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Alan gave a most
interesting talk to the Branch last month.
This is his story as recorded on the BBC WW2 People’s War web site.
“You’re more than
a number in my little red book.” So started a song, which we used to
sing during the war, but most numbers are lost to us. On my way to
holiday I saw on a cleaning trolley the number 271 and my memory flashed
back to another railway journey as a freshly trained flight mechanic,
sitting on my kit bag in a crowded train corridor to join 271 Squadron
in
Doncaster
. We were travelling from Locking in
Weston-Super-Mare
where for four months a group of trainees had specialised on the new
Napier Sabre engine being fitted to the latest fighter, the Hawker
Typhoon, so we were looking forward to joining a Typhoon Squadron to
service these monster fighters.
Imagine our chagrin when reporting for duty at
Doncaster
to be told that the aircraft we would be servicing would be the new
transport aircraft, the Douglas DC3 or Dakota as the RAF named it. So we
spent the next few days familiarising ourselves with the large Pratt
& Whitney radial engines and the 95' wingspan of these fat green
elephants of aircraft.
But
on 29th February 1944 our 271 Squadron moved to an airfield in the
Cotswolds near Cirencester and a little village called Down Ampney.
Although we had never heard of it, apparently it was the birthplace of
the well-known composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.
On arrival we were briefed on our future role which was to train
to fly all aspects of airborne Operations, Glider towing, paratrooper
dropping, air despatch, the dropping of supplies to ground troops and
air ambulance, for at Down Ampney we had a large Casualty Air Evacuation
Centre fitted with a fully surgical hospital and we were told that
between airborne operations we would be bringing back casualties from
the European war fronts. Shortly after settling into our corrugated iron
Nissen huts we were joined by another Dakota Squadron, No 48. Both
Squadrons comprised three flights, A, B & C, with ten Dakotas to a
flight, so we totalled sixty
Dakotas
in all. Later on, when we were advanced in our training we had both
Squadrons taking off towing the wooden Horsa gliders and circling the
village - the noise was horrendous and I often felt sorry for those 280
or so villagers torn out of their rural serenity by all of these
aircraft and over 3,500 airmen and WAAFS who had taken over their
village, particularly when the village bakery opened at 8 am and was
sold out of every crumb by 8.15 am, the long queues at the tiny Post
Office and the sole telephone box, the never-ending hunt for beer in the
local pub which soon became carefully husbanded by the publican for the
locals, whilst we could only buy a liquid paint stripper which they
called scrumpy or rough cider.
In March we soon learned a lesson about the dangers of war and
flying hazards when whilst practicing close formation flying, the wing
tip of one Dakota contacted the elevators of another, which plunged to
the ground killing all of the aircrew and some of our mechanics who had
gone up for a joy ride. By coincidence the pilot whose wing tip caused
the accident was killed himself a month later when the glider he was
towing got out of control and brought his Dakota down.
Alan’s
story continues in our next edition.
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