Bombing Hamburg

Heroes Remember

Bombing Hamburg

Transcript

Got crewed up in a bomber squadron with a Halifax aircraft. They were, I think, the best bomber aircraft there was. I had a good crew. My navigator was the top of his class in Canada when he was learning to be a navigator, and the rest of them were young and fancy free. But we got settled down pretty well and after a few operations over Germany, I was getting settled in pretty well, I thought. And one of our.. sytstems of taking care of ourselves, when there was enemy fighters about at night, we’d do what we call a corkscrew. We’d fly 45 degrees to the left and lose 2,000 feet and then do sort of a circle or corkscrew which usually shook away any fighters that were chasing us if we knew about them. And we had a small radar on the tail which... gave us some knowledge of enemy fighters about. I think that that night there was about 300 of us on the... bombing raid of Hamburg. We were hitting our chemical factory near Hamburg, Peenemunde and I had aircraft tucked right in beside me, so I couldn’t really move. So I couldn’t do much to defend myself and we got hit from underneath. And the starboard engines were on fire, so the rear gunners called up and said that the tail was on fire. Well, this is no good. So, we had better get out. So I told everybody to bail out. I was the last one, except for the engineer who stayed and never did get out. I don’t know why, ‘cause there was nothing wrong with him. He gave me my parachute pack. But after... I suppose, I bailed out at about 12,000 feet. We got hit when it was 21,000 feet. you didn’t see anything very much. You could see the battle going on over Hamburg but not very much of it. You could hear the guns going off and the bombs dropping. When I was captured, I was taken through the city of Hamburg and I think every building had been hit by a bomb of some kind even if it was only incendiaries.

Description

Mr. Jackson describes crewing up and being shot down while approaching their target at Peenemunde.

Donald Jackson

Mr. Jackson was born in Field, British Columbia on August 25, 1915. He was well educated, having completed high school and three years of university where he studied accounting. A friend convinced Mr. Jackson that he could earn a better living in the air force, so he enlisted. Unlike most Canadian pilots, his war experience started in Southeast Asia, where the Allies tried to stem the Japanese advance. Mr. Jackson was then deployed to India and flew bombing sorties into Afghanistan. He became ill, shipped back to Canada and then joined a bomber squadron, piloting a Halifax plane. On a bombing mission over Peenemunde, he was shot down, captured, and remained in a POW camp until war’s end. After returning to England, he married the nurse who had cared for him in India. Mr. Jackson remained in the RCAF after the war, taking part in the aerial mapping of Canada’s North. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Legion, and still dabbles in accounting. Mr. Jackson resides in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

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