The George Adams Interview — Part Eleven

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

=================================================
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.
=================================================

Int: Were they reliable?

GA: Yes, they were fairly reliable, we didn’t have a lot of work on them, just the occasional thing, nothing much, nothing serious. The engines were quite good, they were the Rolls Royce, the Merlin. The armourers; there was a problem at first; some of them were very very bad. The guns; they hadn’t been looked after at all, our armourers had quite a job in dissembling and cleaning, they had a right job on with those, but anyhow, we got things alright. We did quite a lot of flying on those, even the ground used to get quite a lot of trips on those, with the pilots.

Int: Did you enjoy it?

GA: Yes, yes, it was very good, the test flights and everything. I know my pilot at the time was this sub-lieutenant from the navy, and he very often used to say, “Grab a parachute and hop in the back.”

Int: Do you remember his name?

GA: Mitchell, I think, Mitchell. He got in the black books though, he — he dived on the — they weren’t allowed to close the fleet at all and — he was a bit of a boy. He dived down on low flying over the fleet at sea and he wasn’t very welcome. He got into trouble over that. I think he came out of it alright. He left us, but from what I heard after, he did get promotion, but he was really in the black books for a while over that.

We first heard that the Japanese fleet was in the bay, round about early April, about the first. They’d attacked the ports on the eastern side of India. Then they’d moved down and a Catalina from 205 Squadron, down at Codler, in south Ceylon — he’d picked them up fairly early in April, and on Easter Sunday, they attacked Colombo. They sunk the Cornwall and the Dorsetshire in that attack. Out to sea they were, but they’d been separated from the fleet, they’d gone off to search for this fleet, I believe and the navy planes had caught them and sunk them. Then they attacked the port. They did quite a lot of damage, with very little loss, which was the usual case.

They seemed to think — the feeling was still that there were squadrons that hadn’t faced them, that there’d be nothing to it, but they found out that there was, with the navy; they were very good aircraft. They left there and we knew, sooner or later, they would have a go at Trincomalee. The fleet had moved out. We didn’t know where they’d gone of course, but as you read about that after, they’d gone round the Maldives, all that area, out of the way, because they were very slow. There were all the old ones there — the Ramilles, the Warspite. They came at us on the Thursday after Easter Sunday. They hit Trincomalee and China Bay, and the first we knew about it, we were on second standby that morning, and we got up for breakfast and went down, and we were just finishing our breakfast in the dining room when the sirens went, so we immediately grabbed everything.

We went back to the billet, grabbed our rifles and made our way down to the dispersal. By that time, there was a right melee overhead. Quite high up, these planes were going round and round in a circle. We stood on the bank above the MT section, watching these, and suddenly one shot out, and the fighter squadron that was on the drome — their aircraft were up, of course. Ours weren’t up because strangely enough, why they’d done it again I don’t know, but, a few days before, they’d decided that we were not a fighter squadron, they’d redesignated us to a general wrecky squadron. There were only the two planes off that morning, on early morning flight patrol, that were out. The others were on the drome.

The fighter squadron was there, number 261. They were out with the petrol bowser, bringing it round ready for any re-fuelling as the fighter planes came in, when suddenly, this one shot straight out of the sky — of course, the cry went, “Bloody hell, it’s a Zero.” Down she came, all canons blazing. We saw the lads on the bowser, they were stood on the side of the bowser. The driver of the tractor pulled up, they all leapt off like lightening and got behind this bunker. Bang, up she went; one big mass of flame, so we’d no bowser. We’d really struggled before that because when these Hurricanes joined us, they’d come from the Middle East by aircraft carrier, and flown off from the aircraft carrier, and made their way across to Trincomalee and to Colombo. There were three squadrons there. We got this number 261 and we’d had to refuel them with big funnels and four gallon cans.

We’d no bowser, but finally, we managed to get a bowser and it was very welcome, but that went up in flames. The next thing, another one was shot down, and, he was a very brave man who did it, and from what I can gather since, from one or two of our reunions, he survived. It was the fire officer. We saw him dive out in front of the — this Hurricane was coming in, and this Zero was following him with all guns going, and he dived down in front of the Zero with a revolver, firing at the Zero. By that time, we’d decided enough was enough. We dived down the bank and got behind the MT section in a little , well it was like a little concrete gully, no more than, just enough to cover your back, I should say, just enough to get into. We got behind there, and we were stuck there. The problem was, in between the hangars was a huge ammunition dump, and we’d unloaded this from a boat in Trinco Bay. It was all lighter loading, and it had come in because they diverted it. It should have gone to Rangoon, but they diverted it to Trincomalee.

Each flight sent so many men each day. They alternated, one flight one day, one flight another — out to this boat to unload this ship. It’s amazing how much stuff these boats can carry — a fairly biggish one. There were Chev. trucks, there were everything, and this huge load of, a lot of it aircraft ammunition. Twenty pound bombs, unfused of course, everything you could mention. The group captain had had this stacked between the two hangars. We thought, “This is a ridiculous place to stack it. This ought to have gone into the jungle, up the little roads that used to lead in, off the camp, but they had it stacked there.”

The night before the raid, we’d been clearing our hangars, of all the aircraft that were awaiting maintenance and on maintenance. We’d taken them all and taken them up into the jungle, and when we were half way through it, a friend of mine sez to the warrant officer, “Chiefy, that ammunition ought to be moved.” He said “We’ve been talking about it and all the lads are willing to keep on and on and on until we can get it out of the road.” He said, “Well, I agree with yer.” He sez, “I’ll go and ask the group captain.” He was down there supervising things. He went down, and when he came back: “It’s alright, don’t worry about that, it doesn’t matter about that, that’s safe enough.”

Well, we were in this gully, and he’d had a go at the little quay, the little jetty in Trincomalee, and all around the harbour area, the tanks; there were huge oil tanks round there, a fleet refuelling base, yer see. They were all round the side of our drome. These, I think it was nine bombers, they cruised over us once or twice, and we were waiting for it, and the next time they came over, these nine — they kept making a circle round and back. Here it comes. One big roar, the lot together. Well, I bounced like a rubber ball when they hit. They hit the MT section, there were flames shot out all over the place, but just before this, this Zero had shot down, pumped big bursts into this ammunition dump, and up she started to go. It was amazing; there were twenty pound bombs coming down like rain round us. They weren’t exploding of course, but it wasn’t very healthy if one of these things hit yer, coming out from high, so, when they hit the MT section, they hit the hangars, this huge flame shot out, and my friend at the front sez, “Let’s get out of here.” So, before he could move, we were over the top of him and he’d got big stud marks in his back for a day or two after that, but my ribs and insides ached for days and days. It’d just bounced me up and down in this trench with the bombs, and we got out and made a beeline up towards the top of the camp, and it was no use going down onto the dispersal, because by that time, the Zeros were flying round at will and just machine gunning everything that was moving.

REEL 9

Int: Were the British fighter squadrons outnumbered they don’t seem to have been able to…………….

GA: Yes, Yes, they were well outnumbered. They shot very few down; I think they only got about three or four planes down. There was only the one fighter squadron up there, and I believe there were four or five carriers in the bay.

Int: Japanese?

GA: Japanese, yes, oh they were outnumbered and…………….

Int: Was there any effort to get, I mean, I know your planes had been redesignated as general reconnaissance but was there any effort to get them off?

GA: This is rather strange. We couldn’t work this out, I believe they had been told that they would wait, when it came and yet it shouldn’t have been because everyone was expecting it, and they were told to wait. We’d got the early morning patrol; we’d got two planes off there. One never came back, the other, he came back, he’d seen nothing, he’d been out in another direction and seen nothing. When they came in, our planes were on the drome, and they systematically shot them up.

Int: No-one tried to get them up?

GA: I don’t know what happened with the pilots down there, but we couldn’t get them off. The leader of the fighter squadron, he was an ex Battle of Britain ace, I think his name was Squadron leader Lewis. He’d been badly burnt in the Battle of Britain, and from what we were told, he would only fly on normal flying practice and on any emergency. There was something very strange happened there. We had a satellite drome out on the coast, a little bit further north east, and you couldn’t get in, especially in the wet season. You couldn’t get in at all, only by boat and flying in, it was a very difficult strip to get on to. It was almost a dogleg, it was very bad. We used to fly out there, we used to have a crew out there on standby, and they used to do a certain amount of general wrecky from there, and that was the place to put down if the airfield was under attack.

Well, from what we could gather afterwards, squadron leader Lewis — I don’t know where he was at the time, but he came down, went for his plane, and it had gone. The group captain had taken it. He jumped in another Hurricane, took off, and as he got about four or five hundred feet, they caught him. They shot the plane up, he dropped straight out, and he escaped. He was lucky at four hundred feet. He was very lucky, his parachute opened but he had his hand badly shot up, so many fingers off. He wasn’t in a very good temper by the time they got him into the sick bay. He’d had his plane taken by the group captain, and that meant he was delayed in getting another one, which one to go for, and that’s why it happened like that. They were down there, and he was too late to get any height.

Well, afterwards, we’d got some lads out there re-fuelling on the satellite strip. They informed us that the group captain had come in, refuelled me, re-armed me. Well, they couldn’t understand why, because the gun patches were blown off, he’d fired his guns but they couldn’t re-arm him because there was hardly anything gone, from what we could gather, and he’d used very little fuel. It was quite a scandal; we never found out what happened, but on top of that, this ammunition dump - we’d worked into the early hours of the morning, moving these aircraft and everything, and also, we’d wanted to move this ammunition dump. They wouldn’t let us move it. This lot went up and one thing added to another…………….

Int: So the implication was that the group captain had just gone off, fired his gun a couple of times and then………..

GA: Well, that’s what we felt……

Int: He hadn’t engaged the Japanese.

GA: That’s what the lads felt at this little strip.

Int: But you had no evidence either way.

GA: No, no-one had any evidence either way, but I never found what happened, no-one knew what happened to him. He was relieved of his command, and I remember talking to Jackie Wales, who was my pilot and was the AVRO’s test pilot, some twelve months afterwards. We said, “We never found out what happened to the group captain, Mr Wales.” He said, “He was demoted to flying officer.” That was the only thing I knew, it was a right mess.

Int: Now what happened? You’d just had this thing and you jumped out………….

GA: Got out, yes, and got across towards the Marines’ three point sevens, they’d got three point sevens and Boffers there, and there was a Marine RSM who’d taken us for training on fieldwork, and everything like that. He was a very nice person, he was of the old type, but he was like a father to his men, that fella, he was really good. He wasn’t the old type, barking at yer and making ignorant statements all the time like a lot of ‘em were, he was a very nice person; he looked after everyone. He spotted us, and, first of all, as these Zeros were coming down, we got behind a rock, stayed there until they’d cleared, then he said, “Yer can’t do anything lads, get down in the jungle.” So we got down in the jungle and we stayed there until it’d quietened down, then we went back onto the flight. It’d blown our rifles; when the bombs had gone, we’d got a rifle to the side of us on the trench, and they’d gone, so we went and searched for those first of all. We found those alright, and, it’d made a right mess of the MT sections, the hangars were badly damaged, the aircraft were shot up, and all in all, it wasn’t very good at all. A Zero had gone through the top of one of the oil tanks. That was blazing, that kept exploding as it was blazing, and it was a right mess, but we started to get round to the planes and look what damage was done, started to repair and put patches on and everything.

Then we heard that the Hermes, just after the raid, another section of bombers and fighters had caught the Hermes aircraft carrier as she was leaving. She wasn’t far out actually, she was only twenty or thirty miles out from Trincomalee, when they caught her in the bay, and sunk her.

Pt 12: A7543271

Pr-BR

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.