In March '45, I took over as the C.O. of this unit from "Red" McInnis, who had come out on the "Stirling Castle" with me, and flown with me on 110 Sqn. He explained the job, and warned me about the airmen I should keep an eye on *. Then he handed over the safe keys and Code Books and happily went off back to Canada, leaving me with a box of cheap cigars and (although I didn't find out till later) six month's arrears of F.540 - the Operational Record Book.
This hallowed document is the detailed War Diary of a unit. Rendered monthly up the chain of command, it finally comes to rest in the Air Historical Branch of the Air Ministry.
Note *: There was one Glaswegian whom McInnis had occasion to reprimand, and who had bawled: "You can't talk to me like that !" (or words to that effect). The Service can tolerate many things, but insubordination has to be stamped on. McInnis put him under arrest and remanded the case to the Colonel (I am not sure of the legitimacy of this, but they did it, anyway). He had the power to give, and gave the miscreant twenty-one days in the "glasshouse". What they did with him there, I don't know, but he came back like a little lamb and I had no trouble at all with him afterwards (they'd clearly had found the secret of rehabilitation!) He must have shared his experiences with the other airmen; this seemed to have had a salutary effect and they all behaved themselves in my time.
It was just as well, because my powers of punishment as a Subordinate Commander were limited; "Confined to Barracks" had no meaning, because there was nothing to go out of camp for in any case, except for a swim, and the shoreline was wide open for that. The only extra duty I can think of now would be rat-hole filler-upper.
AFAIK, you couldn't impose stoppages of pay then.
In truth, any sensible chap could see that he was onto a good thing in this Unit, and he would be silly to spoil it. He was housed well (in the proper built "cantonment") and fed quite well (as were we all) in the Army Messes. The beach was only a stone's throw away, the sea was warm and safe. There were no Japanese closer than 2500 miles. There was no entertainment, but in general that was true everwhere else. Many had served in the Arakan or Assam in the years before; they could see which side their bread was buttered on, and some were counting the weeks up to their "boat" home in any case.
In my pending tray lay increasingly irate reminders about this Form 540 from 225 Group in Bangalore. CDRE (in the person of their Liaison Officer, a W/Cdr Edmondes),* had managed (presumably at McInnis's request) to secure "Stew" Mobsby from some non-job up North and got him posted in to the Unit as "Adj". He (now a F/O, so he must have been commissioned about the time I left Samungli) was naturally as pleased to get me as the new C.O. as I was to see him, and we set to work together with the Authorisation Book, made notes of what anybody could remember, and used imagination to fill in the gaps. Henry Ford was right: history
is bunk, and in many cases it's not even history. I smoked a pipe then so I cut the cigars up and fed them in. It wasn't really a success.
Note * See the post by Petet (# 2444, p. 123) Our W/Cdr may well have been the "Edmondes" - "Edmonds" - "Edmunds", the inventor of the epoymous Trainer (oh, how I wish I could recall his initials !)
Our task was to do, within reason, anything the CDRE wanted for their trials. I was established with a Harvard and three Vengeance Mk. IIIs. One of these, FB986, was a veteran from one of the old Squadrons and still bore its faded letter "M" for "Mother" (in the old phonetics); it was my favourite as it never seemed to give any trouble.
Of course, there was no question of dive-bombing on this job. Accuracy is not needed when putting gas down. All we had to do was to get the stuff into quite large fields at Porkal or Kumbla (about 40 miles north up the coast), where the CDRE had laid out ranges for their trials.
No conventional bomb types were used. Internally we carried loads of 2 x 6-packs of 65 lb tins of mustard gas (square sectioned, very like the ubiquitous 4-gallon fuel can), and "Chedlets" - smaller segmented things (named after the well known packets of processed cheese, the shape of which they closely resembled).
Besides these, there were 500 lb mustard gas clusters, and a 4 lb bomb. I've forgotten what exactly this was, but an entry in my log shows batches of 42 being dropped from 4,000 ft. This was most unusual, and I cannot recall why (as all other gas ordnance was dropped low-level). There was no need for any of these items to be of ballistic shape, and there were no fuses. We just dropped them and they burst open on impact.
The cans sometimes leaked from the soldered lids and seams, and made most unpleasant cargo. The "post-box" slot on the Vengeance cockpit floor carried up fumes from the bomb bay, so we always flew with canopies fully open, not that that was any hardship in the heat. I cannot remember any hang-ups, for the release mechanism was very simple, but even so we were always glad to get the gas canisters out of the bays. Looking back, I'm amazed at how casually we worked with this dangerous stuff. I never saw a mask worn (and we certainly didn't have any). Of course, my armourers only had to load the containers into the bays, and fit spray tanks to the wing racks.
These wing racks were a different proposition. It would be dangerous to carry the thin-skinned tins out in the airflow (and think of the drag they would cause), so spray tanks were fitted to the bomb racks. From memory, these were cylinders about 15 in in diameter and 4 - 5 ft long. They would hold about ten gallons. There was a spigot at the back of (and projecting below) the tank, and a filling point in the nose. There was no "tap" arrangement: this would be very hard to design, as the original release circuit was just a simple on-off.
The solution was ingenious. There was this small circular opening at the front of the tank, and a similar one in the tail pipe. The tanks were filled with liquid gas ( this was an unpleasant job), and bakelite discs fitted into the apertures to seal them. Each disk carried a tiny explosive charge and detonator, wired up to the cockpit switch. You pressed the button, both disks exploded, the ram effect from air pressure drove all the contents out of the rear nozzle, and the rush of air "scoured" all the gas out of the tank. That way, it would be less of a danger to my ground crew after landing, and ready for refilling by the CDRE's armourers. As with the tins, the spraying was of course done low-level.
There's much more to come, but that'll do for the time being,
Goodnight, chaps,
Danny42C.
"L'État, C'ést Moi !"