COMBAT AND COMPETITION.pdf - Lakes Gliding Club

COMBAT AND COMPETITION
to collect a series of pictures on the oblique camera. It was a different
approach to obtain more detail and make things easier for pilots who
had not been photo recce trained. When the prints came through the
low obliques were excellent. The blind bombing, as expected, showed
an error in hundreds of yards. But Group insisted that it should go
ahead.
The enemy offensive, which had started so well before Christmas,
ground to a halt. The deep salient south of Liege slowly collapsed and
we were grounded once more. Cloud and mist shrouded the airfield.
Snow fell, froze, turned to slush, and fell again. Some hardy souls
located an indoor pool which had no heating and went swimming. 'B'
flight found an abandoned American ambulance, brought it back to
Deurne, gutted the interior and built in a set of wooden lockers for our
flying clobber and parachutes. It was a great success.
My own activities centred around a Fortress which had crash
landed close to the runway. With New Year's day still fresh in our
minds I persuaded Stan Carr to remove one of the twin 0.5 calibre
turrets, and we helped ourselves to several spare guns and every round
of ammunition on board. The turret fitted nicely into an old German
flak position close to the squadron dispersal. If the Luftwaffe ever
returned we would have our own means of defence.
While we were adding the finishing touches a V2 fell apart,
directly overhead. Pumps, turbines and twisted shards of metal came
showering down around the sandbagged emplacement, accompanied by
the familiar receding thunder of a sonic boom.
That experience led to an interesting evening with Neville Thomas.
I had called at his trailer for what was intended to be a brief chat. In
the end we talked far into the night, keeping the cold at bay with the
help of a whisky bottle. We talked about the enemy offensive in the
Ardennes, their jet and rocket aircraft, and weapons to come. We even
frightened ourselves with the thought of V2s carrying poison gas and
atomic warheads!
One for the road - and the moment had come to try out my latest
idea, a forward facing camera installation for our photo recce
Typhoons. I explained that the technique would be very similar to low
level bombing. It would require no special training and should give us
really close up target pictures. Tommy looked at me owlishly - we had
been at the whisky for a long time:
"If you can do it Dave, and it works, Denys Gillam and Johnny
Wells would be delighted."
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