Logbook

~ Adam Purcell ~ 3 Comments

A logbook is a legal requirement for any pilot. In Australia, it must record at a minimum the dates of any flights made by the pilot, crew details, aircraft type and registration, route details and flight times. It allows a pilot to calculate his or her experience in terms of flying hours, and records the results of any exams or licence flight tests carried out.

But logbooks are something more than simply a dry record of dates, aeroplanes and times. They can also be intensely personal documents. Reading through my own one, I find my mind can very easily wander to remember a particular flight, and the circumstances surrounding it. “Bankstown-Three Sisters-Bankstown. Bumpy”, reads one entry. A simple enough description. But it’s one that belies the intensity of that flight, on which I and my passengers flew unwittingly into some pretty severe turbulence. Or ‘Circuits Camden – First Tiger Solo’, recording the first time I flew a Tiger Moth by myself, possibly my proudest yet moment in an aeroplane.

Unless one kept a diary there were very few ways that people could accurately recall where they were at a certain time, let alone what they were doing. This is where all pilots score. Your log book, which it was mandatory to keep and have regularly certified as being a true record, will instantly tell you that and, hopefully, jog the memory especially as the long forgotten names of the people that flew with you are very often there as well.

-The late Reg Levy, 51 Sqn Halifax skipper and later pilot for Sabena, writing on PPRuNe 

I think Reg nailed it. The terse notations in a logbook, taken in isolation, give fairly dry information about where someone was and what they were doing at particular dates in history. This in itself is interesting stuff for a study of the men of Bomber Command. But they can also trigger memories far beyond the short statements themselves.

It’s easier, of course, when the airmen are still around, because you can ask them questions about it. This is one reason why Reg Levy, in the last year or so of his life, contributed to a fantastic thread on the Professional Pilots Rumour Network (which by the way is well worth a look if you have a few hours to spare*). He used his logbooks as the basis of a superb running story about his experiences in training, then while operating in Bomber Command, and his rather incredible adventures after the war. The logbooks provided the spark, the interaction with other contributors around the world were the fuel and his sharp memory filled in the details.

It’s a little harder to ‘reconstruct’ what an airman was doing through his logbook alone if he is no longer with us. But it’s a good starting point. Other historical records and personal letters can go a long way to filling in the details. Maybe the end result won’t be quite so personal – but it’s a worthwhile challenge.

jacklog-last-page copy

*Reg’s pseudonym on the thread was ‘regle’

© 2011 Adam Purcell

Bradfield Park

~ Adam Purcell

After a period on the Volunteer Reserve, a newly-enlisted airman in the RAAF in WWII would find himself posted to an Initial Training School (ITS) to learn about the basics of military life. Each state of Australia had its own ITS. Airmen from NSW would normally pass through No. 2 ITS at Bradfield Park in Sydney. Many thousands of airmen (and women, for there was also a WAAAF school on site) would experience their first taste of the Air Force at this station.

Don Southwell remembers “miles and miles” of parade grounds near the gatehouse of the station. Don was a 463 Squadron navigator in the latter part of the war. Like so many of his era, his Air Force career started at Bradfield Park. Don took me on a drive around the site of the old station shortly before I left Sydney in October 2010. “The WAAAFs could out-drill anyone”, he said.

Don on occasion would need to guard the Station’s boat house, which was down on the banks of the nearby Lane Cove River. He would carry his straw mattress and rifle down a track through thick bush and stay overnight in the boat house. On one occasion he fired his rifle at the water to see what would happen, then spent the walk back to the main base worrying about how he would account for that one cartridge… history and memory do not record how he got away with that one!

Don related stories of airmen crawling through a hole in the fence and removing the white ‘trainee’ flash from their caps to appear to be ground crew and thus less suspicious, to be able to walk up Lady Game Drive to Chatswood Railway Station. Being a Croydon boy, Don says he did the same while officially on guard at the boat house. He simply waited until it was dark, then made his escape to catch a train home. He slept at home that night, returning just as the sun came up the next day.

There is now virtually none of the station left. The CSIRO moved to the area in 1979 when their National Measurement Laboratories were built. In recent years they sold off some of the Commonwealth land on which the RAAF station once stood. But reminders are still there. The main road past the CSIRO’s compound is called Bradfield Rd. Other streets close by are Squadron Circuit and Brevet Ave. And in the corner of Queen Elizabeth Reserve, a short distance from tennis courts where Don says some of the parade grounds were, is this memorial:

 bradfieldparkmemorial1 copy

Partly funded by the CSIRO and Kuringai Council, it was built in 2006 and forms a fitting reminder to the activities that took place there.

 bradfieldparkmemorial2 copy

© 2010 Adam Purcell

The Lost Diggers

~ Adam Purcell ~ 1 Comment

“It’s like looking back into time, looking into the eyes of men who’ve just been in battle.”

-Australian War Memorial historian Peter Burness, quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald: http://www.smh.com.au/world/diggers-at-play-frozen-in-time-20110226-1b97y.html

In 1916 a French couple by the name of Thuillier began taking photographs of allied troops as they passed through their village of Vignacourt, just behind the lines on the Western Front. They began it as a means of making a little money – but what they created has become a priceless collection of immense historical value.

The collection was almost lost to history. A French amateur historian first tried to alert Australian and British authorities to its existence some 20 years ago, but nothing came of it. It was only recently that they were uncovered, in three dusty chests in the attic of the old Thuillier family farmhouse. The Sydney Morning Herald article reports that the farmhouse was about to be sold – which could have been the end of the three dusty chests, until Burness and his team intervened.

As Gil Thew told me, his uncle’s effects hadn’t been touched for over thirty years. I don’t have any comparable material concerning my great uncle Jack. The family story is that his letters disappeared sometime in the 1960s. Perhaps they were seen as merely dusty old papers, of no interest to anyone.

But like this story shows, what one person might consider old junk could be a goldmine. I’ve been lucky enough to study closely the archives of ‘dusty old papers’ belonging to two of the crew of B for Baker. Reading this story made me wonder what else might still be out there, largely forgotten – but waiting to be found.

(c) 2011 Adam Purcell

Have the Brits changed their tune?

~ Adam Purcell

I’ve been thankful that the crew I am researching has four Australians in it. This is good because it means that it was very easy to access copies of their service records. The National Archives of Australia provide records to anyone who requests them, for a small fee – and once the records have been requested they are digitally scanned and placed onto their website where anyone can access them free of charge.

But getting British service records has always been much, much harder. They are still under the care of the Royal Air Force and previously you needed to write to their office at RAF Cranwell. You could access an extract of your record for free if you were a veteran, but anyone else was up for a GBP30.00 fee, payable by cheque only (rather difficult to organise from Australia!). On top of that, due to ‘privacy laws’ you required the written permission of the next of kin to access any records at all. If you didn’t have that permission (perhaps you were still searching for them… sound familiar?!??), you couldn’t access anything at all.

I managed to find Freda Hamer, daughter of Jerry Parker’s widow, and got a letter from her which I used to get his service record – which was two single pages of A4, with information limited to his promotions and postings. Useful, but at GBP30.00, rather steep – and a little unreasonable considering for AUD15.00, or about a quarter of the cost, you got a colour scan of an entire service record for an Australian airman – which could run to seventy or so pages! And I needed to trace Jerry’s family before the RAF even considered giving me that much.

But have things changed? Phil Bonner alerted me to this web page a few months ago. It would appear that an otherwise unannounced change has occurred:

 Under the scheme, and in recognition of the duty of care owed to the family of the deceased subject, for a period of 25 years following the date of death of the subject and without the consent of the Next of Kin, MOD will disclose only:  surname; forename; rank; service number; regiment/corps; place of birth; age; date of birth; date of death where this occurred in service; the date an individual joined the service; the date of leaving; good conduct medals (i.e. Long Service and Good Conduct Medal (LS&GCM)), any orders of chivalry and gallantry medals (decorations of valour) awarded, some of which may have been announced in the London Gazette.

After this period, and if it is held, in addition MOD will disclose without the requirement for Next of Kin consent: the units in which he/she served; the dates of this service and the locations of those units; the ranks in which the service was carried out and details of WWII campaign medals.

Note no further requirement for NoK consent.

So it looks as though I’ll now be able to get parts of the service records for Ken Tabor and for Eric Hill.

Still need to organise some cheques in GBP though.

 

 

 

Propeller

~ Adam Purcell

My good friend Joss le Clercq is a French aviation historian of some note. When I visited Lezennes and the graves of my great uncle’s crew in 2009, I stayed for a few nights with him in his farmhouse between Fromelles and Aubers, about 20km west of Lille.

Joss has the beginnings of a small aviation museum in his back shed. There are parts of many crashed aeroplanes, all dug up around the local area. Among them is one particular bit of metal. Though badly corroded, it is still unmistakably a fragment of a blade from an aircraft propeller. About fifteen years ago, a hotel and a petrol station was being built in Lezennes. While digging the foundations they found some rusted metal – which Joss identified as the remains of a Lancaster. He retrieved two pieces – the propeller blade and a flat fragment of alloy. From local records he deduced which Lancaster the wreckage was from.

These unassuming bits of metal in Joss’ back shed are most probably the only surviving pieces of Lancaster Mk III, LM475:

img_3755 copy

Of the crash site itself there remains now virtually no trace. The petrol station continues dispensing liquefied dead dinosaurs in its curiously French, completely automatic way. The hotel looked pretty empty when we visited. But there are two large rocks on a small bit of flat ground, which Joss says are pretty close to where he found the propeller blade a decade and a half ago.

I reckon they look ideal for the placing of a small plaque, to mark the spot where the Lancaster came down.

 

img_3854 copyA task, perhaps, for when next I visit.

© 2011 Adam Purcell

One Friday Afternoon’s Work

~ Adam Purcell ~ 9 Comments

Gilbert Pate’s first flight – ever – was in a Tiger Moth from Mascot, Sydney in August 1939. His father, Sydney, wrote about it in a letter to Don Smith in July 1944, after the crew had gone missing (A01-346-003). Gilbert had gone flying with a good friend, Andrew MacArthur-Onslow. They even flew over the Pate family home in nearby Kogarah (“2-storey”, wrote Sydney Pate, “and in the nature of a local land-mark”).

Sydney also wrote that Andrew was “now alas deceased”. I decided to try and find out what happened to him.

It seemed likely that Andrew’s was a war-related death, so the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s database was my first port of call. I found a match:

Name: MacARTHUR-ONSLOW, ANDREW WILLIAM
Initials: A W
Nationality: Australian
Rank: Flight Lieutenant
Regiment/Service: Royal Australian Air Force
Age: 25
Date of Death: 18/01/1943
Service No: 261535
Additional information: Son of Francis Arthur and Sylvia Seton Raymond MacArthur-Onslow, of Campbelltown.
Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead
Grave/Memorial Reference: Row A. Grave 6.
Cemetery: TAMWORTH WAR CEMETERY

Note that he died a Flight Lieutenant and is buried at Tamworth, NSW, the site of an Elementary Flying Training School. This suggested he was an instructor.

I next searched the National Archives of Australia for a service record – which exists, but is not digitised so I can’t access it from here. I did find a record of his enlistment in the Australian Army Militia pre-war. I also looked through some Tiger Moth accident reports but found no matches.

Perhaps Tamworth cemetery records would yield something. I found this page, which had the bloke I was looking for. It also had a record for another man killed on the same day – a Thomas Myles DAWSON of Queensland. Figuring two men was the normal crew complement at an EFTS, there was a good chance that both of these men were killed in the same accident.

Dawson proved the breakthrough. A search for his service number at the National Archives pulled up a service record (digitised) – and, more importantly, an entry in an accident file (also digitised). It was a simple matter to access the accident file, which answered the question of what happened to F/L AW MacArthur-Onslow.

Gilbert Pate’s great mate, who had held a pilot’s licence before the war and who took Gilbert for his first flight, possibly sparking Gil’s interest in flying, was killed in a flying accident while serving with the Central Flying School.  On 18JAN43  MacArthur-Onslow was flying with a Sgt TM Dawson in Wirraway A20-45, on an authorised practice low-level sortie 16 miles south-east of Tamworth. They crashed during the low-level segment of the flight and both were killed. The aircraft was written off. (A04-087-001, NAA: A9845, 102).

The most pleasing thing for me in this saga is that it all happened one Friday afternoon. I was reading through all of Sydney Pate’s letters in preparation for an article I’m working on about Gil when I read the July 1944 correspondence to Don Smith. That sparked the curiosity to find out what happened to Andrew MacArthur-Onslow – and over the course of a couple of hours I found what I was looking for. Another loose thread tied off, another facet of Gilbert Pate’s life uncovered.

© 2011 Adam Purcell

First Solo

~ Adam Purcell

“I’ll always remember my first solo”

-463 Sqn navigator Don Southwell in conversation, October 2010

There is a certain mystique about a pilot’s first solo. It is one of those moments that separate them from the common ground-dweller. Quite simply, there are those who have flown solo, and there are those who have not.

I remember my own first solo well. It was 28 November 2002, in a Cessna 152. It didn’t take long – just one circuit, taking off from Runway 16 at Wollongong in NSW. Flying downwind, I distinctly recall the euphoric feeling as I looked at the empty seat to my right, where my instructor had been sitting just a few minutes before, and realised that I was flying the aeroplane – all by myself. I ballooned slightly in the landing flare, but at least it was a reasonably soft touchdown.

World War Two provided many aircrew with the opportunity to join that elite ‘solo’ club. Phil Smith flew alone for the first time on 28 November 1940 (exactly 62 years to the day before I did so myself). He flew a Tiger Moth from No. 6 Elementary Flying Training School, Tamworth, NSW. Despite the achievement, Phil’s letter to his father written later that day is in the same measured, almost formal language as all the rest of his correspondence:

“I still don’t make good landings but they say I am fairly safe. So, this morning I did my first solo flight. Altogether I made three solo flights and landed satisfactorily each time” (A01-132-001)

Don Southwell was originally chosen for pilot training. He was posted to 8 EFTS in Narrandera, NSW, and before he was scrubbed and re-mustered as a navigator, he managed to go solo in the Tiger Moth. His solo flight was not entirely uneventful however. He told me the story when I visited him in October 2010. Don was at one of Narrandera’s four satellite fields, which he described as ‘a paddock with a hut’. Shortly after he took off the wind changed. His instructor came up beside him in another Tiger Moth, gesticulating wildly and pointing to the windsock, but Don couldn’t work out what he was trying to tell him. So he simply landed in the same direction that he had taken off in, in a significant crosswind – and made a ‘pearler of a crosswind landing’. I commented on this because I know from experience how much Tiger Moths do not like crosswinds – Don admitted it had been a ‘bit of a fluke’!

Amusing anecdotes aside, however, some aircrew did see their early solo flying as special. In his memoirs published posthumously in 2009, 467 Sqn mid-upper gunner Brian Fallon described his first solo cross country flight in slightly more descriptive terms:

“On 17 June 1943 I flew my first solo cross-country. It was magic. The thrill of sitting alone in an open cockpit with the wind in your hair floating above the earth is something to be experienced.”

I can only say that the first time I flew a Tiger Moth by myself – in April 2010 – I knew exactly what Brian had been getting at. To look forward and not see the back of the instructor’s head in the front cockpit, to hear the wind through the wires and to feel its force on your face is to experience in a small way something of what it was like for so many aircrew of the Commonwealth air forces of World War Two.

Brian’s writing encapsulates a lot of how much it means for pilots to join a very special club:

“They say that flying is as close to heaven as you can get in this life. I think it is so, for you could not help wondering at God’s greatness as you flew around flirting in and out of the clouds with the earth stretched out below, its cultivated squares looking like a quilt. Up there I had a feeling of detachment from all the petty squabbling in society and could not bring myself to believe that all was not right with the world below.”

If there was one good thing to come out of World War Two, it was the opportunity for so many to experience that joy of flight that Brian writes about.

© 2011 Adam Purcell

So Far from Home

~ Adam Purcell

A recent article in Sydney’s Sun-Herald, 02JAN11:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/where-the-streets-will-have-his-name-20110101-19cjd.html

Flying Officer Lindsay Page Bacon, a couple of months before the end of the war in Europe, returning from a bombing operation in a 7 Sqn Lancaster which is damaged in combat and struggling to keep height. He manages to avoid crashing into a small town, but in the process destroys what little control he has over the aircraft. All on board perish in the crash.

65 years later, digging at a construction site in Nieuwdorp, the Netherlands, uncovers remnants of F/O Bacon’s aircraft. The town goes on a search for information about the crew, with an aim to build a memorial near the crash site. With the help of the newspaper they eventually find F/O Bacon’s sole surviving brother in Ulladulla, NSW.

People have many motivations for becoming involved in this sort of research. For myself, like many others, it’s about that dusty photograph or logbook, and wanting to know more about someone who shared your name. For others, it’s the technical aspects of the aircraft, or the tactics, or the strategies.

But for people like Hans van Dam, the Dutchman who contacted the newspaper in Sydney, it’s about remembering the men who came from the other side of the world to fight in the defence of his little village – and who never got the chance to go back home.

Painting Complete!

~ Adam Purcell ~ 3 Comments

Here is the completed painting, now framed and hanging on my wall. I reckon it looks pretty damn fine:

painting-007 copy

Avro Lancaster LM475 PO-B for Baker, of 467 Sqn RAAF, sits on its dispersal at RAF Waddington on 11 April 1944. Its crew has just arrived for a bombing raid on the German city of Aachen.

This painting serves as a tribute to the crew of this aircraft:

S/L DPS Smith

W/O RW Purcell

Sgt KH Tabor

Sgt J Parker

F/Sgt AD Johnston

Sgt ER Hill

F/Sgt GF Pate

These men were shot down in this aircraft on an operation to Lille, France, on 10 May 1944. Only the pilot, Phil Smith, survived.

The painting, by Steve Leadenham, was specially commissioned by Adam Purcell, the great nephew of the navigator.

Steve advises that prints of this painting will be available in the future – details on how to get one will be posted here in due course.

How many operations?

~ Adam Purcell ~ 2 Comments

Gilbert Pate’s logbook is not held by the part of his family that I am in touch with. It appears that it was sent to his wife, who fairly quickly remarried after the war and then dropped off the radar. So I’ve been trying to ‘recreate’ his operational flights through other sources like the Operational Record Books of the two Squadrons he was part of. Here are the ones I found:

1. 03NOV43: Dusseldorf JB467 EA-T with Sgt WEBB – this as far as I can tell was his only operaion with 49 Sqn.

All the rest in this list come from the 467 Sqn ORB.

2. 28JAN44 to Berlin with Phil Smith in DV372. Tabor, Johnston and Hill also on this op; Purcell and Parker were not.

3. 15FEB44 to Berlin with Phil Smith and entire crew in EE143

4. 19FEB44 to Leipzig in EE143 with Phil Smith and entire crew

5. 24FEB44 to Schweinfurt in EE143 with Phil Smith, entire crew and 2nd dickie

6. 01MAR44 to Stuttgart in EE143 with Phil Smith, entire crew and 2nd dickie

7. 09MAR44 to Marignane with Phil Smith and entire crew in LM475

8. 15MAR44 to Stuttgart with Phil Smith, entire crew and 2nd dickie in LM475

9. 18MAR44 to Frankfurt with Phil Smith and entire crew less Jerry Parker in LM475

10. 22MAR44 to Frankfurt with Phil Smth and entire crew in R5485

11. 24MAR44 to Berlin with entire crew in LM475

12. 26MAR44 to Essen with Phil Smith and entire crew less Dale Johnston in LM475.

13. 30MAR44 to Nuremburg with entire crew less Jerry Parker in LM475

14. 11APR44 to Aachen with Phil Smith and crew in LM475

15. 18APR44 to Juvisy with Phil Smith and crew in LM475 – G/C Bonham-Carter came along too

16. 24APR44 to Munich with Phil Smith, entire crew and 2nd dickie in LM475

17. 28APR44 to St Medard en Jalles with entire crew in LM475.

18. 29APR44 to St Medard en Jalles with Phil Smith and entire crew in LM475

19. 01MAY44 to Toulouse with Phil Smith and entire crew plus second dickie in LM475

20. 03MAY44 to Mailly le Camp with Phil Smith and entire crew in LM475

21. 06MAY44 to Sable sur Sarthe with Phil Smith and entire crew in LM475

22. 10MAY44 to Lille with Phil Smith and entire crew in LM475. MISSING.

Crossreferencing with Phil Smith’s logbook confirms that Gil was on the operations noted in the ORB that he flew with Phil. 22 operations represents a significant contribution to the war effort. But, as is usual in this sort of thing, the picture isn’t as simple as that. I have a letter that Gil wrote to his little sister Joyce on 01MAY44 (A01-443-001) – the eve of his Toulouse trip – that contains the following list:

JOYCE – trips so far are:

BERLIN – 3 times

SCHWEINFURT 2

STUTTGART 2

NUREMBURG 1

LEIPZIG 1

FRANKFURT 2

MUNICH 1

BORDEAUX 2

PARIS (JUVISY) 1

PARIS (La Chapelle) 1

TOURS 1

AACHEN 1

DUSSELDORF 1

ESSEN 1

MARIGNANE 1

BRUNSWICK 1

Remember this list was written on 01MAY44 and so does not include the last four on the list I found in the ORBs. So if we include those, it appears that the Lille operation was Gil’s 26th.

Further muddying the waters is a transcript (via his wife Grace Pate) of a letter Gil sent to her on 02MAY44. It reads as follows:

Last night we went to Toulouse and as we only landed at 7am we have the day off. April was a very busy month for me and I managed 9 trips which were all that we were on. (A01-348-001)

The ORBs only show that Gil was on 5 operations in that time.

In total I can only find 22 in the ORBs – which leaves four ‘extra’ ops:

  • One extra to Schweinfurt
  • Paris-La Chapelle
  • Tours
  • Brunswick

Assuming the letter to Grace wasn’t being exaggerated, there’s a good chance that April 1944 is the month where the inconsistency lies.

The La Chapelle operation could be 21APR44, though 467 Sqn had a ‘make and mend’ day on that date and did not operate. The Brunswick trip is possibly 22APR44.

One other option is that I also have a letter Gil wrote to Joyce on 20AUG43 (A01-381-001) that says he was “on a sortie over Paris recently but things went off smoothly”. This was while he was at 17OTU at Silverstone, so I’m trying to find the ORB of that unit which might reveal a nickelling raid that he could have counted.

I need to do a little more digging to see if I can find his name anywhere else.

(c) Adam Purcell 2011

Incidentally, while I was working on these lists my research database file corrupted itself overnight. I had to redo a little bit of work that I’d done the previous evening but I was able to recover the file from a back-up that was only a couple of days old. Shows the value of having an effective back-up regime in place while doing any irreplaceable work with computers! Since the file died I’ve now got a daily back-up going automatically to secure online storage and I manually copy the file to a USB stick, in addition to the usual weekly backup that my computer carries out.

Paranoid, me???