Bombing and gunnery school

The next stop was off to Fingal, that's a little village just south of Saint-Thomas, in Ontario. And that was where we learned actual bombing and gunnery. That was interesting, and we flew, we did cross-countries and bombing with cute little practice bombs, which give a big white puff in the daytime and a nice flash at night. There was a, and then of course we did the gunnery, and that was somewhat interesting too, because the, the planes we used, well we didn't have unlimited planes, so we used one, a British plane called a Bolingbroke. And three of us, three potential gunners, went up in the same flight. And one guy would have red, another one white, another one green, painted bullets. This was .303, and you would fire at the drogue, which was a target that was being pulled by another aircraft fairly close to you. And then when you came back for, for counting, then you, they knew who hit and who didn't, and how many times, because the paint was still there on the target as the bullets penetrated it. Well that was kinda cute. That was the, that was the gunnery part of it. You were, well, you were perhaps half-trained as a gunner when you finished that course. And the, the bombing was also both day and night by using the different flash or smoke bombs. And then you had two, two guys on the ground assessing your positions, you see. And then of course when you went back for assessment, you either got bad marks or good marks and were encouraged to go on or go away. So that was at, that was at Fingal. And then later on the same year we went to Crumlin, which is a village next door to London, Ontario, which was a navigation school. And there we learned both the office, ground, and actual navigating in Anson aircraft.