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At First Sight
Disappearing Into Bofors Type Flak - Hector Bridges
Having
started my RAF career as a Halton Apprentice I later remustered and was
trained as a pilot at the British Flying Training School in Arizona,
subsequently becoming a Flying Instructor there. Returning to UK in
August 1944 with 1000hrs on my log book I was posted, with the
connivance of Hamish Mahaddie, to PFF and subsequently to 627 Squadron
and stayed at Woodhall Spa until after disbandment of the Squadron in
September 1945, having spent an exciting year full of incident.
Forty five years on memories are blurred, but I do recall that one of
the very first chaps I met on 627 - standing next to me in the Mess
urinal - was John Reid, who had been with me for three years in the
same barrack room at RAF Halton before the war. Unfortunately, John
crashed in the Shetlands on the way back from an operation at
Trondheim, described elsewhere in this book. I must have been flying
quite close to him on that stormy night because, although I could hear
his radio transmissions and he mine, he was unable to raise traffic
control at the diversionary airfield at Scatsa, Shetland and I acted as
his “go-between” so to speak. The last I heard was that he was on final
approach and then that ominous silence.
One or two operations stand out in my mind - the daylight raid on the
Gestapo HQ in Oslo, where my navigator was hit - the so-called
“gardening” operations on the Weser where the opposition was more than
lively and marking a target at Sassnitz where, according to the chap
who came after me “I seemed to disappear in a mass of Bofors type flak
for a few seconds and we were relieved to see you climbing out,
especially as we had to follow you in”.
Of course, flying hazards did not all arise from operations. I remember
a night training exercise at Wainfleet, where I had just dived down and
dropped my practice bombs pretty close to the target and as I climbed
around and gave the all clear I watched the lights of the next aircraft
dip down towards the sea, a thousand feet below. We normally pulled out
of the dive at 700 feet or so, but this time the aircraft just kept
going. I lost another friend, Bob Cornell.
On a lighter note, the morning after the VE day celebrations a
volunteer pilot was required to fly - at 9 in the morning - an unnamed
VIP to RAF Waddington. Against all the rules of service life, I
volunteered. When I taxied out and lined up on the runway I discovered
I could see, not just one strip of tarmac, but two - diverging
slightly!
However, by closing one eye things became fairly normal. I did a “Long
John Silver” take-off without mishap and returned safely. The word
“breathalyser” had, fortunately, not then been coined.
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Copyright © 1943-2012 627 Squadron in Retirement or as
credited
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