Crash and Rescue

Interviewer: Tell me Mr. Sutherland-Brown, what training did you pilots and observers receive to assist you if you were shot down behind enemy lines or had to ditch?

Well um, the first part ah, my navigator was sent away for a jungle survival course. I continued on operations, and when I came back I said to him, "Alf um, what do I need to know? " He says, "Don't bother, I'll shoot you". You know, I mean surviving in the jungle. But we did have, we had our commanding officer shot down late in the war down near Moulmein, and he spent three weeks with his navigator getting back, and found an advance group of British Troops. And there, they built a little airstrip and flew in with Sentinel S-5s and flew them out of there. Um, so it was possible but very unlikely. Now as far as we, as we, our operations often to southern Burma, we flew down the coast off shore and um, for it you, a number of people had to ditch because they were short of fuel or that sort of thing. We had at least two successful recoveries of those crews in dinghies along the Burma coast by Air-Sea Rescue. Or one of them actually, just by fluky good luck, he was driven north by the winds and ended up beaching in sort of no man's land. But they were in a dinghy offshore for five days, pretty.., and during a monsoon.