Description
Mr. Ireland describes air to ground attacks against the Germans, and the different ground to air defenses used by the Germans. He also discusses Priority 1 - regardless of the original mission, an opportunity to engage the enemy in the air was never passed up.
Elgin Gerald Ireland
Elgin Gerald Ireland was born in Shelbourne, Ontario, on January 12, 1921. He was the eldest in a family of seven. Because his father was a farmer, his family survived the depression in relative comfort. Mr. Ireland lived close to an airfield, and was fascinated by the thought of flying. When the family farm was sold, Mr. Ireland felt no obligation to stay home, and in April, 1941, enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was groomed as a pilot, and did his elementary training at St. Eugene, flying the Fleet Finch. He moved on to St. Hubert, learned to fly the Harvard aircraft, and then moved on to Trenton where he was a flight instructor for one and a half years. Mr. Ireland reached England as a member of a Hurricane squadron, but soon transferred to 411 Spitfire Squadron. He flew air to ground combat at Falaise Gap and Nijmegen, while at the same time engaging the Luftwaffe in air to air warfare. For his efforts, he received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Netherlands Flying Cross. After the liberation of Europe, Mr. Ireland volunteered for the Tiger Force, an air group which was to aid in the war against Japan. Mr. Ireland remained in the air force, returning to the Trenton Flying School. He was one Canada’s first pilots to fly the Vampire, F-86 Sabre, and CF-100 jet fighters. After spending four years as Canada’s CF-100 Squadron Commander in France, he returned to 409 Squadron at Comox, British Columbia, where he was promoted to Camp Commander. It was at that point that British Columbia became his family home.
Transcript
So that was a big role, was the ground attack. Now the fighters weren’t showing near the zip that they did later and most of the work was across the bomb line, above the light flak and below the heavy flak, over the bomb line. Once you’re over the bomb line you’re in no man, you’re in... Anything that moves under traction, locomotion, that was a target. Horse drawn vehicles, no, but anything that moved on wheels, motor driven was a target but I figure 90 percent of our job was air to ground. Ninety nine percent of the movement was by night. The only time it was safe and even then with a Mozzie intruders, well they weren’t radar equipped but the Mozzie intruders it was a risky thing then too. There was even under blackout conditions, you know, a flare dropped here and there, you’d catch an armoured column you know and they would be suspect to attack right there. Most feared weapon that the Germans had killed probably, killed more allied airmen, seamen, army guys was the 88 - the famed 88, but and mixed in with that they had a lot of Bofors - 40mm and 20mm banks of guns and rapid fire and small machine guns, 7.92. They just 303 calibre, but very effective and during low level work you figure that everybody down there is looking at you and shooting at you, but really a lot of the time they were down there with their damn heads down because they were afraid you were shooting at them. Fortunately you never saw about, you only saw about one quarter or half the stuff they were throwing at you because they weren’t all tracers. You might have been more alarming had you seen everything that was being thrown at you, but fortunately you weren’t. So, no it was, once the attack was commenced there was no going back, it was go in and get them. You had to take your turn, you were assigned a time block and get in there and do your thing. If you saw anything moving or anything worth shooting at. Supply trains or anything and they were starting to move out, of course, they were likely targets and no it was just a matter of taking your turn and getting in there and hoping meanwhile on the way to and from the target that you’d run into enemy aircraft. That was still, that was still priority 1 if, you might be sent out to ground to strafe targets in Falaise Gap, say or adjoining it. If you encountered air craft, enemy air craft en route, that was priority 1, you took those, you got into those. They weren’t active over the Falaise Gap. They came out spasmodically. They’d show up. They weren’t showing up everyday, everywhere all the time, you could never count getting into them. In fact, you’d have the rare encounter. You’d get up in the morning and say yeah that squadron has been into them this morning before breakfast you know and they got five or six destroyed, where were we? Well it wasn’t our turn. We weren’t due to take off until 9 o’clock instead of six o’clock in the morning. They weren’t as active as they were though later on after the Rhine crossing when they really stiffened up over there.