Mr Tweed,
Yes our old boy the rear gunner was reticent about doing a talk on his experiences at the club, he’s a very modest gentleman with the accent on gentleman!
I managed to get hold of his flight log book and photocopied it on to overhead projector slides, the log book showed his first flight through to his last and when I asked him questions about the slides that I put up at the club the information he could recall was amazing, an hour and a half flew by that evening.
Just the other week I mentioned the fact a German aircrew shot down in 1945 were buried in Scampton churchyard, he asked me to check up to see if it was in March of that year. Lo and behold it was….. my friend told me he and the crew had to put down at Waddington instead of their own base because intruders had followed them back from the raid over Germany. The landing lights were only kept on for a short while as soon as their wheels hit the runway they were extinguished.
That was not the end of it they had to remain in their aircraft with an engine running
so that the Lancaster aircraft guns could complement the bases own anti-aircraft protection.
He remembers seeing streams of tracer from one of the other bases in the area and an aircraft being hit and wondered if this was the crew of the german aircraft that now lie in Scampton cemetery.
I had photographed these german gravestones and the dates matched up perfectly.
I think he is 83 years old now but he is as active as a man 20 years younger, I feel honoured to know this gentleman and to count him as a friend.
Regards
Tom
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