ORAL HISTORY RECORDING

ACCESSION NUMBER: S01646

TITLE: WING COMMANDER BOBBY GIBBES

INTERVIEWEE: WING COMMANDER BOBBY GIBBES

INTERVIEWER: KEN LLEWELYN, RAAF PR.

RECORDING DATE: 12 FEBRUARY 1993

RECORDING LOCATION: COLLAROY, NSW

SUMMARY:

TRANSCRIBER:

TRANSCRIPTION DATE:

BEGIN TAPE 1 SIDE A

Wing Commander Gibbes, you'd decided to join the forces and you applied to the RAAF and to the Navy and some fifty years later you're still waiting to hear from the Navy, I believe.

Yes, that's correct. Monday after war was declared I sent a telegram to Fairbairn in Canberra asking when the Fairbairn air training scheme was starting and received a telegram back saying it's still in the plans. I also, on the Monday morning, went out to Rushcutters Bay and applied for the Navy because I had no particular choice, either would have suited. I still haven't heard from the Navy. Those steps probably all came out.

Where did you first learn to fly when you were accepted by the RAAF?

I started to learn to fly in 1939. I had been jackarooing and droving out in the bush and when I thought the war was imminent I came down and took a job as a commercial traveller, which I was not very successful at I might add, and I started learning to fly out at Mascot with Air Flight, flying an Aeronca. I had four hours flight, half an hour each time was as much as I could afford. Then when war broke out I thought, well, I'll let King George pay for the rest of it, if I get into the Air Force.

How did you take to flying? Did you find it a very enjoyable experience or did you find it hard work?

I was a very nervous pilot and I thought I was the only one who knew that. Later I saw my own record when I became Commanding Officer of 3 Squadron and I saw that my instructor, Alan Clancy, had recorded that I was a very timid pilot, and he was quite right.

That's really extraordinary considering the ensuing events, isn't it?

I don't know. I still think I'm quite a nervous pilot. I've done a fair bit of flying. I flew for twenty-seven years in New Guinea after the war and I still fly but I'm always very, very careful; I don't treat flying lightly.

What do you think makes up a good fighter pilot? - and you're in a very good position to make that comment.

Well, I think a good fighter pilot has to be .... His reactions for a start have to be very fast and invariably in combat you make instant decisions, and afterwards when I've been in fairly hectic combat I've thought about it later and wondered if I did the Wright thing and I've always assessed myself as having been absolutely Wright in the decision I made on the spur of the moment. I think you have to be frightened. If you're not frightened, you're going to get

1 yourself knocked down by becoming over-confident and I always very nervous but I think I hid that pretty well from my fellow pilots.

It must be essential, to have great courage too, because no fighter pilot can be a good operator without having enormous physical and mental courage.

I think courage and cowardice are pretty well one thing in many ways. A pilot shows courage by doing things rather than be seen by his friends for what he really is, probably half a coward underneath, and I certainly come into that category.

Do you believe after a period of time as a fighter pilot you developed a sixth sense about what your opposition was going to do?

I think I knew exactly what my opposition, which was mainly the Germans, that's who I was frightened of, were going to do. The Italians didn't worry us much. But I came to the decision that no German pilot could shoot me down in a Messerschmitt. I knew their tactics completely and I was ultimately shot .... The last time I was shot down was by a Messerschmitt 109.

Was that a lapse of concentration?

It was not a lapse of concentration. I went down to rescue one of my people. I think I got the lead 109 that was beating him up. Incidentally, his aircraft went in. When I was catching up with the formation again, two 109s, the remaining two, were picking at me and I was avoiding their attacks, evading them and climbing back up to the bomb formation and somebody up above suddenly screamed out: 'Look out down below look out!' and I had lost sight of one of these 109s and I panicked and I pulled a full circle, a 360 degree circle, and of course I ran Wright into a twenty millimetre cannon shell and went down. But I always felt that the guy who screamed out to me to look out down below actually was the one responsible for shooting me down.

Did you bail out of that particular ...?

No, this time I landed at high speed with the two 109s still on my hammer. I was fWrightened they might shoot me up on the ground but they didn't. I suppose I touched down. The last time I looked at it, -the air speed- I was doing over 300 when I pushed it onto the deck. I wanted to let them see that I'd had the 'Richard' and I'd started climbing out before I had come to a stop, thinking they might strafe but they were gentlemen and they flew past me and gave me either a salute or a wave. Later, of course, a Fieseler Storch came looking for me but didn't manage to pick me up. I had gone the wrong way, back towards the aerodrome which we'd been bombing and they thought I'd be making back towards home.

2

You landed wheels up obviously.

Oh yes.

Wing Commander, if I just go back just a year or so. What were your feelings about entering combat when you were sent across to the desert to fly Tomahawks with 3 Squadron?

I remember on my first operation which was in Syria, I don't think I slept a wink that night. I was fWrightened of being fWrightened, I think and wondered just how I would take it. Next day we went and strafed Rayak and it was really a piece of cake. We had no real flack and no air opposition and from then on I viewed combat flying with a little less fear. I had made my first effort.

How did you find flying the Tomahawk?

They were a good aeroplane. They were not as good as the Messerschmitts which we came up against but they were a better aeroplane than the Italians had, with the exception of the Macchi 202 which was quite a comparable aeroplane.

So, how did you regard the Italians and the German air crew?

The Italians were very, very nice pilots. They flew well but they were very inclined to be aerobatic pilots rather than combat pilots, whereas the German was a very much more aggressive pilot than the Italian. We always felt rather relieved when we heard Italian voices over the RT rather than the Germans. But I don't want to take away from the Italians. They shot down a lot of our people in the early stages and we always treated them with a fair bit of respect but we respected the Germans more.

Other pilots have always said the Italians flew with great flair.

They did, they were basically good aerobatic pilots. They were a bit inclined to pull off aerobatics rather than just straight combat flying. But they did fly ... they were beautiful pilots but not aggressive.

Wing Commander, can you remember your first contact with the enemy?

Yes, I can. In Syria. In that show we found some JU88s over the fleet off Haifa and we went in and attacked. The Navy put up a terrific amount of flack which we had to fly through to get at the JU88s. We managed to get the four 88s, which incidentally had Italian markings.

3

Can you describe how you felt on your first combat contact?

Well, I suppose I felt apprehensive and I think I made a bit of a goat of myself really because I had never been to an OTU and I knew very little about combat flying, and I didn't know much about the enemy aeroplanes which we were attacking. The JU88 was almost as fast as a Tomahawk and to get at the one I went after, as I closed on it, I wondered what all these little whispy things going by were - little smoke trails going past me - and I suddenly realised that they were bullets. I was being fired at and I thought, my God, and I eventually managed to stop that and in the attack I was covered with oil eventually but I had attacked from behind and Pete Jeffrey who was the CO (Commanding Officer) was a bit critical about that because I didn't know that they had a huge gun underneath the plane firing backwards as well. In fact I didn't know that I shouldn't attack from behind; I had never been told. The normal attack, of course, was front quarter or head on if you could but never from behind. Later I was shot down by a rear gunner on a JU88 flying over the desert, when I was a fairly experienced pilot by then. I was CO of the squadron and to catch four JU88s we carried out one or two frontal attacks but they were as fast as a Kittyhawk which I was flying at that juncture and the only way I could get at them was to go in from behind and I think the one I was shooting at ultimately went down. In the meantime, the guy on the starboard side set me on fire. I parachuted.

In that first combat did you shoot down that JU88?

I was given a probable but I wasn't credited with it.

Can you remember how many hours you had in your log book on that first combat mission?

I would have had about 400 which is a lot more than the poor old Empire Air Scheme pilots had when they went into action.

So you must have felt you had a better grounding to cope. I believe Clive Caldwell had about 150 hours on his first combat mission.

Oh yes, I had done quite a lot of flying and didn't have to concentrate on flying the aeroplane, as the Empire Air Scheme guy had to do. He had to worry about flying and also about shooting. To me it was only ... the flying didn't come into it. It was just the ability to shoot.

Wing Commander, you were in combat for quite some time. How did you cope with the stresses that obviously built up, even subconsciously, during that period?

I went through two or three periods when I thought I just couldn't keep going. We had a combat one day which lasted .... In the morning we lost three of our pilots and I was on that show. In the afternoon I foolishly volunteered again to go out, I wasn't supposed to but I 4 became the extra man, the thirteenth man, and when someone turned back I took his place. We went through a combat that day which lasted one hour and five minutes against the Germans. We were over their territory and near their aerodrome. They could go back and refuel and re-arm and come back. We had got into some extraordinary defensive circle where we basically weren't able to go anywhere. But to cut that short we eventually landed back at a forward aerodrome coming on dusk with our tanks almost empty and mainly out of ammunition. The next day I felt that I couldn't go on, I couldn't face it again but I managed to hide that and I went out in the next show which turned out to be a piece of cake and then my morale improved again. But I went through several, well, two or three, of these stages. I got to the stage once where I couldn't get to sleep, I was deliberately trying to stay awake so that I wouldn't have nightmares. That was a horrible stage but I got over that and kept going.

Did you have nightmares of combat situations?

Yes, very much so, very much so. I still do sometimes.

Is this getting shot down or repeating situations that you had in the air?

Repeating situations to an extent, not necessarily when I got shot down. Another thing, of course, I remember is walking back at one stage and I do have dreams of being behind enemy lines in situations that looked pretty grim.

You still get them.

Just occasionally, yes. But in the combat side ....

Wing Commander, how old were you when you first went into combat in June '41?

I think I was about twenty-four - about that, I think.

We mentioned previously about the stresses you personally suffered during that period of time. How did other pilots cope and how did COs cope with pilots who simply couldn't fly again?

That could be quite difficult. When you found a pilot who just couldn't take it invariably he had to be sent out LMF which is Lacking in Moral Fibre. I had only two or three in my time when I was Commanding Officer and it was to me quite distressing. One was a beaut little bloke - I won't mention names - who just didn't have it but I felt sorry for him because he was such a nice little person. There was another one, he was just plain 'yellow' and he was stripped in front of the squadron - had his wings stripped from him in front of the squadron. Another one, a flying officer, whom I sent home when I tried to make him fly. He had had a couple of bullet holes through his aeroplanes. When I tried to make him fly he refused. When 5

I tried to force the issue he burst out and cried. Later when I came back I found he was equal rank to me. He was made RTO of a certain station and I had to go to him cap in hand to get a train pass to go down to Sydney. To me that was quite distressing but still fortunately there were very few. Most of the 3 Squadron pilots, almost a hundred per cent of them, were good value with lots of guts and stuck with it.

What happened to the pilot that was stripped of his wings? Was he sent back to Australia, was he?

I think they put him into the army but I'm not quite sure. I lost interest in him.

Have you ever met any of these individuals since you've returned to Australia?

Yes, I was flying with Ansett at one stage and I found my first officer on the DC3 was a pilot whom I sent back Lacking in Moral Fibre. I must say I did alert the company that in an emergency, not to let him get in the lefthand seat as in an emergency he might do the wrong thing. Probably nasty of me but I felt that this was only being sensible.

How do you feel about those individuals in retrospect?

Well, I feel sorry for them in many ways except for one case where the character came back to his home town and presented himself as being a famous air ace. I happened to hear about this; I did put his weights up.

That must have been very embarrassing.

Well, I hope it was (laughs). I probably shouldn't have done it but a pilot who lets his comrades down in combat and refuses to fly and comes home as a result of that should, I would think, tread fairly gently, certainly not pretend that he was a famous fighter pilot.

But the fighter world is very black and white, isn't it? It's a very stressful, very cut- throat, lethal game?

It could be quite lethal. We lost a lot of our people but we took a lot of people with us, too - a lot of enemy.

How did you feel when you lost pilots?

It was always .... We never had specific places in the mess for a start. We'd hold a bit of a wake for them but there was always a chance that they might be taken prisoner. There was always a chance - sometimes, of course, you knew they couldn't possibly survive. I think you 6 became a bit hardened to it in many ways. Towards the end I had seen about three different complete lots of pilots go through while I was in 3 Squadron; in the two years I served with 3. I don't think you ever become anything other than distressed and sad when you see or hear of one of your pilots not coming back from an operation.

Wing Commander, you were obviously earmarked for leadership early on in 3 Squadron because your first combat mission was 8 June '41 and by February '42 you were made a squadron leader and you became CO of the squadron.

Well, I don't think so. I think I just survived a bit longer. Some of the older pilots - incidentally, people like Peter Jeffrey and Al Rawlinson and 'Woof' Arthur and so on who made the squadron very, very famous over in the desert, they had finished their tours and they were sent home to carry out further combat flying later against the Japanese, of course. But then we had quite a number of casualties and I found in a very short time that I was the most senior pilot in the squadron and I was promoted to Commanding Officer at that juncture.

Did you take that position on with a great deal of pride or trepidation?

Well, I think I was quite proud to be suddenly wearing squadron leader stripes instead of flying officer stripes or flight lieutenant stripes. But I had been leading the squadron for quite a while in various operations and it didn't come as too much of a shock to me, and I wasn't nervous about leading the squadron as Commanding Officer. I had done it quite a bit before.

Now, 3 Squadron became the most decorated squadron in the RAAF and had an incredible heritage. How do you attribute this history of the squadron?

Well I don't know. We are in fierce competition, of course, with some of the RAF squadrons who incidentally were probably just as good as we were. There was 112 Squadron, for instance, which Clive Caldwell commanded at one stage for quite a period. They had shot down almost the same number of aeroplanes as 3 Squadron. They were mainly composed of Australian pilots, I might say, but it was an RAF squadron.

Was there a bit of competition between you and Clive Caldwell?

Yes, I suppose there was. We were both commanding officers of two squadrons - two of the highest scoring squadrons, I might say, in the Middle East. I was always a bit suspicious of Clive's score. I couldn't see that anyone could shoot down so many when I was firing at just as many aeroplanes and shooting down so few. But, however, one day Clive was leading his squadron and I was leading No. 3 and I saw Caldwell pull up to have a crack at three 109s which were stooging overhead - flying overhead - passing us overhead - obviously trying to get behind us for an attack. I saw the lead aircraft which was Clive's pull up and start to shoot. I got on my radio, I was about to say, 'You line shooting bastard, Caldwell' but the thing went

7 on fire so I didn't continue. Later after the war I have discussed this with Clive - he would never have known about it if I hadn't told him, of course.

How do you regard Clive Caldwell as a leader and as a combat pilot?

As a leader, I wasn't all that impressed with Clive in the desert. He was certainly a brilliant combat pilot. He proved that the day I saw him shoot down that 109 which was, in my books, Wright out of range. I think he .... My criticism of Clive was that he was a bit out to win a score and he led too fast. I don't think he was quite as sympathetic to his pilots if they couldn't keep up as I was; I would probably tend to wait for them more. But however, he proved himself to be a very capable leader. Very much so up in Darwin afterwards where he wasn't contending with one Robert Henry.

He was regarded as probably an average pilot but a brilliant shot.

Well, he was a brilliant shot. I never thought he was an average pilot. I thought he might be even a little bit below average pilot. I was sitting in the back of a Wirraway with him one day when he almost stalled it coming into land and I kept out of his aeroplane from then on. But obviously, he was quite a reasonable pilot.

He developed this method of shooting by following shadows, didn't he? - shooting shadows.

Well, Clive claims to have developed it. I'm not sure that he did. I have an idea that it was done before Clive did. I think probably people were shooting at shadows before that, but I don't know. He did, however, did practise a lot on shadow shooting. We did a lot of shadow shooting. Clive probably improved his marksmanship because of it. I certainly didn't improve mine. I probably shot at more aeroplanes than Clive ever saw over there but I didn't get many.

How did you regard your own abilities as a shot in the air? I mean, you were obviously very successful; you shot down more than ten aircraft.

Well I was a poor shot. Air to ground I think I was a very good shot. I could group my bullets and make sure they didn't run through. I could hold them on target while I went in and strafed. But air to air I certainly missed an awful lot of aeroplanes I fired at. I think the classic example was one day when I had a Kitty Mark III - I had acquired it illegally, I might say - and I had to give it back to the RAF later - but I had a little bit more horsepower than the rest of the squadron and when three 109s passed overhead or ahead of us, if I had waited to take the squadron with me, which normally I would have done, they would have got away. But seeing them and knowing I had that bit more power I opened the taps and went after them. I had a look at the three of them and I thought, if I pull a lead on the number one, number three could probably get a deflection shot at me, so I thought, well, I'll get number two first. So I fired at number two. I must have misjudged their speed completely because the one 8 behind, probably fifty yards behind, flicked over and went down smoking like hell. I looked round to see who else had shot at it but I was the only one in the sky. I then decided, well, I'll go after the number one and number two but, of course, they didn't wait for me. The one, incidentally, number three, did go in.

A successful mission.

Yes, it was a successful mission. We had a big celebration that night in the squadron and a few of the 'Yanks' came over and they thought the shooting was quite brilliant and I had only fired very few rounds. However, during the night I managed to get quite a few grogs on board and I decided that I'd confess that I hadn't even aimed at that one, I'd aimed at the one ahead of it. And, of course, when I did tell them of course no one believed me, but it was true.

Can you describe the mess environment in those days and what sort of alcohol did you drink in the mess?

Well, I think the messes were generally composed of two huge EPIP tents; that's Indian pattern something tents. They were quite big. Dirt floors or sand floors, of course. They were fairly crude. We had benches to sit on and benches on trestles - tables on trestles. They were pretty crude. And as for the drinks, we very rarely had alcohol. It was a rare commodity but sometimes we'd get a shipment in or a truckload in and we'd ration it out fairly carefully; but we didn't have a great deal of alcohol.

* EPIP stands for European Pattern Indian Personnel

But you managed to have enough to celebrate that night.

Oh, we had enough to celebrate that night.

How did you regard the Americans and how did you get on with the American air crew?

Well, the Yanks put in a squadron when they first came into the war. They attached a squadron to our wing, 239 Wing, named 66 Squadron, commanded by an American major called 'Buck' Bilby. I happened to be leading the wing on this occasion and before taking off I had a chat to Buck and I said, 'Now, you are flying the same formation as we are, aren't you, Buck?'. And when he told me the formation he was flying I said, 'Well, that formation has gone out with the blades. If you're not flying our Formation, you're not coming'. And that caused a bit of a furore when the Yankee squadron was forced to remain on the ground and I led off with the wing. Later, of course, I was backed up by my seniors and the Americans had to practise our formation. At that juncture we had very bad radio communication. We had HF, we didn't have VHF in those days. And a lot of our pilots would be shot down because of 9 radio breakdown. You'd see an attack coming in, you'd try and warn them but with the radio being ineffective they often were shot down. If they'd heard on the radio, of course, they wouldn't have been. We evolved a formation of every pilot in the squadron, even including the leader of the squadron, all weaving. We flew in pairs but weaving backwards and forwards behind each other so that this way you were able to cover the whole sky ahead, above, below and behind. And each one was keeping a pretty strict look out. The Americans .... The Germans, by the way, called us the 'Waltzing Matildas'. It was a very effective formation. If an attack came in from behind, we'd scream out - the lead would - 'Duck!'. We'd all do 180 degree turn and when the German attack would come in, or the Italian attack would come in, we'd all be facing them, and this was very effective. The Americans eventually did adopt our formation while they flew with us....

END TAPE 1, SIDE A

BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE B

Identification: interview with Wing Commander Bobby Gibbes, tape 2.

Wing Commander, how did you find the difference between flying the Kittyhawk and the Messerschmitt 109 which you eventually did fly?

The first 109 I flew was a 109F and I carried out comparative tests with it with a Spitfire Mark V and the Kittyhawk. We all started in line abreast. The Messerschmitt ran away. The Spit V came fairly well after in climb and speed and they both left the Kittyhawk quite badly. And later when we captured the 109G at Gambut, it had been slightly damaged and it was repaired by my squadron engineering officer, Ken McRae. I then flew it forward to the base at Mersa Matruh - no, from Gambut up to the Martuba aerodromes, escorted by two Kittyhawks. While I had it there I carried out some simulated attacks on my squadron. By then the German Air Force had retreated out of range so I was able to do this with safety. My people knew I was up there. But I found after two or three attacks I could have shot down one of my pilots each time, so I desisted it, I gave that away; I didn't want to spoil their morale. The purpose had been basically to let them see - some of the new boys see - what a 109 looked like. But its performance was quite terrific. Kittyhawk could out turn it quite comfortably and if the Messerschmitt boys came in and tried to dog fight, they were gone. We could dive away from them. If we started with same speed and they dived away, we could catch them in the dive. But with climb, they could out climb us to blazes. Our best fighting ceiling was twelve to fifteen thousand feet, above that the Kittyhawk went off badly. The 109 was good up to thirty-odd thousand feet and so always we had them sitting up above us. Almost never would we find them on our level.

How did you find flying the 109 when it was all German instrumentation?

Well, I don't think I had a great deal of trouble with it. The first 109F I flew on take-off they had thermostatically controlled gills on the oil cooler and on take-off the gills snapped closed 10 and I thought to myself, well goodness, that's extraordinary because I'm still under full power - on take-off power - and of course my head temperature started going up like blazes and the oil pressure started to drop and I did a very split-arsed circuit and came in and I couldn't remember how to get the undercart down, and eventually I managed to get down. The second flight, the boys wired the thermostatic gills up so that they couldn't do that to me again and that was my second flight. I think even though the instruments were in kilometres and we used to not even knots in those days - we were used to flying our fighters in miles per hour - but they had markings so that you could see what the maximum boost was and things of that nature. I think we had to guess at what speed we could put the flaps down or the undercart down, but we treated them as fairly normal aeroplanes and they were quite a pleasant thing to fly.

You gave a demonstration to your squadron pilots which nearly ended up in you crashing the aeroplane.

Well, that was the first 109F that I flew on the first take-off, as I've just said, I had trouble with the thermostatically controlled gills. On the next flight I came in at high speed - I don't know what I would have been doing, probably 400-odd - and carried out a normal round-out as I would have done with a Kittyhawk. I hadn't allowed for the higher wing loading on the Messerschmitt and I splurged almost onto the aerodrome. I think it was purely ground effect that held me off. The boys on the side said the propeller looked as if it was hitting the desert and the tail was almost on the desert also, and I went past with a great cloud of dust coming up. So it was a very close call and fWrightened the hell out of me.

So you came back to the flight line a bit ashen-faced.

I treated it much more cautiously from then on. And from the time I flew the 109G, it was a similar aeroplane but better performance, but I had no trouble with that. When I flew the aircraft up to the Martuba aerodromes with a Kittyhawk on each side of me just in case I was attacked by our own fighters, I saw a Messerschmitt, a 109F, an early model, in the circuit area being flown obviously by one of the squadron from one of the units. Very foolishly I thought, well, I'll fWrighten the hell out of this guy, so I dived on him. Looking back at it now it was a ridiculous thing to do; but I have never seen an aeroplane get down on the ground as fast as this character went. He went down almost vertically and the next thing he was on the ground. I landed in and I sort of felt very worried about having fWrightened the guy. It's a wonder he didn't kill himself. When I taxied in I found out that he had me out- ranked, he was a colonel from a South African squadron, so I kept away from South African squadrons for a while after that because I don't think I pleased him very much.

He didn't try to front you about it?

No. Well, I went to South Africa some years later, or seven or eight years ago, and I thought, well, the time has come to apologise to this poor character but he had died just before I got

11 there. I don't know whether I fWrightened him to death or not but I never was able to apologise.

Hopefully you didn't cause his premature death, anyway.

That's Wright.

Wing Commander, you also flew an Italian fighter called the CR42. Can you describe that particular experience?

I didn't do very much in the CR42. We captured it and it was serviceable so I flew it. Now, the throttles on the Italian aeroplanes worked the opposite way to ours. With our throttles you push the throttle forward to increase your engine power. With the Italians, you pulled it towards you to increase the engine power. With the CR42, we painted the Italian markings out but no one thought of looking under the wings which had Italian markings. I did a circuit and I saw all the Beaufort boys who were aerodrome defence racing for their guns and their guns starting to train them onto me. I panicked. I didn't know what was happening but I knew that they thought I was an Italian, so I did a very brief circuit and came in to land. I was holding off a little bit high and I started to sink down with a bit of engine power on so I gave it a burst of power and, of course, the bit of power I had on, by pushing the throttle the wrong way I cut out all power. I came down with a terrific thud and I bounced into the air and luckily I remembered and I managed to pick the aircraft ... save it from absolutely smashing itself and me, too, by giving it some power and got away with it, but it was a great fWright; otherwise it was a pleasant little thing to fly. I did an aerobatic. I didn't fly it that much but I enjoyed flying it.

It was a radial engined bi-plane. Does it compare with anything on the Allied infantry.

Well, it was pretty similar, I think, to the aircraft which 3 Squadron were flying against the Italians, the Gladiator. I think they were probably both very comparable aeroplanes.

Who made the CR42?

Well, that's an interesting question. I just don't remember now, I don't remember.

Just one we'll just put in for the record. How did the Merlin compare with the Daimler-Benz engine?

I think .... One thing I've discovered since the war - I'm now 'buddy-buddies' with some of these German pilots that I was fighting against - the Merlin engine .... Well, I wasn't flying Merlins over there but I was flying behind the Allison and we were having great trouble with sand and dust because there's no greater thing that will damage an engine more than an oil and 12 sand combination. We were getting twenty to twenty-five hours out of our Allisons. We had an Engineer Officer called Buck Abicair who invented an air filter. I carried out the flying for him while we tested the air filter and it was hugely successful. Allison adopted it in the subsequent models with some modifications of course and our engine hours went up to over 100 before they were due for complete engine overhaul. I was talking to one of these Germans who was in command of JG27 in the desert, flying Messerschmitts, and he told me that they were getting eighteen to twenty hours between overhaul, so they were really up against it.

How did you find your meeting with your adversaries after the war?

Well, I met Galland when he came to Australia at one stage. He was rubbished by our newspapers. They called him a Nazi and so on. Some of we Air Force people got together and we took him to the Imperial Service Club which was in Barrack Street in those days. And talking to Galland I told him that I was going over to Europe and he invited to go and have a drink with him, so I did this and I've been to his house on two or three occasions now. And also, I have met him elsewhere. I met him in America three or four years ago and we have become quite good friends. The other chap I mentioned, who told me about the sand problem with the Messerschmitts, he came out when the tall ships came in. He was a 'Cape Horner'. He pronounced it 'Keporner' but Cape Horner. He had sailed from Adelaide, round the Horn in sailing ships before the war, in 1932-33, carrying wool and wheat to Germany. The Americans wrote to me and asked me if we would entertain him, he and his wife, when they came for the tall ships. We did and we put them up here in the house and they were very charming people and the two of us had great old chats about tactics and so on, and subsequently we went to stay with them both in Germany. While there we visited a current German mess and met quite a few of the pilots who had flown during World War II, and I found it a very, very interesting .... We are all good buddy-buddies now.

Did you find it very revealing that in fact you had similar attitudes and probably even similar senses of humour?

Well, yes, I did, I think. I think during war years you have to learn to hate, otherwise how the blazes do you kill? But I think it's rather nice when it's all over to get together and become friends. Their attitudes were pretty much like ours. One thing I did .... Talking to Galland in his little cocktail bar one day on my first visit to Germany, he made a statement to the effect that the German pilots have never shot anyone out of their parachutes. There was an American character there who brought up the subject. I listened to this for quite a while and I then said to Adolf, 'The very first action I saw against Messerschmitt 109s was near the wire in Egypt and Libya and one of our pilots was shot down by a Messerschmitt. I actually drove the Messerschmitt off his tail but I watched him bail out and he was over our land, we'd thought he'd be back. He didn't arrive back but a few days later a South African padre came and told us that four Messerschmitt 109s had detached themselves from the main combat and had gone down and cut this character's 'chute - his name was Dudley Parker - cut his parachute at about 4,000 feet and he went down the rest of the way without a parachute and the South Africans buried him. Now, I told Adof Galland about this and he was genuinely, I believe

13 absolutely genuinely, horrified and I don't know if he believed me but, however, that's the way it was.

Adolf Galland was the leading Luftwaffe pilot during World War II, wasn't he? - leading scoring ace.

Well, I don't think he was the leading pilot. There were people who claimed more than Galland but Galland did claim 104 confirmed victories. He sent me a book recently which he had signed and in the foreword it said something about seventy-four victories but further on in the book it came back to the 104, so I'm not quite sure. Some of the German pilots claimed an awful lot more. This Ehardt Brauner, this friend of mine, said, when 'bearded' on this, he said that sometimes to restore morale back in Germany they used to make some fictitious claims and I think that happened quite a bit with some of the German pilots, but a lot of them were quite accurate. They got most of their score, I think, in that - against the Russians. I've heard it described that this was like shooting down clay pigeons; I always found shooting clay pigeons difficult.

Wing Commander, you were involved in a very unusual incident on December 21, 1942 when you picked up one of your pilots, Rex Bayley, after his aircraft was downed. Can you describe that incident?

Well, I can but I'd say I'm not the only one who picked up pilots who had been shot down. Peter Jeffrey, our CO, at one stage picked up one of the pilots, 'Tiny' Cameron. I think mine was a bit different in that I was pretty near the aerodrome which we'd been strafing. However, we took off from Marble Arch, six aircraft took off. We went to carry out a survey of the aerodrome called Hun. I notice nowadays it's pronounced 'hon' but it was 'hun' in those days; spelt H-U-N. And we were then to go out further, near to the desert, because the long range desert group wanted to take Hun and also they wanted to know what the strength and so on was. So we took off with belly tanks on and after Hun we were meant to go further inland to carry out this reconnaissance. When we came over Hun which was about 180 miles from Marble Arch we - I forget our height, probably seven or eight thousand feet - on looking down I could see quite a number of aeroplanes there. Now, we hadn't been briefed to strafe but it was a target of opportunity so I led in and we strafed. We got a few flamers and it was a quite successful strafe but not a shot was fired at us, not a single shot. So contrary to normal practice I decided we'd have another quick run through which we did and we got a little bit of very light flack as we went past the second time. I called the boys up and I said, 'Well, okay, let's form up again and we'll keep going'. In the meantime we had a new pilot who was just out from Australia, he was quite senior, and he led in again. I screamed on my radio, 'For goodness sake, don't do that, come and join up'. But he went in followed by his number two and the other two of my pilots - my number two stayed with me, thank goodness - the other two went in after him and, of course, I knew it was going to be lethal, and they were both shot down. One of them was hit as he went in and he became a flamer and obviously he was going to try and land at high speed in the desert. I called out to him to pull up and bail out but he might have been dead at that juncture and, of course, he went in and the obvious happened, he just rolled up. The other pilot called up, named Rex Bayley, he was a pilot officer. He said he'd been hit and it was a forced landing. After he forced landed - I watched this happen - and

14 he was a mile probably from the edge of the aerodrome. After he forced landed he came up in the air and I called him up and I said, 'What's it like for a landing?'. He said, 'It's impossible here, you'd never get down, just leave me'. I left my other pilots up there and passed my number two and I went down and had a look and I found an area that looked quite suitable. So I called Bayley and I said, 'Well, I'm landing'. I gave him a position. I was about three miles away. 'I'm going to taxi as far as I can towards you, so you make over towards me'. On landing - I was quite nervous about the landing - not because of just landing but on one attack I had hit a Savoia 79 as I approached it at low altitude across the aerodrome and it must have been loaded with ammunition because it blew up and I went straight through the blast at high speed. As I went through, I came out the other side, I was heading straight for the ground, I pulled the stick back and the blast must have got under the tailplane and, I thought my tail had been shot off. However, I recovered, I had lots of bits of shrapnel through the wings - nothing through the cockpit - and so on landing I was ready if necessary - if I found my tyres had been punctured to take off again and keep going but they were okay. On landing I then started taxiing towards Bayley. Now, I got part way, I suppose within a mile of Bayley, which put me two or three miles, I suppose, from the perimeter of the aerodrome, and I couldn't get any further. So I stopped and stopped the motor. I then stepped out a possible take-off run. I had 300 yards and I tied a handkerchief on a camel-thorn. A camel-thorn is a bit like a baby saltbush to act as an aiming point and take-off. I then .... We hadn't taken our slipper tanks off because we intended to carry out a further survey. So I had to get this belly tank off and it was still half full of petrol and it was round but it took a lot of .... I jettisoned it but then I had to roll it from underneath the aeroplane and that took a lot of strength and effort. I threw my parachute away because I had to make room for Bayley. He eventually arrived, puffing and panting like blazes but looking very cheerful about it all. He climbed in and I sat in on top of him. I must say I was as nervous as hell in case the engine wouldn't start but it did. It was a big relief when it did, I can tell you. However, I then stood on my brakes, gave it full power, in fact much more than normal power, and when I released the brakes we went surging forward towards this handkerchief 300 yards away. I put down a little bit of flap and as we went past the handkerchief I wasn't flying and I was thrown into the air and we staggered virtually into the air and there was a ridge probably a couple of hundred yards further on and I hit it with a hell of a bang and as I was thrown back into the air I saw my port wheel or tyre bowling along in the dust behind and the next ridge loomed up and it looked as if I wasn't going to clear it and I automatically put my Wright wing down, thinking if I hit maybe I could bounce it off on the one wheel. I didn't touch and I got my undercart up and kept going back towards base. We'd been there a long time, probably an hour or more, and I thought by now every Luftwaffe aircraft will have been alerted and will be looking for us, so I was very, very nervous going back towards the Marble Arch aerodrome, but we weren't picked up. On the way. I called the flight lieutenant or squadron leader up who'd led the third attack in, asked him to check my undercart to see if I had lost my port wheel. So I put my undercart down and he confirmed that I had lost it. As I getting near Marble Arch - we were very, very short of aeroplanes at the time - I thought I possibly might be able to do a one-wheel landing. It was a big square aerodrome with a lot of room. I couldn't talk to Bayley because of the noise factor, it was very, very noisy, so I wrote on my map, 'Do you mind if I try a one-wheel landing?' and I passed this back to Bayley. And I looked at him and he nodded, so I called up Wing and I said, 'Have an ambulance standing by and a bartender because I'm going to try and come in on one wheel'. They didn't argue about it. I came in with the wind on my port side, I had lost my port wheel, and I touched down, kept it running on the starboard wheel, and when the wing started to drop I carried out a gentle turn to the Wright which threw the weight out and I had almost stopped before the stump of the undercart hit and I did quite a vicious ground loop and 15 did very little damage. The prop wasn't damaged, the flap was damaged and the wing tip was damaged and the aircraft was flying again within a week of being patched up - all the little holes in it. Now, it was a complete fluke on my part. I got away with it and I shouldn't have.

That was really quite remarkable.

It was. It was quite strange. The nice part about it was: a) I saved Bayley from becoming a prisoner; and also I had my old aeroplane back again. I was shot down in it shortly afterwards and the Germans when they went looking for me eventually burnt the thing.

Why didn't the Germans ...? I mean, you weren't very far away from the perimeter of the airfield. Were they taken so by surprise or they were just dealing with their own issues on the airfield?

I think one thing that impressed me with the Italians. They were Italians by the way, it's been written up as being Germans but they were mainly Italians, I think; it was an Italian 'drome. One thing that did impress me, when we were still overhead an ambulance went racing out towards the crashed Kittyhawk which was burning like blazes. There was no chance of them rescuing him, I could see that, but I thought it showed a great deal of guts to do that in case we went in and strafed it. I think the other thing was, I told my other pilots, the three remaining, if anything started coming out towards us, to beat it up. I also said - and they still had ammunition - I also said to keep me covered till I got there. But I think the thing that saved me being shot at from the aerodrome perimeter, I think probably the anti-aircraft guns were put in a position where they could fire upwards and defend the aerodrome but not away from the aerodrome. I think that was the saving grace. But I don't think I have ever been as fWrightened in my life continually for nearly an hour or more.

How did you fly the aeroplane? Did you have the cockpit open and you were sitting on his lap?

Well, generally in the desert you got so much dust on the cockpit canopy that we generally did fly with the canopy wound back. When we got very high, of course, then we probably needed to close it a bit. To see enemy aeroplanes through a dirty canopy, looking into the sun especially, was pretty hard, so we preferred to put up with the cold and fly with it open.

So you flew the aeroplane, Bayley didn't fly the aeroplane, at all?

No, Bayley couldn't do a thing. I was pretty heavy at that stage and he was probably finding it hard to breathe even. No, he couldn't touch any of the controls; he was taking the place of my parachute basically.

16

He must have been incredibly uncomfortable and traumatic.

Well, it was uncomfortable and I was sitting pretty well forward and I was very, very worried in case we had combat in those conditions. But as I said, we weren't picked up by enemy aeroplanes, thank goodness.

When you got back and actually thought about it, would you have done it in retrospect as the CO of the squadron?

Yes, I think I would have. I would have done it again but I didn't know just how fWrightened I was going to be.

What sort of celebration did you have in the mess that night?

I don't think any great celebration. It was coming on, I think from memory it wasn't far from Christmas. No, I don't think we celebrated. I think just - we were both very pleased to be back.

So your aircraft that you ground-looped flew within a very short period of time.

I think a week or so later; it had been patched up and it became my aircraft again for a short time until I got shot down.

You said you were shot down in fact fairly shortly after that incident.

I was leading a show on Bir Dufan. It was a Wing show escorting bombers. The Americans had been briefed to go in an hour before us with another bombing raid and the theory was that they would have all their fighters on the ground after that operation and we would hit them and probably knock out - the bombers would knock out a lot of their fighters while they were being refuelled and re-armed. The Yanks were half an hour late in taking off so by the time we were going in .... By the way, the leader of the whole gaggle happened to be Gibbes, sitting in tightly on the lefthand side of the lead bomber. It was my job really to turn the whole show back if I thought it prudent. Two 109s .... We were going in at low level so we wouldn't be picked up by radar, going in over the sea, and as we were halfway there we were picked up by a couple of Messerschmitt 109s who flew over at high altitude. Knowing that we had been seen I gave instructions to climb, so we started climbing before we got to the coast. Before we really crossed the coast we found every Messerschmitt there, instead of being back on the ground refuelling, they were all in the air, and I've now discovered that we had some high level pilots that day fighting against us. We had about ten aces, all of which we round the 100 or more mark; one had 220 and Goebbels had given them a back to the wall lecture. Being in close cover we had to stay with the bombers. We suffered most of the casualties, trying to keep the fighters away. The Messerschmitts were diving, ignoring the Spitfires which were up out of sight somewhere; we never did see them. They were diving 17 straight through the formations, trying to get at the bombers. Four fifty were on top of us. They suffered casualties and we suffered casualties.

END TAPE 1, SIDE B

BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A

Four fifty were on top of us. They suffered casualties and we suffered casualties. I don't think anyone else did. We shot down a few but we lost quite a few, including old Gibbes shot down.

You parachuted out of that one, did you?

No, that time I put it down. We were successful in warding off the fighters as not one of them got through to the bombers that day, so all the bombers got home safely.

Identification: interview with Wing Commander Bobby Gibbes, tape 3.

Wing Commander, on 26 May 1942 you were shot down by a rear gun of JU88 and you broke your leg on landing. Can you describe that particular engagement?

Well, yes, I can. I remember it quite vividly, actually. We were sent up to intercept four bombers coming over, escorted by a flock of 109s. We saw the bombers, the JU88’s, and I led the squadron into attack. We got stuck into the fighters to start with and obviously the bombers were going to get away so I called up and - this was on official records of the time - saying, 'forget the fighters, get the bombers' and I led in on the bombers. I carried out one or two frontal attacks but the JU88 was jolly nearly as fast as a Kittyhawk and after the first couple of attacks, I couldn't get back in position, so I started carrying out attack from the rear which I knew was going to be very, very dicey but I thought, we must stop these bombers. On one such attack my motor was set on fire by an aircraft on the starboard side. The bomber which I'd been shooting at I had no one shooting back at me from that one and ultimately, I believe, it went down. Well, I know it went down; I don't think I was ever credited with it. However, I was burning and I stayed with the aircraft for a little while hoping the fire would go out but it didn't and when I got to about 4,000 feet I decided I'd have to leave the aircraft up there, which I did. Some of the pilots had been caught by ejecting, by rolling onto their back and bailing out that way, but their parachutes had caught and they did have trouble. I decided that I would turn and wind the trim forward, get up and turn my back to the instrument panel and let the stick go, and that's what I did and I was catapulted out like from a shanghai. Unfortunately I hadn't allowed for the aerial, a trailing aerial, and that wrapped round me and also I hit the rear fin on my left with my left knee which gave me a fairly bad graze. However, going down I pulled the rip cord and I struggled to get rid of the aerial which was wrapped round me and as I was going down I was fWrightened of being strafed in the parachute and I suddenly heard and aircraft coming towards me. The roar increased and increased and increased and I started climbing up the shroud, trying to collapse the 'chute so I could get free 18 of this attack which I believed was coming in. However, then there was a sudden 'woof' and dead silence. What I had heard was the noise of my aircraft going down which had come back to me and it was an amazing sensation, an amazing thing to happen but it fWrightened the blazes out of me. On landing I landed in a fairly heavy wind. Now, I had been taught to fold parachutes at Richmond; I knew how to fold a parachute but I had never been taught how to jump. I knew you should land facing down wind, if possible, but I hadn't been told about bending your knees and all that sort of jazz, so when I hit I think my legs were wide apart and I was side on. I got a swing up trying to turn, to go down wind. I obviously suffered a little bit of pain and I looked down my left leg and it had quite a kink in it. After a while I managed to get my shoe off that side and I didn't know if I was in enemy territory or in our territory or no man's land. As it turned out, I was between the lines. A vehicle came out looking for me. I had lost all orientation. I didn't know whether they were facing north, east, west or south and in it were some scruffy looking individuals without any type of uniform that I could recognise and they got me and one of them pointed a Tommy gun at me. I was sitting on the ground really in a little bit of pain and with my hands up; I had surrendered. I thought they were German and I thought this was the end of the war for Gibbes. However, one of them said, 'Get up, John'. I was so delighted, I said, 'You're a lot of pommie bastards'. They then came to my assistance. They thought I was a German. They thought they had captured a German pilot. They thought my aircraft going in was a Messerschmitt, not a Kittyhawk. I had my leg set in a forward field ambulance and got back to the squadron. I was flown back to Cairo. The Brits tried to put me into hospital there but I said, 'No, I'm going to a hospital at Gaza, an AIF hospital'. My driver had come through from the desert in a Lincoln Zephyr and picked me up - in a staff car - picked me up - and took me up to the Gaza hospital. After I had been there for a while the war was going very, very badly. Our people were retreating like one thing and I was very, very unhappy being there, listening to the news and I decided I'd try and get away from this hospital. They gave me a walking iron which made me a bit mobile. It fitted under the plaster of my left leg. I went to see Colonel Money who was in charge of the hospital, 6th AGH, and I said, 'I don't like it here, I'd like to be posted up to the No. 1 British hospital in Jerusalem'. He was very offended, he said, 'Wright, Gibbes', and he posted me immediately. He was going to turn an ambulance on for me but I said, 'Sir, my staff car is here and my driver will drive me up'. I left 6th AGH, went into Gaza, went to an AIF telegraph station, sent a telegram to the 1st British AGH - British hospital in Jerusalem - said, 'Delete all reference Squadron Leader Gibbes, Gibbes now proceeding heliopolis for Medical Board', and of course that was it. I got back to Cairo. I had a friend there who was running Anglo-Egyptian Motors and he got his mechanics to make me a fitting to fit onto my walking iron with three butterfly screws with a bump under the sole of the foot. I went back to my base camp where we had a Harvard for checking pilots out. One of my pilots, Gordon White. did a circuit with me, or a circuit or two with me, and I proved that I could handle the toe brakes by sliding by backside forward, even though my ankle was locked I got movement on the pedal that way, so I got into a new Kittyhawk and ferried it back to the scene of operations. In the meantime, while I was away Nicky Barr had taken over the squadron and I went to see Tommy Elmhirst because I wanted to get back into flying, and Tommy was an air commodore, I think, at that stage - he later became much more senior - and he said to me, 'Well, you can't be doing this. We can't do this because what happens if you're shot down?'. And I thought he was being sympathetic to me and I said, 'Well look, Sir, if I am shot down with a leg in plaster I might find it pretty difficult getting out of the aeroplane but I'm prepared to take that chance.' He said, 'Oh no, 'Gibbo'' - he called me 'Gibby' or 'Gibbo', I forget now - he said, 'I don't mean that. I mean that if you're shot down and captured by the Germans and they find you flying with a leg in plaster, the German morale will be boosted to blazes and 19 you'll probably be instrumental in killing quite a few of our own people.' I said, 'Sir, I hadn't thought of that', so I asked for a Wing job on the ground. When I got back to the squadron Nicky Barr had been shot down and captured. The Brits said, 'Well okay, Gibbes, you take over the squadron again'. I said, 'No Sir', to the CO of the Wing, Clive Miles, I think. I said, 'No, I won't do that. I can't lead a squadron without flying.' He said, 'If you don't, we're going to put a pommie in'. He was a pommie who addressed me by the way. Eventually I was persuaded to take it over as a non-flying CO and I think it's about the unhappiest time I ever had with the squadron - not being able to fly. After a while my plaster was taken off and while I was waiting to do a Medical Board, my ankle was very weak and the squadron medical officer wouldn't let me fly, so I overcame that one by having one of the aircraft parked near my tent, one of the pilots would be on the Operations Board but I'd quietly sneak out to the aeroplane and fly while he would stay in my tent. When I'd come back - I wasn't leading I was flying as one of the mob - ultimately I said to the 'doc', Tim Stone, I said, 'My ankle is ready now for Medical Board', so he posted me to Cairo to do a Medical Board. I didn't go to Cairo, I went to Alex and had a ball and two or three days later I arrived back and I said, 'Well, I've passed the Board, I'm back in flying', and 'Where are your papers, Gibbes?' or 'Sir', yes, I was his CO. I said, 'Well, they're being posted to you, Tim'. Of course, they never did arrive.

Your leave in Alexandria, you said you had a ball. Can you describe in greater detail exactly what you got up to?

Well, there are some things I'd prefer not to talk about. I was single then, had been away from female company for quite a long time and there were some very nice little French females around, mainly wives of the free French who were up further in the desert fighting, I suppose; but they were very nice people.

They were equally desperate for male company, were they?

Oh, I think they needed to see us occasionally, yes.

Did you do any more flying before you got posted to England?

Oh yes, I did a lot more flying. I was shot down a second time. This was after I'd picked Bayley up I was shot down again. At that juncture walking back I was quite worried about my ankle because it was pretty weak and I found when I got back, the strange part about it was my Wright ankle was the crook one, my left ankle was good.

I think it's interesting to just bring up some of this letter here that was sent to Mrs Gibbes, in fact, on 15 January 1943 from the Secretary of the Department of Air, a Mr Langslow, and he says here, 'Dear Madam, with reference to my telegram dated 14 January 1943 concerning the award of a Distinguished Service Order to your son, Squadron Leader R.H. Gibbes, DFC, I desire to inform you that the following citation in respect of this award has been received from the Air Ministry.' And it says, 'This officer has completed many operational sorties in which he has destroyed at least nine 20

enemy aircraft and damaged several others. On one occasion he led a small force on a long range expedition to reconnoitre and attack an enemy airfield. As a result of his excellent leadership, seven enemy aircraft were destroyed on the ground. During this engagement one of the pilots was forced to land his aircraft and Squadron Leader Gibbes immediately landed as near as possible to him and after waiting some time for his comrade flew off with him. During the take-off a wheel was knocked off the aircraft but on reaching his base he effected a masterly landing causing only slight further damage to his aircraft. Squadron Leader Gibbes has displayed outstanding qualities of leadership and enthusiasm throughout his long career of flying duties.' Now, Wing Commander, this was supposed to alleviate your mother's worries, I should imagine it would have exacerbated them.

Yes, I only discovered this letter in the last two or three years in some of my late mother's effects, and for some extraordinary reason people who have written about this episode, picking up Bayley, have maintained that I had a blow out in one wheel, one tyre, now any silly character can land an aircraft with a flat tyre but it takes a complete ruddy idiot to land without a wheel.

Wing Commander, before we continue to your posting to England there is one incident in January 1943 when you failed to return from a bomber escort mission and was posted 'missing believed killed'. Can you describe how you actually managed to get back?

Well, yes, I can. After I was shot down I had quite a long walk which took me three days and a couple of nights. When I tried to get my water bottle and rations out of the aircraft I wasn't able to open the hatch because it had a Dzus fastener which you needed a screwdriver or a coin and I didn't have one. I tried to kick the door in but I couldn't so I got a blaze away from the aircraft before they came looking for me with a Fieseler Storch. Fortunately, I'd gone back towards the aerodrome which we'd been bombing and the Germans obviously thought I'd be making towards home, so I got away with that one. However, to cut a long story short, when I got back to the squadron I found Squadron Leader Watt had been given the job as Commanding Officer during my absence but I was a bit cranky about this and I managed to get Harry Broadhurst who was our AOC at that time to scrub that posting and I became Commanding Officer again for a while.

Wing Commander, you managed to get yourself posted to UK on the pretext of completing a staff course and you reached England, Hendon in fact, on 23 May 1943 and then you had discussions with Air Vice-Marshal WWrigley who was in charge of Australian air crew in London.

Well, I told 'Wrig' that I wasn't really keen on doing a staff course, that I'd prefer to get back into operations and I would like a squadron. I knew that 456 was just forming with Mosquitoes and I thought, well, that would suit me pretty well. Wrig agreed that I could have 456 and I was to be posted to do some night flying on Blenheims and later to do an abridged OTU on Mosquitoes at High Ercall. We then discovered, unfortunately, that a permanent officer, Wing Commander Keith Hennock had been posted from Australia to take over 456, so 21 this was scrubbed. Wrig then gave me a job chasing up, getting information for Air Board on the formation of the First Tactical Air Force for the invasion of Europe. I did this for a period and was not terribly happy having this sort of an assignment; however, I discovered that 464 which had been completely written off over France when they failed to meet up with their fighter air squad were being re-equipped with Mosquitoes. So I said to Wrig, 'Can I have the next squadron to form with Mosquitoes - an Australian squadron formed with Mosquitoes?'. He agreed so then I broke the news, 'Well, 464 are getting Mosquitoes now, Sir'. Now, Wrig had agreed so I was sent up to High Ercall. I did my training on Blenheims - night flying. I must say that flying at night in England frightened the blazes out of me; I never knew any sky could get as dark, also flying in war-time there were no lights shown anywhere and once you took off you had no horizon, you had to settle straight onto instruments. This was all quite new to me. However, I finished that Blenheim course. I went and did an abridged Mosquito course. When I was pronounced fit for operations I packed my little car and I was ready to go to command to 464 and I received word that I had to contact London. I did and found out that Air Board had sent a signal to the effect that: 'What the hell is Gibbes doing in England? He is to come home immediately.' I drove down to London, I pleaded with Wrig to get me out of that but he wouldn't do that, so there I was, having to come home very much against my will. Now, ‘Mary’ Coningham, Air Marshal Coningham had told me that he would call me back to the desert after I'd had a holiday in England. He knew I wasn't really going to do a staff course and I did toy with the idea of that but thinking that I must be important if the Air Board really want me that badly, I'll go home. I was given .... I was sent by sea to Canada, to talk to the Australian air crew over there and to try and boost morale. I tried to talk my way into flying a flying boat back to Australia and I met Bill Taylor over there, P.G. Taylor, and he was very enthusiastic that I should do that and he arranged for me to do a conversion onto mariners and arranged for a crew for me. But Group Captain Alexander in Washington sent back a message that Squadron Leader Gibbes is a single engine pilot and is not qualified to fly twin engines and he is to go home by boat. Now, that annoyed me because I had done quite a bit of twin engine flying, so I came back by boat and that was it.

Wing Commander, you were posted to the Fighter OTU at Mildura where you stayed from Jan. '44 till October '44, during which time you were the chief flying instructor and finally you were the acting CO. But you also flew up to New Guinea to get some practical experience of operations. Would you like to comment on that?

When I arrived at Mildura I realised that if I'm training pilots to fight against the Japanese I'd better learn a little about it, so I took myself up to New Guinea, I flew an aircraft, a Kittyhawk, up to New Guinea and I visited some of the fighter squadrons and I met up with Gordon Steege's wing. I went for a sortie - the Yanks call them 'missions' - went for a sortie across to New Britain with a mob of Kittyhawks. One thing that impressed me about that was the amount of nattering that was going on on the radio. In North Africa you just didn't make a sound on the radio because the Germans would be waiting for you. This day when we got to our destination I thought every Japanese aircraft in the world would be there but we didn't see any 'Japs', nor did we get any flack, so it was a piece of cake really. But I did learn a little bit about tactics and I knew that the tactics we were using in North Africa in the desert would not work against the Japanese. In New Guinea against the Japanese we had to use tactics more

22 like the Germans were using against us. In other words, attack and dive away or attack and zoom with a lot of speed but not staying and try and dog fight them.

After your posting at the OTU at Mildura you were posted as Wing Leader up to Darwin flying Spitfire Mark VIIIs and by this time, of course, you were a Wing Commander.

Yes, that's correct. From Darwin - I was married in Darwin, by the way. I met my wife ....

You met your wife in Darwin?

Met my wife in Darwin in the AOC's boat and three weeks later we were married. We've been married now for forty-eight years or something.

You married in three weeks?

Yes, in three weeks.

That was a fighter pilot snap decision, was it?

My old friend, 'Black Jack' Walker, said, 'It can never last'. In the meantime he has been divorced a couple of times but I haven't. However, from Darwin I had a Spitfire blow up on me and I was pretty badly burnt at one stage. Later, when I recovered, I went down to Oakey, picked up 79 Squadron and escorted them up to Morotai. We were given a job .... To take the squadron up we had three Beaufighters to navigate us. This was nearly disaster. The Beaufighters were probably sprog pilots navigating mainly experienced fighter pilots. They got up near Rockhampton, the weather was bad and they turned back towards Oakey. When they were part way back - we were watching our petrol in our Spitfires because we had limited range - wondering why the devil they didn't go back to the coast on an aerodrome there and one of them dived down to have a look at the name on the railway station. At that juncture I realised we were lost so I took the lead and went straight in and landed at Maryborough and most of the pilots were almost completely out of petrol. I abused the leader of - the Beaufighters followed us - I abused the leader and I told him that I wouldn't dob him in; he nearly lost a squadron of Spitfires, plus what would have probably been many casualties. I said, 'From now on, I lead, you can tag along if you like and I'll say nothing about it but if you don't like it, we'll take it up further'. He was quite happy just to tag along. We got to Iron Range, one of the Beaufighters pranged - ground looped - so we only had two to follow us up. That was the trip up there. When I got to Morotai I was taken for a whirl around by Bruce Watson[?} who'd been up there for a little while. And Bruce tried to get me shot down, I think quite deliberately - he was a great mate of mine, by the way, still is. He flew over a Japanese aerodrome at dot feet with me following as number two. A Jap shell went off under one wing, rolling me onto my back, and I was pretty jolly low, and I got away with it. It was about the only time I had ever heard a shell burst in all the time I'd been flying but this one went off with a hell of a bang. When I got back I abused Bruce quite soundly for endangering 23 both himself and me. Morotai was quite a disastrous thing for me. When I got there I found that I had been superseded by a chap, Glen Cooper. He was a hundred paces on the Air Force list junior to me and had served under me at Mildura, and I took a poor view of this. So I put in - made redress of grievance and applied for a posting. I kept on flying for the month and during that month I was hit on six occasions in a very limited number of about sixty-three hours which I refused to call operational hours. I achieved nothing. Had my aeroplane damaged. We were losing pilots and not doing anything of strategic importance to the war effort. The Japanese had been by-passed. They were of no danger to anyone and they could have just been left sitting there. But I think at the time the command up there were trying to build up hours and we were having a lot of false publicity in the media in Australia. It wasn't their fault, they were being fed with this information. No one said what we were achieving or what we were losing. ‘Woof’ Arthur brought out a balance sheet. It became quite a famous balance sheet showing that the loses and the results achieved were not compatible at all and we were just wasting aeroplanes, ammunition and pilots. However, to cut a long story short, I was court martialled for attempted sale of grog. I was on three charges amounting I think to four bottles of whisky - of liquor, I don't think it was all whisky. I discovered since, of course, that one of the charges which I pleaded guilty to I wasn't even in Morotai, I hadn't arrived there, and I thought so little of it that in my court martial I told them that I had actually sold two or three bottles but I wondered why I hadn't been charged with that rather than just attempted sale. I was later told by John Davoron who defended Clive Caldwell up there that they wanted me to get the impression that I was being leniently treated, that's why they didn't charge me in a more substantial way. I wasn't terribly pleased about being court martialled but I also thought that it was a bit of a joke because many people were selling a bit of grog. I had been superseded and I had about two or three cases of various types of liquor and I had intended probably to sell a bottle or two to help outlay the cost of it but once I was superseded I was loathe to donate it to the mess, so I thought, well, I'll sell what I can. Unfortunately it didn't work out, I ended by donating the remainder to the mess which was the bulk of it, of course. I was posted out. I was one of the eight people who resigned our commissions. We knew we were not able to resign our commission in war-time. We knew that the landing in Borneo was coming off in the very, very near future. The Air Force people up there were not being honest. The AIF had asked us to limit our equipment and transport so that they could carry a maximum of fighting power with them, guns and so on. We were asked to work out a schedule of what we could operate for a month on at a bare minimum. We put in our detail that we thought we could cope with. This was knocked back by our command who insisted on taking all the added trucks and all the stuff that would deny the AIF the added fire power and equipment. As it turned out, it turned out to be a piece of cake anyway, but we did manage to change the command up there completely. One or two of them I felt sad about: Harry Cobby who was a wonderful man, he was posted. But some of the others I wasn't distressed about. But we did change the command and that's what we set out to do.

It was a bitter period for both you and Clive Caldwell, wasn't it?

Well, for me, in my [inaudible], I can't see how it was bitter to me. I was disappointed, having gone to the top virtually as a fighter pilot, when I came back from overseas I was the highest decorated man in the Australian Air Force which, of course, didn't last; but I felt that I'd been wasted. If I had ....

24

END TAPE 2, SIDE A

BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE B

It was a bitter period for both you and Clive Caldwell, wasn't it?

Well, for me, in my [inaudible], I can't see how it was bitter to me. I was disappointed, having gone to the top virtually as a fighter pilot. When I came back from overseas I was the highest decorated man in the Australian Air Force which, of course, didn't last; but I felt that I'd been wasted. If I had been allowed to remain in Europe I would have been able to do a much better job. As it happened, not getting 464 Squadron, the Mosquito squadron, was possibly a good thing because 464 was the squadron that led the raid on the prison in France - I think it was France - and it would have been a very dicey operation, so I was very, very glad to know that I was out of that, anyway.

Bobby Gibbes, you've had a most distinguished career. You've quite Wrightly won the DSO, DFC and bar. It's been an absolutely marvellous Air Force career, apart from a slight glitch at the end. Any regrets?

No, no regrets, no regrets at all. I was demoted to squadron leader but in peace time you take the highest rank so I'm now a wing commander again so what the hell.

END OF INTERVIEW

25