Memories of Frank Yates Chapter 11

Memories of Frank Yates CHAPTER 11

We had no more enemy action, at Topcliffe, that summer. There was a little bit of excitement when a barrage balloon, trailing a lot of cable, sailed over us, closely escorted by two Spitfires. As soon as the thing was clear of the, airfield, they both gave it a burst of fire and the result, to say the least, was spectacular!
All the men on the site could have a day’s leave every ten days, and when it was my turn I went on the train to Ripon, the largest place in the area. I would go to the cinema (a choice of two), have a meal, a drink, in one of the 27 pubs in the main street and back on the train to the site.
We had a visit from the Regimental commander. The Regiment, with its three batteries, was spread all over Yorkshire, and we never saw anything of the other two batteries. The CO., called Lt. Col. Brody, inspected the site, talked to some of the men, and tore me off a strip because he considered my room to be untidy!
Next day, one of the Troop Officers arrived, (a Mr. Oaten), sat every one round the table and announced that the Colonel had complained about their ignorance about all regimental matters. So he went through an interrogation, and provided the correct answers to the difficult questions, such as “What is this airfield called”? “What is the Battery Commander called”? Then he asked one of the Irishmen, “What is my name”? I looked on, in amazement, as the reply came, “PADDY KELLY” and the Liverpool blokes fell about laughing. The answer was that, when the Troop officer came into sight, the dockers would warn everyone by announcing “Paddy Kelly’s coming”!
“Paddy Kelly” was the term, used on the docks, for the security men, appointed to prevent pilfering from cargoes. I expect that, originally, the first security man rejoiced in the name. There was some embarrassment for the hapless Irishman, and descriptions, from the Liverpudlians, of the methods used in getting out of the docks with purloined goods. Mr Oaten went away; no doubt thinking about how it is possible, in a ship’s hold, to remove one’s shirt, hold one end of a length of silk against the body and “Twirl” until the cloth was fully wound, then secure it with a safety pin. Then the shirt and the rest of the clothes were replaced! Alternately he might have thought about how easy it would be to tie a leg of lamb to each end of a piece of string and hang it round the neck, concealed by an overcoat!
Our Troop HQ was in a farmhouse, left in situ when the airfield was built. As well as the officers, there was a Troop sergeant. A couple of motor bikes and a 15 cwt. Fordson truck was the transport fleet.
When the Troop sergeant went on leave I took over for a week. I ate in the RAF Sergeants’ mess. Although an interesting experience for me, it was not always a happy place, On the rare no flying nights, wild boisterous activities would contrast with the breakfasts, after a raid, when the young men, white faced and tired, after a night of terror, lingered over their privileged bacon and eggs, waiting for news of their pals, looking at the vacant chairs, waiting to be filled.
My ambition, during my week at troop HQ, was to learn to ride a motor bike. The batman (Officer’s servant) pointed out to me the positions of the clutch and front brake levers, at the ends of the handlebars, how the gear lever was raised and lowered by the right foot, where the rear brake pedal was and how to start the engine, with the kick starter.
After a wobbly start I went off on a confident double circuit of the perimeter track, getting more and more certain that I was a born motor cyclist. I stopped at Bert Hawkin’s gun site and sat engine running, while we had a rare meeting. Bert offered me a cigarette and I reached for the fag, forgetting that the reaching hand had been holding the clutch out. When I had picked myself up and retrieved the bike, I departed in a chastened mood! With practice, I did become quite a competent rider.
Very obviously, aircraft recognition is an essential part of the training of an AA gunner. A constant stream of recognition posters arrived, all of which showed a plane, in silhouette, showing the plan, side elevation and front views. I pinned these up, on every bit of wall in the hut and encouraged every one to look at them. I had been an aircraft buff, making models and reading “Flying Aces” when I was about 15, so I was very interested in these posters, showing some rare beasts like the Westland Whirlwind and the Focke-Wulf W 189, not to mention the odd Dornier DO 335, which, remarkably, had an engine and a propeller at both ends!
In the mists of time, I cannot recall why anyone in the battery should choose me to represent them in an aircraft recognition competition, between representatives from all batteries in the Yorkshire area. On the Sunday of the competition I was driven to Battery HQ, in Harrogate and sent on my way by Battery Captain Catlin, who had been the Troop Commander back in Norfolk, who wished me luck. The venue was Church Fenton where I found thirty competitors! I began to realise, that, with the interest shown, by Capt. Catlin and then seeing all these clever looking people, I had underestimated the importance of the whole thing!
Single aspect silhouettes, such as the front view of a Blackburn Skua, were projected on a screen, then the lights were put on, so we could record the answer on a printed form. This went on for about an hour when we had identified 100 planes. We were given a buffet lunch, after which the results were announced. I came third, which I thought was good. When I got back to Harrogate, captain Catlin didn’t think third was good enough and I made some remark about there being twenty seven others worse than me, whereupon he said that he hadn’t asked for my opinion and complained that my military bearing left something to be desired. Perhaps I hadn’t treated him with the smart salute and deference expected by him!
My interesting spring and summer at Topcliffe was drawing to an end, the airfield was shortly to be closed, for concrete runways to be laid in, to take the weight of the four engined Halifax bombers which were to replace the Whitleys. I vividly remember those loaded Whitleys taking off, in the dusk, engines roaring on full boost, blue—white exhaust flames blasting from the Merlins as they clawed their ponderous way into the air, over our hut.
I also remember the tremendous casualty rate of the RAF lads. The Yorkshire airfields had a death roll of 18 000. All but 2000 of them were aircrew. Apart from the battle casualties many aircrew were lost in training. Several times we had crashes on the airfield when trainee pilots were doing “Circuits and Bumps” They took off flew around on navigational exercises and landed, usually safely but sometimes, in the dark, they came to grief. Once, after a “Flamer”, I wandered down to the burnt out wreck and noticed, what I thought to be a charred gas mask. It wasn’t -the mask was a blackened skull and the corrugated tube was a windpipe! After that, I stayed away from crashed aeroplanes.
Just before our departure from Topcliffe, I was sent on a small arms course at Elloughton, a village near the Blackburn factory at Brough, on the banks of the Humber. The course was run by an infantry unit and I was billeted in a civilian house, for the few days of the course. I found it very interesting. We covered the Tommy gun, the Bren gun and the Sten gun. We stripped them down and reassembled them and took them to a range, (at Blackburn’s) to fire them. The reader may recall my description of the Bofors method of locking the breechblock and the necessity of keeping the gases sealed in the barrel. The Tommy gun, familiar to viewers of gangster films, and correctly known as the Thompson sub machine gun, was arriving in large numbers from America on the lease- lend arrangement, The breech locking mechanism was extremely complicated , this, and the superb finish, made it an expensive infantry weapon, superseded by the bargain basement Sten gun. The Bren gun, of Czechoslovakian design and British manufacture was a superb weapon, it was gas operated, like the old Lewis gun, had another complicated breech lock mechanism, but solved all overheating problems by having a spare, quick fit barrel. When the Bren was used in the single shot mode, it was as accurate as a rifle.
The Sten gun ushered in a new era in small arms manufacture. Some bright spark had decided that an expensive, locking breech block was not necessary. A length of 2in steel tubing about 10in long had a slot on one side to take the straight magazine and another slot opposite, to allow the exit of the spent cartridge cases.
At one end of the tube a skeleton steel bar butt was welded and, at the front, a 4in length of steel tube, formed the unrifled barrel. The only moving part was the breech block, a massive piece of steel bar, with a conical striker machined in the middle of its front face and an extractor fitted on one side, was a sliding fit in the large tube. A knob, screwed into the top of the block, ran in a long slot in the body, so that the block could be cocked, against the pressure of a helical spring and held back by the trigger. I am going into some detail about the Sten, because, much later in the war, I was concerned with another gun, the Polsten, a 20mm cannon, using the same principle, and I won’t have to repeat myself.
When the trigger was pulled, the spring impelled the breech block down the tube and a cartridge was stripped off the end of the magazine and slammed into the barrel, the projection, on the front of the block, striking the cap and firing the charge. Here is the clever bit; as the bullet leaves the muzzle of the gun at high velocity, the same force acting forwards on the bullet is equal to the force acting backwards on the massive block. To put it as simply as possible, Suppose the bullet has a mass of one ounce and the block weighs two pounds, the block has 32 times the mass of the bullet. If the bullet has a velocity of 1600 ft per second the block will move backwards at 1600/32= 50 ft per second. This means that the bullet has left the short barrel before the block has moved far enough to unseal the breech.
The block moves back, the extractor pulling the cartridge case out of the breech and throwing it out at the side. When the block reaches the end of its travel, the spring pushes if forwards again and so the cycle is repeated until the magazine is empty.
One snag about the Sten was that, according to War Office statistics, more army casualties were caused by Sten guns and Jeep accidents than were inflicted by the enemy. If the gun is accidentally dropped, butt downwards, the heavy block sets back and forward again, often shooting the owner under the chin!
If the reader has bothered to soldier on to the end of this tedious description, may I mention that I was told, on the course, that a Tommy gun cost £60 and a Sten gun £3 10s!

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