ORAL HISTORY RECORDING

ACCESSION NUMBER: S01652

TITLE: LEN WATERS, ABORIGINAL FIGHTER PILOT

INTERVIEWEE: LEN WATERS

INTERVIEWER: KEN LLEWELYN RAAF PR.

RECORDING DATE: 12 JUNE 1993

RECORDING LOCATION: TOWNSVILLE TRAVELODGE

SUMMARY:

TRANSCRIBER: DIANA NELSON

TRANSCRIPTION DATE:

BEGIN TAPE 1 SIDE A

Identification: This is an interview with Aboriginal fighter pilot, Len Waters, on 12 June 1993 at the Townsville Travelodge during the tour of the RAAF War Memorial Dakota.

Len, you've got this magnificently carved egg in your hands. Can you tell me something about it?

Yes. Years ago I was on Old Toomelah Mission Station, near Boomi, in north-western New South Wales. On the station was an old fellow called Frank Woods. Now, he really fascinated me, this man, the way he used to do his work. He did arts and crafts of all sorts but the way he did his eggs was something unreal. He used to break wine bottles just to clear the mottled part of the egg off first and then he'd get the old black mussel shells and do the carving with that. He actually used to sculpt with those and, some of the stuff that he did, they would be really priceless today.

Initially, Len, where do you get the emu eggs from?

Naturally, you get them from emu nests in the bush. They lay from about the first week in May up until about the end of June; it all depends on the seasons. Sometimes if you get good summer rains they might start a little bit earlier than that, probably the third week in April but you can see if there is a pair of emus together or you might just see one - mostly a hen - and she will be skirting around, going around in a circle and you get the idea then that she has already laid the eggs and, as a lot of people might not realise, the cock bird does the hatching and she feeds him while he's on the nest.

How long does it take you to carve one of these eggs with all these beautiful variety of colours you've got in it?

Normally it takes from a week anything up to two weeks but very seldom you can do them in less than a week because there are several colours in them and the way I do them and the way that this old man used to do them they weren't just etched as you see a lot of people do them today but I sculpt mine and actually carve them and you'll get anything up to about seven different colours or different layers in each shell.

I guess sometimes you must break the odd one.

That is for sure and certain. Last year at the Opal Festival in Cunnamulla I made two and I was mounting them in an oval sort of an arch but all the time I used to have to keep whittling away, whittling away and getting a perfect fit and unfortunately I was sitting at the top of my stairs and I knew that I was very close to getting it to fit completely and unfortunately one of my neighbours came up just as I just about had it ready to mount. He's had a couple of strokes 1 and I couldn't understand completely what he was talking about. I got a bit impatient and I went to force the egg through and it slipped straight through the arch and just rolled down the steps and, naturally, it was shattered by the time it hit the bottom of the stairs.

It must have been heartbreaking.

It sure was because I could have got at least $200 for it.

Len, you also carved .... In the background there we've got a beautiful billiard cue which you've put together and also a silky oak walking stick.

They take approximately the same amount of time to do. I have made myself an old wood turning lathe out of scrap that I found at the dump one day. I've got a little electric motor that I set up and I turned most of the stuff down on those and then I do the whittling part, the carving part, after that. That's done with a small pocket knife. As a matter of fact I'll show you the pocket knife afterwards. I have been using it now for about forty-three or forty-four years so there's not much of the blades left on it.

How did you manage to get the billiard cue so straight?

That's what I said. I've made this little makeshift wood-turning lathe and I've got an electric motor to turn it over and naturally it comes out completely straight. That two piece one that I've got there I drill the centre out on the lathe and turn it out on the inside doing more or less the same way.

Len, can you tell us something about your early life?

Going back to where I was actually born, I was born on a little mission station. It's actually between Boomi and Moree on the Whelan Creek in the Moree Plains area. They call it the Kamilaroi area. I was about four year old when we left there and we went on to another mission station, a reserve, at old Toomelah which is on the Goondiwindi side of Boomi. We were there at that place until 1931. When I was about seven year old we moved from there. My father was a hard worker. He used to shear and do bush work and everything like that. He had started a lot of work over on the Queensland side of the border around Nindigully and St George, all up the Moonee area, and he finished up borrowing a truck and he moved the family across in 1931 to this place at Nindigully. We more or less went to school there from then on until I was thirteen years and nine months old when I finally left school. My family, Mum and Dad, they reared about eight of us during the Depression and I sort of grew up before my age and thought that .... When Dad had his bush working team at that time - he had a ringbarking team and a fencing team and he used to go away shearing himself - and then there were about twelve or fifteen men working for Dad at the time in the bush working gangs. Jim, my brother, and I, who later on joined up with me on the same day in August 1942, we left school and decided to give Mum and Dad a hand to rear the rest of the family. Our family amounted to ... there was eleven kids altogether - eight boys and three girls, so we

2 actually grew up before our time sort of thing. We just wanted to give them a hand because they'd reared us in those days.

One of your schoolteachers was very keen on you continuing your schooling, wasn't he?

Yes, he actually begged my mother and my mother actually begged me not to leave school. He used to come to our home at night and tutor me at least twice a week and he told my mother that he could get me a bursary or a scholarship to go to a Church of England Grammar School in Brisbane. He even said to Mum, 'You realise you might even have a Rhodes scholar in your family'.

What were your first jobs, Len, after leaving school at such an early age?

Well, as I said, we went just ringbarking and fencing; that's all we did. And then as we got a little bit older we went into the shearing sheds and did shed work like rousabouting. Actually I was learning to shear when I joined up and that was in .... I started to learn to shear in 1939 and I ....

Can you remember the first moment when you were fascinated by flight?

Not really, but I grew up in the era when the skies were being explored. There was Amy Johnston[?], Kingsford-Smith, Bert Hinkler, Lindbergh and Jean Batten in New Zealand. When other kids were making toy - this was when I was only about eight or nine years of age - other kids were playing with ordinary toys, I'd be making model planes and flying kites. I always, as people have said and it has been mentioned before this in interviews that I had, had my head in the clouds. Unfortunately it took a world war for me to realise my ambition but fortunately for me I did do that.

Len, when you went to the Recruiting Office what did they recommend? What trade did they think you should enter, for example?

When we went away Jim and I - we both enlisted on the same day - and on the troop train that went down from Dirranbandi, out in the south-west of Queensland, and there was several - there could have been anything up to 200 boys, you could say, because that's all we were in those days - on that train. We were all collected from Roma Street and taken to the Exhibition Ground in Brisbane. Jim, my brother, had told me that he had made up his mind to join the Army because he idolised grandfather Bennett[?]. That was Mum's father who, incidentally, served in the first world war and finished up being gassed in the Somme.

He, in fact, was at Gallipoli, wasn't he?

3 He was reinforcement at Gallipoli, yes. He wasn't an original at Gallipoli. At any rate, well, I said to Jim, 'As you know, I've always wanted to fly so if I can be associated with the Air Force in any way at all, I'm going to join the Air Force'. Well, unfortunately I didn't have the educational qualifications at that time because as the saying was then you had to have at least two years of college education to get into air crew. So I joined ground staff and fortunately for me when I was at Mildura working on Kittyhawks, they called for remusters to air crew from the ground staff and I was lucky enough to be recruited with quite a few of my mates who were there at the time. We went down to ITS, that's the Initial Training School at Somers in eastern Victoria, and I was selected as a pilot on that course which was Forty-four Course. There again, everything seemed to fall my way because there was a 167 remusters on that course and out of those there was only forty-four who finished up as pilots and I was one of them.

I was lucky enough to be selected to go on to single-engined aircraft which was the old Tiger Moths at Narrandera and after finishing the course there I went on to Uranquinty where I did a course on Wirraways where I received my wings and then I was made a fighter pilot and sent back to Mildura to fly the planes that I'd actually worked on before. It was something that I found the experience was invaluable to me because after flying them - after working on them, I should say - and then going to fly them in operations I knew if the plane was air worthy. As a matter of fact, I told some of my friends who when they were warming their aircraft up, I used to say, 'No, I wouldn't take that aircraft up if I were you; there's something wrong with it', and they appreciated that.

People have said to me about discrimination, was I ever discriminated against? I can say, no, I was not ever. As a matter of fact, two of my best friends, they came from high class families in Sydney and I was always accepted as equal to them. As a matter of fact, later on towards the end of the war, just before Tarakan was invaded, Jim, my brother that I'd joined up with and, incidentally, I hadn't seen up until about four and a half to five months before the war actually finished, he came to our camp at Morotai where the 78 Squadron was established at that time - where we operated from - and Jim was a three-quarter caste. My mother was the same colour. My father was almost a white man. You would never have taken him for an Aboriginal, at all. When Jim came there, even after that, there was no discrimination in any shape or form. As a matter of fact, after we went to Tarakan, after we landed, Jim went and was on the landing when they took the strip - took the island - and we moved in afterwards. They didn't actually take the full island, they just had a perimeter established, just enough for us to operate from. But he was established there in the guardian force more or less and we used to go up and pick him up two or three times a week sometimes and he'd come down and he was welcome into our mess with all the rest of the pilots and there was never any discrimination towards him at all.

What did your fellow pilots call you, Len?

Oh.

Did they have a nickname for you?

4 Not really, they didn't.

Because you were a great strapping fellow, weren't you? In fact you were a champion boxer, so maybe they weren't game to give you a nickname.

As a matter of fact, speaking on those lines, the other day, last Tuesday I think it was, there was a knock on my unit door and I was around the back at the time doing a bit of arts and crafts again. And I just called out to this fellow, whoever it was, I said, 'Just come around the back, I'm around here'. This fellow came and when he walked around the side I looked at him and I said to him, 'Gee, I know you from somewhere but I just can't place you at the present time'. 'Well', he said, 'you haven't changed that bloody much as far as I'm concerned you still look as fit as you ever did when we worked together'. I said, 'When did we work together? You don't look like a shearer to me or a ringbarker or a fencer'. He said, 'No, the last time I saw you was in November 1945'. I said, 'Now I know you. You used to be in the control tower at Morotai and Tarakan'. 'That's right.'

What made you so fit in those days?

As I mentioned before, my father had two lots of working teams, a fencing team and a ringbarking team and when we left school originally we went into those teams to work and in those days there were no forty hour weeks or anything like that. It was seven days a week, daylight till dark, and you ran all day. You just didn't walk from tree to tree. In the ringbarking teams that Dad had, if he had twelve or fifteen ringbarkers, every third or fourth fellow was a pacemaker and they were experts at the game and that's where we became so fit.

Len, you were a middle-weight champion boxer in the islands, weren't you?

Yes, I won the middle-weight title at Morotai. I held it for 1944 and '45. I actually had fifteen fights and I didn't lose one, and I don't think I show much of the results of it today; there's not too many scars on me. The garrison force at Morotai in those days was the 93rd American negro division so there were some fit fighters amongst them, too.

So you had a few fights with some American negroes.

I had fifteen fights altogether and I didn't lose any.

Were most of those fights with negroes?

No, there was Dutch, there was English and other Australians, of course - Army Australians and other Air Force. About a third of them, I suppose, might have been negroes.

How did the authorities feel about you fighting when you were a very valuable pilot?

5 That never ever came up. It was never mentioned. I think they probably realised that I kept myself pretty fit and it was never mentioned, even after I became a flight leader. I was a flight sergeant leading a flight and I was never restricted in any shape or form in those activities.

Do you believe with boxing it requires the same hand eye coordination it does in flying?

It's a funny thing now you should mention that because I think when I was selected on the initial training course at Somers as a pilot, there was a boxing competition on the night before and there was a flight sergeant there at the time, a drill instructor, and he had a few tickets on himself and apparently he wasn't a bad 'pug' and I had to fight him this night. He was a middle-weight, the same weight as me, but I thought that it was only an exhibition bout like most of the bouts were. They were mostly only four round bouts. At any rate one of the chaps who remustered with me from Mildura, Wally McKenzie[?], he was a fantastic mate of mine. He was in my corner that night and he said to me, 'You think this is only going to be an exhibition bout, dont' you?'. I said, 'That's what I've been led to believe'. He said, 'Well, Flight Sergeant Mclean[?], he's got his mates putting money on him, so just watch him'. I said, 'What have you done?'. He said, 'I've had fifteen quid on you'. Well, fifteen quid to a trainee in those days was quite a bit of money but his money owned three properties around the Riverina area so he wasn't short of a quid. At any rate we went out and this fellow tried to put me away in the first two or three punches and as it so happened he finished up on the sick parade the next morning. Any rate, then we had to go before the Categorisation Board the next morning and you went in alphabetical order and being Waters I was one of the last to go before the Board. Three of my mates said to me, 'You'll be one of the first to be picked as a pilot'. I said, 'I can't see it' because I knew that I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I said I couldn't see it really. They said, 'We'll bet you that you'll be one of the first'. So I had three bets against myself - three five pound bets. As it so happened I went in to the Board and there were five officers selecting the recruits to go on to be made different categorisation. There were navigators, pilots, observers, flight operators; there were about six different categories. And, of course, the commanding officer had the final say. There was something else I didn't mention that almost brought me undone, because I was so keen to prove myself in everything that I took on that I mastered the Morse in half the time that it would have normally taken - I cut the time in half, I reached the required standard. At any rate when the commanding officer had his say, he said, 'Now, Waters, I see here you mastered Morse Code in half the time'. I said, 'Yes'. He said, 'Any reason for that? Are you keen on becoming a wireless air gunner?'. I said, 'No, Sir, I just wanted to prove myself in every category - every subject'. He said, 'The wireless air gunners are becoming a bit scarce' - because that was around about the Battle of Britain era - 'Have you ever imagined yourself being a wireless air gunner - a tail gunner?'. I said, 'No, Sir'. He said, 'Just close your eyes now and just imagine yourself as a wireless air gunner, sitting in the tail of a ...

END TAPE 1, SIDE A

BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE B

Identification: this is interview with Len Waters, 13 August, tape 2.

6 Len, can you tell us a little bit about your early childhood?

Actually, I was born on Euraba Mission Reserve - they called them 'missions' in those days - in New South Wales. That's on the Whalan Creek between Boomi and Moree. We moved from there shortly afterwards to Toomelah which was fourteen miles up on the Goondiwindi road from Boomi. We actually stayed there again until 1931. I was born, by the way, on 20 June 1924, so I was just turned seven when we left Old Toomelah. We liked to refer to it as 'Old Toomelah', not the trouble spot that gives a lot of trouble today, which is New Toomelah.

Len, you left school at a very early age, didn't you?

Yes, I left school in April and I didn't turn fourteen until 20 June that year. If I'd have stayed on the mission what the education qualifications were in those days was either grade five or fourteen and you either had to go out and get a job because the government wouldn't keep you any longer than that.

You worked with your father at that time, didn't you?

When I went to work at first I went to work in that bushwork, ringbarking and fencing for Dad. He had two teams going: one of fencing; one of ringbarking. When I hear about a lot of the money that's being paid these days for fencing and ringbarking ... actually the first job that we did for Dad - that I did do when I joined the team - he was getting three and sixpence for an acre of land to ringbark in those days. Now, that country was all virgin country and the eldest member of our family, Georgie, he was a fantastic provider when Dad used to be away. We were lucky to see our father any more than twice a year because he hardly ever lived on the mission station at Boomi. Georgie, he could have bought and sold Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, the lot of them all put together. He had fantastic wit about him. I remember once - this is how thick the scrub was that we were ringbarking in - he shot this kangaroo one day and we said to him, 'Where did you get it?'. 'Over in the scrubby part, the real scrubby part of it.' There were a couple of other friends there working on the next property. They said, 'How bad is it there?'. He said, 'I can tell you now, the scrub's that thick I had to drag the animal carcass out into a water course because the scrub was that thick I couldn't open my pocket knife'.

It was very hard work, though, for a young boy.

It was very hard work because Dad used to always have pacemakers in his team and we worked from daylight till dark and just coming into winter, like at April when I left school, there used to be heavy dew on the timber every morning and we'd all be in a line ready to start work as soon as it was light enough to see the timber that we had to work on. We'd just have little twig fires sitting around there warming our hands and sharpening our axes ready to start work, and with pacemakers we had to really work. You almost ran from tree to tree.

7 Len, as a young boy did you ever have a dream to fly as you worked in the scrub out there?

It was always in my mind because of the skyways being developed at that time. I always thought, will I ever realise my dream? - because that's what I wanted to do more than anything else.

Your family had a long history of service in the Australian forces, didn't they? Your father was at Gallipoli and France.

No, that was my mother's father - Grandfather Bennett[?]. He was a reinforcement to Gallipoli and then he went on to the Somme in France, and actually he didn't even get a pension because he hardly had any education at all to apply for one and he was gassed in the Somme. I was told afterwards because I didn't even attend his funeral because I was further out west around Cunnamulla and I didn't even know that he'd died but they said that he only had half a lung left from his service in the first world war.

That's from being gassed.

Yes.

Len, when you turned up at the recruiting office did they want you to join the Army or were you quite definite that you wanted to join the Royal Australian Air Force?

No, what happened was, the recruiting vans used to come around and they circled all the outlying districts and they came to St George and out to Cunnamulla and up to Charleville, Blackall, around like that. Anyone who wanted to enlist put their names down and you had to wait then to be called up. Jim and I - my brother - he idolised Grandfather Bennett, Mum's father, and he said all along that he wanted to join the army and he said that we'll go away together just in case they don't take you in the air force and we can serve together. We actually were called up on the same day. We went down to the Exhibition Ground in Brisbane which was the centre for all services, not just the army or the air force but the navy were there, too. When they got us off the train at Roma Street, they took us straight out to the Exhibition Ground which was in the centre and we all walked into three different doors - army, navy, air force, and that was the last I saw of Jim up until about four and a half to five months before the war ended.

Which trade did the air force accept you in?

When I joined the ground staff I had to go to Maryborough and do my 'rooky's' which was only a month/six weeks course and then it was like - you were selected on ability, whether you were mechanically minded or different ways. The experts chose who was to go where. I was always mechanically minded so they sent me down to Ultimo in Sydney to do a tech course and from there I went on further down to .... At the end of the tech course at Ultimo I was 8 sent down to Ascotvale which is the showgrounds at Melbourne. I finally graduated from there as a flight mechanic.

There was some discrimination in wages in those days, wasn't there, Len?

Yes, there was for the fellows that joined up from the reserves and who were recognised as blacks, as Aboriginals, but that is one thing that I never ever experienced. Neither did Jim because he told me he got the same wages as the other fellows that he worked with and trained with and then served with. Actually, I think he deserved more because he was a forward scout and in the front of his company all the time.

Len, were you recommended to apply for air crew?

I wasn't actually recommended but getting towards that time all the fellows that we called were more or less born with silver spoons in their mouths, the upper crust, they were getting scarce and there was a rumour going around that there was going to be remusters from ground staff into air crew and anyone who was interested in it could apply to transfer from the ground staff to air crew.

When you applied for air crew they actually tried to persuade you to become a wireless operator air gunner, didn't they?

Yes, the Categorisation Board at Somers when we went back to - it's the I.T.S., it's an Initial Training School, and you brought yourself up-to-date with your schooling, with your education. Of course, there were different courses that you could have gone into and one of them, naturally, was a wireless air gunner or a tail gunner because I was told by some of the fellows who operated during the Battle of Britain that right in the heart of it the life of a tail gunner in the Battle of Britain was two and a half minutes and they did say that sometimes they just hosed them out.

Must have been a terrible thought.

That didn't appeal to me, to go that way after going as far as I did. I knew that I was holding my own with the majority of the fellows who had transferred to air crew. When I went before the board, actually I was keen to prove myself in every different part of the course and one of those parts was the Morse Code. It was not just the key but also the Aldis Lamp and I reached the required standard in half the time and then I could concentrate on the other stuff because I didn't have to do Morse any more.

Len, did you have any idea when you were accepted as a pilot trainee that you were likely to become the first Aboriginal military pilot in Australia and, indeed, probably still the only one?

9 No, I had no ideas that way. I didn't join up for the glamour or the glory of it and the publicity that I have copped in the last two or three years. I just joined up with Jim, the two of us went away together, and we thought when eventually we did get back .... Actually, we didn't run into each other again until about four or five months before the war ended. And I thought it was great then, knowing that they were going to Borneo - well, they went to Tarakan which is just off the east coast of Borneo - and that we were due to go across there to operate from that strip. I thought, well, eventually we're doing our job together. He's down there in the jungle and I'm over the top of him.

Len, can you recall your first flights in a Tiger Moth?

No, I can't say that I do, really, but the instructor that had us, he was only a flight sergeant instructor and he was the greatest ear-basher of all time. At times when we got out of the plane, he'd get out of one side of the cockpit and I'd get out the other side because he used to ear-bash me that much I wasn't game to walk - I felt like attacking him because he attacked me with words up in the air. The day that I finally did my first solo flight, actually I was the second one on 44 Course to go but Teddy Williams, that was the instructor's name, and there was a young fellow by the name of Carter. Each instructor had three trainees. It was a toss up which one of us would go first and young Carter he beat me. He did a couple of .... All you do on your first solo flight is just a few circuits and bumps; that's all it was. He beat me by about ten minutes on the course.

What year was this? This was 1944?

It had to be early in '44 because we then finished there and we went across to Uranquinty. I've got my log book but I just can't get the dates. I did two courses on Wirraways. Actually, there was one course up at Narromine which was where you learnt skip bombing and strafing and that sort of thing. And the other one was where you did your training course at Uranquinty and then when you got your wings you went to Narromine and that's when you started your skip bombing and your operational training. And then, from there to Mildura, back on to the Kittyhawks.

It must have been a very proud moment when you got presented with your wings.

Yes, that was a very proud moment because I thought I'd have to battle all the time. Actually, I had to repeat navigation and meteorology but it was only a week to repeat that and then there were only about three or four in the course that topped me, the day I got my wings.

Len, what made you opt for fighters rather than fly transport aircraft or bombers?

I thought as far as flying goes it really did appeal to me to get into the fighter aircraft because there was a point to be proved there whereas with the couriers and the bombers and transports and all that sort of thing they were a crew whereas there was something special. It was always

10 regarded when you did your initial training that everyone wanted to be a single-seater fighter pilot.

It must have been a very exciting moment on conversion when you first sat in a Kittyhawk and fired up the big V-12.

It was unreal. It's something that you just can't describe, you've got to do it, you've got to experience that feeling because they developed almost twice the horsepower of a Wirraway and a Wirraway landed at about eighty-five miles an hour and a Kittyhawk mostly was about ninety-eight up to 105.

Len, how did you take to flying the Kittyhawk?

I didn't have any trouble whatsoever. I shouldn't say I didn't have any trouble because on one of the final flights that we did before we sent up north, we had to do a battle climb that's a squadron formation and climb to 20,000 feet which was almost the extremity of a Kittyhawk because they only had a two-stage blower, not like the Spitfires or Mustangs or Thunderbolts, they had three-stage blowers and they could fly up to over 30,000 feet. But we flew to 20,000 feet and then we had to pair off to lose height and have dog fights but naturally with cameras. The fellow that was number four to me, Joe Smith - I was three, he was four - so we paired off and he got onto my tail straight away and I flipped around and got onto his tail and gave him a couple of bursts and he thought he'd have to get square with me so he got around behind me again and the aircraft - I felt there was something wrong with it because it wasn't as manoeuvrable as some of the others that I had flown. Actually, he was trying to get inside me because you have to lay off deflection when you shoot at anything and he was trying to get his nose in front of me and I kept just keeping inside and all of a sudden I hit my tail slipstream and it flipped over and I brought it back around again and I looked in the rear vision mirror and he was back on my tail so I whipped inside him. I thought, I'll do it the other way so I did a reverse turn and went back round the other way and he kept on my tail. He was a pretty good pilot, too, Joe, even though he didn't finish up with our squadron. At any rate he came around under me and he got inside me again and then all of a sudden my aircraft did something that I just wouldn't like to go through again. It was one of the most hair-raising things that ever happened to me. It went into an inverted spin and just before I went into it I noticed the altimeter was showing 18,000 feet. Anyway, it kept getting tighter and tighter into this spin and was stalled completely but spinning upside down. It was at Mildura where there's a lot of vineyards and stumps sticking up out of the ground and I thought, this is going to be nice, I'm going in here with all these stumps, I've got to try and manoeuvre to get in between them but I couldn't. I tried everything to try and recover - all the recommended methods. At any rate, all of a sudden I just started pumping the throttle and the joystick at the same time and all of a sudden it just flipped over the right way up and I looked at the altimeter and I thought I saw 12,000 feet and I thought, well, that's not too bad and I looked around to see where Joe was. At any rate, I looked at the altimeter again and it was 1200 feet and I started to get the shakes. In the meantime as well, I tried to bail out and seeing as I was upside down all my weight was on the canopy and I couldn't open the canopy and that's when I really did panic. When it flipped over and came out all right I looked over the left wing and I spotted the airfield there and so I just side slipped over and slowly just dropped her straight down and taxiing back to the tarmac and I was shaking that much I couldn't even sign the log 11 book. As I got out of my cockpit and was getting the parachute out, Joe pulled up alongside of me and he said to me, 'Where the fucking hell did you get that bloody manoeuvre from? I've never seen one like that before.' As it so turned out the aircraft had been pranged before but it had never been sent down to aircraft depot to have the frame lined up truly. I was told after I went up to the islands that two courses afterwards it actually pranged and killed a bloke; he wasn't as lucky as I was.

You must have wondered whether aviation was for you after that flight.

You know, that was sort of things that… I survived that. I got through that sort of thing and everything sort of went my way. That's the way I thought about it.

Len, in 1944 you got sent up to the frontline. How old were you?

I was still only in my twenties because when I got discharged in '46 I wasn't even twenty-two so I was more or less only a kid. Actually, we were all kids because Dick Sudlow[?], our squadron leader, was only twenty-three years of age and in those days - I have spoken to other elderly men that are a bit older than us .... As a matter of fact I mentioned before about one of the control tower fellows, he called in the other day out where I'd been out to Cunnamulla and he said in those days if you were twenty-seven or twenty-eight they considered you too old for air crew.

Can you describe your feelings when you got sent up to the frontline? Was it with some sort of anticipation or trepidation?

It was definitely anticipation. Well, to a certain extent intrepidation, too, I suppose, but we were so keen especially after the Japs had been kicked out of New Guinea - well, they weren't all completely kicked out because they still had bases there and we had to raid quite a few of them. But there was something else that I haven't mentioned in one of the interviews that I've had, that there were three of the Jackson brothers from St George. Now, 'Old John' they called, it was John F. Jackson, Les Jackson and Eddie Jackson, they all finished up wing commanders and there was about six Distinguished Flying Crosses amongst them, a DSO and I think John got a Croix de Guerre, out of the one family. There were only two other pilots from the district which is one of the wealthiest districts in the south-west of Queensland and the other fellow was from a top family, which was the Mace's[?], that was young Billy Mace[?], and I was the other one, I was the fifth one.

Len you flew ninety-five missions or sorties, as you call them, with 78 Squadron. What was one of your most 'hairy' missions?

Actually, the most hairy one that stands out more than any other, we were over the Celibes one day and we were dive bombing and we had to come back around and strafe the base after we'd dropped our bombs. I was leading A flight at the time and as I pulled out of the dive and I dropped the bombs at about 3,000 feet and I felt a 'clunk' underneath and I thought, I've got a

12 hit there somewhere. We knew, of course, what type of anti-aircraft fire they were throwing up at us and the majority of it at that stage: there was a Japanese type of 'pom pom' that the navy had and they were a 37 ml - they were 40 mls that the navy had. As I pulled out of it I flew back around and I felt this thing whatever it was, this slug, lodged between my armour- plating behind the nape of my neck and the seventy-five gallon high octane fuel tank in the fuselage. I thought, it's over two hours from the Celibes back to Morotai and when we got back there - I could almost hear the thing ticking behind my skull because one in five is a high explosive shell - when we got back to base I just told the others to land and get off the strip because I didn't want to .... We could land as a flight, that's four of us together, either take off or land it. I told them to clear the strip, that I didn't like what had happened to me and I just taxied up at the end of the strip and the armourers came over and I just said to them, 'There's something underneath - went underneath'. And luckily underneath the belly of a Kittyhawk is fabric between the armour-plating and the seventy-five gallon fuel tank. Incidentally, it was a high explosive shell. If it had landed six or eight inches one way or the other, I wouldn't be here talking about it today. They looked up inside and ripped it open and the shell was there - it was a live shell.

You must have gone up to the mess to have a few celebration drinks afterwards.

Yes, I had a couple of extra that night. There was one thing about our old doctor, like in those days the only grog ration that we got was two tall bottles a fortnight ....

END TAPE 1, SIDE B

BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A

Identification: this is interview with Len Waters, tape 3.

Len, you previously mentioned after your flight with the shell embedded behind your seat the doctor actually made up a special brew for you which I think was of considerable interest.

Yes, he used to, naturally, have medicinal alcohol and the brews that he made, they weren't like a lot of the jungle juices like the old pumpkin rum and stuff like that they made but this one that he made this night was aniseed tasting, crème-de-menthe and it tasted exactly the same as the real thing. As a matter of fact, I think, if you put it into a bottle you could quite easily have sold it, I said to him afterwards, and naturally it was pretty potent, I said, 'That's a real good brew you've put on tonight, Doc, but what intrigues me is how did you get the colour that it is?'. He said, 'That was quite simple. I just used tinea paint.'

That must have created a lot of amusement around the bar.

Yes, it did and actually the next morning because we were all a bit seedy from the brew the night before and I sauntered into the mess the next morning to see if there was any of the brew 13 left and to my surprise the galvanisation on the inside of the old milk bucket that he made the brews in, it was starting to peel off.

Len, maybe that you were so fit up there you survived because when you were up in Morotai you had quite a reputation as a middle-weight boxing champion, didn't you?

Yes, I held the title for 1944 and '45 and everyone was fit otherwise you wouldn't have been there. The garrison force on Morotai was the 93rd Negro Division and there were naturally some very fit blokes amongst them. Actually the fellow that won the light heavyweight title was Jimmy Tolliver[?]. Now, when - a lot of the old timers would remember this and would probably read about it - when Archie Moore[?] came out here and fought Ron Richards[?] who was the Australian middleweight champion and Richards at the time was rated fourth in the world and Archie Moore was rated second and Jimmy Tolliver, he was rated third in the world of the champions.

So in fact you're one of the early Lionel Roses.

I don't know about one of the early Lionel Roses but I think that I could have made a living out of it. As a matter of fact I had young brother, I later on I promoted him and he went down and after I came back from the war and he actually fought for the lightweight championship of Queensland.

When you fought against Negroes as well as English and other races, there was no discrimination, I believe, during that time.

No, the only discrimination actually there was with the Negroes that no one was allowed to hold a rank above captain in the 93rd Division; anyone over that was a white man. When the war finished we were situated at Tarakan at that time and everyone more or less had the idea that things were drawing to a close as just about everything that we did, we'd never seen any Japanese aircraft in the air. We saw plenty on airfields but no pilots were there apparently to fly them. Anyway, this day we came back from Balikpapan and as we got into our jets and went back up we heard that 80 Squadron had gone down to the Mohakam Valley which was the last big base that the Japs had in Borneo. Nobody else really wanted to raid the place because it was cut off completely, it was halfway between Tarakan and Balikpapan so they couldn't get anything into them to supply them in any shape or form and 80 Squadron they took off this day to go down - it was one of these war winner types - and he wanted to do a raid on this big base and as they took off one of the pilots had engine trouble on take-off and he had to return, just more or less did a circuit and a bump and came back down and landed. Now, one of the fellows that went up on my course because there was only three of us left out of eight of us that had gone up there originally off 44 Course, his name was Ted Quinn. Incidentally, as far as I can ascertain he was an only son and he was down at the strip when they took off because he was keen to get up in the air all the time. Most of us were, we didn't like being - laying around the camp or just going on swims; we weren't there on a holiday basis or anything like that. At any rate, when this other fellow returned to base, just more or less flew around and landed, 'Quinny' called out to the squadron leader, 'I'll take his place' and he more or less had his motor warmed up at the time and he took off and caught up with the 14 squadron. They went down and did the raid and there was only one casualty on that raid and that was Ted Quinn, our mate that went out there off 44 Course. We were down to do a raid the next day on the same place but we'd completed our tour of duty and we said to our squadron leader we don't feel up to going on a raid where Quinny had just got shot down and said that we had finished our tour. Whether the powers-that-be knew what was going on at the time or not, I don't know but he said, 'Just leave it as it is on the notice board there' and he took us over to see the wing commander and the wing commander more or less said the same thing. He said, 'Just leave it, you never can tell you mightn't even have to fly tomorrow'. At ten o'clock that night we got the news that the bomb had been dropped and the war was finished. So Teddy Quinn was killed in the last raid on the last day of the war.

What happened to other members of your 44 Course?

I don't know which squadrons they finished up with. There was only in 78 Wing, as I said, there was Ted Quinn and Frank Smith and myself. We finished up the last three of 44 Course. But two them, there was a young fellow who got married on his final leave and whether he was just in love with his sweetheart or not but his nerves gave out on him completely and he was transferred back. There was another fellow, they weren't related to each other, but both their surnames were Brown[?] and he killed himself. He just dived into the water - misjudged. The others went on to different squadrons and we just didn't hear anything from them afterwards.

One of your fellow pilots, though, had a most unfortunate end, didn't he?

Yes, there was a fellow that took me under his wing when I went there first and when I hear that song, 'Billy, don't be a hero' or 'Johnny, don't be a hero', I often think of this really good friend of mine, Johnny Griffiths[?]. He had finished his tour of duty and he was just more or less driving us down to the strip so we could take off and do our flights and he'd be there when we came back and we'd go and have a swim and that sort of thing but he always said 'Don't be a hero. Don't be a war winner. There's plenty of those fellows here. Just do your duty and pull your weight and you'll come through it okay because remember you've got two parents who actually idolise you.' I had, incidentally, shown him some of my letters from my mother and the way I felt about her, she felt about me apparently. I know she did. At any rate, this day in particular the squadron was flying morning and afternoon and the squadron leader, Dick Sudlow, he said to Johnny one day - it was just an ordinary mopping up sort of thing, just raiding the base just to see that the Japs weren't trying to smuggle stuff in by barge, into the bases that were left in New Guinea - and he asked Johnny would he take the squadron out this day. Johnny said he would be only too pleased to go because he didn't like laying around the camp and I actually flew number two to him that day. When we got out from base, it was just round the top of Dutch New Guinea, we ran into an electric storm, a tropical storm, and it was down to about 200 feet above sea level, and it could have been anything up to 120 feet wide and with the old Kittyhawks, of course, you couldn't get over a storm like that because they go up to thirty-five/forty thousand feet. And so he just called us up and gave us the thumbs down sign and he said, 'We'll go back, it's not worthwhile trying to risk ourselves', because we didn't have night flying instruments in the Kittyhawk, not like the other aircraft had, there was no radar or anything like that. So we went back. We landed and he went to walk past my tent, or Stan Hattersley's and my tent, that afternoon. He said, 'Well, 15 that finishes me now, Len. I'll go and fix my log book up, paint a few photographs in it and that'll be the end of it. I'll just wait for a courier to take me home then'. He walked into the operations tent and sat down at the desk with like a bar stool behind it, opened his log book and had the photographs there, arranging them where he was going to put them and a dead limb off a jungle giant, about 140 to 150 feet up over the tent, snapped off and fell down and came straight through the top of the tent and hit him, splattered his brains all over his log book. I might tell you it shattered me especially because he said don't be a hero, don't be a war winner. Another thing, he couldn't be certified as killed in action. It was only accidental death after he'd completed a tour up there. Incidents like that, like Johnny being killed accidentally like that, and Teddy Quinn being killed on the last raid of the last day of the war more or less, got to me more than any other incidents that happened while I was actually operating out there.

Lenny, at the end of the war you were a very fit twenty-one year old. You were a boxing champion, you were a combat hardened flyer yet in many ways you were quite naive.

Actually, to verify that sort of thing, I was very naive and when I read The Virgin Soldiers I thought about myself when I came back I was still a virgin airman and I ran into some friends who had worked and owned properties out in the area where I came from, out in the south- western downs of Queensland, and I was waiting for my Christmas leave to come through to go out and have Christmas with the family and I ran into these fellows this night at a hotel that most of the people from around - the property owners, actually, they were from around St George, my home town - they used to patronise this hotel. I was in there thinking that they'd probably be down getting their Christmas supplies and that sort of thing. And as it happened they did walk in and, of course, we got together. We went around to the lounge and we ran into another friend of theirs that had gone to college with them on the outskirts of Toowoomba at Downlands College. He was, to my surprise, a brilliant pianist and had had a few beers and something a bit heavier than that I'd say, too, because he was under the weather and we joined in and had a few drinks. He was a good boogie-woogie pianist and we had him really going. And the two boys, his brothers, they kept urging him on and praising him for his talents as far as a musician. He just happened to say, 'Yes, I know I can play. I've always been ambitious that way, but my greatest ambition is to play a piano at a brothel.' When he said that I looked at the older brother of the two, 'Moonee Loonies' - that's where they came from, up the Moonee River. And the older fellow gave me a bit of a nod and I walked over near him and said we'll let him realise his ambition, if you like. I said, 'Yes, fair enough'. So we said to him .... We were given an invitation earlier on to go to this old lady's place, she's got about four beautiful young daughters, her husband either blew through or was killed at the war, but she likes to entertain the young men, the servicemen and that sort of thing. So he said, 'We've been invited out tonight, would you like to come along? What have you got on your card?'. He said, 'Nothing, I'd be only too pleased to come across'. So we got in a taxi and went over the bridge, on the south side of the Brisbane River, and pulled up in front of this place. And it was a typical old Queensland home, a two-storey place with the verandah all around it, and a beautiful big loungeroom in the front. We walked in and the old lady knew the two Loonies and they introduced me to her, as well, and this friend of ours, the musician. We had a few drinks. She had a bar in the corner and we had a few drinks. The older of the brothers, the Loonies, said, 'Do you mind if our friend plays the piano?'. And the old lady said, 'Can he play the piano?'. 'Oh yes, he's brilliant, he's really good.' So he went over and there was a big grand over in the corner and he started beating away on it and playing 'Boogie 16 Woogie Bugle Boy' and all this modern stuff of that time, and he really had the place jumping. The girls were all there. They were all beautifully respectably dressed and there was no scantily dressed ones amongst them. They kept disappearing with other men who came and went and after we'd been there for quite a while .... Actually, before what really happened to him, I decided to cart one of the girls away to a room, too. I still had my uniform on and when I went into the room with her she said, 'Naturally, you're a flyer' because I had my wings on my uniform. She said, 'What squadron did you fly with?' and I told her. She said, 'Do you know a certain flying officer?' I said, 'Yes, he flew with me. I led a flight many times that he flew with. Why, do you know the man?'. She said, 'Yes, as a matter of fact he happens to be my husband'. Now I have heard tales about things like this, about the girls in the Cross in Sydney where they were getting money on the side like that then they bought their own homes, the couples like that. The husbands apparently didn't mind, especially with the Yanks and that who were big payers, had plenty of money and didn't mind splurging the money. She almost put me off my business what I'd taken her into the room for. When we got back the pianist was really under the weather by this time but he apparently he kept noticing these girls going away and they were going with a different fellow in the other room at times and he turned around and he said, 'By the way, is this place as respectable as it seems from the outside?'. And Darcy said, 'Why?'. He said, 'There's something funny about it. The girls come in and then there'd be something else going and they'll be away for twenty minutes, a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes and that sort of thing and then he'll come back and then somebody else would go along. Is it a respectable house?'. We all burst out laughing and Darcy said - the older of the Loonie boys - 'You know something, Doug, you've just realised your life's ambition. You've played a piano in a brothel.'

Well, Lenny, did you enjoy your experience at Elsie's?

Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. As I said before, what she told me almost put me off what I'd gone into the room with her for, but about places like that you hear tales all the time. As a matter of fact a lot of people in my age group, anyhow, knew that the girls had to be inspected every Sunday morning. A medico used to come around and just use one of the rooms as a ward to inspect them to see that they were clean, they weren't carrying any sort of diseases. This morning there was quite a few of them lined up and an old lady who was taking her little dog for a walk walked up, and as a lot of people know, there were queues for everything in those days and this old lady said to the girls, 'Oh, there's another queue on here, what's this one for?'. One of them just winked at the other and said, 'Oh, look, Ma'am, they're handing out sweets this morning - lollies - and usually we get some good stuff here, so you mightn't be able to get your issue of sugar and stuff like that so you can make up if you've got good lollies.' She said, 'Yes, as a matter of act I do like lollies'. The one who spoke said, 'You can get in here in front of me'. She was only two back from the door at the time. One came out just after that and she was nasty and a bit sour, didn't like being put on parade at that hour of the morning after having a heavy night before, I suppose. She said, 'This morning all they've got is bloody boiled lollies in there. There's no soft sweets at all.' The one just in front, due to go into the door, she said, ''Do you hear that, Nan, you realise that seeing you haven't got any teeth and they're only handing out boiled lollies, how will you be with that?'. The old lady said, 'That won't be any problem, I can still suck them.'

Len, you haven't had an easy life. You left school before you were fourteen, you became a fighter pilot before you were twenty years old. After the war you married 17 and raised a family and worked extremely hard. Is there any message you'd like to give to young Aboriginals today?

I have been asked the same question several times at different interviews and I've always said that even though a job doesn't seem to be available, if you show that you're willing to try something, as I did, you can always get something to do. You mightn't get full wages at first but once you start to prove yourself you can do that because I've done that in several occasions with different building firms and things like that. When I got married we were both still working. My wife was a house maid in a hotel and she worked seven days a week, you could say, and when I came into town because at that time I was driving a grader on the road between St George and Mungindi and we used to get together at weekends but she was actually earning almost as much money as I was. I thought, if I'm going to be the breadwinner, I'm going to have to get into something a bit more productive and that something would bring in a little bit more money, because she said she wanted to have a family. I said I can do all sorts of hard work - bush work - but the best money job, naturally, was shearing which most of my family had tried and all, at that time, just about the lot of them were doing. So I went back to shearing and my wife .... We started to set up a home and she became pregnant almost two years after we were married. Eventually to give our family a chance for a better life we decided to move to the city because in those days there was no high schools or secondary education west of the Darling Downs, you could say, or the Dividing Range - Toowoomba and Warwick were the closest high schools. The squatters and the business people in the west were able to send their families, their kids, down to be educated but the working classes just weren't able to do that. So we decided eventually to move to the city to give our kids an opportunity to have a secondary education, but unfortunately it played a lot of havoc with the family because the kids where we moved to had a reputation - the suburb, I should say - had a reputation of being one of the roughest in Brisbane and our two eldest kids more or less got involved with some of the scalliwagging that went on at the place, and seeing as I was away up to ten months of the year, they'd only see me at the middle of the year and then just a couple of weeks before Christmas, and I'd be gone again the first week after January. It was hard on my wife because she had to be mother and father to the kids while I was away. I've been told by the two eldest ones, especially my only son, he said to me just recently, 'Dad, I know that you were a top shearer, a gun shearer, that you were a ringer in most of the sheds that you shore in, but you don't realise how much you were missed at home because Mum felt so responsible to keep us in tow while you were away that she ...

END TAPE 2, SIDE A

BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE B

Len, I understand at Selection Board they actually tried to interest you in becoming a wireless operator/air gunner.

That is true. When we went before the Categorisation Board, as they called them, and there were about five, I think, from memory, and they all fired questions at us and finally, of course, the commanding officer was the one who had the final - well, he didn't have the final say - as far as it goes they put their words together afterwards, but he was the last one to quiz anyone that went before the Board. I had done the Morse Code in half the time that it needed to be 18 taken to complete it and he tried to have a go at me about that. His final words were, Now, Waters, have you ever imagined yourself to be a wireless/air gunner a tail gunner. I said, 'No, Sir'. He said, 'I see here where you did the Morse part of your course in half the time that was needed. What was the reason for that?'. I said, 'Well, I just was keen to prove myself in every subject that I was doing'. He said, 'Well, have you ever imagined yourself to be a tail gunner?'. I said, 'No, Sir, I haven't'. 'Well', he said, 'Just close your eyes now and imagine yourself sitting in the tail turret of a Halifax or Lancaster or a Stirling and four 303s stuck out in front of you. Just close your eyes and just imagine how you look.' I closed my eyes. He told me to open my eyes and he said, 'What is the expression like on your face?'. I just said, 'I've got a very disappointed look on my face, Sir'. And that brought a bit of a giggle out of the Board. He said, 'Okay, that's it', and I walked out of the room.

How did you feel when you got selected as a pilot, Len?

Well, it's something that I'd dreamed about. It was something that I never ever thought was possible considering where I'd come from and background that I had and I just didn't think that it was possible to become a pilot. And then when I went to Narrandera and did the elementary flying course on the old Tiger Moth and I was selected there to go on to single- engine stuff, on to Wirraways, and naturally eventually it would have been on to Kittyhawks, Warhawks or Boomerangs or Spitfires. I got my wings at Uranquinty and then I was sent back to Mildura to do training on the Kittyhawks that I'd flown before.

Len, did you realise how important it was that you became the first Aboriginal or black fellow, as you sometimes call yourself, to receive military wings?

People have asked me the same question many times. I just did what I wanted to do. It was a life long ambition. I wanted to get up there. I had my head in the clouds and I had no idea whatsoever that I was the only one to do it until Bob Hall, from Canberra, told me when he was compiling The Black Diggers. He contacted me one day in Brisbane I was there. He said could he speak to Mr Waters? I said, 'Unfortunately, we buried Mr Waters about six or seven years ago'. He said, 'I'm sorry to hear that, who am I speaking to?' I said, 'This is one of his sons, Len'. He said, 'You're the one that I want to speak to'. I said, 'Okay, go ahead. What do you want to speak to me about?'. He said, 'I don't know whether you realise it or not, Len, but you happen to be the only Aboriginal that flew an aircraft during the war'. I gave a bit of a giggle and said, ‘You've got to be joking’. He said, 'No, that's true’. I happen to be in charge of affairs down here and I've done the research and it definitely is true. You're the only one. As a matter of fact there's only about three others that were in air crew. I'll be up in Brisbane tomorrow, would it be okay if I can come out and have a yarn to you?'. I said, 'Yes, no worries'. So he came out and that's when he told me evrything about what’s being done now. As I said, he was compiling The Black Diggers at the time; there's a chapter in that about me, about myself.

How did you take to flying?

19 I just took to it. I don't know, I just thought, well, this is something that I've wanted to do all my life and I just .... It seemed to be so easy to do. It wasn't as hard as a lot of people probably would have imagined it. I just took to it like a duck to water, I did.

How did you rate yourself as a pilot?

Well, you don't rate yourselves actually because you do your duty. I've had people say to me, 'What was the most terrifying experience you had while you were up in the islands?'. Things like that, and it's hard to say which is the most terrifying because each bash that you do, you're flying over enemy occupied territory and each flight, to a certain extent, is terrifying.

Can you remember your first solo in a Kittyhawk, for example?

Yes, I can. After the old Tiger Moths and Wirraways, and to get into something that had twice the power, and you opened it up for the first time; like the Wirraways, you had your instructor behind you, but you took that up solo and it was just something unreal.

Len, where were you first deployed on your first operations?

We actually joined the squadron at Noemfoor, that's Dutch East New Guinea. It was early in November and we operated from there, more or less mopping up sort of stuff, against the enemy, like the Japanese, they still had a couple of good bases there. One really big base that was at Cape Noejew or Sorong and we did two heavy bashes on that. And then there were other places like Middleton. And then we used to go up to, we’d fly from there to Morotai and, of course, the Yanks, all they were interested in was getting back to the Philippines, and we had to clean up in between. A lot of our stuff was done over the Halmaheres and Celibes, more or less Dutch East Indies, what would be Indonesia today, you could say. We were there up until about the early part of '45 when we moved over to Tarakan and we carried out raids over there on Sandakan and Balikpapan, Borneo, places like that - Labuan. We were actually there when they dropped the bomb and the war ended.

Len, what were your feelings towards the Japanese in those days?

Well, naturally, we weren't very happy about them. We knew that they would have invaded Australia if they could have. Actually, I can't understand why they didn't come straight down and I think they probably would have regretted it later on because instead of occupying all those islands in between Japan here and taking over New Guinea, if they had come straight down rather than drop American bombs on Pearl Harbour - the bombs that they dropped on Pearl Harbour were made in America - and I've met sailors, I met them up in the islands, who said that some of the unexploded shells that fell on Australian ships in the Coral Sea Battle were actually made in America. As far as I'm concerned, the Yanks were just as big enemies as the Japs were because we hated the guys almost as much as we hated the Japs because if there was anything too hot for them to go into, they'd send us in and if it was successful, they'd

20 still hear over the new that night, there'd been another successful raid by the American Air Force in the islands up there.

You became bitter towards the Americans up in the islands?

Yes, we did. Not must me, a lot of my mates did, too. I lost my tent mate at Noemfoor. We flew over Cape Sorong or Cape Noejew - Stan Hattersley was his name; he was only a little flight sergeant - and it was the last big base that the Japs had left in New Guinea. It was the western most point of New Guinea and they had a big naval base there, two airstrips, they even had a submarine base there. We did a bash on it and it was at that time, naturally, it was the hottest spot left in New Guinea. We just dive bombed it and blew through because it was so hot. And two days afterwards we had to go back to the same place again but then we had to dive bomb it and strafe it. And Stan Hattersley, my little tent mate, he was told by the commanding officer right after they'd established a base at Middleton. He told him to go back to Middleton and the squadron or the wing would pick him up when we got back there. Of course, Stan wanted to be in the raid with us and he was the last one to go over the strip. We dropped our bombs. One thing about a Kittyhawk, they were the most heavily armed allied fighter. They had 6.5 machine guns and we used to carry two 500 pound bombs as well as a 78 gallon disposable tank. We went through, of course naturally, you use your disposable tank at first and then drop it and that gives you enough fuel to get back home with. But Stan instead of still stopping at Middleton he came on with us and he was the last one to go in and they hit him with everything. And he went in just off shore. Of course, it was a good raid and it came over that night that we had a big raid on this Japanese base - there wasn't one Yank in it. A fortnight afterwards they sent the Mitchell bombers over at 25,000 feet and dropped a ....

[Interruption in tape]

NO MORE INTERVIEW ON TAPE

21