Atmospheric East Kirkby.
A short tribute to my father courtesy of the “Just Jane” sountrack.
My father’s Nuremburg raid display at East Kirkby.
Operation Grapple 1956-1957 60 page booklet
All previous British atomic tests had taken place in and around Australia but for testing weapons of the scope involved in Operation Grapple they needed somewhere more isolated. It needed favourable wind and weather conditions for air and sea operations and an island in the Pacific was deemed most suitable. Christmas Island was remote from any inhabited area and had a suitable harbour for landing supplies and scope to build an airfield from scratch capable of handling Valiants and other large aircraft like the Shackleton.
The logistics to maintain a large force of various types of aircraft 10,000 miles from U.K. maintenance facilities was immense. Not forgetting the fact that some aircraft were war-time transports and others the latest up-to-date medium bombers. In the end 10,000 tons of ground equipment and spares in 15,000 packing cases was sent out and that’s not including fuel, oil and compressed gasses etc.
All the armed services were involved in detailed and varied ways. Put simply the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy sorted sea patrols and transport. The Army did the building work and the RAF as well as dropping the bomb did meteorological reconnaissance, cloud analysis after the burst, transport, SAR and patrolled the exclusion zone.
Friday 8th November “H” bomb No 4 letter home
Diary entry: Tea. Dinner. Couple of beers. Life goes on!
We donated most of the Operation Grapple items to 206 Squadron, just keeping the letter, the diary and the booklet after letting the squadron historian copy them.
Hi TwinOtter23. No problem regards the RAF Blyton items for the West Lindsey project. I can’t wait to see it in print.
As well as being very methodical and ordered my father was also a bit of a hoarder so his photo album, log books and diaries often have little bookmarks or additional bits of memorabilia tucked away amongst the pages. You never know what may be lurking as you turn the next page.
This menu gives a little snap shot of life in the Sergeants mess in 1943 at Christmas. Not a bad spread considering.
2nd December on only his 2nd trip. Target Berlin 23 flak holes (Landed Bradwell Bay). DV 302 (H) did 121 opl. sorties and was scrapped in January 1947.
20th January. Target Berlin 3 fighters Me 110’s. Bomb doors stuck open and no ASI all the way from target. Holes in port fin and rudder and large hole in wing. (Landed Lindholme)
5th February. Air test 23,000 ft for new A/C ME 616 B-BEER.
24th February 1944. Target Sweinfurt – Ball bearing factory.
25th February. Target Augsburg. Port engine driven generator u/s No 3 engine feathered dropped “Cookie” in Channel and returned landing by torchlight!!
24th March. Target Berlin. 2,500 tons dropped and 73 A/C missing (Landed Shippham)
30th March. Target Nuremberg. Total A/C on raid – 795 – Halifax and Lancs with 96 A/C lost. 101 lost 7 A/C with 56 crew from the 26 A/C sent.
10 April. Target Aulnoye – Railway junction bombed @ 8,700 ft.
28th May. Target Aachen – Bombed @ 10,000 ft flying through A.A. barrage.
31st May. Target Trappes (Paris) Last sortie on 101 Squadron.
ME 616 was lost 30th June just a month later with it’s new crew.
8 man crew because of the addition of a Special W.O.P. who operated the extra electronics (A.B.C. or Airborne cigar).
5 D.F.C.’s and 3 D.F.M.’s and all 8 survived the war.
Some incredible newspaper cuttings from my father’s scrap book. The text in the first one made me smile.
Sorry but as some of the added notes are in pencil, like my eyes, they have faded over time.
I have left out his very first Operational sortie log as it was done several months prior to these 101 Squadron ones and was a leaflet drop from a Wellington (R1666) with 28 O.T.U. based at Castle Donington. It is scanned and it and the other logs for his time at 28 O.T.U. will be posted shortly.
Thank you for the warm welcome. My scanner is just cooling down while I write this post. Hopefully I will not run out of storage on Photobucket. 🙂
This is my father’s record of Flying Time and Aircraft Flown. The 2:00 hour daylight trip in the Fortress B17 was courtesy of our American friends and I am sure was not fully authorised. But hey there was a war on.
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