Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Dedication
OPERATION
PARLIAMENT
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2015)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LB
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to my friend, Jon Glauert, for his editorial skills
in correcting my appalling abuse of the English language and
the rules of punctuation. I would also like to thank him for his
enthusiastic encouragement and help when producing the
presentable draft. David Evans of Mark generously allowed me
to study his comprehensive library of material on Lancaster
Bombers and Bomber Command. I thank Peter Higman for his
considerable help on the production of the first draft of the
manuscript. My grateful thanks go to the RAF Museum
Hendon, Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre and Lady
Jane at East Kirkby, Norman Groom and his Pitstone Museum
and Flyingzone Publications, who all provided invaluable
information and explanation. Finally, to the gentleman who
farmed the old RAF Kelstern airfield in Lincolnshire in the
1950s. As a nine-year-old boy I heard him relating a story of a
ghost Lancaster, hence, inspiring this book many years later.
10
FOREWORD
11
12
ASR
ATA
B
Bought it
Bowser
Bus Driver
C
Caterpillar Club
Chaff
Camp
Chop
Cookie
Chiefy
Crate
Crabbing
Cans
Corkscrew
Anti-aircraft gunfire.
Height, i.e. Angels Ten = 10,000 feet.
Air Officer Commanding. (of a group.)
Air Force Medal. Awarded to NCOs for one
outstanding action (immediate) or more
usually for a sustained effort in battle.
Air Sea Rescue.
Air Transport Auxiliary. A civilian
Organisation run by the Air Ministry to
deliver new aircraft to the RAF from the
factories. Many women were pilots for them.
Killed.
Petrol tanker.
Bomber pilot.
An informal association of people who have
successfully used a parachute to bail out of a
disabled aircraft. Once, you are awarded a
silver caterpillar lapel badge twice, and you
receive a gold badge from the parachute
manufacturer.
Slang name for Window, anti-radar device.
An RAF station.
Killed.
Barrel shaped 4,000-pound bomb.
Ground Crew Flight Sergeant.
Aeroplane.
Flying slightly sideways.
Pints of beer.
Evasive manoeuvres when attacked by a night
fighter, sharp diving turn to port/starboard
followed by a sharp climbing turn to
starboard/port.
13
CO
Coned
Computor
Ding Bat
Duff Gen
Dispersal pan
DFC
DSO
DFM
E
Elsan
ENSA
Erk
ETA
F
FFI
Commanding Officer.
Being caught in the beam of many
searchlights (a cone).
Wartime spelling for the first computers.
High speed. Going like a ding bat.
Bad information.
A frying pan shaped concrete pad
where bombers were parked.
Distinguished Flying Cross. Awarded to
Officers for one outstanding action
(immediate) or more usually for a sustained
effort in battle.
Distinguished Service Order. Awarded to
Officers primarily for leadership and
dedication to duty as well as acts of bravery.
Distinguished Flying Medal. Awarded to
NCOs as DFC above.
Chemical toilet on board the aircraft.
Entertainment National Service Association.
A civilian theatre company that entertained
the troops.
Ground crew member.
Estimated Time of Arrival.
Free From Infection, medical inspection for
VD, etc.
G
Gen
Information.
Gone for a Burton
Missing/dead airman or crew.
Group
As in 1 Group. The administrative HQ for a
number of squadrons in a geographical area,
headed up by the AOC, an Air Vice Marshall.
Groupie
Group Captain. CO of an RAF camp.
Green House
Cockpit cover of a Lancaster.
H
Heat Wagon
Fire Engine.
Happy Valley The Ruhr Valley industrial area in Germany.
14
15
Main Spar
Milk Run
MIA
Monica
MT Section
N
NCO
O
Op/Ops
Officer Ranks RAF
O.C. /
OTU
P
Pancake
Plumduff
Piece of cake
PFF
Plumber
Port
Q
QFE
R
RDF
R/T
RP
Operation/s.
Pilot Officer, Flying Officer, Flight
Lieutenant, Squadron Leader, Wing
Commander, Group Captain, Air
Commodore, Air Vice Marshal, Vice
Marshal, Air Chief Marshal, Marshal
of the Royal Air Force.
Officer Commanding.
Operational Training Unit. A follow on from
HCU.
Crash.
4,000 impact fused HC bomb.
Easy,
Path Finder Force. A small group of aircraft,
which after finding the target, put down
flares to guide the following bombers.
Flight Engineer.
Left side of aircraft.
Airfield Atmospheric Pressure; i.e. altimeter
setting at ground level, Elkington = 390 feet.
Radio Direction Finding (radar)
Radio Telephone.
Rendezvous point.
16
S
Snowdrop
Sortie
Starboard
Scarecrows
T
Tail Spar
Tour
Toc H Lamp
Tracer
RAF Policeman.
One aircraft making one trip to target and
back.
Right side of aircraft.
Bombers exploding in flight, usually because
of the bombs on board being hit by enemy
fire. Crews were told, for moral purposes, that
they were enemy ack-ack devices designed to
look like aeroplanes blowing up.
Structural element of the tail section.
30 sorties made a tour. Airmen were then
rested for 6 months.
Toc H (Talbot House) was a charitable
Christian society for officers and men, who
could go to a Toc H house for a break from
the normal entertainments they were
attracted to! Its emblem was an old-fashioned
candle lamp. Toc was the army signal code
for the letter T. Hence Toc H.
Tracer ammunition contains a pyrotechnic
attached to the base of the round. It is ignited
by the burning powder enabling the path of
the projectile to be traced. Normally 1 in 5
bullets are tracer.
Second in Command.
Target Indicators/Turn indicators. A bomblike capsule that busts open at a given height
releasing coloured burning candle flares. As
they drop they ignite at different times,
illuminating the target area for several
minutes.
U
Undercarriage Landing gear.
V
Vergeltungswaffen
Vengeance weapons.
Verey Gun/Pistol
Fires coloured flares.
17
VHF
VC
VIC/Vic
W
WAAF, Waaf
Went in
Wimpy
Weaving
Wizard
Window
WingCo
Whizzed
18
OPERATION PARLIAMENT
Prologue
Jack Richardss family had farmed the land around the village
of Elkington for four generations, and he had kept the tradition
alive and followed his fathers footsteps on to the farm.
In the nineteen forties, the Air Ministry requisitioned fourhundred acres of the high land around their farm and two of the
neighbouring farms, as it was one of the many suitable sites in
the county ideal for conversion to an airfield for the modern
Royal Air Force. The elevated plateau of flat land on top of the
Lincolnshire Wolds had served before, in the Great War, as an
emergency landing field for Zeppelin hunting bi-planes, the
fighter-aircraft of the day of the Royal Flying Corps. However,
1942 saw it brought back into service. The Air Ministry created
more than forty-five bomber stations in Lincolnshire alone in
those days of uncertainty and apprehension, and Lincolnshire
earned the sobriquet, Bomber County.
For all Jack Richards childhood he had been fascinated,
and loved with a passion, any and everything about aircraft. He
drew pictures of them, flew the balsa wood gliders he designed
and constructed himself and read every book about aircraft he
could lay his hands on. His passion for flying was the result of
his fathers exciting stories of the string bags of the Great War
which flew from the temporary airfield here at Elkington. He
would thrill him with stories of heroic young fighter pilots
attacking the giant blimps and bringing their wounded
aeroplanes back to the field, and with stories of crash landings
and explosions. He dreamed of becoming a pilot. However,
when he was a small inquisitive boy, the iron-shod hoof of one
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1 ... Blooded