Halifax bomber

From here Matthew went on to Andreas on the Isle of Man for gunnery training and his first flights were in an Avro Anson. He then progressed onto Wellingtons and finally he went onto the Halifax. Matthew felt that the Wellington was a good plane but it didn’t have the bomb load or could travel long distances and that the Halifax was the best by far. Lancaster’s were in his opinion overrated because of the raids on the Mohne and Eder dams but it couldn’t do what the Halifax did. A Halifax could tow two gliders a Lancaster couldn’t even tow one. The Halifax was used in situations and operations where the Lancaster was no use, such as dropping agents into France at low levels. The Lancaster couldn’t come in a low level and get away quickly enough.

Matthew was based at Leconfield 3 miles from Beverly and 10 miles from Hull, East Yorkshire. He was posted to 640 Squadron, which was only eleven months old when he joined. The squadron only being formed around January or February 1944. The crew consisted of Ian the pilot, Sandy the wireless operator, Alan Dansey the bomb aimer, Ron and George. They were all into their twenties apart from George who was twenty and Matthew, the rear gunner, who was the youngest at eighteen.

Matthew 2nd left, rear

Mathew’s time in the RAF was not without incidents the first happening when undergoing training. On the aircraft the’ airspeed indication’ was worked out by the air rushing through a tube on the wing of the aircraft. This was called a pilot tube or a pilot head The pilot head had little holes in it, which the wind blew through. It should have been covered at night when the plane wasn’t flying so that no wind or rain would get into it. “One day we were taking this aircraft up on air test and the Skipper said to the acting officer, “ There’s something wrong here we’re climbing at zero knots per hour – No, we’re climbing at 300 knots per hour”. And he put the plane into dive –“No, we’re going at zero knots per hour, there’s something wrong.” So we called up base and were diverted to Carnaby, an emergency landing field with a 3-mile long runway. We couldn’t get the airspeed for landing, so they sent up another Halifax along side us. The Skipper had to adjust the speed to the Halifax beside us for landing. If the Halifax hadn’t been there we could have come in at over 100mph instead of 90mph or only 70mph and dropped onto the runway. All it was, was the pilot head had not been covered the previous night and rain got in and every time we dived the water came up into the pilot head and when we were climbing it was the other way.“

In all the crew were credited with thirty trips. Some aircrews flew forty trips but some of these were only ‘tip and run’ raids. So there was a points system introduced for distance and crews had to do forty runs before they were finished flying. However, after D Day aircrews were flying greater distances and the number was brought down to thirty. Matthew flew to such places as Magdeburg, Leipzig, Goch, Chemnitz and Colonge, and twice to Essen, Mainz, Kamen and Hamburg.

Matthew 2nd left with the rest of the crew and his Halifax

Mathew’s first trip was one never to be forgotten. Here described in his own words:

“Well, the first raid we did was to Duisburg in 17th Dec 1944 – it’s printed in there (pointing to head). We went out, we were a few minutes late on target, but Skipper decided we were going to press on and drop our bombs. Sure you’ve often heard the bomb aimers instructions to the pilot, left, left steady, steady and so on. Well, the bomb-aimer got down on the bomb sight and gave the instructions. “Left, steady, steady, bombs gone Skipper.” - and then he said, “Oh! There’s nothing going down. So they must be hung up.” They were frozen. Frozen up on the clips that held them. So we went round a second time.

It was really picturesque that first raid, you couldn’t see the ground with cloud. We were about 17,000 feet. The tops of the clouds were 10,000 feet and these clouds were lit up by the search lights from below. The search lights weren’t getting through but they lit up the clouds the result was we were above and the enemy fighters above that, and we were just silhouetted against the white cloud, but fortunately if they did spot us they didn’t come near us.

When we came round the second time the bomb aimer shouted bombs gone and then - “No – they still haven’t gone Skipper.” We went round a third time – we were mad you know – with all this flak coming up at us. So by this time I’d had enough, so after he said, “Bombs gone.” And added– “No, I don’t think so.” I said, ‘It’s alright, I can see bombs going down!” Well, I could see bombs going down – only they weren’t ours though.”
“That’ll be all right.” said the Skipper, and he set a course for home. You always had a photoflash when your bombs went. You flew straight and level for about 30 seconds until the photoflash went off so intelligence could tell exactly where your bombs had dropped. The bombs were still in the air but they could tell from the way they were going down where they would drop. So we came over the North Sea quite forgetting about the photo flash and the skipper said, “Alan, you’d better open the bomb doors in case there’s any ‘hang ups’. By that time we were down to four or five thousand feet and it stops freezing at that height. The clips holding the bombs in the bomb bay, had defrosted so when he pressed the button all the bombs went down into the North Sea instead of going down over the target at Duisberg and with that the photoflash went off.

After each flight you went into interrogation, they call it ‘debriefing’ now and the intelligence officer was there, asking various questions. What we had seen? What aircraft attacked and so on and about the bombing run? So we told him we definitely bombed on the third run, definitely our bombs went.

Next morning we went up to the intelligence room, just to see how things were and what the result of the raid was. There were all these little photographs, just about 6 by 4 from all the other crews’ bombs and there was a big photograph larger than A4 of our bombs dropping in the North Sea. So that was our first raid over Duisburg.” After that they always made sure the bombs went down where they should. However, that was until one night :

“One night we came back and when we were over the North Sea we opened the bomb doors and we reckoned the bombs had gone but there was one still hung up and it wasn’t until we were landing – it’s a wonder we didn’t blow ourselves up. We were just opening the bomb doors that was the last thing the bomb aimer did before the engines were cut when there were shouts, “Close the bomb doors, close the bomb doors there’s a loose bomb.” One bomb, a 500lb had defrosted itself. So there was panic stations to get that bomb off because these bombs all had a fuse on them. It wasn’t impact that burst the bombs there was a fuse. These fuses were set at a certain height above the ground and they went off about 10ft above the ground, or maybe less and when they exploded the blast went out, whereas if they exploded in the ground there would just be a blast in the ground it wouldn’t do any harm.” This one didn’t do any harm as the ‘armourist’ defused it safely.