach you the menswear trade.” He said, “The minute you decide whether you like it well enough, we’ll think about making you a director of the company.” So I took his challenge. But he was a good teacher, and he taught me the menswear trade, and I stayed with him for five years. And in the meantime I’d brought myself a little house, or we had, between us. And we

20:30 started to settle down, and the first in the family arrived. And I thought, ‘I’m not getting far enough. I’m in a family business, and they’re hanging the little carrot in front of me to be a director, and all I’ll be is really a director who’s managing it, and not doing any better than if I could something for myself.’ So I thought, ‘Now, I’ve seen a lot of reps on the road, and half of them are not worth a spit. I’m sure I can do better for a company than a lot of them.’ So I

21:00 kept on tapping on doors, tapping on doors and find they’d all say, “Well, Mr Sanders, we’d like to give you a job, but you’ve got no experience.” I said, “How the hell am I going to get experience if you won’t let me have a go?” So I finally found a company in Birmingham and I said the same thing to the boss there. He said, “I like the way you say that,” he said, “I’ll give you a go.” So I went on the road, and

21:30 I did very well for them. Extremely well, until I returned, in 1964, with the family, with a young family then, and my wife, she had lost her mother in the meantime. So in the meantime I had become a fully fledged menswear man both in retail and on the outside, the wholesalers. I came back here, and I

22:00 started looking around, and I approached three firms I thought I’d like to work for, and on the same day all three asked me to come in for interviews, in Sydney. And all three offered me a job. So I had to make my pick then. And I picked the (UNCLEAR) suit men, who was doing very well, indeed. It was a different line of country for me, and the samples weren’t as big to carry around,

22:30 as some of the samples others had. And I stayed with him, and then finally I got the chance to join a retailer with the understanding that after two years as his manager, I could the company as a director, which I did. And stayed on that until I retired.

When you returned in the immediate post-war period, did you discuss with your uncle your

23:00 distant plans of perhaps getting involved in the airline industry in Australia?

Yes, I did. I did. I had a long talk to him, Uncle George. He had three boys, and they were all pilots. And they had all been flying with his airline before the war, and they had joined the air force, and he had a senior pilot who was….a fellow by the name of Keith Welcher. And he was a son in law. So he had four pilots in his family. And they had been used to running this bush….Well, when you look at

23:30 in hindsight, when you look back, it was a bush airline, really. They definitely had their own rules, you know. And these fellows weren’t going back into the airline business, except Keith, he had stayed in it. But the boys, they weren’t going back into it. They reckoned in the post war airline business, you became a number, you lost your identity. Well, such is so. That’s what they were. They lost their identity in the air force, and that hadn’t

24:00 suited them I suppose, because they were so used to pleasing themselves. In the air force you obey the rules or you’re out, sort of thing, so they’d had to sort of knuckle under I suppose. I’m not saying they did, but maybe that might have been the case. So uncle put that to me, when I asked him about joining the airline. He said, “That’s the situation Noel,” he said, “what’s your mother think?” I said, “Mum thinks that now I’m married I should not put myself

24:30 in the firing line again, and forget about flying. I’ve got responsibilities to my wife and any family that came along.” He said, “Well, that’s mother’s way of thinking, I suppose, you’ve got to weight that up for yourself.” He said, “I’ll tell you what, Noel. He said, “I will promise you, that if you name your airline, I will get you into that airline.” How’s that? How’s that? And I was,

25:00 possibly, in one or way or another, a bit foolish. I didn’t really appreciate the value of the training and experience I had with the Royal Australian Air Force. I should have grabbed it with both hands, and taken the chance on that my sight would have been right, right through. As it turns out, when I retired from menswear, I had my eyes checked, and they said, “You could still be a pilot you know.”

25:31 How’s that for a story?

Is that a source of regret in any way for you?

In some ways. But that’s life. I’ve had a good life, I’ve lived. I can’t complain about it. If I had stayed on the farm, I would have struggled and struggled. But my cousin, who owned the farm next door, he stayed on, and he struggled and struggled. I went to see him the other day. He lives just outside the little township

26:00 of South West Rocks. The whole place had encroached around him, and he’s just been given two and a half million for his bush block. On his farm. He said, “I can’t do anything with it now, it’s too late. I’ve let it go.” He said, “You could have been a billionaire.” Because I had a block close in too, but I sold it earlier on in the piece for a lot less than that, to put it into the business. But that’s the way of life. If you’ve lived at life, if you’ve been comfortable, if you’ve been

26:30 happy at it, that’s the important thing. Because after all, as I said when I came out of the air force, “Today’s important, and tomorrow’s important, one day at a time.” Because a lot of lovely fellows have gone long before me, and that’s the way you’ve got to live.

In what days did your air force training prepare you for your post-war life? In terms of business or the things that

27:00 you pursued post-war?

Oh, it gave me a sense of direction, very much so. It gave me the ability to make decisions, which I hadn’t had earlier on. It gave me the ability to assess things. And generally, I grew up in the air force. That’s basically it, I grew up in the air force. The various courses I took, they were all beneficial to me. I’ve no regrets at all. It was a good life.

27:30 What were the best of times during the war?

The best of times were the times when you were with your mates, or with your wife or with your girlfriend. The best of times. They were the best of times. There were others, no doubt. But one can’t say the best of times would have been over the other side, on operations or anything like that. They were traumatic. What were the worst? Was there a worst time or a worst period for you?

28:02 Now you’ve put that down, I don’t think there was any specific period. No, I don’t think there was any specific period at all. As I say, my service career, I have no regrets about that at all. I attained more than I ever expected to do. I might have finished up as an instructor on Tiger Moths, and never got any further than that. And a lot of our boys did, joined up, to

28:30 be put wherever they were put. Some of them never got off. I’ve got a chap in this village. He was an instructor there soon after I left, at Narrandera, and he stayed there almost until the end of the war, until they released him to go and fly something a bit bigger than a Tiger Moth. That could happen. I got the best of aircraft to fly.

What was then the most valuable lesson you learned from your war experiences?

29:00 The most valuable lesson, so many, aren’t there? Valuable lessons. I’m still learning them, brother. I’m still learning a lot. There’s a lot of lessons to be learned in life. Even at 80, you can tend to sometimes give your opinion out in the wrong places and things like that, holding yourself up as an authority. But then,

29:30 the elders of our nation in the past have always been the authoritarian, haven’t they?

Mate, you’re not going to get a better chance than this. Lay it on the line. Tell it as it is.

You’ve got to bear in mind that some of the statements in life, that have gone down in history, have taken hours of pondering by the person who made those statements, and they’ve had them ready for just such an occasion as this.

30:03 When I was a young man, I belonged to an organisation called Murdoch’s Birthday Club. Now the Murdoch’s were a big menswear store on the corner of Park and George Street there. And they set up this club purely for country boys.

30:30 Because we used to do a lot of catalogue buying out the in the country. And they sent us applications for us to join their birthday club. So I joined Murdoch’s club and they sent back a little badge with ‘M’ on it. It didn’t mean ‘M’ it meant Murdoch’s Birthday Club. A little lapel badge, and I wore that, from a growing youth, right through. Every birthday, without fail, I got a

31:00 message from “My old chum at Murdoch’s,” he used to say. And I’ve spoken to many people since, and they’d say, “Oh yeah, that was good. We always got a message on our birthday. They never missed.” And they sent me one right up until my 21st birthday, which I received when I was overseas. And I’ve still got that, it’s called My Son. It’s so full of wonderful thoughts and information for a man reaching 21, that I use

31:30 it now as my grandchildren and my sons get up to 21sts, to let them know what I was given on my 21st. And I found it a rule of life that they would find very good to live by. And one of the little ones that I got when I was overseas and I memorised. And I thought how lovely it was. And I still believe it’s right. And it goes like this “The joy of life is living it, and doing

32:00 things of worth, of making bright and fruitful, the barren spots of Earth, for only he knows perfect peace, and his little bit of soil, is richer now, than what it was, when he began to toil.” Think about it, it’s got a lot of merit.

That’s a beautiful note to end on mate. Thank you very much.

That’s it. That could be my epitaph.