AN ACCOUNT
BY
WING COMMANDER
PETER ISAACSON, AM, DFC, AFC, DFM, RAAF(Rtd)
as told
to AVM Peter Scully (rtd)
on 24th April
1997
I was born in London, England and my
father had met my mother when he was serving in the AIF. He was an Australian soldier and as part of
his service he was aide-de-camp to General
Birdwood and I have a picture of General Birdwood’s staff in Cairo which I
think was just before they went off to Galipoli. There were two Australians on Birdwood’s
staff; there was my father who was his aide-de-camp and there was a Major
Churnside, Gordon Churnside - the Churnsides are a very well know Melbourne
family. So he married my mother in
England - he was at least twenty years older than my mother and they lived
there and came out to Australia for a honeymoon trip, went back to England
where my father set up some sort of manufacturing agency business -
representing agencies and then decided that they’d come back to Australia and
he brought the agencies with him. He
did quite well prior to the depression, but with the depression lost most
things and my mother then went to work and went to the Age where she was
employed as a journalist and was there for very many years. She was a very fine woman and was probably
the greatest influence in my life.
There was only twenty years between us - I was born when she was twenty,
so when I was twenty, my mother was forty and my father was sixty. But she was a great woman.
I was educated at Brighton Grammer School but I was always very keen on
newspapers as she was on the Age and I got
myself a job as a messenger boy.
I was a messenger boy on the Age and that time - it was in 1937, and I
was just seventeen - and one of my jobs was to ride around town on a bicycle
and fill up the kiosks which were run by ex-servicemen, who sold newspapers and
sweets and things, and I was scared that some of the people from school would
see me doing this demeaning job. But it
was good training and from there I went into the answers to advertisemenrts
section and I worked at night. From one
episode that happened to me I was determined that one day I would hopefully own
a newspaper. It was rather a strange -
it wasn’t strange, but was rather an amusing thing that happened. I was working on the front counter of the
Age one Saturday afternoon and phone call came through and the voice at the
other end said, “It’s David Syme here”, and of course the Symes owned the Age
at that time and I said, “Yes Sir”. He
said, “Isaacson, I want you to go up to His Majesty’s theatre and get me four
tickets for tonight.” I said, “Yes
Sir. What will I do for money Sir ?” He said, “What will you do for money ? Take it out of the till of course.” And from that moment I decided that some
time in the future I was going to be the guy that rang up and told somebody to
take the money out of the till and buy me theatre tickets.
Anyway, I stayed on the Age and then
I joined up with another young man and we started a small advertising agency
and publishing company which went.....I think I drew about fifteen shillings a
week out of it or something but you could live on fifteen shillings a week in
1938 and I was living at home of course.
Anyway, the war came along and I wanted to join something. I didn’t rush into it but I thought - the
air force was the glamour service and I’ll see how I get on. You were enrolled and you did the
educational tests and did your medical tests and then went onto the
Reserve. At that time, you went onto
the Reserve in an aircrew catagory. You
were categorised at that time as a pilot, a navigator or an observer as they
called them then, a wireless operator or an air gunner, and I was lucky enough
to be categorised as a pilot. We had
our twenty-one lessons and went up to the local post office in Malvern to learn morse code. That continued for, I suppose, about six
months and eventually we were called up and I was called up for Bradfield Park,
to go to ITS at Bradfield Park - No 2 ITS.
On the way up in the train I met a
couple of people with whom I’m still friendly - Jimmy Crabb, for instance who’s
up at Marouchydore, I still see him and a couple of others. So off we went to Bradfield Park and got
stuck into the drill and the anti-gas and it was going back to school. I still remember Sergeant Macintoch, Bushy
Macintosh, who was in charge of our flight and Corporal Olsen. I can still remember them very vividly. About the only memorabe thing that happened
to me at ITS was on parade one day. The
whole parade was called to a halt and a pilot officer, who must have been admin
or something, and he pulled up everybody and he walked over to me and in his
loudest voice he said, “Isaacson, your appearance is bad and your marching is
worse.” So that was the main thing that
happened to me at Bradfield Park. I
managed to scrape through, I don’t think I was brilliant, I certainly didn’t
top the class, but it was enjoyable.
I met up there with three people and
we used to motor down from Bradfield Park to Melbourne sometimes on the
weekends when we had a weekend pass. One
of them was called Geoff Reeve, he came from Geelong and Geoff had a Service
Station in Geelong, the Reeve Service Station.
There was Tilley McCracken - I never knew what Tilley’s other name
was. Geoff Reeve was a Geelong
Grammer boy, Tilley McCracken was Scotch
and Brefney Littlejohn. The Littlejohns
were a well know Melbourne family - his grandfather was the headmaster of
Scotch college, a Dr Littlejohn. I had
a later association with the Littlejohn family which I’ll tell you about
later. We used to motor down; we’d leave Bradfiled Park at about 4 o’clock
on a Friday when we were stood down, motor all night, come to Melbourne, take
our girls out and motor back on Sunday afternoor, leaving about two o’clock and
be back on parade at about half past seven at Bradfield Park.
Then I was posted to Narrandra, No 8
EFTS Narrandra. I can’t remember the
CO’s name but my flight commander was a chap called called Maddocks, Bill
Maddocks from South Australia and strangely enough subsequently I employed his
son - but I didn’t know he was Bill Maddock’s son for quite a long time after
he’d been working for me. Narrandra,
well, we did the usual two months. I
wasn’t a terribly competent pilot at that stage and I graduated from there
below average - it was below average in my log book. I think that one of the things that possibly
told against me was I was flying around one day and I felt like a cigarette and
so I landed in a paddock and was having a cigarette under the wing, or
somewhere near, and of course the CFI flew over and he took the number of the
aircraft of course and that ended my weekends off. A chap called Bill McGrath was my
instructor. He was a sergeant pilot and
there was also another fellow called Barrett who was an instructor there - and
the padre I kept in touch with over the years, whose name I’ve forgotten
now.
The flying was great. Narrandra and up in that area was great for
flying and the people were very pleasant.
The Murrimbidgee Club took us in and gave us a party when we graduated. There was a doctor and his two daughters in
Leeton that I got to know and I still see one of them - a girl called Barbara
Jolly. When I was on final leave I
think I received a cake and it had ‘with love from Barbara’ and so I rang Barbara Jolly up and thanked
her - or wrote to her - and she said,
“I can’t cook a cake.” It was
from another Barbara altogether.
Eventually we were then posted to
Canada to do SFTS. I was quite excited
about all this because some people were just posted to Service Flying Training
in Australia and, you know, that was a bit dull, and it was great to be posted
overseas. So off we went to Canada and
arrivd in Vancouver and took the train across.
We all had diarrhoea - the food on the train apparently gave us
diarrhoea - we went by train across Canada and took a couple of days if I
recall to Ottowa, to I think, it was No 2 SFTS Uplands in Ottowa.
There we trained on Harvards and again my career was checkered. I think I got an ‘average’ so I’d come up one
from below average to average, but there I got a red book entry in my log book
for turning an aircraft on its nose while harshly applying the brakes while I
was taxying - categorised as ‘gross carelessness’. So its sitting in my log book today - still
there. Apart from that, it was again
splendid flying. I was there in the
summer/autumn period and quite apart from good flying, it was beautiful flying
- the Gattineau Lakes and the area around Ottowa was great. It was only a small town Ottowa in those
days, quite a small town. We used to go
across to Quebec - if I remember Ottowa was dry or you couldn’t get spirits -
there was something why we went to Quebec, I can’t quite remember, to a place
called Hull which was just over the river, Ottowa being in Ontario and Hull being
in Quebec Province. This was 1941 - I
went in in December 1940 and that would have been ‘41.
At that point, I think we were asked
which command we woud like to go to - fighters, bombers, army co-operations and
so on, and I put down Bomber Command. I
felt that, I don’t know, I think I needed a support system and I though that in
Bomber Command you’d have a support system and you’d have a couple of people
there to help you do whatever it was you had to do. But we went across the Atlantic in a boat
called the Andes and arrived in Liverpool which was the first indication we’d
had of war - the rest of it had been lots of fun. You saw Liverpool and it had been bombed and
there were sunken ships and the docks were bombed and so on and it was quite a
sobering moment to realise that, “well this is for real. you’re not here just
to have fun” which we’d had been to date.
As I said, it was a sobering thought.
Onto the train we went and we went
down to Bournemouth to the PDRC - Personnel Dispatch and Receipt Centre - and
there we were billetted in hotels and other places waiting some sort of
posting. It eventually came and I was
posted to 27 OTU Lichfield - you’ve probably heard of that a lot because it was
where a lot of Australians went - up in Staffordshire where we were to be
trained on Wellingtons. There we crewed
up and I can’t remember who the rest of my crew were but my navigator was a
chap called Gardiner, George Gardiner but was always known as Ches and I can’t
remember why, and Ches and I trained together.
I’ll skip for a moment. we didn’t
see each other from the day we finished OTU and until 1994, when we met up but
somebody met him somewhere and he wrote to me and so we kept up a desultory
correspondence and when Ann and I went to England when I retired in 1994, he and his wife joined us for dinner and then
when we went again in 1996, we met up again.
He came from Canterbury and was a sergeant navigator and I was a
sergeant pilot - I graduated as a sergeant, I didn’t get commissioned off
course - but Ches left the Air Force and then went back into the Air Force and
retired as a group captain and although I’m skipping a lot, he eventually
retired as a group captain and became the director of the Thalidimide
Childrens’ Trust. He’s still alive and
I ring him on High Days and Holy Days and wish him a happy Christmas and we’ll
probably see each other if I go to England again. But he had a good career.
So Ches and I crewed up and as I
say, I can’t remember who the rest of the crew were and did our OTU. Well then we passed out of Litchfield and we
were on leave and while we were on leave we got a telegram saying to report to
an airfield called Wing, which was somewhere in the south of England. So we didn’t know what the hell this was
all about, maybe we were going to be sent to the Middle East or we were going
to do something. I’m not quite sure
whether, at that stage, we had been posted to 460 Squadron - no we hadn’t - I
don’t think anyway. Anyway we were told
to report to Wing, which we did. Ches
met me at the station and we picked up our rail warrants and off we went. When we got there, later on in the day or
the next day we found that we were briefed and we were briefed for the first
thousand bomber raid on Cologne and I think this was 29th May 1941 (1942) and
we were briefed for the first thousand bomber raid. To collect a thousand bombers they had to
take crews from OTU and we hadn’t done anything, we were straight from OTU,
we’d flown around England and done all that sort of thing and knew how to fly a
Wellington and so they dragged in those crews who had graduated from OTU and
aeroplanes from OTU and these were clapped out old Wellingtons 1As.
So we were briefed and off we went
and it was a beautiful night, it was an absolutely perfect English summer
night, it was May and we we just coming into summer. The moon was out and off we trundled and it
wasn’t hard to pick up Cologn because its on the river and we picked it up and
dropped our bombs and as is well known, the raid was a great success. So back we went and the following night - I
think it was the following - we were briefed again for another thousand bomber
raid, on Essen. Essen was a bit of a
different target to Cologn. Cologn
wasn’t a difficult target - wasn’t recognised as a very difficult target -
whereas Essen was, it being in the heart of the Ruhr, really right slap bang in
the heart of the Ruhr and of course, the aiming point was the Krupps
Works. It was more difficult to find
and secondly, it was more heavily defended and the weather had turned bad and
wasn’t particularly good by this time and so while we didn’t have any trouble,
it wasn’t a great success. The Germans
were very astute, they’d put up dummy cities and the industrial haze over Essen
made identification more difficult. So
that was that and from that point we then went back on leave. I think we must have been posted to 460
Squadron by this time because I remember we went back on leave and finished our
leave.
I used to stay with some cousins of
mine who were doctors in St John’s Wood and my male cousin, married to my
female cousin - she was a doctor - also was an air raid warden. He was an older person. There was a raid over London or something
and he took me down into an air raid shelter and a little boy seeing me in
uniform said, “What are you doing down here, why aren’t you up there shooting
them down ?” I was quite abashed at
that and thought “perhaps I shouldn’t be down here.” These cousins were very kind to me, Elizabeth, my cousin, I was very fond of her
and I stayed with them each leave I had all the time I was in England. So as I say, I think we must have already
known where we were going and I went to 460 Squadron which at that time was at
Breighton and was under the command of Wing Commander Arthur Hubbard. There I crewed up with Bob Neilson as a
navigator and Bill Copely as the wireless operator and Johnny Swain as the rear
gunner and Ed Weitzler as front gunner and bomb aimer.
Q. Why didn’t you retain Gardiner as your
navigator ?
Oh, he was just posted somewhere
else. We crewed up at OTU and then they
split you up. I think what was
happening was that they were building up the Australian squadrons and were
streaming off the Australians into those squadrons. But I don’t know the reason; that’s an assumption. At that time 460 had been operating, it was
a dispersed aerodrome at Breighton. It
was all very muddy, it was pretty primitive, particularly for the
sergeants; the officers were slightly
better off, not greatly, but slightly better off and we had to go across fields
from the mess to out Nissan huts where we slept and there was a sort of brazier
in the hut to keep you warm.
We started operating. The squadron at that time had had some
losses and had a very good reputation in Bomber Command. The two flight commanders were Billy
Brill, later Wing Comander, he was at this satge, I think a flight
lieutenant and Arthur Doubleday. Bill
stayed in the Air Force after the war for a while and became a wing commander
as I recall, might have been a group captain, I’m not sure and Aurthur
Doubleday left and became a fairly senior person in the Department of Civil
Aviation as it was then. So they were the
two flight comanders - A Flight and B Flight - I think I was in B Flight and
Billy Brill was my flight commander. We
started operating and one of the early operations was the thousand bomber raid
on Emden - I think it was Emden, Emden or Hamburg - which was reasonably
successful. That was the end of the
thousand bomber raids - I think the strain of getting all these aeroplanes
together was a bit much in those days.
So we pressed on operating and without too much trouble. The major spot of bother was when we got
attacked by a night fighter and Eddy Weirtzler got wounded and one other time
when we got holed in the petrol tanks and couldn’t make base and we landed at
an aerodrome on the coast of England.
Generally speaking it was not all that adventurous and while we were
there it was decided that we would convert onto Halifaxes.
At this stage there had been some
changes in the command and Reg Bailey who was an Australian in the RAF was
posted in as flight commander and Arthur Hubbard had finished his tour as
squadron commander and Keith Kaufman had taken over as squadron commander. He was also an Australian in the Royal Air
Force. Towards the end of my tour we
converted onto Halifaxes but before we operated on Halifaxes they were
withdrawn and we re-converted onto Lancasters.
That ws a great day - a great day.
These wonderful Lancasters came and they were just beautiful to
fly. We’d lost a couple of crews in the
conversion onto Halifaxes. The early
Halifaxes had a tail stall or something and they eventually redesigned the tail
and we lost several crews in the conversion onto Halifaxes.
By this time 460 were really
having great number of losses - our loss
rate was very high. And at this
particular time, the chances of getting through a 45 operational tour was 17
per cent and I’ve got something that was put out that ostensively proves this,
but you never know. But 460 were having
a great number of losses - almost the highest loss rate in Bomber Command for
some time. We did quite well; we
brought home our photographs and we were a good crew. We kept together and we did our cockpit drills
and we knew how the other one was thinking and it was good to be able to keep
together. Bob Neilson went off on a
Spec N Course sometime during the tour and we took another navigator who should
never have been on operations. This
navigator had come down over the channel and was in a dinghy and for some
obscure reason - normally they would screen them at that stage - but they put
him back on ops. We had been to
somewhere like Munich, a fairly long trip, and we’d had a brush with something,
I can’t remember whether it was searchlights or a fighter or anti aircraft and
he packed up, he really did. So I just
said, “Well go back and take a lie
down.”
So my idea of navigation was, to get
to England I’d just fly West. So off we
went flying West and when I thought the ETA for the coast was there, the French
coast, I started to come down, but soon went back up again because we were hit
by a barrage of anti-aircraft fire. So
I thought that was strange anyway I stayed up there for a while and I started
to come down again and the same thing happened and so I went up again and then
I came down again and all was quiet. In
re-plotting it back later what had happened was we’d flown West all right but I
was off course and instead of hitting the coast I was going up the Cherberg
Peninsular, so instead of being where the coast was, I was still over
land. Then when I got past the Cherberg
Peninsuar, I went over the Channel Islands, so that was why and it shows you
that my navigation was not that bloody great. Anyway, they then took him off. There was no question of it being lack of
morale fibre or anything like that, he just should never have been put back
after what had happened to him previously.
We then got towards the end of our
tour and then what would we do ? At
this stage, a recruiting team from Pathfinder Force which had relatively just been formed came
around, headed by Haemish McHaddie.
Haemish McHaddie was a recruiting officer. He had entered the RAF as a boy at Halton
and then learnt to fly, sergeant pilot and by this time I think he was a
squadron leader or wing commander and he was in Pathfinder Force with Don
Bennett and his job was to recruit the troops for Pathfinder Force. So what his job was was to go around the
squadrons and pick out those people that he thought from their experience and
their reputation and recommendation from the CO would be worthwhile recruiting
for PFF. He asked us whether we’d go. You had to volunteer, it was not a posting
because if you were not quite through your first tour, you went on without a
break to do your 45 trips. At 30 trips
you were screened and you may come back later but you went off as an instructor
or to headquarters or did something. But
if you went to Pathfinder Force before you’d finished and you hadn’t been
screened, you then went on and did a straight 45. Haemish asked us whether we’d go and we
talked about it as a crew and we all decided yes, we’d give it a go - all
except John Swain who was the rear gunner you recall, decided - he was engaged
- I think at this stage we had about 26 trips up, I can’t remember exactly and
so he had only about four to go to be screened and he thought, “Oh, I’ll finish
my tour and get screened” and so he said, “No I’ll dip out if you don’t
mind”. Eddy Wertzler had also dropped
out of the crew because I told you he’d been wounded and so he couldn’t go back
on ops so he was replaced by, probably
Alan Ritchie.
We went down to PFF and at this
stage I was a flight sergeant and I’d been recommended for my commission and
I’d done my commissioning interviews.
So Johnny decided he wouldn’t go and we went off to PFF and
unfortunately, on the first trip he did with his new crew, he bought it, the
whole crew bought it, which was bad lack.
I still see the girl he was engaged to, Joan Denier - do you remember
Denier’s are a firm of hospital suppliers, splints and beds and things, she
lives in Melbourne, she’s now Joan Morris.
I still see Joan and Jack, he husband.
Off we went to PFF and at that stage we went to 156 squadron and at that
stage 156 had been flying Wellingtons and were ready to convert onto
Lancasters. So my first job was to
convert a couple of pilots onto Lancasters - one called Alistair Lang and
another called Verdon Roe. Verdon Roe was a very interesting character,
he was the son of Dr Marie Stokes and of course Marie Stokes was the birth
control advocate in days when birth control was a subject you just never
mentioned. And it was her son, Verdon
Roe, a wild character, he seemed wild, with a dog and an MG, very good looking,
girls everywhere. So I converted
Alistair Lang and Verdon Roe and then they converted others. That’s how you did it in those days, you got
into an aeroplane and said well there’s the bits and tits and there’s the book
and lets tootle off.
At that stage my commission came
through - it mught have been before I got to PFF, I can’t remember but it was
around about that time. On PFF we got
the latest equipment first. By this time
we already had GEE and on PFF we started to get H2S and we learnt to operate
that. Then you did number of trips and I think you did some sort
of verbal exam in meteorology and bits and pieces and you were then given your
Pathfinder badge on a temporary basis.
You were given a temporary award of the pathfinder badge. The Pathfinder Force were the only force in
the Royal Air Force or the Royal Australian Air Force to have a distinguishing
badge and that was the little golden eagle that you wore underneath your wings
on the flap of your left hand pocket.
You got the temporary award and a certificate saying that you’d been
temporarily awarded the Pathfinder Badge.
You didn’t get your permanent award for some time later and I can’t
remember how many trips you would have to complete to get your permanent award
- I’m not sure whether you had to finish your tour or.. I can’t remember. Anyway, I eventually got it and you get
another certificate saying that you’ve
been permanently awarded the Pathfinder badge.
That was regarded as being.. almost a decoration and it was signed by
D.C.T. Bennett, who of course was the Australian who was AOC Pathfinder Force,
No 8 Group. He had been the pilot of
the top half of the Mayo composite machine that did the first air mail flights
across the Atlantic and he’d been shot down over Norway, doing a mission over
Norway quite early, and had evaded and got back to England and he was
recognised as being the greatest navigator in the Air Force. That was why he was chosen for the PFF because
we did do an advanced course in navigation - the navigator did a more advanced
course than we did but that was part of the examinations you did to get your
temporary award.
We moved to Warboys, which again was
a dispersed aerodrome, a satellite to Witton and Witton was a pre-war
aerodrome; lovely buildings, great mess
and well established and we were at Warboys which was a satellite to it. By that time we were in the Officers’ Mess
and we had a batman; even in those days
we had a batman. He looked after a
couple of us and we had our own rooms then, we were no longer in barracks -
they were little rooms, just plywood (partitions). The batman cleaned your uniform and put the
fire on and made you a cup of tea in the
morning and woke you up. So life became
a bit more civilised being an officer.
I still have the first letter that I wrote back to my parents and I
said, “This is the first letter I’ve written to you from the Officers’ Mess and
gosh it seems good.”
We had a great commanding officer,
Tommy Rivett-Carnac, a South African and again I met him later. He died if Altseimers about five years ago
now but Ann and I went to visit him
after I retired - he was a DSO, DFC man as I recall and he retired from
the Air Force as a Group Captain and went back to South Africa from whence he
came, but never did very well in civil life - he became a sales rep for Dulux
Paints or something. He then went back
to England and met a WAAF in the Air Force, Wendy, whom he married, a very nice
person and was living up in the Coltwolds when we saw him later. But Tommy Rivett-Carnac was a great CO and
he taught us a few South African songs and we gave him a fighting cock. He was a real fighting man - shortish,
chunky, bug moustache and we gave him a fighting cock which used to sit on the
rafters. It was a really gung-ho
squadron this. Verdon Roe who came in
one night full as a boot and rode his bicycle around the mess. Intrepid types would put soot on their feet
and would be held up and they’d make
foot marks across the ceiling. It was a
great atmoshpere and it was one - it sounds a bit snobbish but - a more
gentlemanly style than 460 squadron. We
had tea at about four o’clock, a high tea where you could have a boiled egg and
fresh Hovis bread and then you’d have dinner, providing you were not operating
of course, at about half past seven or eight.
It was run, as the officers’ mess was, run in a more gentlemanly manner
and as I say with a batman and so on.
I think it was before this - one of
the things we used to have to do was to take a photograph, in the Wellingtons
on 460 and later the Lancasters and so on.
We were armed with a photoflash tube and it was automatically connected
to the bomb release so that when you released your bombs, the photoflash was
also released and at the time that your bombs were due to go off, your
photoflash should also go off and take a photograph of where your bombs
landed. I’ve got some photographs of my
own. When you were being debriefed
after the raid, you told the intelligence officer how you thought your bombs
had gone and where you thought you’d dropped them and so on. By the next morning the photographs would
prove whether you were right or wrong and the photographs would be plotted by
the intelligence team, the photo plotters, where your bombs had dropped and
then a plot came out - at the bottom of your photograph it was identified where
you dropped and then on the plot was where all those bombs had dropped, of
those who had dropped withing the area and identified to the squadron and the
crew - I’ve got some at home which Bob sent me because he did some research for
that book of his. So we had developed a
reputation for getting our bombs in reasonable positions and coming back with
good photographs.
But on 156 squadron we went even further. Each crew put in a shilling per crew member
and whoever got closest to the aiming point got the kitty. So there were seven shillings per crew and if
you had, say, ten aircraft, it was seventy shillings and seventy shillings in
those days would go a long way so you’d divide it up and you’d get ten
shillings each. We really worked hard
to get that kitty and again we were pretty lucky and got it quite a few times. On one occasion though we didn’t get it but
they gave us a booby prize because my bombs on a raid on Milan had been plotted
on the Synagog, so they thought they’d give me a booby prize. I took Rivett-Carnac on one trip with me and
he wrote the introduction to Bob’s book - he came with us on one trip which was
good but the bugger would keep wanting to see what was going on in the cockpit
and would light his torch and I was the captain and I just told him to turn the
bloody torch out. But he came along as supernumary.
It was really towards the end of
that tour that they decided that they were going to build or thinking of
building Lancasters in Australia and a war loan tour and all the rest of
it. By this time I think I’d done 42
trips and so we were reaching the end of our second tour really, our extended
tour and at 45 you did come off, they didn’t let you go on. That was a total of 30 plus 15, but without
a break. That’s where the seventeen per
cent came from. Somebody in Pathfinder
Force did the research which said that at that stage of the war which was 42/43
the chances of doing a 45 trip tour were about seventeen percent
finishing.
At this stage, the Australians were
thinking of taking an aircraft over and building Lancasters or doing something
and it was also at the time when they were just considering the invasion of
Japan, just considering that, maybe, one day...It was decided that the RAF
would provide a component of the invasions or the softening up force or
whatever and so they were considering Tiger Force, which is as I understand it
was to be the RAF component of the invasion of Japan and they wanted to know
how they were going to get the bloody aeroplanes to South-East Asia because
they didn’t know whether Burma would be free at this stage, or whether
Singapore or all that area would be free and so they thought we might have to go from East to West instead of West
to East. East to West is not the best
way to go because of the prevailing winds going in the wrong direction. So the three things came together a bit - a
prooving flight for Tiger Force, an aircraft to Australia and a War Loan
tour. In what order they put these
things I don’t know. So they wanted a
crew and we were about the most experienced Australian crew at this stage and
so they picked on us.
The AOC in London was Wrig and Wrig
got us down and said, “Well boys, this is what we want you to do.” And we said, “What about what we’re
doing.” and he said, “Oh I’ll fix that,
I’ll fix that.” I think Bob’s book goes
through it. This wasn’t taken too
happily by Don Bennett. He was the boss
and he wasn’t going to have some pip
squeak of an air vice-marshal from Australia telling him what to do, dragging
his crew out. He called me up and said,
“Isaacson, if you and your crew take on this assignment before you’ve finished
your 45 trips, you’ll go without your pathfinder badge and you’ll go in
disgrace.” So I said, “Well Sir, it’s got nothing to do with me.” He said, “Well, I’m going to tell Wrig you’ve got to finish.” I think Bob tells the story in the book. So we finished and it was interesting that
of the three trips we had left - I think I had about 42 up - of the three
trips, two of them were on Berlin.
And so we finished our tour and that
was fine and then we went down to the A.V. Roe works at Chippenham and we did
the air tests on this aeroplane they’d given us and so on. That was it. I came back to Australia, flew back, and we
flew round Australia and then I went down to East Sale as assistant chief
ground insructor, chief ground instructor and then a flying instructor on
Beauforts and then I came up to the Director of Flying Safety - a thing for me to do ! Then I flew under the Sydney Harbour Bridge
in one of these things and at that time it was interesting because they wanted
to court martial me but I was attached to Southern Area - they had them in
areas in those days, Southern Area was down here and Eastern Area was based in
Sydney - and I did the deed in Sydney but I was a pilot in Southern Command and
as I understand it both AOCs wanted to court martial me and as far as I know
they’re still arguing as to which one should do it. So I didn’t get court martialled. So from East Sale I went to the Directorate
of Flying Safety, with Johnny Lerew. It
was he who sent that wonderful signal from Rabaul when he was instructed to
take off and intercept the Migs (Zeros) in Wirraways “We who are about to die
salute you.” and he sent it in Latin to Air Board, or to Bostock, who was
operations. And that was it Peter.
Q. You did you SFTS on Harvards and then
went to heavies.
Yes. It depended, as I understand it, on what
they wanted at that time and if you recall that in 1941 there was not much for
fighters to do and they were just building up the Bomber Command and at that
time of course, the only offensive operations was Bomber Command. There was no army on the mainland of
Europe. They did these sporadic raids; St Nazairre a bit later on and on Narvik, but
there was no real offense and it was
Bomber Command was the offensive force.
That was why - and so it really didn’t matter, I put in for Bomber Command too and some put
in for Fighter Command and then later on once they got plenty of bombers well
they put them in to I suppose light bombers and fighters once again.
I think I’ve covered the training,
the routines and tactics. They were
fairly straight forward. The OTUs were
good and the training on cross countries and on the ground was pretty
satisfactory, night flying and all those sort of things.
Personalities. Keith Kaufman was a very good leader, Rivett-Carnac was a very good leader. Arthur Hubbard: I had quite a regard for Arthur Hubbard, a
lot of people didn’t - he was a difficult character. We went through a few squadron commanders on
460 squadron, I can’t remember whether a chap called Dillworth came in between
Hubbard and Kaufman but he did come in and he got the chop fairly quicky. The other one I told you about Reg Bailey
coming in and Reg Bailey then went on to TAA and became a general manager in
TAA and is now one of my trustees on the Shrine, he’s still going. Reg Bailey, DSO, DFC.
I was delighted to be in Europe and
not the Pacific. In fact there was no
Pacific war when I went to Europe, the Pacific war hadn’t started. I must say that when the pacific war did
start we all felt that we wanted to come back and Stanley Bruce came to
Lichfield, I think we were still a Lichfield, and said, “Well look chaps, I’m
afraid there’s no way of getting you back for the time being.”
Serving in a non-RAAF unit. I was much happier in the RAF squadron than
I was when I was in 460. Australians
when they get together become ...always things are never good enough... “we
didn’t do it like this at home.” The
RAF squadrons - a mixed squadron always
seemed to me to be a happier squadron than an Australian. Certainly 460 and maybe that was because the
living was pretty rough at Breighton, the losses were very high. I was much happier on an RAF, a mixed
squadron.
Q. A lot of people have mentioned that
discipline was a bit more relaxed on an RAF squadrons than on the Australian
ones. Did you notice that ?
No, I didn’t notice that. There was a greater demarkation of officers
and men on an RAF squadron, on a mixed squadron than on the RAAF
squadrons. Yes. it was gentlemen and the
others on an RAF squadron. That was the
impression right through the war. The
British have never got over their class consciousness, never, even today it’s the same, it really is.
Q. Did that impact on their performance at
all ?
No I don’t think so, I don’t think
so. Of course you got the odd occasion
where you’d get a sergeant or a flight sergeant as captain of the aircraft and
a flying officer or even a flight lieutenant as the navigator or the wireless
operator or something like that. IT
worked as a crew. In some squadons I
believe, I’m not sure about this, they had an aircrew mess, rather than an
officers’ and...but I only heard of it, I never experienced one.
The Leadership. Bomber Harris was very highly regarded, very
highly - although he was called ‘Butch’ Harris and he did send his troops off
on pretty hairy trips. We went off on a
raid on Essen once, with H2S, it was one of the early proving flights with H2S
and I think we had about 12 aircraft on that raid, about 12 aeroplanes, on
Essen, and that wasn’t a nice thing.
But Bomber Harris was very highly regarded and I never struck an officer
who was senior to me that I didn’t respect.
No I found them all, flight commanders,
squadron commanders always good.
One of the things that did happen to us on Pathfinder Force, we were given accelerated
promotion. So as I mentioned to you, I
can’t remember whether I got my commission just before I went to PFF or after,
but I went down there as a pilot officer and once I had got my temporary award
of the Pathfinder Badge I was promoted to acting flight lieutenant - acting,
temporary. Because you only became
temporary anyway, you never became a full flight lieutenant. So I went from flight sergeant to flight
lieutenant in about two months or something.
Moral Aspects. Look, I had no compunction, I’m afraid. I was Jewish of course and knew what had
gone on, or had an idea because my mother had been involved in bringing people
out from Europe in the late-1930s - from 36/37 onwards. I had no compunction about bombing the
civilian population. Pathfinder Force’s
job really was to create these fires and our job was to find the target area
and then find the aiming point and the aiming point was usually - if it wasn’t
the Krupp’s works or a military instillation or a munitions installation of
some sort or a marshalling yard or something like that, submarine pens - it was
the centre of the old city, which of course was wooden in Europe, and the job
was to create a bloody great fire. Then
as that fire took, to drop the markers further on, further into the area. I don’t think that many people had much
compunction - it was war and I think we regarded ......the moralistic aspect of
it, I don’t think, entered that many people’s minds. It was something that was happening and that
we had joined up to do and we did it. I
don’t think we had any moralistic or non-moralistic - it was almost dreamlike,
almost dreamlike. You sort of lived for
the day and what was happening and we were young too - 21 or 22.
What kept people going in
Britain. I think the thing that kept
people going in Britain was eventual victory and to see the end to the
hardships under which they were living - sometimes the continual air raid
warnings and later on the doodle bugs, the V1s and V2s, the restrictions on food and so on. And of course, in London, life was pretty
gay, pretty bright. The theatres were
open. The theatres would start about
five o’clock in the afternoon and there were night clubs and what were called
the bottle parties, bottle clubs. You
just went down there and you could get a drink. Australia House was a great refuge, Codgers Inn,
you’ve no doubt heard about that, Codger’s Hotel, and Eve. On operations, of course, we got six days’
leave every six weeks while we were operating and you had a girl friend
probably in London, or somewhere, and so life was enjoyable. I can’t say that I laboured under any great
strain, maybe I’m a bit phlegmatic and unimaginative.
Q. But not just what kept the Britons
going, but what kept all you people going, getting back into aeroplanes night
after night.
I think you sort of got into a sort
of lifestyle. That was happening and
that’s what you expected. You did your
NFTs, your night flying tests - you..........just expected it, It’s hard to
visualise. It’s interesting, the only
times when I felt beforehand that something was going to go wrong, it did -
sort of a premonition. It was only on a
couple of occasions, two or three occasions that I had a premonition that
something was going to go wrong tonight.
Once it was only something quite simple, one of the engines packed up
when I was just about on take off and that was an aborted trip and you got very
cross at aborted trips because you’d gone through this briefing and getting out
there and hyping yourself up and having your last minute leak and nothing
happened.
Q. Did you have any little superstitions or
customs that you observed ?
No - always had a leak before on the
tyre, that’s about all. A girl gave me
a silk stocking and I wore that as a scarf.
My wife - was she my wife then ? - anyway she found it and put it in the
fireplace and I lit the fire. “Have you
ever seen that scarf of mine ?” “Oh,”
she said, “You burnt it.” It was a dirty
trick. I think that was the case with
most people. Those people that did have
any sort of problems, really didn’t last.
It was an extrordinary thing, Pete, one could almost tell in some cases
the people who wouldn’t last. There was
one particular, and I remember them very vividly, something always went wrong,
always went wrong. Whether it was
manufactured or whether it was true, but you just had the instinctive feeling
they were going to go, and they
did.
The Administration side - we didn’t
come across very much, it didn’t affect us that much. We were left pretty well to ourselves. There were no actual parades that I can
recall on the squadrons. It was
different on the OTUs of course, but talking of squadron life. I can’t think of really doing any drill -
the only time we did was when the King and Queen inspected us
Q You didn’t have a moring parade every
morning - some squadrons evidently did.
Not that I can remember - I can’t
remember a morning parade.
Q. Could you get RAAF uniforms ?
Yes, and when we got commissioned we
got a magnificent uniform; Saville Row
tailored - Carr, Son and Wore - Saville Row - two uniforms, tin trunk, a
beautifully cut and tailor made overcaot, greatcoat, - very well kitted
out, very well. There were no problems with kitting. We were pretty well looked after, particularly
as officers.
Q. If I could just comment - a thing that
surprises me is that in the middle of this dreadful war, and it really was an
horrendous few years, but life in England seemed to go on.
Yes, As I said, theatres and
restaurants. My cousins, I told you
they were both doctors and their daughter and their son became doctors later, -
there were four of them - but my cousin, I don’t know why, but he had a
chauffeuse who used to drive him around.
Why, I don’t know, I never bothered to inquire. There were shortages of eggs and bits and
pireces, but you could still get a decent meal in a restaurant and on leave,
the good restaurants were still going.
London and the provincial towns were carrying on as usual. Our off duty times and activities. Well, we all had bicycles. The captain and navigator on the squadron
had a bicycle and at Breighton, I think it was a pre-war base over at
Holme-on-Spalding Moor, just quite close to Breightn and we used to cycle over
there. Pub life was a big part of our
off duty times on the squadron. ENSA,
the entertainment people, used to come around and put on shows - I can’t
remember if we had any film shows - but they would come and out on a
concert. You’d go into the local towns,
local villages and you’d go to a film, have
a meal at a cafe. It was faily relaxed
and you got to know a few of the girls around and they were pleasant.
I was back here on VE day, so I
can’t comment there. When I got back
here, I flew around for quite a while in various ways, pranged the aeroplane at Evans Head on a
short runway and a wind change on the downwind leg, and then went to East Sale, the Directorate
of Flying Safety and so on. And then I
went back to the Argus and Anne and I got engaged and she went down with polio
a week later and I started my business and here we are today - 50 years
later.
Q. A lot of the chaps have said they were
treated very coldly when they got back to
Australia.
Yes, very very coldly. At East Sale, there was a bugger there
called Tony Jay, I remember and I met his wife later and by this time he’d
divorced her in Adelaide. They didn’t
like the people who had served in Europe, because they had far more experienced
and some of us had gongs of course and that was a question of jealousy. They were very jealous and treated you very
coldly - it was difficult to make friends with them. That was at East Sale where I spent some
time. It wore off, as you got to know a
few people, it wore off and there were a couple of quite nice characters down
there, at East Sale who had been in England - Bull Garing, he’d served in flying
boats - 10 Squadron - he broke the ice a bit.
Q. Was there anything to the white feather
story ?
I’ve got a white feather at
home. I sometimes changed into civilian
clothes on leave and I’ve got one a woman gave me in Collins Street. I never got anything in England.
Q. Some have reported that people serving
in England had got them.
I never heard of that - what from people
in Australia who thought they should have been back here - no, I never heard of
that. But some of these old dears
wanted to show their patriotism and they gave odd people a white feather. Yes, a woman stuck it into my hand and said,
‘You take this.’
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