Description
Mr. Moore describes how his crew always stuck together on a night out. He then describes a particularly close call in attacking a submarine being flanked by two destroyers.
Ken Moore
Born in Rock Haven, Saskatchewan, Ken Moore was the youngest of eight children. His father died when he was very young and his mother raised the family on her own. After graduating from highschool, he hitchhiked to Vancouver, BC and joined the Air Force. During the war, he piloted 61 missions, in Liberators, on coastal escort duties and submarine patrols. During one such mission, his crew sank two U-boats in 22 minutes. Because of this act he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) and the Silver Star (by the US).
Transcript
Our idea of a night out was to go out with the crew. And so it was social night out, eh. You would go to the pub, local pub or something to, to have a beer. Always ended up with some member of the crew talking about something he was doing and do you think I should do this or this you know. You mentioned, you know near misses. I think the two subs in twenty-two minutes was a great feat. I have to accept that, I'm not going to fight it. No, it's just one of those things. You become a not a self embarrassed, but you know there's kind of a funny feeling about it. And but the, we got a sub in March of 44 and it was being escorted by two destroyers. So you got a destroyer on each flank and the, and the u-boat in the middle eh. Well we did very well on our basic thinking. I very quickly decided that I was going to go in over France. We were right along the coast. And come out from France and they would think that it's not an enemy aircraft coming out. And so we did this. When I flew over the u-boat of course we, we decided, I asked the radar guy if he had his choice which one did he think is, is the u-boat. And what are these targets, these three blips. So anyway he assessed that one right while we weren't in too good of position when it went through. But we did have to go through with a destroyer on either side with the guns blazing and try to get a hold of this guy. So instead of climbing up, which I think most people would do after the attack I stayed down because I just like being down low. And I did another 360 degree and come around and attacked the second time, well there was a lot of fire. It got so bright in the cockpit, from the tracer type bullets that they had, that I had to reach down and lower my seat and I stuck my head in under the dash so that I could fly on the instruments. We must have been pretty close to having a problem I would think. You know the odds of going down in between two destroyers and coming out clean the other side, somebody's looking after you.