Jim Wilson’s
War -
the Diary of a ‘Gang Boss’
It is well known that the Civilian Repair Organisation and
the RAF maintenance infrastructure around it was instrumental in keeping the
numbers of available aircraft above critical in the dark early days of the war.
What this meant at ‘ground level’ to those civilians with
the task of retrieving all of this material from where it lay strewn across the
British countryside is not so well known. That it was extraordinarily hard and often dangerous
work is brought to light by the journal of Accrington-born Jim Wilson who at 40
signed up to serve with 50 Maintenance Unit (MU) out of the Morris Motors’
plant in Cowley, Oxfordshire and who in January 1940 found himself in charge of
seven men and a four-wheel drive lorry.
Although the primary task of the MU gangs at the beginning
of the war had been disassembly for transport of all non-airworthy aircraft,
the job very quickly became as much about salvage. The procedure was straightforward in theory,
and begun with the report of a missing aircraft to 43 Group RAF. Acting on reports of crashes and with the input
of Intelligence Officers Group would contact the MU serving that geographical
patch. The MU would dispatch the duty
‘gang’ to drive out and pick up the pieces, where they might encounter
investigators, intelligence and those tasked with removing human remains still
at work. The wreckage would then be loaded
onto RAF transport (often the famous ‘Queen Mary’) and driven away to be recycled,
long before the term was coined.
Jim Wilson was appointed Gang Leader of 24 gang and was
given a patch that covered the entire southwest of England. His diary, supplemented by a narrative typed
up by Jim postwar, gives the flavour of a life largely spent on the road and often
in danger. It also offers a ‘nuts and
bolts’ insight into the business of dismantling and recovering all kinds of
WWII aircraft.
Jim’s first job saw him lead a driver, three mechanics, two
electricians and a ‘chippy’ out from Cowley in the general direction of south Wales
on a freezing January morning. Their
Crossley three-tonner slid off the snowy road in the Cotswolds, and they had to
transfer all of the heavy salvage equipment to a replacement with numb fingers
in the driving sleet.
Navigating using a Daily Mail 3-in-1 map and unable to ask
directions (the British public had been told repeatedly never to give
directions to strangers) they eventually found Fairey Battle L6065 in a wood
near St Brides, Cardiff, lying across a ditch and three fields away from the
nearest point to which they could drive the lorry. In the freezing rain Jim had to chip the ice
off the wing each time he needed to pick up a tool placed there. Led by resourceful gang chippy Jack Cook, the
team built a sled from what they could find around them, and hired two Sussex
grey horses to pull it. Dismantling the
aircraft required excavation of the frozen ground to remove a bank and fill in
the ditch - then Jim discovered that they needed a 2BA spanner, which hadn’t
been provided by the RAF. He had to “improvise”
- though he doesn’t record how.
The whole job took 11 days of solid work – they found ‘digs’
on-the-fly here as they seemed to on most jobs - and almost as an afterthought
Jim mentioned that he cracked a rib and had to have it strapped up back at
Cowley.
This set the tone for the rest of Jim’s time at 50MU. Jobs were long and each one threw up a new
challenge. He recalls with some pride
that his men “thrived under the difficult situations.”
Fairey Battle K7688 came to grief 2,000 feet up
in the Preseli mountains (the crew, on a cross country from Aston Down,
survived thanks to a superb uphill landing by pilot Sgt T. Forbes). The farmer with whom they left the lorry advised Jim to leave a
stick with a white cloth every 100 yards during the ascent, and when the
weather closed in they were grateful for this advice – the bogs were
treacherous. Going back up the next
morning they took the farmer and a horse with them, for which he charged four
pounds. Working in the freezing cold and
horizontal rain they managed to get the Merlin engine onto a sled and set off
back down with it “tied well down and roped to the pony’s harness. Hanging on to the extra guide ropes we had
taken off we started off on the worst downhill climb I have ever known.”
The next day the farmer refused to go back up the mountain. On informing Cowley of this, the gang were
told to simply dig a big enough hole and bury the aircraft. This took three days to do – the hole was 30ft
long, 15ft wide and five feet deep. Jim
drained 150 gallons of fuel from the Battle’s tanks and burned what he could in
the hole, before filling it in. “When
the sun shone on the mountain” Jim recalled “the pyre could be seen for miles.”
The surface remains were well known
landmarks for decades – sadly now very little remains, though the buried parts
must still be there.
Work was steadily coming up more frequently as the phoney war
began to get real. A Hampden in May got
Jim into trouble with Jack Dale, Foreman to all the 50MU gangs. The low-loader got stuck in the field - Jim
had only ordered one (the aircraft being a compacted wreck), and it was
overloaded. Jim had to order a Coles crane
to pull it out, and Mr Dale “played the dickens” over it.
Loading instructions (for complete aircraft), were in fact
very detailed and required a surprising amount of heavy transport. As well as details on how to ‘pack’
components, Jim’s notes show that, for example, a Short Stirling requires the
ordering of:
-
Two long low loaders (less side rails) for
fuselage (can be done with one ‘Ark Royal’)
-
Two long low loaders (less side rails) for
mainplanes
-
One short low loader for flaps
-
One long low loader – tailplanes and fin
-
Two short low loaders – powerplants and props
-
One long low loader for jacks etc.
-
Two 25-ton jacks
-
Two 15-ton jacks
-
One long low loader for ‘Stirling trucks’
-
Two Stirling wing cradles
-
One jacking beam
-
One crane for offloading beam, jacks etc.
On June 18, while attending to a Wellington at Farnborough
Jim watched a Spitfire being tested by the A&AEE against a captured 109. He noted that it was “wonderful to watch them
at their aerobatics.”
Shortly after this a growing demand for recoveries meant
more gangs and a new section of 50MU needed to be formed to serve a specific
territory - the southwest peninsula. Along
with two others, Jims’s gang set off in July for Taunton, county town of
Somerset, in a new vehicle - a four-wheel-drive Crossley with “gantry, booster
gear and heavy track tyres.” The
steel gantry gave them fourteen feet of lifting clearance when mounted on the
back of the lorry, and Jim found it by far the most useful piece of kit they
had.
Immediately on starting with No.1 section, three Spitfires
in a row required salvage by 24 gang. N3287,
abandoned at night by T.S. ‘Wimpy’ Wade of 92 Squadron (later killed test
flying the Hawker P1081), was scattered over a wide area with the engine in a
deep hole. Jim had his new gantry, so
that didn’t prove a problem to his gang – however, getting the remains off site
did. The RAF low-loader couldn’t get
within three fields of the wreckage, and so the gang had to dismantle a wall in
order to drive the components across to it in their four-wheel-drive Crossley,
having first emptied it of equipment and de-rigged the gantry. This again set a precedent for future trips.
The next Spitfire was P9493. This time thick granite walls and an uncooperative
farmer necessitated many trips by a smaller vehicle from the field to the road.
This journey ran past an abandoned
tin-mine, and Jim commented meaningfully “We loaded what we could – some parts
must have gone down the mineshaft”. He
did collect the only re-useable part – the reflector gunsight.
Spitfire K9879 completed the trio – this was (unbeknownst to
Jim) a very early PDU PR1. Jim noted “The
salvage of good parts was becoming urgent. We realised we would be kept very busy picking
up bad crashes rather than reparable jobs because of the amount of air battles
being fought overhead.”
One such occurred while Jim was salvaging 234 Squadron
Spitfires R6811 and K9894 from Langton Matravers and Wareham flats respectively
(the latter requiring three sheer legs and a pulley block borrowed from a local
boat yard to pull out of a deep irrigation ditch). He later had to go back to retrieve an Me110
that he had watched come down onto a local gunnery range – much to the
irritation of the Tank Corps who had found their mock battle most rudely
interrupted.
Indeed Jim seemed to attract enemy action – it was as if the
Germans had it in for him personally. He
was bombed while working at Filton aerodrome, Gosport, South Cerney and Exeter
airport (twice), and he writes that he got into the habit of finding potential
shelter for the team before starting work at an airfield. On August 25 while retrieving Hurricane R2687
from the slopes above Abbotsbury Swannery he watched “nearly 100” bombers and
their escorts come in from the sea – he
was right underneath as they were met by Spitfires and Hurricanes from
Warmwell, Exeter and Tangmere. In this
fight, Jim reported a parachutist coming under fire from a German aircraft.
A 109 dropped out of the melee and after strafing Weymouth High
Street headed directly for Jim’s party. A Hurricane latched on to it and fired – the
German “shot up into the air and then straight down into the ground” about half
a mile away. He admitted to cheering
“more out of relief than anything.”
On the Friday evening of September 13 Jim was ordered by Mr.
Leggett to trawl the pubs, dancehalls and picture palaces of Taunton and get
his gang together for an urgent job. He
had to get the manager to put a message on screen at one cinema. They drove all night to get to Gosport,
Hampshire – only to find four of the five Blackburn Rocs they were supposed to
dismantle had been removed by 49MU. However
George Leggett’s boss, Foreman Dale, insisted they stay to deal with the fifth,
though there was another gang present.
There was more danger to come. Returning to Taunton wet and hungry from a rain-soaked
job in Blagdon (Hurricane P3021, Category ‘B’) where Jim’s gang had needed to
demolish and then rebuild two gates and three walls to get the transport in, he
was ‘turned around’ by the ubiquitous Mr Leggett and sent straight back out to
another job – Hurricane P3088, aground on Chesil Bank, Dorset.
The wreck lay three miles along a shingle beach – on the
other side of a minefield. A locally
stationed army officer had to guide the gang through each time, carrying their
tools and equipment by hand until once again they built a sled, and ‘wet hired’
a horse to pull it. By day three they
were erecting a gantry over the hulk. As
an aside Jim mentions that the Germans were bombing Portland while they were
doing this.
On day four, October 7, the rain stopped and as Jim put it,
“Jerry seemed to appreciate this fact”. He
describes “bullets and shrapnel flying about everywhere” – 152’s Spitfires from
Warmwell were getting amongst the JU88’s of on their way to bomb the Westland
factory in Yeovil. There was no cover this time, as they were some way out on
the shingle spit.
With gratitude to the landlady who provided hot meals and
put their work clothes out to dry, and the horse-leading farmer who was “a good
sport,” Jim records that though they weren’t sad to finish the job none of them
would have missed it for the world. Ten
days later they arrived triumphant but exhausted in Taunton, “still with salt
on our faces.”
The ‘book’ made it sound easy. Jim transcribed the standing orders to crews
into his account, and it described procedure in detail:
REMOVAL OF
MAIN PLANES
All
controls, electric leads, hydraulic equipment, airspeed indicator pipes, oil
and radiator capillaries etc. must be disconnected – battens should be placed
to prevent movement between ailerons and planes. Main planes, after removal
from aircraft should be placed where they cannot be damaged by wind and other
elements.
Preserve all
bolts and nuts that cannot be re-fitted – blank-off all pipe lines, screw up
turn buckles and cover un-protected threads.
REMOVAL OF
AIRSCREWS
Use the
correct spanners; grease and protect the hub and gear from ingress of dirt.
REMOVAL OF
ENGINES
Use the
correct slings and attach them to the proper points.
The lift
should be perpendicular and the weight should be taken slowly to check
application of slings and to ensure freedom of the engine from its fixings and
connections.
Lower engine
on to stand, if available. If not place it on adequate soft packing.
Blank off
all pipes – remove sparking plugs, inject oil spray into cylinders and fit
dummy plugs.
REMOVAL OF
TAIL UNIT
Disconnect
controls, wires etc. Remove rudder, store carefully, replace bolts and nuts.On some
types the elevators may not have to be disconnected; in which case elevators
must be secured to prevent movement.
If elevators
are removed treat them similarly to main planes.
REMOVAL OF
UNDERCARRIAGE
Examine well
the trestles and jacks etc. under fuselage before removing undercarriage.
Relieve pressure in Oleo legs before any dismantling work is started.
Replace
bolts and nuts after removal of Oleo legs, radius rods, wires etc.
CARE OF BOLTS
& NUTS ETC. DURING SALVAGE
Whenever
practicable place these items back securely into their respective positions –
such items as fairing screws, clevis pins etc. must be put into bags which must
be firmly tied at the neck. Deal with other groups as follows:
Place the
bolts and items relative to the engine and airscrew in one bag and attach the
bag to the engine.
Bolts and
nuts that secure engine to airframe should be refitted in cradle.
Nuts etc.
that fix to the exhaust manifold or rings to engine are to be refitted to engine.
If airframe
is going to storage replace in the instrument panel all loose screws, nuts and
bolts etc. – if instruments have immovable studs fitted replace nuts on studs.
The above
gives you an outline of what is wanted; you must use your own discretion in
many cases. Losses of the smallest parts must be avoided – you have only to put
yourself in the other man’s place, who may be prevented from rebuilding in the
shortest possible time by the absence of such small items as nuts, bolts or
washers etc.
These instructions were to be followed to the letter under
air raids, working with numb fingers on storm-lashed mountainsides and up to
one’s waist in freezing seawater. It
took eighteen days to remove the remains of Hudson P5124 from the foreshore at
Gwithian, Cornwall. When Jim arrived on
November 13 1940, his first plan was to float the aircraft off, and he bought
some surplus petrol barrels from the local petroleum board. He also managed, in full diplomat mode, to get
the Hale harbour board to agree to lend them two pinnaces to tow with, and the
use of the crane in Hale Harbour. Then a
phone call to keep Mr Hale at Cowley informed of the plan ended this idea – Jim
was to proceed without outside help.
The team had two hours each tide where the water was low
enough to get around the rocks to the beach. All their equipment had to be carried over a
two-foot wide wooden footbridge. Nevertheless
by day three they had erected a jig of 9 x 3 timbers and improvised sheer legs,
attached a pulley to it and dug out one of the engines. Another rapidly-constructed Jack Cook sled
allowed them to drag the engines above the tideline (after digging them out of
the sand – several times). A borrowed
tractor couldn’t pull them off the beach, however, and they had to resort to
horses once again.
They returned to Taunton on December 1, “ready for a rest
and a change of clothes.”
Christmas 1940 brought no break in the punishing travel and
work schedule. Dispatched to 67’s Truro
outpost to cover Christmas leave there, Jim had the idea of inviting his
long-suffering wife Norah down from Taunton to spend Christmas with him – the
gang driver, Giles ‘Pop’ Holland, did the same thing. That night they were informed that Beaufort
L9913 was spread across three fields at Braunton sands, Devon – and as the only
crew working they had to attend. The
gang set off at 8 am on Christmas morning with Norah Wilson and Mrs. Holland
sitting up front in the cab. On the way
Jim managed to secure a proper Christmas dinner with all the trimmings (even
paper hats) for 10 despite everything being closed, from “the good people of
the Elm Tree hotel, Stratton.”
Jim admits to being “something of a diplomat” when it came to
arranging food and digs for his crew. In
the period of the diaries, Jim and his gang stayed in many unlikely venues –
including pub lock-ins followed by the lorry cab, RAF tents, the ‘Bedford
Drivers Club’, a most disturbing-sounding Inn called The Hangman’s Grave in
Shepton Mallett and a Royal Artillery machine gun post.
When ‘on shift’ in Taunton, between call-outs all gangs were
expected to work separating metals from a big pile of wreckage in the garage yard.
Jim wrote of the useful quantities of sorted
assemblies that they would stack up by the ‘goods out’ gate with every shift
put in at Taunton, ready for redistribution via Cowley, as well as the
separated metals that would go directly into the smelters. Jim was at the sharp end of an extremely effective
operation.
February 1941 saw Jim make a grim discovery. When jacking up the fuselage of an HE111 1G+FR
of 7/KG 27 near Totnes he found the missing fourth member of
the crew – or rather pieces of body and skull - underneath.
Despite being civilians, they were expected to handle
ordnance, and make it safe where possible. There were accidents – Jim records several
incidents where colleagues were badly injured by live ammunition. Fortunately he ‘got away’ with no more than
the early rib-cracking incident, a bout of flu, and a damaged foot where an
un-named gang member dropped an airscrew onto it. Jim’s last brush with personal danger that
came quite unexpectedly in March when he was called away from a recovery to
attend an emergency job, retrieving a ‘bomber wheel’ that had been washed up in
Devon. Jim found it next to the Start
Point lighthouse inexplicably caught up with the firing pins of a live 500lb sea
mine.
Nobody seemed to know anything about it (and it all seemed a
bit curious, a leg and a wheel being an emergency job) but Jim’s instructions
were simply to retrieve the leg and wheel – so he backed the lorry up to the
mine, positioned the trusty gantry over it, and ordered the assembled crowd to
retreat at least 100 yards.
He asked for a volunteer, and the gang electrician put his
hand up – he would help, as long as Jim told Mr. Dale he had volunteered. The leg came away fairly easily – shortly
before a mines expert turned up from Portsmouth and called Jim all kinds of
names for not having the mine made safe.
Between January 1940 and October 1941 Jim Wilson was
responsible for the recovery of 140 aircraft, including a remarkable thirty-two
Hurricanes (an aircraft Jim admitted to having a “Real love” for), at least seven
Spitfires, Blenheims, Battles, Hampdens, Wellingtons, Beauforts, two Monospars
and even a Queen Bee among what was an inventory of serving RAF types. At a time when the supply of aeroplanes was
utterly critical, he gave as much as any civilian could possibly contribute to
the war effort.
With enormous thanks
to Matt Bearman for using quotes from my father’s
original diaries and notes.
