Plane goes down

Heroes Remember

Plane goes down

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Transcript

We did about six weeks there and we used to fly to Dundee and then to Edinburgh, maybe down to Liverpool and then come back, you know, that was the training. There was always two navigators and a screen pilot, and a staff pilot, normally somebody that had finished a tour of operations and they used to send them on to be an instructor. This is what happened to some of the pilots. So then I was posted, I picked up a crew. We were crewed up at Kinloss and we were posted down to a place called St. Eval in Cornwall and the RAF, I was still flying with the RAF, and the RAF were very cagey. This was still a, an operational training unit and so the trips that you made didn't count as operations 'cause you have to do 30 trips, you see, on operations if you're going to be on bomber command. So I got down there and we, we used to go out, this was still supposed to be training, and we'd go out in the Bay of Biscay and come back and I guess it was the fourth trip that we went out and lost an engine and we went into the, into the Bay of Biscay. And I lost a crew and when we, when we were going in I was right in about the centre, that's where my desk was for navigator. It broke in half, a dingy comes out automatically in the, in the Whitley, so I, so I jumped in and there's a knife and stuff you cut the cord and it's automatically inflated as the dingy comes out, you know, it's just a "psst" kind of thing. So the last person I saw when they, when they went in, and this is a five-man crew, was a fellow called Dick Jackson, a guy from Newcastle. He was our wireless operator and he's the guy, every time we'd take a trip Dick was supposed to rescue me cause I couldn't swim. You know they'd say, "Okay Dick, you rescue Cauley cause he can't swim, ha, ha..." Big deal sort of stuff, and that is the last guy I saw.

Description

Mr. Cauley talks about completing his training, and being posted to an RAF squadron. It was supposed to be an operational training unit, but on their 4th trip, the plane lost an engine and went down in the Bay of Biscay; he lost his whole crew.

Frank Joseph John Cauley

Mr. Frank Joseph John Cauley was born on July 31, 1921 in Toledo, just outside of Smith Falls, a small town near Ottawa. He joined the Air Force as a Navigator in 1942 at the age of 20. After completing his training in Canada, he was sent overseas where he completed two tours and was awarded seven medals. He spent a year in England, a year in Scotland and a year in Ireland.

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