First Mission

Heroes Remember

First Mission

Transcript

I’ve never been so scared in my life. I’m the navigator up in the nose of the airplane and there’s a little platform your feet are on. It’s about 3/4 inch steel. I crouched down on this real scared. I thought oh, this is gonna be the end. Looked down, saw all the flack coming up and whatnot. Nothing happened, didn’t get hurt. Fine. Second trip, no fear at all and from then on it was a piece of cake. So just that first preliminary uncertainty, I guess bothered me, but from then on it was fine. Interviewer: Did you have any close calls? Well, we lost three airplanes out from under us. Brought them home alright, but they didn’t fly again. The Liberator has a main spar from wing tip to wing tip. It’s about a two inch steel bar, steel pipe. It got a machine gun bullet right through it and when we landed both ends of the wings hit the ground. The spar broke, but we got it home. That was the first one. Then we got, two others were holed pretty badly by anti-aircraft fire. We never ever got attacked by fighters at all. We saw some, but never got attacked. So it was basically flack that put them out of commission.

Description

Mr. Emslie describes his first operational mission as navigator.

John “Jack” Emslie

John Emslie was born in Vermilion, Alberta in 1924 with the military in his blood. His father was a WWI Veteran and Federal Government employee in the Soldier Settlement Branch. His grandfather was in the Boer War. Mr. Emslie joined the Air Force in 1943 with the entire male component of his high school graduating class, all on the same day. He trained as a navigator in Edmonton, near where he grew up. Mr. Emslie took part in the Burma Campaign, where he flew in the Wing Commander’s crew. After the war, he finished his education in Alberta and Toronto and became a meteorologist.

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