Mepal airfield

‘Luck and a Lancaster’ by Harry Yates is a good read including plenty about his time with 75 Sqn at Mepal.

Some nice additions to an old thread!

Also just found out that my Dad was attached to 42 MU. They fixed the bits that 75 Sqdn. chaps couldn’t handle

The Lancaster at MOTAT, Auckland has recently had it’s markings changed to a 75 (NZ) Squadron Lanc that took part in the Manna drops. The official unveiling is today, by chance!

http://rnzaf.proboards.com/thread/21096/captains-fancy-art

That’s encouraging to hear.

Operation Manna is being taught up in Lincolnshire – I understand that Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire may also be co-ordinating an exchange visit of some kind with some Dutch schools! 🙂

Dutch Children still learn about Operation Manna at the primary schools.

That’s nice to hear, especially as it seems a lot of British children have no idea what D-Day was. 🙁

I came across this thread while looking for anything to do with RAF Mepal. As I was talking to my Dad this morning
and found that he was based there at the time of the D-Day landings. He was a fitter working on Lancasters.

Thanks for this personal story.

Operation Manna

My dad took part in some of these ops. After flying on the last operational sorties that 75 Sqn completed he wrote “The very next day we were engaged in practice supply dropping. Rumours had been going around that the Germans were about to pack it in and this was shown by the lack of defence on our last trip. We were told that we would be dropping supplies to the Dutch from low level and that the Germans had agreed not to shoot at us, provided we kept to designated lanes. On the 30 April we took off at 4.50pm with our bomb bays full of supplies and dropped them (just by opening the bomb doors) at the racecourse at Rotterdam. It was nice to see the Dutch waving madly and some of them running around in the dropping zone where they were likely to get killed as the bags of flour etc would have done them in for sure. The Germans did not wave and we understood that there had been a few rounds let off at some of the aircraft. On the 2nd of May we did this again but this time we dropped the supplies on a large clear area at Delft near The Hague. In flying on these two trips at low level over Holland we could see very clearly the results of the bombings that had breached the dykes – done to make life difficult for the occupying German forces. Of course it made life difficult for everybody and was probably one of the reasons why the Dutch were very short of food. I took some photos on these (and also on some of the daylight bombing raids) which was very naughty as we were not supposed to have cameras on board.)”