The Wartime Memories Project - The Second World War - Day by Day Jeff Chapman Royal Air Force 5. Squadron My Father was at Little Staughton from April 1. February 1. 94. 5. He flew on operations until October 1. He had completed three tours including several sorties in the master bomber crew with the squadron commander. It was about the crew of an aircraft of 1.
Squadron who had been attacking a German- held airfield at Derna in North Africa on the night of 3. May 1. 94. 2. The others opted to stay by the aircraft, which was, depending on where you thought you were and whether you had managed to get a message back to base before you put down, recommended as the better way of staying alive. Metacritic Game Reviews, Valley for PlayStation 4, Explore the vast and beautiful game world of Valley using the power of the L.E.A.F. SUIT: a fierce exoskeleton that. They had no food and no water but were able to keep themselves going by licking the dampness, which formed at the base of rocks and large stones just before dawn. This was not so much for our benefit as for that of the engine fitters working desperately to keep the sand out of our rather clapped- out engines and making them good for yet one more trip. These were scattered haphazardly and I shared tent No. An estimated total of 416,800 members of Armerica's fighting forces lost their lives in battle during World War II. The following account records the death of one. The families of the men lost during the 1943 sinking of battleship Mutsu was finally notified; they were not informed that the ship had been destroyed in. Local news text excerpts from PE.com and The Press Enterprise for the Riverside and San Bernardino county areas. In the Valley of the Shadow of Death: Guyana After the Jonestown Massacre. Rolling Stone's 1979 story piecing together what happened after the tragedy masterminded by. Geoff Stayton, our front gunner. One's ears, in those days, became finely tuned to the sound of individual aircraft types. There was a theory that they thought this had an effect on our radar systems (not that we had any in the Middle East) and of course this was nonsense but they nearly always seemed to do it. Maybe they just liked the noise. Luftwaffe, a very efficient twin- engined aircraft, fast, manoeuvrable, and versatile in that it was used as a night- fighter as well as a bomber. They always came from the west, the pilot map- reading his way easily enough along the coast, keeping just a little bit out to sea until he found us to avoid any stray flak as they would fly quite low. He would clearly see the three promontories one after the other along the coast, the Ras Alam el Rum at Mersa Matruh, the Ras el Kenafs at Fuka and the Ras el Daba. He would know that if he drew an imaginary line due south from the Ras el Daba he would find us at the point where it crossed the tarmac road. Not that he would see us all that clearly, if at all, for everything was heavily camouflaged. But he would have a good game with us for a while, dropping the odd bomb whenever the fancy took him, have a circle round, come in from a different angle, five minutes later drop another and so on. We usually kept our heads above ground to see what was going on until we heard the whistle of the bomb coming down and then, like the proverbial ostrich, buried our heads in the sand. When it was moonlight the aircraft would be perfectly visible at their usual height of 1. Darkness in the desert was not as we knew it back home; light from the stars was enough and there seemed such an incredible number of them; but moonlight was another thing altogether and good enough to read a copy of that multi- purpose publication, the Eighth Army News, that is if you still had a copy that hadn't been torn up into handy sized squares. As by this time the second half of our beer ration was now comfortably inside most of us a somewhat more relaxed view could be taken, especially towards the end of our occupation of L. G. 1. 04 when we knew that in the several months of nightly bombing we had had, Jerry might have put some holes through our aeroplanes, but no- one had been even slightly injured. There were about 1. Jerry came over. One particular night it was very bright moonlight and he came over low, and very visible. He must have known how clearly we could see him because we used to bomb his airfield at low- level in just the same way. Nothing much happened at first; each time he came over he dropped one bomb, we ducked our heads, and looked again. Each time a hundred and fifty different points of aim put up a barrage of bullets he would have to fly through. After several runs over the landing ground we heard one of his engines hesitate a bit, cough a bit, and then the other engine rise in pitch as the pilot gave it full throttle to maintain height. We were all out of our trenches trying to get a look and saw it disappear towards the southeast and we knew he was in trouble because he didn't seem to be able to turn to go back home. In a minute or so we could see an orange glow on the ground some miles away. We all knew what it meant. There was a sort of half- hearted cheer. And then Jones- the- Voice started up. He sung the official version for two or three verses, (I always like to think he was a sensitive soul), before degenerating, if that is the right word, into the squadron version, some two dozen verses I should think, most of which cast doubts about the parentage of NCOs in general, some in particular; pilots who misused their engines (but that wasn't the word he used); all politicians, Hitler and Goering; und so weiter. Voices from near and voices from far away entered into a sort of dismembered chorus. It was all rather moving in the otherwise now- silent desert night and, to me, it has become quite unforgettable. I have to confess that I never found the words of Lili Marlene particularly edifying, then or now, and have long forgotten the squadron version but I never hear that haunting tune without instant recall of that occasion and, I sometimes imagine, when a little carried away by nostalgia, that it was perhaps, a kind of unconscious requiem. And something else, too.. It was those chaps in that book in the library licking stones to keep alive. It reminded me of how damp it felt at the bottom of our slit trench that night. Funny, how one small thing reminds you of what you thought you had long forgotten. I acknowledge that no one has ever asked me, or, indeed is ever likely to, but I have noticed that many of those who bare their souls do so without any prompting by an eager public. And I make no apology for the fickle winds, or just inattention (which airmen are sometimes prone to), that occasionally take me off course during this story of what turned out to be really just a longish journey; or for a tendency, verging on the tedious at times, no doubt, to dwell on technical detail. I was a newly promoted sergeant in the Royal Air Force and recently deemed to have become sufficiently proficient at wireless telegraphy and air gunnery to become part of the crew of a Vickers 'Wellington' bomber aircraft - I should say at least that I had a certificate to this effect. Such an aircraft required, in those days, two pilots, a navigator, a wireless operator/air gunner such as myself, and two air- gunners. About sixty of us, in our assorted trades, all much of an age, had arrived at Operational Training Unit No. Moreton- in- the- Marsh in the heart of the Cotswolds towards the end of summer 1. The method of forming us into crews was quite simply that of putting our names into a hat. In retrospect this turned out to be as good a system as any and I have no doubt that had we been allowed a choice we would have made no better for all that we were a motley collection - or maybe even because of it. Our navigator, whose name I confess to having forgotten was Australian, extremely tall and spare of frame, also very laid back and spoke, if at all, extremely slowly. The two gunners were 'Jock' Brown, not surprisingly a Scot, and Geoff Stayton, who, with a background very similar to my own, represented the English. Our flying consisted mainly of cross- country runs on the western side of Britain up as far as the Mull of Galloway and back down the Irish Sea, or sometimes the other way round; and sometimes short bombing and gunnery exercises. A few of the crews, including ours, were moved after a few weeks from Moreton, which was as comfortable as a peace- time base, and sent out to its 'satellite' airfield at Edgehill, near Banbury. One of the pleasures of Banbury (in fact the only one as far as I knew) was Ye Olde Tea Shop where the two delightful welcoming elderly ladies still made Banbury Cakes and always, somehow, managed to produce them in sufficient numbers when we arrived, together with the best cup of tea for miles around. It did, in fact, begin to snow hard and some of them got lost and either ran out of fuel because they couldn't find anywhere to land and crashed, or crashed attempting to land at base which was to have a sobering effect not just on us but on the whole of Training Command, apparently. We, ourselves, were flying that night from Edgehill but fortunately with an experienced pilot who sensed that something was going wrong with the weather and decided on his own initiative to return early from our cross- country. Even so we lost all contact with the ground and I had for the first time, in a situation which was becoming increasingly life threatening, to use such skills as I possessed to get wireless bearings and fixes. This is easy to say; not so easy in practice. When fuel runs short the temptation to go down through cloud and have a look can be dangerous.) Anyway, we 'homed' thus by wireless to Moreton where they had a D/F (direction- finding) station, made a safe, if somewhat interesting landing, thanks to our instructor, and stayed there the rest of the night. It had been clear weather over Wales and the Irish Sea and, heading once again for the Mull of Galloway, we had passed over the south west tip of the Isle of Man right on course and flying at 1. A well- developed mass of cloud soon appeared ahead of us. Normally one would have picked one's way through it, finding the gaps as though they were mountain peaks which pilots found quite fun to do and certainly desirable within a particular range of air- temperatures because of the dangers of icing. Normally this got hot enough for me to see it glow a dull red at night. I saw ice building up rapidly on this to a thickness of 4 or 5 inches and then like a sheet over the wings and, with that, the controls locked solid, both engines cut, and everything seemed to go berserk. The next 9. 0 seconds seemed quite unreal; as though in slow motion.
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