CJC “BILL” GALL – NAVIGATOR

Extracts from a taped interview with his granddaughter Sally Cripps

Tell me about joining the Air Force?

I make these decisions which I've got no right to do. I was 32, I thought I'd be too old for aircrew, it was 1942, the war was on, but I thought I'd have a go. I wanted to be a pilot you see. They were recruiting in Brisbane, and they were also recruiting, both in Creek Street, in different parts of the street. They were looking for what the called the armoured division. Me and my-, I didn't know much about anything, I was pretty sure they wouldn't accept me in air crew, so I wanted to go to the armoured division.

 Anyhow, first of all, I'll tell you about my hearing disabilities. It started off, incidentally I'd come down by train from Blackall and I'd had a bit of a gastric attack on the way, and I wasn't feeling 100 percent. I didn't particularly care to be pushed around by what I thought were public servants then. I started off, not a stitch on, and I went to this hearing place. I had no idea what was going to happen. My hearing then was, certainly, not much good, so, what he said to me from memory, he stood up in a big room and said, “Stand against the wall and face left and repeat what I say.” Now, I had no idea what he was going to do. He had a loud whisper and I said "57". "Righto, turn round the other way." There was a loud whisper and I said "76". He said, "Righto, away you go." I didn't ask any questions. Now I couldn't possibly have heard what he said. I don't say, well, other people have had telepathy experience, I don't say they're all baloney, but I didn't believe in it as far as it attaches to me. When I'd gone right found and finished everything, the bloke was sorting out my documents and I said "How did I go with the hearing?" He said, "Oh yes, you're alright." It was Anzac Day and the only reason I could cope with it was, he was crabby this bloke who'd had to come back and work on Anzac Day. He might have thought, "If the silly bugger wants to go, he can go.” That's only a guess but I never knew how I passed that test.

Now, there was another thing with this, they gave me two tests, they turned out to be aptitude tests. The second one was a sort of a mechanical test. I didn't realise that speed entered into it you see. All my exams at school, this was 15 years since I'd had the last exam, my argument was, always read the paper. In an aptitude test, that's no good. So I read the paper and by the time I came to do the paper, time had run out and I didn't do any good. After that I went up to this board and they said; there was three, one was Air Force, one was civilian, and I don't know what the other was. They said, "Your aptitude test was about the level of a seven-year-old child, but your mechanical aptitude test was absolutely fantastic." I said it wasn't an aptitude test at all, I'd been working with pulleys and cogwheels and levers, I'd been doing that all my life. It's just a test of my knowledge. They said, "You won't get into air crew". I said I'll have a go at the armoured division but they said no, you go and see the ground staff people. I said I don't want to join the ground staff, don't ask me why. They said you go downstairs and see the ground staff people. Righto, so I went downstairs and went towards the front door. A corporal brought me back. They had me there again, went through it all over again, the second time I went for the door, the corporal sent me back, so eventually they said to me, "Right, we will give you a go at air crew but the only thing you could possibly do in air crew was a gunner." Of course I knew guns all my life, that didn't worry me. They said if you fail your aircrew course you'll have to go the ground crew. Well I said that was OK, it was up to me. They ended up making me a bloody navigator, and I've got the mentality of a seven-year-old child.

 I think perhaps I would have liked the ground staff. When I got over to England, I saw all these blooming ground staff blokes in the middle of the night, ice and frost and rain everywhere, working on engines with a little hurricane light, because there was a blackout, I thought, "By gee, I'm glad I'm not them". The plane they were looking after might come back with half a dozen dead crew and the pilot'd get a DFC or anything, but nobody gave the ground crew any credit that looked after that plane that got there and back.

 There was another experience in the air force, if you're interested. When I joined the air force, I thought, "Right, I'm a number." Nearly everywhere I went they had (category call?). Another stage, I went to Kingaroy to have my IFT - Initial Flying Training or something. I went through another category call - I wanted to be a pilot, naturally. They tried to talk me out of being that but they let me have a go. I went to (Narromine?) as a pilot. The first time I went up with an instructor, he said, "You land it, you take over the stick." I flew it onto the ground as easy as anything, you see, you hardly knew. For some unknown reason, I could fly it onto the ground but he told me I had to do a three point landing. For some damn reason I couldn't do that. I discussed it with some ear specialist since, he said yes, there are times when the mechanics of your ears does affect your balance. Anyhow, the first time I went solo I thought, "I'm going to do it this time." I was looking at the clock and I was looking at the petrol tank, it took me seven seconds to land the bloody thing. I couldn't do it; I'd give it a gun and go round again. My poor pilot, I thought he was flying round with somebody else but he was on the ground watching me, and tearing his bloody hair. At the finish I had the ambulance on one side and the fire engine on the other. He told me, if I couldn't do a three point landing I wouldn't go any further. It turned out to be wrong because other people told me they had that problem and of course once they went onto front wheel stuff, they didn't have to do that. I believed him so that's how I was scrubbed.

 Of course these instructors, they hated the job. Apparently they wanted to go somewhere else and they were shanghaied in. He was a nice bloke but he used to yell out a bit. He said, "The last person I had, I hated the thought of him going solo. He never made a mistake, he never done the wrong thing, but when he got up on his own, I wondered what would happen if he did the wrong thing. On the other hand, you've made every bloody mistake in the book." Another thing this bloke, he had a sense of humour. One day he said, he was in front, we were going along and he said, "Take your foot off the rudder, take you hand off the stick." After a few seconds he said, "See, that plane can fly itself better than you can." Another time, he told me to fly straight. After a while he said, "What are you doing now?" "Flying straight." "Oh, I thought you were stirring the porridge." That was the end of my flying. Oh, I went to Mt Gambier there. The first day we went up the clouds came in very quickly. We went up for what they call flight experience, in an Ansett plane, with an experienced pilot. They just took us for a ride, I don't know why. We landed in a farmer's paddock and the farmer gave us a feed and they rang up, and they sent another pilot out. That’s another thing about the Air Force. We landed in this paddock because the cloud had come in too much. When the cloud had disappeared after dusk, they sent out-. The pilot who took us up in the morning, he'd done a tour of operations, in the north of Australia. Instead of letting him fly, they sent a bloody sprog, a young pilot out with no experience at all, to fly that plane home. I thought that was terrible, but that was the Air Force.

 If I'd had a choice-. In long night flights I was the only one who had something to do. The pilots and the gunners, they were staring into space all night, looking for fighters, and might never see one. The pilot had to fly the plane but lots of times-. The pilot didn't like flying at night, no pilots do. The statistics show the night jobs were the safest. We lost less planes. I was blacked out all the time, I always reckoned everyone could see out except me, I was the only bloke who never knew where we were. I was the only bloke, really, if there were no landmarks, that did know where we were. We had two radar setups in my day, one was very new, took me a while to get used to it, but in night flying, even in those days, that was fantastic. Another thing about flying at night time, now, in our day we weren't very worried about flak much, the intelligence blokes'd know where the flak was and they'd route you round it if they could, unless it was in the target area, well they couldn't do anything about that. If there's 200 guns firing up in the air and 200 flying past, they'd have to collide, they'd have to get some hits. Of course if they found you in a searchlight that's a different story, they could aim at you. Night fighters were our trouble really, we had to be very careful, particularly toward the finish. Twenty thousand feet we did a lot of our, most of our flying, except an odd one where we had to get very low. Sometimes we came down lower to drop our bombs. The fighters could get up there too. Later on they got some sort of radar too.

 We were trapped six times one night, on the way home. We were all late, the meteorological wind forecast turned out to be wrong. We were timed to be on target to the minute. Well, I think this time, most of the 4^th got there three or four minutes late, or after the markers had marked the target. Well, of course they had time to get the fighters up then and they had a rough idea which way they might be going home. We were ambushed on the way home. We were just lucky. We had a very good gunner. This rear gunner, if he was attacked; now you're always attacked, particularly at night, from the rear or the side. Two planes heading towards each other at 200 miles an hour in the dark, well, you can't see. They usually see you from the side or underneath and they come down. By the time they get into range, they're more or less behind. The rear gunner's job is to tell the pilot what evasive action to take. We had practice, we used to go up in the daytime. If the rear gunner told you to take evasive action too soon, the fighter could follow you through. If it was too late you might be dead. There was a lot of teamwork between the rear gunner and the pilot. The mid upper gunner, he nearly shot someone down, or he got the credit for it. It was over Leipzig I think. When we came home, my reports and his reports coincided with a Jerry fighter that was shot down and apparently nobody else claimed to shoot it down, and this bloke claimed it. It looked like what they called a possible. The only time we got a hit on the plane, the mid upper gunner, that particular night he got a pit out of his perspex, a little hole. Now, whether that was a bullet or not. We came home on three engines one night but that was, I think, an oil pipe blocked up. The Lancaster engines and the ground crew were so reliable that as far as the plane was concerned, it was like getting in a car and going to Southport.

 Another thing my pilot and I agreed on, you see I was on the squadron for nearly five months and we only did 21 trips. The weather was so duff, we got scrubbed before we took off. One or two times it was scrubbed after we took off and we had to go and drop our bombs in a special place in the North Sea. One of the things that he did, if there were any passenger trips to take important people visiting, he always tried taking them over England if there wasn't an operation on because, he and I both thought flying was the best insurance. They were mostly Australian ground crew in our squadron. We had two Australian squadrons, they called them but there were odd people from other places in the air crew section. There was a Rhodesian, a Canadian. We landed once, in daylight, we were taking a bod to Liverpool. I said to him when we started, "Do you know Liverpool?" "Oh yes, I know Liverpool very well." I said, "Do you know where the aerodrome is?" "Oh yes, I know." I said, well if that's alright I'll get down in the bomb bays and have a look because England when the sun's out, flying down low, with all these little farms and everything-. That's alright, just before we landed, the pilot asked permission to land and it sounded a bit far away. Just before we landed we heard in the distance somebody calling "Darkie". Now, that was one of the things, if you got lost or something went wrong, you'd call "Darkie" and ask for assistance. This bloke calling out "Darkie, Darkie", it sounded odd. I said, "Some poor bugger lost." We landed on this bloody aerodrome, it was the wrong one. Full of naval bods, you know, what do they call them, WRENS and things, and they looked at us as if we were a blooming dinosaur or something. As soon as John landed he knew, so he said to this bloke, "Will this do you?" He said yes so he just went to the end of the runway, turned round and took off. We found out later that that runway was too short for Lancasters. I don't say it was my fault.

 I think it was Christmas Eve, or the day before, the weather was bad, we were at Waddington near Lincoln, and on the way home we were briefed to land at some station in the north of Scotland, which we did. They were coastal commando, nearly all ex-Battle for Britain pilots and nearly all flew Mosquitos. Of course, they were all for their blooming selves, you don't blame them either. They'd come through the Battle of Britain, they were mad as snakes. Before we woke up, the boss, the headman and the commander, he told the barman that any Australian that came in to drink, give them it free. Before we woke up, "Oh, let's try your overcoat." They'd borrow your coat and race into the bar and get a free drink. And they'd shoot the control tower off when they took off. Now, on the way home the next day, for some unknown reason, we were flying in daylight, going back to our own base. It was sort of a happy time and the crew were talking about all the things they shouldn't talk about, like criticizing everything in the Air Force, and fortunately for me, I needed a bit of practice so I didn't say very much. The wireless operator came on and he said, "Hey boss, I've got a message from base, just for us." I said, "I wonder what the devil it is." "Oh I'll ring 'em up and find out." He contacted base on the RT, which was the radio telephone. He had his radio transmitter on all the time and all these blokes in the operation room, they'd heard all this talk going on. You can imagine what it would have been. Incidentally when we got home I had to go and have a feed at the dining room and I was on my own. Two English squad were sitting there. My pilot was doing a bit of a line with one of the WAAFs in the control room and these two Englishmen; I don't know whether they knew I was there. They were talking, they were just terrible, the wireless operator was slinging off at the pilot about his girlfriend up in the control tower. These two Englishmen were talking. He said, "That poor girl in the control tower, it must have been terrible." I said, "Why didn't you switch the damn thing off?" "Oh," he said, "Who wanted to switch it off!"

 Another time was serious. We never transmitted on the way into the target and very seldom on the way home either, but we got instructions sometimes you see. One time our wireless operator missed a broadcast from base. One the way home, we were briefed to land at Lossiemouth, our force, Five Group, which is a separate group, was advised to cancel that instruction to go to Lossiemouth and return to base. Fortunately our op missed that. Later on, they cancelled that again and said go back to where you were originally briefed. Well, some of the wireless operators apparently, they heard the first one and thought, "Oh well, she's alright," and stopped listening and didn't hear the second one. Well I think they lost eight planes over England that night, because people got to where they thought was the-, and they couldn't see anything. One of our pilots, he got to Waddington and he didn't know but he was a daredevil bloke and he thought, well, he'd have a go and he actually made it. In our particular case, we were on one plane that used up a lot of fuel. Now, we couldn't get to Lossiemouth, we landed at (Banf?) because we were running short of petrol. Now, if we'd got that second broadcast that said go to base and then got the other one that said go back, we wouldn't have made it. We were terribly lucky our wireless operator missed that broadcast, and we were lucky, we didn't call Banf up when we came in to land, we just fired red Vereys so they'd know we were in distress.

 There was another story, it didn't concern us. This bloke, every time we went, a squadron at Waddington, we had to do a cross country flight after we got there, in the night time. This bloke was doing the cross country flight; I don't know whether he'd done any operations. As far as we knew, he didn't. He was a young fellow and he was coming into the circuit on the way home from this flight, he applied for permission to land, which was given. Sometimes round the circuit they might say, if you were number one, they'd say, "Pancake number one" or if you were the third one in the circuit, they'd say, "Pancake number three". This bloke got halfway round the circuit and of course, no lights on, it was a blackout, and a voice he didn't quite recognize, "What is your position?" giving his call sign, instead of Pancake number one. He probably did have his lights on, you'd have to, to land, so he turned his lights out and headed west. It turned out he was right, it was a Jerry fighter that had come in and it wanted to get the positions so he could shoot him down, but he had enough brains to realise there was something wrong. He said nothing and he cleared out and turned round and came back and landed. 

Crew Missions