For Five Shillings a Day: Personal Histories of World War II. Dr. Campbell-Begg Richard

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СКАЧАТЬ when the Jerries came over one morning and an aircraft flew round the aerodrome and laid a smoke circle right round the aerodrome and all the bombers had to do was to drop their bombs inside the ring. We had a great number of bombs there in a matter of an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half, which did quite a lot of damage to the station. Fortunately we didn’t lose any aircraft through it. That was our first introduction to active warfare.

      The Blenheim carried a crew of three, a pilot, the air-gunner and radar operator. Now, radar was very much in its infancy at this stage – we were only operating on about a Mark 1, Mark 2 set – and the Blenheim wasn’t always the best aircraft for the job because it was too slow. It was fast to what we’d been used to in New Zealand, but it still wasn’t fast enough for the Germans, and we were employed mainly as night fighters, but during the daytime in the Battle of Britain we had to do area patrols over designated areas, as for aerodrome defence and also out on the coast. The Blenheim was a very cold aircraft because of the opening where the Vickers gun pointed out through the Perspex; it was an open “V” and the wind used to come in through there; it was sucked in, and even with all your flying clothing on you still used to freeze to death almost. A lot of our flying was up round 15-19,000 feet.

      There were two other New Zealanders in the squadron at that time, and one was Stewart Lusk, who at that time was a Pilot Officer and had been a law student at Oxford University. About the second or third trip I did at night with Stewart Lusk some idiot vectored us into the London balloon barrage, and then the control came up and told us that we were to turn on to given courses on a countdown and to turn and to be accurate to within a degree. After some two hours they got us out of it and we landed back at base.

      We were at North Weald until about the first week of November, I think it was, when we went to Debden. It was in September the Squadron had received its first Beaufighter and, of course, the pilots had to have ground instruction on it and do some daylight flying on their own to familiarise themselves with the aircraft. One or two of us went up and did some daylight flying with the pilots. The Beaufighter was a very much more sophisticated aircraft than the Blenheim; it was faster, it only carried a crew of two, and it had an armament of four 20-millimetre cannons firing through the nose and six machine-guns, four on the starboard and two on the port I think it was – they were Brownings.

      We went to Debden in about the first week in November, as I said, and whilst there we took delivery of quite a number of Beaufighters, and the Blenheims were gradually phased out, but Debden wasn’t a good aerodrome from the point of view of night flying – there was always a danger of fogs. We took off one night and we’d been away for about two and a half hours and when we came back they switched the floodlight on for us to touch down and it gave us a false ceiling – it showed up a blanket of fog, and we landed on top of a 20-foot fog. When the pilot cut the motors the machine just dropped straight to the ground and damaged the undercarriage. It was rather fortuitous for us because the Flight Commander had done exactly the same thing only a matter of about half an hour before us.

      When Coventry was bombed we were about a straight line, about 40 miles from Coventry; we could see the blaze of the city and we were patrolling a given line, and although we patrolled for three hours we never even saw a sign of an aircraft. Now, there was always a danger at night that you could be directed on to a friendly aircraft, and one night we did actually line up on a Stirling and it took a minute or two before the pilot was able to get identification of the aircraft because it was one which was only just coming in to beam at that time and we didn’t have a silhouette of him. Fortunately the ground control was able to identify it for us and so we didn’t give it a reception.

      Getting back to 1941 again, Stewart Lusk had to go off flying for a while, on account of indifferent health, and I had to fly with the CO of the Squadron. One day I hadn’t had any leave for about three weeks – hadn’t had a night off – and I asked him if I could go into town. I wanted to do some shopping, and that was all right. When I got back, the boys in the mess were quite surprised to see me and I asked them what was the matter.

      “Well, we thought you were with the CO.”

      I said, “Why, what happened to him?”

      They said, “He took off and instead of going down the runway, he took off at right angles to it and finished up and hit a tree.” So I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time sometimes.

      Anyway, he went into hospital and there was another pilot came on to the Squadron and he just looked like an English schoolkid and I flew with him a couple of times and I wasn’t very happy. He didn’t master the machine. The Beaufighter is like a frisky horse – you either mastered it or it would kill you. I flew with him for about a fortnight, I think it was, and then I went to the Flight Commander and told him that I’d like to be taken off and given another pilot because I didn’t feel safe with him. He listened to my story and swapped me over to fly with an Australian pilot. It was only a matter of two or three nights after that, that this English lad was coming into land and he had to come across the Great North Road – it was on the boundary – and he had to come over that at night and he missed it and he was too low and his undercarriage hit the verge on the Great North Road and he crashed into the airfield and he broke his radio operator’s legs at the knees and he had to have his legs amputated.’

      Pilot Officer Bernard Brown, after his activities over and around Dunkirk, was to transfer to a more modern type of aircraft, but the introduction was stark:

      ‘As they were losing lots of Hurricanes at that time they asked for volunteers to go to Fighter Command, so two or three of us went; we were sent to Hawarden, near Chester, and we learnt how to fly a Spitfire and it was very interesting because I’d never flown anything like that. You didn’t have any dual or anything; they said there it is, sort it out. Well, I got it off the ground and got it back again.

      After this training at Hawarden I was posted to Biggin Hill, and on arrival I was just in time to see that a number of Junkers 88s had plastered the airfield and there was a big cloud of smoke all over the place. I arrived at the entrance and, as I looked, there were people running round with little red flags, and I enquired what it was all about. They said, “Oh there’s unexploded bombs down there.” Then, when I got to the Mess, there was an orderly putting letters in the rack and taking a number of them out again; there was a big pile of them on the floor. I was quite surprised about this and I said, “What are you doing?”

      “Oh,” he said, “I’ve got a list in front of me,” he said. “People’s names that are on this list, they won’t be collecting their mail; I’m taking it out and putting it on the floor.”

      I said, “Thank you very much, that’s a very good introduction to Biggin Hill.” They were losing quite a number of aeroplanes every day.

      When not on duty, people would say, oh, let’s have a party. On the particular day that I got shot down, it must have been about 2am, the Flight Commander came along to me and he said, “Oh, it’s a pity it’s your day off tomorrow, but you’re on at 6.” It didn’t mean very much – I’d had quite a lot to drink, but I would be off duty at 9am. Anyway, at 8.55 the hooter goes – oh dear – and I was fast asleep, so it was straight into the aeroplane, everything on and away. At 20 minutes to 10 I was floating down in a parachute over Eastchurch.

      We had been jumped from above and scattered, and I saw an aeroplane miles below me and I thought, oh, you can’t shoot me, but he did; he must have pulled his nose up and let me have it. That next second there was a big bang in the cockpit and the throttle assembly underneath my left arm and leg just disappeared, gone. There was no control on the aeroplane whatsoever, the thing was roaring its life out and I couldn’t steer it, I couldn’t do anything with it, so I thought, “Right Brown, this is the time.” Someone had said, “This is what you do when you jump out,” and funnily enough, I remember the drill exactly. They said, “Take your helmet off, because СКАЧАТЬ