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This is Mr. Fred Witchell's story as told to us by Fred himself in conversations during August 2006. Fred has lived in Long Lane, Harriseahead, North Staffordshire, for many years. Some memories of his life in the RAF during WW2 are painful ones, with the loss of his friends, workmates and colleagues in the air battle over Europe. He has however, told us all that he feels able and has kindly supplied us with a wealth of photographs that he either took himself or acquired during his wartime service in RAF Bomber Command.
Fred pictured in August 2006 Fred during his wartime RAF days
The War Years At the outbreak of WW2, Fred was just about to turn 17 and was still living with his parents at 30, Taunton Rd, Wallasey, a town on the Wirral which overlooks Liverpool across the River Mersey. He found employment at the Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Company in Milton Rd, Edge Hill, Liverpool, and attended technical college in the evenings. Fred's father was a director of International Stores which was in direct competition with the Co-op. With the bombing of Liverpool and its docks imminent, he decided to move into a new home at Nantwich, Cheshire. It was a large formidable country house and was to provide his family with safer surroundings away from the bombing as well as giving safe storage of a duplicate set of his company's paperwork. We must remember that at that time, all company records were paper based and the total destruction of them during the heavy bombing would have spelt disaster for the company. This move made life difficult for Fred, who spent most of his time on the long, arduous and unpredictable journey from his new home to work and back in those early wartime days. He was to spend most of his night school time in Liverpool, sheltering during air raids. Although in a reserved occupation, Fred eventually took the decision to join the RAF.
This is a copy of Fred's RAF service and release book. Click on the picture to see it in detail.
He joined on 22nd September 1941 and spent his first sixteen weeks at RAF Henlow training to be an electrician. This turned out to be a period of intense learning, with almost daily tests or examinations. After all day in the classroom or workshops, the evenings were taken up by study or revising for the following day's examinations, giving him little time to spend on socialising. He would have only one night a week free to visit the pub if he was lucky. After his sixteen weeks, Fred passed out of Henlow as an AC2 and was to gain his promotion to AC1 at a later date. Even during those wartime days when skilled and trained personnel were in short supply, training standards were never relaxed to help fill the shortage. His first posting was to RAF Holme on Spalding Moor in Yorkshire. He was with 101 Squadron, and was to spend the next six months there working as an electrician on such aircraft as Wellington and Stirling bombers.
Ludford Magna RAF Ludford Magna in Lincolnshire, was the wartime base for 101 Squadron of RAF Bomber Command and was to become Fred's next posting, He would remain there until the end of the war. Many excellent accounts of the life and times at RAF Ludford Magna have already been written, so we won't try to repeat them here. It is a fact however that 101 Squadron, whose identifying letters were SR, suffered some of the highest casualty rates for aircrew and aircraft than other squadrons within Bomber Command during WW2. Some memories from his time there include lost friends and comrades and are hard to talk about, however it was not all sadness, there were some happier times in the squadron. The aircraft types he worked on were Wellington, Stirling and Lancaster Bombers. When asked how the aircraft types compared, he said that without doubt the Lancaster was way out in front. The Short Stirlings differed from the others in that they had all electrically controlled systems and they were prone to failure. Fred remembers that on one occasion they had been trying to sort out a series of electrical faults on one particular aircraft. They took a meal break, but what they found when they returned afterwards was a Stirling, 'belly' on the ground with it's undercarriage raised. Another electrical fault had decided to raise the undercarriage without human intervention while they were eating their lunch! Repairing flack damage kept them constantly busy, forgoing meal and rest breaks to make sure that the aircraft were ready and top line for the next operation. Some of the aircraft returned so badly damaged that they were only good for spares use. How some of the aircrew managed to get these badly damaged aircraft back and land them was an incredible story of skill and heroism. Some returned with the 'Perspex' cockpit canopy totally blown out or missing, injured crew members and with so much flack damage that it was a miracle the aircraft flew at all.
There were times when he had to run for cover when the German Luftwaffe dropped anti-personnel bombs on the aerodrome, only requiring small movements to set them off. The bomb disposal unit seemed to be constantly on duty. He remembers the German fighters that would often follow the bombers back to the aerodrome to find out were the squadron was based. They took this additional opportunity to strafe the airfield and buildings with gunfire. All the ground crews were hard working and forever on the alert, and they would secretly worry about the fate of the aircraft and the aircrews when they went on a mission, wondering which of their friends and colleagues would be lost or return to fight another day.
Fred worked on some of the more famous aircraft in WW2, one of them being Lancaster DV302, H for Harry, which went on to complete 121 missions. Their were to many aircraft to mention individually but take a look at the photo page to see some of the others. FIDO FIDO was a fog dispersal system that was used at airfields during WW2 to clear fog from the runways, allowing the returning bombers to find their base and land safely. Fred remembers FIDO well, it was a series of pipes laid permanently on each side of the entire runway, which sprayed jets of lighted oil in an attempt to 'burn off' the fog. It worked extremely well and saved the lives of many returning aircrews. He did remark however that when FIDO was first lit, great plumes of thick black acrid smoke were produced, probably thicker than the fog itself, only clearing when the pipes got hot and vaporised the oil. As Fred put it ' in a similar way to the old fashioned paraffin blowlamps.' An incident that Fred remembers well is when an officer had noticed that the gun in the upper turret of the Lancaster wouldn't fire in all positions and assumed that it was some sort of fault. It had to be explained to the unnamed officer, that if they did fire in all positions they would surely shoot off their own rudders from the tail plane, and not require the assistance of enemy fire to down the aircraft! The upper turret guns had to be disabled when they were turned to face either rudder, and although the officer was not aware of it, the Luftwaffe certainly were, for they used to exploit this blind spot.
Nights out were not that common, but they tried to manage at least one a week with a trip to the pubs in Louth. If any Americans came into the pub they were drinking in, they would quickly leave, for it usually meant arguments followed by a fight breaking out. On a few occasions, they missed the liberty bus back to the base and had to walk the whole 9 miles! Celebrations on VE night meant a few drinks at the pub in Ludford Magna village.
With the bombing campaign in Europe ending, the war in the Far East was still going on with no end in sight. Fred and his ground crew colleagues were ordered to report to Blackpool to be re-assigned to the Army, with the intention of sending them out to the Far East to continue the fight. Fred managed to delay reporting to Blackpool by a few weeks. By the time he eventually got there, the war with Japan was coming to an end and so he was to remain with the RAF until his discharge on 19th November 1946. Fred tells us that he would have liked to have remained in the RAF and make it his career, but being newly married, he had a wife to consider. After talking it over, it was decided that a life living at various RAF stations throughout the world would not be right for them to start and bring up a family.
The links below will take you to some good web sites. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/billchurchley/ludford.html http://www.worldwar2exraf.co.uk/Squadron Pages/101 Squadron.htm There are many good sites about Ludford Magna and 101 Squadron, try searching .
Click here to see Fred's collection of photographs.
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