The George Adams Interview — Part Three

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Bill Ross of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of George Adams, and has been added to the site with his permission. Mr. Adams fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Other parts to this story can be found at:
INDEX: A7544630

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This is a transcript taken from audio footage made by the Department of Sound Recordings at the
Imperial War Museum,
Lambeth Road,
LONDON SE1 6H7.

It has been copied almost exactly as recorded, therefore the terminology and grammar are as spoken and have not been manipulated in any way. Where place names that could not be found in an atlas, and/or unfamiliar terminology are mentioned, phonetic spellings are used and are subject to alteration.

On some occasions, sentences were not completed; the following symbol is used to denote that: ……………………
Only repetition has been suppressed.

Bill Ross — BBC People’s War Story Editor.
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Int: So, you were a specialist.

GA: Yes, you did one thing — but at that period, you did everything, you did tyres — all the lot. Now I found when I came back to this country, we’d split up into each section. I found it very strange. I’d start to do a job on an aircraft when I came and they’d say, “Oh no, you don’t do that, that goes up to the tyre section.”

Int: So when you did it, you just did………….

GA: You did the lot.

Int: There was the engine lot, and the fitter lot.

GA: Yes.

Int: And you did the whole plane bar the engine.

GA: Yes, that’s right.

Int: So that’s the sort of things that were going wrong, tyres, undercarriage.

GA: Yes, things like that.

Int: Were they well built?

GA: They were very solid, they were a good solid plane, but oh dear, slow.

Int: So the design was bad, but they were well built.

GA: Yes, they were well built.

Int: And you were enjoying the work.

GA: Yeah, I was really. We were frozen to death, we’d no heating. Everything of that period as I remember it, we’d nothing. Everything froze up, we’d only got about one wash house on the camp where you could get a wash. We were in real trouble then. All the lot, all the camp froze up. It was terrific.

Int: Something I meant to ask you, you mentioned they had flight fitters and that you lot were the maintenance fitters, what would the flight fitters……..they’d be attached……?

GA: They were attached out on the field and any small jobs that came up, they’d do them.

Int: What sort of things would they do?

GA: Probably put a patch on, a fabric patch, something like that.

Int: Would they change the tyres for instance?

GA: They’d probably change a wheel, yeah, things like that.

Int: Is that all you did, change wheels and change tyres?

GA: You changed the wheel, and that would go to the tyre section and they would put a new tyre on that wheel, but you changed the wheel.

Int: So, anything else about Dumfries you remember?

GA: Yeah, while I was on standby, there were two or three — er, you were put into a section. I was in that section quite a while where, if anything happened anywhere, an invasion down on the south coast or wherever it was, you would transfer down there and these transport planes were always on the ready. They were always on the ready there, and you’d be taken down if anything happened, but of course, nothing did, so they never got used.

Int: Anything else?

GA: No, not really.

Int: So, when did you move away from Dumfries?

GA: About the end of February, 1941. they put me through for a fitter’s course down at Insworth Lane in Gloucester. About six of us went there, on the Fitter Airframe’s Course.

Int: What was so special about this, what were you learning that you didn’t already know?

GA: It was advanced on your rigger’s course. You went deeper into everything on the airframe. We were down there from the end of February until the end of May, I believe it was. And you went through the same thing: classes each day. We went through just the same as on the rigger’s course, only this was more involved. You had bigger jobs to do. Riggers usually stayed on the flight. I was fortunate, I was in maintenance in Dumfries, so that helped. The riggers just did the small jobs on the flights, but when you went onto the fitter’s course, you got the advanced jobs that you would do in maintenance, even to changing main planes and air runs and things like that.

Int: From what you said, you had some fun.

GA: Oh yes, we had quite a time there.

Int: What sort of things were you up to then?

GA: We’d a very good flight sergeant, he was a great fella. He’d been on the Lancastria when she got sunk, in France, when we were coming out. He was a nice chap; just occasionally, he’d catch you out on a button inspection on a morning. About six of us got caught out one morning, well, more than six, quite a few, probably a dozen. We hadn’t cleaned the buttons; we had to report to the orderly room. That evening, after dinner, we rolled up there and I’d made arrangements to go out that evening with a friend of mine from Scotland. He’d moved down from another station on the engine course. Somebody said, “You’re going out tonight aren’t ya?” “Yeah!” He said, “Yer’ll not be going now will yer?” I said, “Yeah, I’m going out.”

So, I’d seen this parade before and I’d worked it all out, and this other friend who was with me said, “I’d fixed up to go out tonight.” I said, “Well, stop with me, keep at the back here.” I said, “They never count them.” So they said, “Take them down to the cookhouse Corporal.” They gave us jobs down in the cookhouse, peeling potatoes, anything. He said, “What we goina do?” I said, “You have to go down through the billets. When he turns right to the cookhouse, shoot off from the back to the left, through the billets.” I said, “Be all ready to go out, up to the orderly room, book out, up to the guardroom, we’re on our way.” So that’s what we did; when they turned right, we turned left and the corporal was at the front. He said, “He might count them.” I said, “Well that’s too bad, we’ve had it if he counts them,” but he didn’t, we got away with it; odds and ends like that, y’know.

Int: You were there until about May?

GA: Yes, I was there until May. I was disappointed there. It was a good camp and a good course, and I’d gone right through my board — beautiful. And I got right to the hydraulics, and I’ll always remember it, there was this big chart up, of a hydraulic system, I can’t remember what it was, probably a Lockheed hydraulic system, or something like that. I went right through it until he got to one box, and he said, “What’s that?” My mind went blank. He said, “Come on, you were doing all right.”
Next to it was so and so, next to it, yes, I went right round. He sez, “Yer’ve made a mess of it haven’t yer? Wait outside.” So he took the others through, and I waited for about an hour, then he fetched me back in. He sez, “Do you remember what it was?” I said, “Yeah, a flow control valve,” just like that. He asked me one or two other things and he sent me out, but it did me; I expected nothing less than AC 1. I knew it had done me, just that one thing. You could tell how tight it was in the R.A.F., just that one thing; it dropped me down to AC 2. That was about the only mistake I made right the way through on everything, but they were very tight.

Also there, they did a certain amount of metallurgy, just simple metallurgy, but that was all right because I’d done that at technical college, that was OK, I’d no problems with that — so, I was down to AC 2 fitter then.

Int: Where were you posted to?

GA: Nice and local, Finningly.

Int: Finningly?

GA: Just outside Doncaster.

Int: Which squadron were you sent to?

GA: It was an operational training unit, I think it was — was it 25 OT or 250 OT? I can’t remember exactly, but it was an operational training unit. I was with……….I was on Hamdens there, Hamdens and Wellingtons, and I was on Hamdens. That was a pilot’s final training there. I always remember when we first arrived there. “Oh, you go to the reception billet.” Well, you should have seen the reception billet. There was straw all over the floor, it was a right mess. We’d one or two lads with us who were a bit particular. “Oh dear, look at this.”

But we were all right, we got straightened up and we were moved into a billet when we got medicals and everything, and got clearances signed. We went onto a flight then and into the flight billets. The first night there we had an air raid.

Int: What do you remember about that?

GA: Not much really.

Int: That would be in May, would it?

GA: Yes, I think it was sometime in May. But they didn’t drop any heavy stuff, funnily enough. They damaged one of the hangar doors and I don’t think they did much more damage. There were one or two small bomb craters, but it wasn’t much, wasn’t much at all.

Int: Did you have shelters?

GA: Yeah, yeah, we had shelters.

Int: Did you feel safe enough down there?

GA: I didn’t go down them that night actually.

Int: What did you do?

GA: I stopped in bed (laughter).

Int: So you weren’t that nervous then.

GA: Not then, no (more laughter), no.

Int: And you were working on the Hamdens on the flights, so you were doing the little jobs, the patch up jobs.

GA: Yes, we were on the flights actually there, and you’d just do jobs that were anything that was a little bit more than the ordinary rigger would do. The fitter would do it and you felt very — I dunno, it was a bit frightening because you were suddenly thrown……….it was YOURS, and if anything went wrong, it was YOU, you know………

Int: You were in charge.

GA: Well, yer’d a corporal.

Int: So what was a team on a flight then? There was a corporal, you………..

GA: Yer’d a corporal……………..

Int: Would he be a fitter as well?

GA: Sometimes, if there was just one corporal, there was what they used to call, I think it was a fitter aero-engine, and he could do anything. He was a top trained man in the R.A.F. He’d probably done his training at Halton and he could do engines and airframes, he could do the lot, and you were responsible to him.

Int: So, there was him, then you, would there be any other AC 2’s?

GA: Yes, there was a couple of riggers, a couple of fitter air frames, there was probably an L.A.C. Leading Aircraft man, and then, such as myself, either AC 1 or AC 2, whatever you were, and you took it from there. But it was terrible at Finningly really. We lost a lot of planes.

Int: How? Sorry, I thought it was a training unit.

GA: It was, and that was it. We lost a lot of planes at Finningly.

Int: What, crashing?

GA: Yeah.

Int: Why was that, was it unreliable planes, unreliable pilots?

GA: No, it was — I think you got it right through with er, they were pushing them through yer know and you’d only got to make one slip and it was there, and we got quite a lot. I had one; I was terribly terribly upset about that at the time.

Reel 3:

Int: We were talking about your time at Finningley and how a particular accident affected you.

GA: It did, it disturbed me quite a lot for a while. We’d done all the inspection on this aircraft and everything was all right. It was due to be taking off on a night flying cross country flight. I was on a weekend pass. I went home on the Friday night. When I came back on the Sunday, he’d taken off and crashed over the other side of what is now the A1. That used to be called the Great North Road. The pilot, navigator and two gunners were all killed. It was particularly sad because he’d got his wife up there to stay in the village and it was his last trip before going on leave, then on to operations. I was very upset. There’s always a court of enquiry; they sift through all the wreckage to see what they can find. We had to go in front of this court of enquiry, and everything was as we said, we hadn’t found anything wrong at all. We’d done the usual daily inspection and everything had been all right, and I think what they found was, they’d put the flight back and hour, because I think they’d had trouble with the enemy raiders in the near vicinity, so they’d put the flight back until it was clear. He was in a hurry to get off and he took her off. They felt that he’d pulled her up too steeply and stalled it, that’s what they felt.

Int: Pilot error?

GA: Yes, pilot error. But this is what used to keep happening, but we did — one night there, a Wellington got caught with an enemy raider. It riddled him from stem to stern, that went down in flames.

Int: Did they have any ammunition aboard, because they were training, but they were in operation?

GA: Some of them had, on the cross country flights, yes they had, and they also used to get the enemy aircraft coming in. For a couple of nights, they came in straight down the flare path. We weren’t on that night, we were in the billet. They let go straight down the flare path. There had been a siren, nobody was bothering, we hadn’t heard anything and we were all still in bed, then suddenly, this tremendous crescendo of machine guns, straight down the flare path, following this one in, but it didn’t hit him. As luck would have it, they cut the lights and he took off again. But this is what used to happen there. It happened two or three times while we were there.

Int: What did you think of the Hamdons as compared to the Whitley or the Wellingtons?

GA: They were a little bit faster than the Whitley, but they were a terrible plane for a pilot.

Int: Why?

GA: well, you’d no co-pilot and you’d no...... they were very narrow, can you remember? They were very narrow, very tight. You could just get in the cockpit and that was it. The navigator was just sat behind. The rear gunner — they would only be two foot wide; like a dragonfly they were, actually. He’d get in a hatch, right on this narrow part at the back, sit on a cushion with a cushion at his back, and the guns at his front underneath. The upper gunner would be further up the fuselage behind him. I know one or two on operational training, there’d be no action at all, so they’d be sat there. He said, “I went to sleep,” y’know, he’d just head back and he’d gone. In fact, there was one of our flight sergeants who was helping with air crew, he’d done his first lot of operations, and he’d been on Hamdens and he’d gone to sleep, woke up and they were over Hamburg and there was all hell let loose. ‘Cos he was just sat back, like that, cushion at yer back, sat on a cushion, but they were very very narrow. You hadn’t a lot of room to move at all. You couldn’t move around much.

Int: Were they reliable?

GA: Pretty reliable, yes, fairly good machine.

Int: I’d forgotten about two things I ought to have asked, who looked after the guns?

GA: The armourers, the armourers did the guns……………and the wireless ops.

Int: They’d deal with the intercom would they?

GA: Yes. That was all separate.

Int: Who dealt with the electrics generally?

GA: The electricians, you’d got your electricians.

Int: So it was quite a big team of experts.

GA: Oh yes, yes.

Pt 4: A7542308

Pr-BR

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