Daring young RAF men in flying machines

**stuartblack** · 20th January 2023, 20:16

Baz,
Yes, writing about these experiences seems to be a thing. My dad's best friend and brother-in-law, Dougie Williamson wrote a book called "Aimless Wanderings of a Nincompoop" which recalls his "Last Op" in the last days of the war where his Lancaster was hit by flak and he bailed out, ending up in a farmer's field with a German farmer pointing a pitch fork at him. When the plane limped back to base, the rest of the crew wondered what had happened to the Flight Engineer! It is still available on Amazon.
https://books.google.ca/books/about/...AJ&redir_esc=y
No need to order a copy, the best part of the story is on the web where the JN-Dog Boys 75(NZ) Squadron put their stories online:
http://www.jn-dogboys.com/operations/the-final-op/
Dougie later republished his book with one written by his German neighbour in Toronto called "The Nazi & The Luftgangster", also available on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0473220865

**David Duxbury** · 20th January 2023, 21:39

stuartblack, your statement about converting from "medium weight" Catalina to heavier Oxford aircraft (if I am reading this right) just does not make sense to me. The Catalina was a far heavier aircraft (max take off weight on water could be as high as 35,000 pounds) than the low powered and very small twin-engined Airspeed Oxford (max take off weight about 7,300 pounds, this was a dedicated training aircraft for multi-engine pilots, including use for Beam (or "Blind") Approach Training. Thus Catalina could be up to 7 times heavier than Oxford.

**stuartblack** · 21st January 2023, 22:13

David, thanks for the clarification. This is very helpful as I work my way through the terminology. My father had undertaken training in Grosse Ile (N25 Stearman) and Pensacola Florida (Catalinas), following which he was slotted into the 1332 Heavy Conversion Unit for further training, before being posted to a Transport unit. I simply assumed the new aircraft he was trained on were "heavier". So perhaps it is the "conversion" (of skills) part of HCU that is more important.

**bvs** · 21st January 2023, 23:07

Hi Stuart
Was it possible that he was trained to help ferry a Catalina across the Atlantic ?Quite often the Ferry Catalina Captain was from Ferry Command and the Co Pilot was RAF.

**stuartblack** · 31st January 2023, 02:46

Hi BVS,
It doesn't look like it because there is no record of this flight in his Flight Log and his Service Record says that he went from From Pensacola back to no 31 in Moncton (somewhere around 23 May 1944). His Service Record has a date for "Pilot" as 14 May 1944, which I assume is him getting his wings on that date, again I assume this was in Moncton. The Service Records lists his journey back to the UK as "HE" embarking Canada on 16 June 1944 and disembarking UK on 24 June 1944.
But his journey from the UK to Canada in 1943 is a bit of a mystery, as it is listed as "7906 Draft" in his Record of Service (10 July 1943 arriving in Canada 15 July 1943) -- 5 days to cross the Atlantic. The previous entry was arriving at ACDC on 18 June 1943.
Stuart