Memorable Operations

Heroes Remember

Memorable Operations

Transcript

I have a couple of memories mainly born out by photographs that I have of the actual bombs striking and causing fire and so on. One was to an oil refinery, Poullak (sp), and it was really tremendous. The tanks were hit and of course there was quite a conglomeration of tanks. And when they were hit, of course, it caught fire. It was something to see, believe me. I think my 20th operation was probably the most harrowing for me, apart from the night we had that semi-attack by an ME 109. It was a day trip, daylight trip. I was flying mid-upper and there were I guess probably five or six hundred air craft in the stream and when we were over the target and in fact, Johnny Bishell, the bomb aimer was reciting his "steady, steady, left, left, right, right a bit, down a bit, steady." I happened to glance up and there was another Lanc immediately above us, probably maybe 150 feet above us, bomb doors open. I could see the eight thousand or the four thousand pound cookie and the other bombs hung up, you know, in the bomb bay. And our trajectory, say, was like this and he was coming this way. We were converging. And just as I felt he was immediately overhead, they started. They came down and the cookie, I would say, was probably a hundred yards off to the right. I should say starboard. And the others were just dropping haphazardly, the thousands and fives. But the canister of incendiaries, we were...we must have been either gaining height because normally these things would just come out and just go all over the sky, you know, four pound incendiary bombs. But we were close enough that they were peppering off our air craft left right, and centre. In fact, Johnny Bissell, I remember now: "Christ, I'm hit!" This was one of the incendiaries had bounced off the front turret, which was immediately above his bomb sight canopy and it had knocked one of the books that he had just hooked in the upper part of his area and it came down of course and hit him in the head. "Christ, I'm hit!" He really thought that he had been hit. Anyways, this cookie just went on down and the incendiaries bounced off. But there was enough damage to the air craft that we got back to base but the plane was written off. And I still, I've never figured out yet how it could have happened that these four pound incendiaries could cause so much trouble. Well, the thing that we were concerned about of course, if a bomb went through the wing and went through the fuel tank, you know, that sort of thing could mean the end of everything because you'd just explode. And there probably wasn't as much danger of the bombs exploding because they were coming at such a tremendous capacity that even if they hit the wing, they could go on through it without detonating. And some of these were fused, too. They were time delay, delay fused. So that wasn't as great a concern as being hit in the fuel tank. Or of course, now obviously if there was a plane below us, an enemy plane below us and the bombs were still on board, then it could be tremendous. And I've seen that happen in one of these scrag music things at night. I'm sure that that's what it was. The plane just disintegrated in mid air. You know, no possibility of any survivors at all.

Description

Mr. Cole describes the bombing of an oil refinery and his 20th operation in which a Lancaster bomber was directly overhead and started to drop its bombs.

Raymond Boyd Cole

Raymond Boyd Cole was born in Elliston on July 14, 1924. His father worked in the United States and then at a papermill in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, when Raymond Cole was one month old. Mr. Cole grew up in Newfoundland.

In 1941, Mr. Cole finished grade 11 and was 17 years old in July of that year. He wanted to be a fighter pilot so in 1942 he signed up for the air force by altering his birth certificate. He received his wings on November 12, 1943. He found out later that he was not to become a pilot, but he did become an air gunner.

Mr. Cole spent three weeks at #1 Air Gunners Ground Training School (AGGTS). He then spent six weeks at #9 Bombing and Gunnery School (BGS). Following #9 BGS he went overseas. Further training includes #30 Operation Training Unit (OTU) and then 1667 Heavy Conversion Unit (HCU) where he made the conversion from twin engine aircraft to heavier, four engine aircraft with seven crew members.

Mr. Cole flew as an air gunner in over twenty operations with as much as one thousand aircraft in some. He was involved in the Normandy Campaign and many of the missions were heavy concentration bombings of the Ruhr Valley, which was a heavy industrial area.

Mr. Cole completed his flying tour (thirty operations) and went on to do three more operations afterwards. One to help his crew finish up their tour and then volunteered for another two. He worked as an orderly and as a truck driver for a while before returning to Grand Falls, after three and a half years overseas. Afterwards, he became a minister.

Meta Data

Medium:: Video
Owner:: Veterans Affairs Canada
Duration:: 04:55
Person Interviewed:: Raymond Boyd Cole
War, Conflict or Mission:: Second World War
Location/Theatre:: Europe
Branch:: Air Force
Units/Ship:: 166th Airborne
Rank:: Corporal
Occupation:: Air Gunner

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Memorable Operations

Heroes Remember