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AWM Interview with Arthur Tucker (1989)

Kittyhawk Pilot in the critical battles of Moresby and Milne Bay 1942.

Port Moresby, New Guinea. August 1942. Kittyhawk fighter pilots of No. 75 Squadron RAAF, during a break in operations against the Japanese.

TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET 

 

INFORMANT:                   ARTHUR TUCKER

INTERVIEWER:                 Ed Stokes

SUBJECT OF INTERVIEW:        75 Squadron, RAAF

DATE OF INTERVIEW:           June 1989

TRANSCRIBER:                 Margaret Sparke

TRANSCRIPTION DATE:          29 June 1989 

 

  Tape identification: This is Edward Stokes recording with Arthur Tucker, 75 Squadron, Tape 1 Side 1.  

 

Arthur, can we just go back to the beginning? Could you tell us where you were born, and when, please? 

 

On 1st March 1920 I was born in Brisbane, and my mother was widowed when I was nine months old, a car accident. And she then returned to the country to family members, subsequently married in the country, and I lived with her and my stepfather until I was about eight, up in the Brisbane Valley at Esk. So I was a country boy till I went to Brisbane for the rest of my education, stayed with my grandparents until I completed my Intermediate - it was called the Queensland Junior Public - at the age of fourteen. Then I took up ... this was the end of the depression, jobs weren't easy to come by, and I took a teacher training course with the Queensland department. And by the time I was sixteen and a half, I was judged to be mature enough to become a fully fledged country school teacher, which I did in a little town forty miles north of Mackay. I was there for a year and, in our discusssions of your own career, you know what a vacancy there is at the weekends, particularly in country towns. 

 

Now, at that time the government supplied freely .303 rifles and lots of ammunition to rifle clubs, and by the end of that year I was the district junior rifle champion. The point of this, which will emerge later when we talk about air combat, rests on my ability to hit targets at three to five hundred yards over open sights and with a peep sight up to nine hundred yards. It meant that I knew range and I knew the capability of a high-powered rifle and had no qualms about firing it at something at three hundred yards. Later, I was in charge of country one-teacher schools, down in the Darling Downs and later in central western Queensland. So that, in this period - because I joined up when I was twenty, still in central western Queensland - I had associated with grown men. When I was in the rifle club at seventeen, I was also playing rugby with cane-cutters. Then in central western Queensland, when the stations were shearing and carting their wool, I used to do this for the exercise and association with other people. And you know that men don't tolerate boys very well, you learn ... you grow up quickly or they ... you know, that's it ... so that the old hard knocks really comes into it. By the time I was twenty I was a big fellow, I wouldn't take any lip from anyone, and very sure, very independent.  That's the sort of thing you want to know? 

 

(5.00) Yes, that's most interesting. There was certainly that independence, from some things you were saying before. Arthur, you did tell me the story of your uncle who was at Gallipoli; and that, I think, reflects in quite an interesting way on your views towards the Empire and potential war and so on.  

 

Yes, you were interested in how people like myself saw Australian ANZACs and others. And, as I told you, he was a good example. He was at Gallipoli, then he went to France. And you'll surely have heard of the, you know, the unthinking use of men, quite fruitlessly in many of those pushes in France; and you probably know that Australian troops in particular, when they couldn't see the sense of it, became what was called `mutinous'. Now, they didn't take kindly to what some of the British troops seemed to be ready to put up with. And Albert had had a good career, but, by that stage, he was beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel, and so he shot off to Ireland where he met a very nice Irish lass from County Cork whom he married and brought back to Australia. And if they'd caught up with him before the Armistice, no doubt the story would have been quite different. 

 

But from people like that, and from ... we had a Church of England clergyman who used to visit our primary school on ANZAC Day and, looking back, it was quite amazing the hair-raising stories he used to tell us. ANZAC Day in those days was a national day of mourning, no celebration, and so I ...  Our family was completely Celtic, there's no ... it's Irish, Welsh and Scotch, but no ... and with all the, I suppose, independence, and some anti-monarchist feeling - which hasn't evaporated, I can tolerate them but, you know, I wouldn't see any reason for going and doing something silly just because the king wanted me too. But, you know, Albert served, and his mates, they served and did the things they thought it was needed for Australia. They were told it was needed, but they weren't persuaded for any other reason, and afterwards they did wonder why. Because of the association with Ireland - and he was there during the black-and-tan business - in our family there was a lot of resentment of the British attitude to things. And then later, with the depression and - wasn't it Sir Otto Niemeyer and the Australians not being forgiven their war debts when other countries were? - there wasn't any feeling in me right up to the time I joined that I should do this for any reason other than that our own country might be under some sort of threat.  

 

Mmm, that's most interesting, Arthur.  And during the period of say the 1930s, the later 1930s, when there were definite political changes occurring in Europe which some people predicted would lead to war and in fact occurred under Hitler, - were you conscious of that?  How did you feel about developments in Hitler's Germany?  

 

Well, just to tell you another thing before I get to the German incident ... well, take it by incident. I remember when I was at the Grammar School leading and winning a debate on relations with Japan. And it's just occurred to me that I was waving a newspaper of the time which recounted that someone had been in Japan and there had seen in the schools a map of Australia which he alleged had written across it `Your future home'. You know, that would be 1934. But the incident that I think is probably more to the point is that I was telling you, in previous conversations, that as a country school teacher one of the problems was dealing with the parents that ... you know, they were always on the school committee, and you had to appease them. Now, when I was in ... down in Elbow Valley, on the upper end of the Condamine, it was a war settle... a soldier settlement area, and one of the people who ... one of the families that I had associated with quite closely with, the father had been gassed on the Marne, and he had very great trouble with his breathing. 

 

(10.00) Now, relations had been very good until I got carried away during a history lesson, and was explaining to the children that there was a possibility that, had the Versailles Treaty not been so severe, had Germany not been treated quite so harshly, the Germans might have been able to order their affairs and choose a more rational group of people to govern them, because about that time Hitler was starting to move in on the Sudetenland. And the next meeting of the school committee I really got torn to pieces by these people who showed me their various wounds and wheezes and pointed out that they weren't going to have their children's minds poisoned by some ... what we'd now call a `trendy', negating everything they had done. And yet the parallel to that - and I've just been reading Kristen Williamson's Last Bastion - it appears that even Menzies, in the period up to the beginning of the war, was unwilling to send Australian troops overseas until relations with Japan had been settled. Now we weren't, in training, ever to have anything told us about Japan, we never had any Japanese aircraft recognition or anything till we got fired into the battle, there was absolutely no preparation there at all. And yet it's interesting to find out that in about 1939 Menzies was so worried about what Japan would do that he had to have assurances that ... from Churchill that they ... that the response that we'd get ... and this was all because Menzies himself recognised that the western countries were pinching Japan very severely in trade, on rubber, and oil. And so that, in a way here too, you're getting the situation ... and people don't realise how trade ... how dangerous trade wars are, and yet it's going on today, with American wheat isn't it?  

 

Mmm. Yes, that's most interesting.  Arthur, just turning back for a moment to the debating incident  - that anecdote where you were waving the ... this Japanese newspaper with this Australia marked in as a future home - could you just clarify that particular point about the newspaper?  And also, do you recall the motion, and on which side were you speaking?  And did you sincerely believe what you were debating, or was it merely a show debate? 

 

Ah, I tend to believe what I say (laughing).  I ... oh well, I suppose I was young, you know, one wants to win a debate. But I think it was some ... I ... just the ... you know, it sort of just flashed into my mind. I've only just recalled the incident; but I think it was a debate in which it was put that there was no threat to Australia in the foreseeable future. And this was 1934, and of course it was by that time obvious that the Japanese were starting to tread heavily on the Chinese; and I think the debate was that we couldn't feel sure that Japan wouldn't take further interest. In fact, I was proving to them that this fellow had seen evidence that they did think of Australia in much the same way. 

 

              As a potential ... ? 

 

As a potential source of room. The very thing they're doing now, but they're buying the place up instead of taking it. That's half joking, you know; but still, we've got those concerns, we can ... you know, every nation looks to its borders. 

 

Yes, well that's certainly true. And certainly, looking at the contemporary scene, I think that's certainly a very general comment. 

 

Could I add to that? - because we were talking before, and I think maybe you were trying to gauge whether I ended up by joining up because it was an empire, a nationalistic thing, that I believed in. And I think, no; I think my concern, and the concern of a lot of people who having been brought up rather pacifistically did join up, was that, although we weren't told as much as could have been told us about the gathering storm in the East, we still didn't feel happy with our situation with England apparently being close to going to the wall. 

 

Mmm. Yes, that's most interesting. Pacifism I guess often breaks down in the reality.  

 

When you're threatened. 

 

Mmm. My father was, actually. And he joined up shortly after the beginning of the war. I mean, he was a pacifist. Well, let's move on a bit. I think you were about twenty when war broke out. Do you actually recall the declaration of war on Germany by Britain?  

 

Yes, I do. I was in this ... This little fettler's camp was a place called Yalleroi, and it had been a staging post for Cobb and Co., and there was a little old country store-cum-hotel where I used to board, close to the school. Well, there was only half a dozen buildings in the whole place. And I can remember sitting with old Macdonald, who ran the place, listening to his radio one evening, and hearing it all. I can remember it quite distinctly.     

 

(15.00) And how did you feel? What were your thoughts? 

 

Ah, oh, it seemed omin ... I felt ominous, sad about it, it was something that really it did weigh on me because, as I told you, in my upbringing there was such a lot of discussion. ANZAC Day was always a day of quite deep national mourning in those days. People nowadays wouldn't have any idea quite what a ... ah, what a burdensome day it was. Of course, Australia had lost a whole generation of young people, and they were being missed. There were quite an excess of unmarried ladies who had either lost fiances or who had grown up in a land which had been bereft of its young people. 

 

That's most interesting, Arthur. Moving on a little bit, it was shortly after that that you applied to join the air force but of course had to wait, as many people did, for some months before you were in fact called up. Why the air force? 

 

I was interested in flying always. I was at Ascot aerodrome when Hinkler landed there in 1928. I was down at Pinkenba when Kingsford Smith and Ulm landed there. I think I was about ten then. I read books about aeroplanes and made models. 

 

Was there ever any thought of the other services? Or was it the air force or nothing? 

 

No, well, what ... I decided I'd want to do something technical. If the air force wouldn't have me, I was going to join an artillery ... ah, I didn't ever think of joining the navy (laughing). 

 

              They're not technical? (laughter) 

 

Ah no, I got ... it's just that it never occurred to me. 

 

No, I was just thinking it's funny how people see things.    

 

I lived too far from the coast, I suppose. (laughter) 

 

Yes, well that's certainly understandable. Uhm, let's go on then. I think it was in ... about Christmas 1940 you were called up. 

 

Mmm. 

 

              You went to Bradfield Park. 

 

Yes.  

 

You were obviously something of a loner, if not a rebel ... 

 

Mmm. 

 

... and you were thrown into a situation that was obviously highly structured and hierarchical, service situation. How did you react? 

 

Oh, I enjoyed my training. I've read recently someone writing about the many privileges that air force pilots had had in training, the sort of life of milk and honey, sort of like gladiators being prepared for the fray - well it was nothing like that. That's erron... a romantic view of what it was. But it was a most inspiring and interesting thing, right through from the time the ground lectures started. And of course the physical training was enjoyable, navigation, all those things. I was always a dab hand at arithmetic, so navigation ... the only thing I couldn't stand was wireless telegraphy. No, that was ... but I'd have been quite happy as a navigator if they'd scrubbed me as a pilot.  

 

Mmm. And what about the drill aspect of your early training, which was obviously quite strong? Do you see a direct correlation between that kind of instinctive discipline and later flying aircraft? Or was it unnecessary? 

 

The drill, you say? Oh well, one needed to be fit. And of course out in, you know, in the country and that, I'd had more than my quota of beer with the men and I needed a bit of fitness and ... no, I enjoyed that greatly. And even the WOD was a tall, lanky fellow at Bradfield Park who used to ... oh, he put on a magnificent act, you know, he was a ... and I could see ...  But I used to have troubles with some of the drill instructors, I was ... you know they ... when they leant on me, I used to tend to squeak. And actually, as I told you, I ended up my course by being commissioned off course, and I attribute a lot of that to the cheek I used to give the drill instructors (laughing). But it was all in good fun and ... but no, I had an instinctive dislike of automatic rote-like discipline. But I could appreciate the good effect it had.  

 

(20.00) Mmm, that's very interesting. I'll ask you in a moment, Arthur, about the later, more important, stages of training at Tamworth and Deniliquin. But perhaps just generally looking over the whole period of the different camps, Bradfield and on to Deniliquin. Living conditions you've implied weren't champagne and breakfast in bed. But how tough were living conditions, housing, food, messes, those things? 

 

Well, we were fed very well at Bradfield Park, and we were working so hard we needed it. At Tamworth it was delightful, a lovely little country town. It was winter, which made it hard when you went flying in a Tiger Moth and your instructor insisted on your wearing sandshoes rather than flying boots because you were too heavy on the rudder, because it was a very, very cold place. But at night it was delightful, we had a big ... we had a pot-bellied stove at the end of the hut, and we were fed well, and it was a lovely little town where the townsfolk took a great interest in their little aerodrome. And I played hockey there for the station. And we occasionally went off to Armidale and then we'd go into the Royal Hotel and they had a great big ... you know, wooden fireplace. And the whole thing, I remember it now with nostalgic feelings, it was a lovely place. No, it was a number one way of living. 

 

I might say that Deniliquin was a little bit different. We were the first course to go into Denny and they only had a few of the hangars complete, and I think we occupied the first two or three huts, and the whole place was a bog. And there was a food mutiny there, because we got tired of eating mince. The messing wasn't that good. We used to enjoy night flying; because, after night flying, which was another delightful experience, we could go up and they'd leave eggs and ham and toast and cheese, and you could have your night-flying supper which was always looked forward to with great anticipation. That was very good. 

 

That's lovely. Just a moment. Well, just going on, Arthur. Your first actual flying was in Tiger Moths I think at Tamworth. 

 

Yes. 

 

How was it to fly?  You'd looked forward to it. Did it live up to its expectations? 

 

Oh yes, oh they're splendid. The Tiger Moth was an experience that everyone agrees is the absolute spirit of flying. Probably sail-plane enthusiasts would disagree; but with the Tiger Moth you've got something where you're just with the elements. They were a delightful aeroplane. Of course, there was a great deal of trepidation to start with, and that was enhanced by the smell of the dope and the oil, and then the trembling little fuselage, and the cold feet that I mentioned, because of the high altitude of Tamworth in the winter weather we used to get very, very cold. 

 

I had a charming instructor, Mort Brand, who was very, very patient and considerate and who was a great enthusiast for instrument flying, which was to be very important to me later. And it was then, because I had ... amongst my early experiences was watching the Sunderlands on the Empire route coming into Brisbane. I could stand on our front verandah and watch them coming in on to the Hamilton Reach. And I ... of course, 10 Squadron had early on got quite a bit of publicity and I'd ... I said I didn't want to join the navy but, strangely enough, I did want to fly a Sunderland on Coastal Command, somehow or other that really got me, they were such majestic aircraft, and so I wanted to fly Sunderlands; and I suppose we'll come in a moment to why I didn't. But the Tiger Moth was ... I supp... it would be like young men like to get out on motor bikes. It's got, you know, it's ... it's ... you're free, you're part of nature. 

 

(25.00) I remember the terror the first time Mort slow-rolled it; and of course you hang up on your straps, you've just got these two straps over the shoulders, and your feet come off the rudder and go up behind the instrument panel, and hang on to the side like grim death, and you have to learn that it's all right, that if you sit the right way, everything will stay in place when you're upside down. 

 

              Yes, it'd be an awful feeling: what if a strap breaks?  

 

Yes, well that's right. One character that you'd be interested in was our ... my flight commander then was [Jerry?] Pentland, who had been written up in the first world war as the wild Australian war bird. And of all the dreadful things that could happen to you, just two weeks short of completing my two months on Tigers and passing on to service flying training, I got mumps. And there I was in hospital with that dreaded character, the military policeman, who also had the mumps, and turned out to be a very nice fellow. And when I came out I was very anxious not to be left behind; and there was only one instructor pilot on the site, or on the station, who'd fly with me and that was Jerry. But he came over, having instructed the ground staff to take my Gosport tube out - you know, in those days you talked into the end of a bit of garden hose and it came back and plugged into a couple of tubes that went up to your ear pieces - so he could talk to me but I couldn't talk back to him because he'd taken away this source of germs. And he got in - and I suppose Jerry in those days must have been, what, mid-forties - and he looked round in a trembling voice and sort of said `Well boy, you keep a good lookout because I don't see so well.' (a chuckle) So, Jerry, I have to thank him for the fact that I remained on 13 Course. He did my last ten days flying with me and I left the station a bit after the others. And we had been all Queenslanders up till that point, but four of us were sent off to Deniliquin where we met a lot of Victorians, who play that weird sort of football they have down there, and the others went off to other places. 

 

Mmm, that's most interesting. Could I just ask you about the move to Deniliquin, Arthur. You've said you wanted to fly Sunderlands; but in fact you were sent off to train on Wirraways. Were there any objective criteria used by the air force, do you think, in making those decisions? Or was it very subjective and very personal? 

 

Oh, it was a very highly technical choice. They sat you down with your back to the wall and measured the length of your legs, and if they were long enough to fly a Wirraway that's where you went. Mine just made it - unfortunately, because there was a great deal of gossip and concern about the vicious flying tendencies of the Wirraway and no one was particularly anxious to fly them. But, of course, once ... that meant that you were going on to singles and you automatically became a fighter pilot, or some such. If your legs were short enough, which I would have desired, then you'd have ended up on four engines, either land planes or seaplanes. I must admit the logic of this still escapes me, that people with shorter legs would handle things like Lancasters and Sunderlands (a laugh); you know, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, does it. 

 

Well, I can't really understand it. I would have thought you'd just modify the backing of a seat or something to shift someone forward or backwards. 

 

Well, the thing was that the Wirraway had rudder bars and incorporated brake pedals, and in order to get full top rudder in more violent manoeuvres you just had to be able to stretch out and push the rudder right forward, and you had to have a certain leg length. But I would have thought it would have turned out the other way round. But, as we've said, the selection was very arbitrary and, I suppose, hardly technical.  

 

And there was no ... uhm, for example, rudimentary psychological assessment of the kind of character which might make a good fighter pilot or a good bomber pilot? 

 

No. There was no ... not at all. That was the only criterion that they'd set. They were rather desp... there were too few people volunteering to go on to them. So that meant that one went off to meet this fearsome Wirraway with, you know, a little bit of feeling in the water. You didn't feel quite so sure that it was going to be a welcome experience. 

 

END TAPE 1 SIDE A 

 

BEGIN TAPE 1 SIDE B 

 

Tape identification: Edward Stokes recording with Arthur Tucker, 75 Squadron, Tape 1 Side 2.  

 

Arthur, could you tell us then about the first experience of a Wirraway? 

 

Yes, well, we got off the train and we were driven in trucks to this western town, very taken ... but at that stage they were just developing the irrigation canals. And then we drove on to this aerodrome where all the buildings were quite skeletons, there were only a couple of the hangars that had been fully covered in, and I think there were only two of the living huts complete, and the place was very boggy, and we wondered what we'd got to. And the four of us, meeting all these Victorians ... [Interview continues after a pause] So there, lined up, in front of these largely incomplete hangars, were these monstrous looking aircraft - after the Tiger Moth - stubby, short wheels, and seeming high up and rather ... the short fuselage made them look almost as though they wouldn't fly, like the bumble bee. Anyway, with the Wirraway the cockpit was huge after a Tiger Moth, and you sat up front with your instructor behind, and this funny, stuttering radial motor when it started up. But I must say I took to it [interruption] like a duck to water. I found the aeroplane very easy to handle. I had a - once again - an instructor of my own ilk who was more interested in instrument flying than aerobatics, and so I came to be regarded as rather a straight-and-level man when I got into a fighter squadron. 

 

But of course this had an immense advantage when you ... there was a belief, widely spread amongst people, that fighter pilots should be harum-scarum wild men, you know, care about nothing at all and no ... rather be upside down than right-side up. But of course the error with that is that if you don't fly smoothly and instinctively, when you get into combat you'll be slipping or skidding, and when you press the tit the bullets don't go where you're aiming, they get thrown off to one side and you won't hit anything. And you haven't got time to be watching your 'bat and ball' and aiming at the enemy and pressing the tit. So that in fact if you're an instinctively smooth flyer there's much more chance you're going to hit something. So that it really was very important. And of course when we - we didn't expect to get up to New Guinea, but we should have expected bad weather over England - but in New Guinea, you just had to be able to fly on instruments, sometimes when you were in a really tight corner it was better to try and find yourself a cloud that didn't have a mountain in it and hide away for a while.  

 

(5.00) Mmm, that's interesting. We'll talk later about the weather in New Guinea, that was obviously a big thing. Just perhaps finishing at Deniliquin, Arthur; do you see your training there as being very effective, quite effective, or not as effective as it should have been? 

 

Well, I think that we needed it, and in view of how little we were to get later. The first thing you had to be able to do was to fly an aeroplane, and that was done extremely well. But of course you did a little bit of gunnery. From Deniliquin, we got our wings at the end of two months, and this was hurried forward so that you could take a passenger, and then we flew over to Port Pirie, and that's where we did our gunnery against drogues towed by Fairey Battles. But you were firing with two guns just on top of the motor, firing through the propellor, two .303, and it was hard to get any really remarkable scoring on the drogue. You know, if you could hit it occasionally with these coloured - usually the coloured whole one went through it - that was fine. 

 

And of course the danger was that in trying to get the sights on the drogue, if you got around too far you were likely to be shooting out the back end of the Battle, and they'd be firing off Very lights and - oh, good fun! But it wasn't the sort of thing that was battle training or anything like it. And there was formation, but there was nothing that would ... that was in any way directed toward contact with the enemy. And I think the comment I would make - I may have made it earlier on this tape, or in talking to you - now, and reading what the government had known for some years and Menzies' concern about Japan, I'm surprised that no one ever talked Japan to us. We never saw any reports of Japanese aircraft or tactics. I think it is true the tendency was to try to persuade us they were made of bamboo and spittle, and that the Japanese were short-sighted and couldn't see at night. I don't know whether those things were jokes or whether they were the ... what everyone was trying to believe, or whether somebody was trying to pull the wool over our eyes; but certainly I never saw anything technical on Japanese aircraft. And I'll tell you about what our intelligence officer knew about them later. 

 

Yes, those comments about the Japanese being ineffective fighters and so on; were they ... do you recall those only in the context say of drinking, social situations, light hearted banter, or were the comments such as that ever made more seriously, for example, by instructors?     

 

It was never discussed by instructors. It was a flying school. It wasn't warlike training, and there just wasn't any ... there was no political discussion, there was no tactical discussion, there was no prediction of what might happen to us, even if we got to England. It was ... it was cloud cuckoo land, looking back - but it was lovely. 

 

Well, just turning briefly to two political questions, then. During that period, despite that lack of ... input, if you like, from your instructors, were you and your colleagues, and other young men training, particularly conscious or not of events in Europe? And also the likelihood of Japan actually entering the war, pre-Pearl Harbour? 

 

No discussion of Japan at all, no warning, no mention whatsoever. When, later, Pearl Harbour was bombed, that came as a bolt out of the blue, there'd never been any mention of it in service areas. And as for consciousness even of what was happening in Europe, once 1941 was ... we were just floating away flying aeroplanes and enjoying it, we didn't seem to - oh and listening to Vera Lynn - we never ... we didn't see any newspapers, we didn't hear any news releases that ...   Looking at it now, we were so cut off, I can't believe it!  

 

(10.00) Yes, it does seem very much like that, very much in limbo and out of the context of what you were intended to do. Well, turning to that, I know in January 1942 you went to Nhill in western Victoria for what was to be an operational training unit; but I understand your view is that, really, it had very little operational training input at all. 

 

Yes, well, just to ... probably there's a little bit of a gap there in that I was commissoned off course, late October, and I was seconded to the RAF and sent on disembarkation leave and then came back to Bradfield Park all set to go aboard one of the well known Pacific ships. We were going to go over through Canada and Halifax to the RAF. And it was only a couple of days before - we were in Bradfield Park - in fact, it was within a couple of days of going on the ship when Pearl Harbour was bombed, and a couple of days later they sent the first half down, and we were waiting in the afternoon with all our gear for the buses to come back and take us down, and they came back fully loaded, and there we were in Bradfield Park for a couple of weeks. And then, as you say, we were sent off, a few of us, the Wirraway pilots, were sent off to Nhill, over in the mallee, western Victoria, where Sammy [Balmer?] was giving a sort of post-graduate course to a few Hudson pilots, and Jock Perrin was running ... had some, a few Wirraways there. Well, we did a repeat of the sort of flying we did in the service flying training on our course. But there was nothing tactical, nothing much in the way of formation. We did a bit of bombing and gunnery and a bit of flying in pairs, and that was it. 

 

So you didn't really gain a lot more than you would have gained from after the Wirraway period? 

 

Nothing at all, nothing. 

 

Were you disillusioned by that at the time? Or didn't you realise the import of it? 

 

Well, we didn't know what was going to happen to us. We knew that Pearl Harbour had been bombed, and we were over there, and it seemed like a bit of a fill-in, and we'd rather have been flying our Wirraways than sitting around in Bradfield Park wondering. But, once again, it was a vacuum thing. 

 

But the period at Nhill, Arthur - at the time, not looking back on it now - at the time, did you see that as a kind of pointless vacuum? Or weren't you conscious of the lack of tactical training, for example? 

 

Well, we didn't know what to expect. Here was a fellow who'd come back from the 3 Squadron, and he was giving us this. And I suppose, without voicing it, we wondered what the hell it was all about. I mean, we weren't learning anything, we weren't being told anything, we weren't disturbed, we didn't know enough to be frightened (laughing). But it ... I think I've got to look back, it was so much a repeat of the comfortable life we'd had and we were still so much enjoying our Wirraways, that we didn't think another thing about it. 

 

Mmm. There is quite a strong thread running through things you've already said we'll record later that is certainly critical of training. Do you think it would be true to say that the problem was that men who were perhaps great combat fighters themselves weren't necessarily particularly good teachers of what they themselves were good at?  

 

Well, I think we'll have to try to get round to some of the things that we've already talked about; and that is, when you come to the definition of who is going to do the instructing, and who are the great combat pilots. You see, you can see now that, here we were in flying and we'd got into something very comfortable, very pleasant, and we weren't thinking too much about it. Now, suddenly we're handed over to some people who've come back from a named squadron and a named area, whom the government apparently think `Well, these are the people who can prepare something to go to New Guinea.' But I think you've got to ... you've got to look at this in hindsight; and that is, that when you now know what an absolute political, tactical vacuum there was in our government and our command structure, that they just didn't know what to do, and they got some people back from an operational squadron and they said `Ah, we'll put them in charge! They'll tell us what to do.' Now, without reflecting on anyone, I have over the years wondered what 3 Squadron were doing, because they were not doing work that prepared them to pass on anything useful to us when we came into contact with the Zeros, and what I observed of them, they didn't know what to do with them themselves. 

 

(15.00) You see, they had been up against ... mostly, I think, inferior Italian aircraft in inferior Gladiators and things like that; they were fighting a war almost an extension of world war one. I'm not being unkind to anyone, but it wasn't ... then they got the Tomahawks, and I know there were some Me 109s there, but I can't believe that these people were having a wartime experience that was relevant to what we were going to have to do. I think they maybe more have been in close army support, strafing and doing that with the army, and I'm sure doing a tremendous job. But it didn't have any ... it didn't prepare them in any way to tell us what to do - with one or two exceptions, as we'll see. 

 

Mmm, that's interesting Arthur. Do you think perhaps another aspect of this problem, this difficulty in training, was that the pilots - the men who trained you - had been fighting against in Europe German and Italian pilots who thought in a very different way from the Japanese and were a different sort of enemy?    

 

Yes, that's true. I think the Western Desert was a ... again, it was a different war. It was a bit like our training, it was ... they were neither in Europe nor were they over here, they were in the Western Desert. It ... sometimes, when you read about it, it was almost a gentlemanly game of tennis, you know. I mean, it was vicious, people were getting killed, but they weren't doing ... they weren't facing an enemy as ... as victorious as the Japanese, and then they weren't even as experienced as the Japanese. See, the Germans, they did have some people who were very good, they'd been at it ever since the Spanish Civil War - which incidentally was one of the things that affected me when I was a young man, that's when I saw that things were going to have to be done that I mightn't want to do.  But the Japs had been sharpening their claws on the Chinese for six or seven years, they had the Zero which was a beautiful aeroplane with tremendous flying capability - poorly armed, fortunately, or I wouldn't be here - and then they'd pushed everything ahead of them, they'd just swamped the forces in Malaya and they were on the go. 

 

The people that we were to find in Moresby were some of their very top men, they were put off carriers there, and they were very experienced and very ... it was something that these other people hadn't come up against. But there is another thing, and it's got to do with this whole thing I've been telling you about, about the morale and the command. I think it was command collapse in Australia generally. There was tremendous defeatism, in my view, and they didn't even know whether they were going to put up a resistance. And I think these blokes back from the Middle East didn't have too much faith in what they'd be able to do. And, just as we had been told nothing about the Japs, they hadn't either. They didn't know what it was going to be about. But also, they hadn't fought a pitched battle. You see, Moresby, as it turned out was more like the Battle of Britain than anything else. 

 

Now, the Battle of Britain had been fought a long time before, and they'd lost a lot of people, and the battle for Moresby was very much more like that. It was a real pitched-in, hard-going thing where the Japanese were setting out - in our cases they didn't have to set out at all the English aerodromes like they did in the Battle of Britain - but they were set out for Moresby, and they only had one target and we were sitting on it. And it was an intense effort so they could invade the place at the beginning of May. And they wanted to neutralise the place so they could take it over and use it as a stepping stone. I mean, this is in the history books now. Now, they hadn't struck anything like that: the Western Desert was a mobile thing, where they rolled backwards and forwards over the desert and they used flat areas of desert to land on. We were going to have one single strip that people could bomb and make parts of it unserviceable, and there was nowhere else to go. And then, of course, there was the terrain. 

 

Yes, that's very interesting, Arthur. Could we perhaps just leave that for a minute, and come back to that in a moment, perhaps in context. But, going back to the context of the story; having had this interim period when you might have gone to Britain, and then Nhill, you then went to Bankstown and that's where you first encountered Kittyhawks ... 

 

That's right. 

 

(20.00) They were frightening, I think you said, at first, or they didn't inspire confidence. Could you explain why? 

 

Ah, I think they were awe-inspiring. See, instead of having a short stubby thing like the Wirraway was, which was low-down and a short undercarriage and had become familiar and beloved, here we had an animal that had a great long nose. Now the thing that was probably the most startling thing was that you had to climb up into the Wirraway [sic] ... you could sort of step onto the wing of a Wirraway, but to get into a Kittyhawk you had to climb up onto the wing and then clamber up in the cockpit, and there sticking in front of you was this great twelve-cylinder V-engine with an air scoop on the top. And it sort of went up almost at forty-five degrees, and you couldn't see anything ahead of you, you had to look out to about forty degrees to the side to see, with your tail down. And it smelt differently. The smell of aeroplanes when you first got into one was always ominous, it smelt different in the ... you had the smell of glycol, whereas we'd had an air-cooled engine in the Wirraway and you could just sort of see over - it was short and stubby - you could see over the top of it. Here you had this great lump of metal ahead of you, and all the switches and dials, and engine ... ah, gun reload mechanisms and ... 

 

Yes, I have heard from somebody else that, compared to, say the Wirraway, and other English planes generally, the Kittyhawk was very elaborately equipped and somewhat confusing in its cockpit controls. Would you agree, or not? 

 

Yes, until you got to know ... I think I counted once that I had something like seventy-seven different dial switches and levers that I had to know where they were by feel. And down in front of you, between ... just above the rudders, there was a great bank of six ... they were hydraulic gun-load things, which we didn't ever use. In fact, we were forbidden to use them eventually, because if you had one ... an explosive shell stuck up the spout and then you hydraulically loaded another one, then you were likely to blow the top off your wing. So there were lots of things you didn't use. Then there were ... So that there was a great ... they seemed an unfamiliar type of beast, and the ... but I think the most difficult thing was not being able to see. It turned out it wasn't a problem. 

 

The other thing was the reputation. You see, we went to 7th Pursuit Squadron - we were attached to them although we were actually with the headquarters, Bankstown - and that's where I met Alan Whetters of whom we've spoken. And fortunately, he was a very experienced airman, instructor, and altogether eight years older, but a magnificent pilot, an instinctive one who liked to teach people. So we were given the manuals to read, and then we were told when we could start the aeroplane they'd let us fly it, because there was no dual instruction or anything, no one could stand on the side and tell you how. And Alan flew it and came back and said `Well, it's got a long nose, but it's just like a Wirraway - you can't go wrong.' Reassuring. And I can remember going down into that far corner of Bankstown, down near the river, turning uphill, and pushing off. Now, the one problem that got people into a lot of trouble was the intense - there were a lot more power than we'd ever had before - and there was an intense swing of torque, and so you had to remember to wind on three right rudder trim and three back, if you were going to get it off the ground; and if you happened to forget to put on the trim or wind on the wrong trim, then you'd very smartly ground loop and plough into something, and I've seen people doing that. But apart from that it turned out to be as Alan said, it was a beautiful aeroplane to fly. 

 

But the Americans were lads who ... well, like ourselves, they hadn't had a lot of training, and they were bending quite a lot - not only being attached to the squadron to learn to fly then, we used to have to act as aerodrome control officers, and I can tell you there were an awful lot of them bent there.  

 

(25.00) Yes, that's interesting about the Kittyhawk, Arthur; because the general picture from other people has certainly been that they were difficult to begin with but that once one got into them in fact they were, if not as fast and manoeuvrable as a Zero, still a wonderful plane to fly. Would you agree with that? 

 

Yes, and they had a big advantage. I must say that, reading as I have later, there is no doubt about it that the Hurricane was a more effective fighter than the Spitfire, and a lot of people say would tell you that the Hurricane won the Battle of Britain. Now, in my opinion, the Kittyhawk was just the aeroplane for the sort of conditions we were going into. And it had ... it was a very rugged aeroplane, it had very good armour plate behind the pilot, it had self-sealing tanks - which the Zero had neither of those - but it was a heavier aeroplane and you couldn't turn with a Zero, they could outclimb us about three or four to one. We could outrun them by about ... probably thirty or forty mile an hour flat out and low down. But we could outdive them, these ... the Kittyhawk had a carburettor, a Stromberg-Carlson [sic] injection carburettor, and the important thing about that was that it was entirely independent of gravity, whatever pressures you put on the aircraft - whether you put the nose down sharply or up sharply or turned it - the engine would run without losing a beat; whereas the Zero had a float-valve carburettor, and if they ... our escape manoeuvre was whenever some of those flaming cricket balls shot around your head - in other words, the tracer - you just jammed everything forward and into one corner and the Kittyhawk would bunt away like that 747 that we've been seeing on the TV when it hit that air turbulence, still air turbulence, or whatever - that was a bunt. And you dived away, the fellow behind you who had you in his sights, the only way he could keep his guns on you and keep his advantage would be to stick his stick forward too. But if the Zero did that, its engine cut straight away, and of course we were away by then. Now, it had a rugged undercart, contrary to what a Spit did, and the one other thing that people were worried about then was that it had a reputation for ground looping, of having a ... it had ... there were two things, one was for ground looping because it had a short fuselage, and the other was ... 

 

Excuse me. Could you clarify what ground looping entailed? 

 

Well, that meant that if you ... say you were landing - the Wirraway had had the same tendency - and you were a bit careless, the thing would just sort of suddenly whip around in a  ... as you were slowing down, instead of running forward and staying on the runway, you'd whip around quickly and dig the outside wing in and you might even tip over. The other ... the Kittyhawk also was feared because it was supposed, like some of the early world war one  aircraft, of being very difficult to get out of a spin, because, with the short fuselage and the placing of the rudder, the elevators were supposed to blank off the rudder and stop you from a normal spin recovery. It wasn't true. And the 3 Squadron people made it very difficult for us when they got back, and since they came to be the bosses they insisted that a Kittyhawk couldn't be landed in a three-point position - that's when you touch down with your two landing wheels and your back wheel hitting the ground at the same time. They insisted you had to drive them on, get your wheels on the ground, and then reduce your throttle, which of course meant that you had to come in a lot faster and use a lot more runway. And also, of course, you could very easily get a series of bounces. It was absolutely unnecessary, and wrong. 

 

The Kittyhawk was actually ... it was a kitten to fly. It was a beautiful aeroplane, it was easier than a ... if you'd flown a Wirraway you could fly a Kittyhawk right from the beginning, and it was simple and smooth and easy. It was heavy, and when you got up a lot of speed in a ... in a ... say you'd bunted and you were escaping, then the trim would also become a problem, it used to want to duck its head away to the right and roll the left wing, and you needed the strength of a navvy to hold it straight at high speed, it was a ... but, you know, you were getting away all the time and it didn't really worry you very much. 

 

              Mmm.  That's interesting.  Just a moment, Arthur. 

 

END TAPE 1 SIDE B 

 

BEGIN TAPE 2 SIDE B 

 

Tape identification: This is Edward Stokes recording with Arthur Tucker, 75 Squadron, Tape 2 Side 1 (Side 3 of the whole lot). 

 

Arthur, just following on from that description of landing the Kittyhawk, I was going to ask:  were those kind of decisions about flying techniques - for example, your point about landing with only two wheels rather than three - were they in the end the responsibility of individual pilots to do as they thought best, or were they flying decisions that were imposed from above and had to be kept to? 

 

Well, we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. But in Townsville ... and I've told you we didn't have nine days intensive training, I flew it three times; one of those was a formation flight, led by my flight commander who was a much vaunted ... oh, I don't know, `vaunted' is probably not the ... yes, a prominent 3 Squadron gentleman who ...  During the formation, I ran into problems with my propellor. They had an automatic way of keeping the ... balancing the blades, like, you know, like top gear and low gear, and you needed top gear for taking off, and when you came in to land you put it back into this full fine so that your engine would produce full power if you had to go round again - in other words, if you mess the landing up and you want to go away again. Now if that failed you had a switch down bottom left. To get at it you had to lean forward and reach down, which made it very hard to see forward, and then you had to hold that up to keep it in full fine. Now, in the formation flight, I kept falling back, and I thought ... well, we were training for war, I thought I should stay there and try and keep with the flight. So then, when we came to come to land - and this is to do with your question whether it was imposed; this was a 3 Squadron gent, and we had 3 Squadron commanders and that - we were supposed ... they were fanatical about us wheeling them on. That was the order. We were not to three-point them any more. So I came into land, and I was in this awkward position, and I'm trying to keep my hand down there and keep the prop in full fine, which meant I had to lock my throttle and everything else so that wouldn't fall off, judge my landing, and yet keep it in full fine so that, if the landing was messed up, I'd be able to shove the throttle forward and go round again because if it was in full coarse it wouldn't make it, I wouldn't get off. And I'm also trying to wheel it on, because this fellow's been jumping up and down about us three-pointing it, you see. So I bounced. Whereupon he counted it and when we got to sixteen ...  by that time you can imagine the state of mind of the pilot listening to these, trying to wrestle this aeroplane down in a very nasty position, and this fellow counting your bounces over the radio. So, when it was all down and the dust was settled, I went round to decapitate him. I must say this fellow and I never got on from thereon. But that's the extent to which people would interfere, you see; and this was all because ... 

 

And the other peculiar thing I'm going to ... because I`ve told you how, later, all complaints of aircraft serviceability were put down to pilot's reluctance to go into battle. Here was the situation where I was then told that, as soon as the aircraft had developed a fault, I should have returned to the aerodrome and had it fixed up. Now, that was in Townsville. After that - and I didn't do it very often - every time I took an aeroplane back, which might have been three or four times, to report a defect, I was accused of ducking battle. So that, that's the extent to which these pressures were put on the individual. I'm here simply because I was a rebel and I didn't take any notice of that sort of thing. But I'm quite sure a lot of younger or less mature people were induced to try to do things with aeroplanes that just weren't capable of functioning.  

 

(5.00) Hmm. That's most interesting, that description of the landing, Arthur.  Well, going on a little bit, Arthur, of course it was about the ... well, early March I think, the seventh, but the date doesn't matter, there was a flight when Jeffrey came down south and you all headed off north and there was a real debacle. How do you recall that episode beginning? When did you meet Jeffrey? 

 

I met him on the morning of the seventh, at Bankstown. I see he had been attached to squadron headquarters, Bankstown, but I'd never met him at that stage. Incidentally, he hadn't been north at that stage, he was coming over from Perth or something. And there'd been a small group of us, half a dozen attached to the 7th Pursuit at Bankstown, there'd been another half dozen at Williamtown, and another half dozen at Canberra, all attached to ... where they were forming US Air Corps squadrons. And suddenly ten of us, including the new leader, were told off to proceed to Townsville. And we'd never met most of those who were flying; I think there were two or three of us from Bankstown - or maybe even less, O'Connor, Norton and I and maybe one other, I think that's about all - and all the others were strangers to us. And we'd only flown the aeroplane four times, never in formation, and of course we hadn't done any instrument flying in it. But I just mention here, I mightn't have done so with the ... I was talking about the Wirraway at Deniliquin and Jeff Ball being interested in instrument flying, one thing he insisted was that I always flew a Wirraway with the artificial horizon caged; that's a gyroscopic instrument, and if you get into a unusual or difficult position sufficient to topple the horizon beyond its limits, it won't recover again and there's no ...  if you're depending on it, you`ve had it; so he always made me fly the Wirraway with the horizon caged, and to fly on what's called `bat and ball' which is regarded as a very primitive instrument. So we, at that stage, we didn't have any radios because we didn't have microphones or ear-pieces that would fit the aeroplane, we didn't have any oxygen so we couldn't communicate with one another, and we couldn't fly - theoretically - above about fifteen or sixteen thousand feet. 

 

We took off, and circled round and round for quite a while because somebody couldn't get his engine started. We'd said to the leader that we'd never flown formation, and he said `Oh that's all right, I won't take you into cloud.' And we set off eventually. The leader had three aircraft formating on him; I was flying in the starboard flight led by Norton, with O'Connor on his starboard, I was on his port, that's on the left-hand side; and then, on the far left, Johnny Piper had Holliday and someone else with him. So that meant ... in a formation, if you're flying, formating on a section leader, you depend on him then to keep your flight orientated with the rest of the squadron. He's got to be watching the leader and his people. Well, we didn't get far beyond the Hawkesbury and we started getting into the lower bits of the cloud which were getting lower and lower. And suddenly, we were in cloud. And when you're cloud-flying or blind-flying the difficulty is to believe your instruments and not your feelings; but nevertheless you do get a feeling that things aren't quite right, and when I looked - see, after all, you get in tight and you're formating on your leader and you're trusting him in every way, and that means you don't look in the office - when I did, our speed was up and we were in a tight obviously descending spiral to the right. 

 

(10.00) Now, we had no wireless, nothing at all, and obviously there was nothing I could do for him, but the time had come to bale out metaphorically. So I straightened up on my 'bat and ball', which was no problem to me with the training I'd had with Jeff Ball, and I climbed up - and we'd gone in at about fifteen hundred feet into the bottom of the cloud - I got to 9000 and 10,000 and then the cloud ahead of me started to lighten, and then obviously here was the sun, it was all nice and bright you see. And of course I fell for the old trick (laughing): I was so anxious to get out of the cloud I pulled my nose up, and spun. Now of course here was real trouble, because the ... I hadn't tried spinning a Kitty, but I was obviously now in a spin. It came out just like a Tiger Moth would; I straightened up, and when ... you see, there's ... if I'd had my ... if I'd been depending on my horizon, I was gone, because it would have been toppled well and truly, even there when we were down in that spiral, the spin would have really done it. So I climbed up again, and found myself above the cloud at about 12,000 feet, and I could see a little aeroplane way ahead of me, so I thought `company would be nice!' and I chased off after him. And after a period of probably half an hour, twenty-five or half an hour, I was nearly up to him and suddenly he dived down. When I got there, there was a lovely big ... you often see these, sort of a round opening slanting down, and I could see the sea underneath and him just at the bottom, so I shot down after him. And there was heavy ... we were down along the coast up the north of the ... up the north coast, and there was heavy rain in there, and once again when I was within perhaps quarter of a mile of him, I saw him put his wheels down and his flaps, turn left, and then head off into heavy rain. So I thought he looked like somebody who knew what he was doing, I might as well follow him. I came in with flaps down over the edge of an aerodrome, and the rain was so heavy, I saw the end of the runway, and I was about halfway through my landing run and suddenly hangars shot past on the left hand side, and we were at Evans Head and it was Johnny Piper I'd followed there. Later, I discovered that Norton, the fellow who'd been leading me, was killed at Kempsey; and Holliday, who'd been with Piper, was killed up near Port Macquarie; O'Connor, who was the third one of our 'vic', got himself down along the coast and tried to land at Kyogle, he got out of it but he wrecked the aeroplane.  

 

Just to wind that story up, Arthur, I ...  the tape's going on a bit and I want to try and get on to Port Moresby if we can. That's an interesting story of ... uhm ... well, of misadventure; but there is an important end I think, and that's the report you later made. 

 

Yes. Well, the result of that was, you see, I reported the fact that we'd been told we wouldn't go into cloud and we did, and what had happened. And I guess there was an inquiry.  But it became obvious that I had tipped the bucket on a senior man, and after that I was ... you know, I only had to blow my nose and I was in strife. It was very uncomfortable; and it was to have consequences some years later.  

 

              Yes, well, we might talk about that ... 

 

No, I'll just ... I don't want to say any more about it now. 

 

Yes, sure. We'll come on to that later. Well, going on then to arriving in Townsville with the Kittyhawks. Of course it was a very rushed period there too. How well do you think you were trained ... first of all, just in flying together as a squadron? How effective was that? 

 

Well, I've already told you the story of the one real squadron formation I was in. I got into strife for not taking my aeroplane back when the ... that was at that period. We only flew it three times. Once I did a lot of shadow gunnery; that's when somebody flies at about three or four hundred feet along the coast, casting his shadow where the surf is breaking in, and you make diving attacks just to check whether you're giving it enough lead, because if you are leading it forward enough your bullets should kick up on the shadow, if you're firing at the moving target then the bul... the splashes will be behind. One lot of that. And I see we ... by my log book, we had two formations, I don't ... the other one wasn't memorable. But there was no combat training, this was just flying around in 'vics', firing the guns once. So ... I've seen reports of nine and seventeen days intensive training in various things, but there was actually none at all. 

 

(15.00) Just looking at another aspect of the formation of the squadron, Arthur. I understand you feel there was something of a division between the men who'd come from Europe and men such as yourself? Could you recall that in more detail? 

 

Well, I think I could generalise it, because it was a disease of RAAF squadrons generally throughout the war, in that you'd ... people didn't stick together for any length of time but you'd get a certain group who'd had experiences in common and then they'd be called out and put somewhere else, and you didn't only import the friendships and loyalties, you also imported the distrusts and dislikes. Now, you do that with a group from 3 Squadron who, after all, probably felt they had earned a rest in the Middle East, and in view of the political situation I've told you about they weren't necessarily confident that the Japanese were going to be held. No one was, and I've said to you, and I'll say frankly, I believe that there was incredible defeatism in all levels of our community. So you get them. Then you get mixed groups from different Australian squadrons; in some places you had people who came to be in authority who'd all been to school together, and then you'd get another group from overseas from some different background, and each of them then would be restive with the other groups. There was no chance of building up of any esprit de corps, ever. But this was particularly marked in 75th Squadron.   

 

Perhaps an associated question. In getting postings to different units, in your personal experience in what you know of what happened to other men, how easy or difficult was it for men to get to the squadron they wanted to be at?  For example: a number of your friends from some previous squadron are going to X squadron; how easy was it to make sure you got there, too? 

 

Well, it was probably reasonably easy for people who'd been cadets, or permanent - and many of these people were, and they had all sorts of associations, and debts owing to them, and all the rest of it. For the rest of us, it just wasn't on. So ... 

 

Right. Well, moving on a bit. Just before we leave Townsville, is there anything else of that period, before you leave Australia, that you regard as particularly significant to the story, or not? 

 

Ah ... well, it may have saved my life, the story I've told you about my disagreement when I suddenly knocked a fellow's block off for counting at me down over the radio. I in fact drew one of the short straws, and I was left in Australia to go back south to pick up another aircraft. So he probably did me a favour, because I was delayed by about ten days or a fortnight in getting to Moresby, and ... But on the other hand, you know, I think if you counted people's time in Moresby, it was like the Battle of Britain. If you look there you'll find most squadrons in fact didn't serve more than two, three, sometimes four weeks, in an advance and then they were relieved. Well, there wasn't anyone to relieve us, but people ... I don't think anyone served the full time. So mine was delayed for later on. I went south to pick up an aeroplane that had ... it wasn't ... we were unable to find.   

 

That seems remarkable in itself. To send somebody all that way. 

 

It was a shambles, then. And it had probably been ... ah, sent off to some other squadron, or something. I went down to Bankstown and I was sent back to Archerfield, and that's where I met Alan Whetters again. He was with 76 Squadron. And then they suddenly decided that aeroplanes weren't as important as men, and four of us - Scandrett, Alan Whetters, Johnston and myself - were put on a train to Townsville and on a Flying Fortress, and we arrived in Moresby early in the first week of April. 

 

(20.00) Mmm, that's most interesting.  Let's look now at that period at Port Moresby. Perhaps two questions to begin with. The first regarding that first period of fairly intense conflict when there'd ... I know on the first day a bomber had been shot down, and there'd been attacks on Lae and so on. How do you recall that being described to you? What was your impression of the mood of the squadron when you arrived yourself the short time later? 

 

Well, the living was so hard and they were already ... they'd had a ... quite a lot of flying ... of accidents getting ... Moresby was a dreadful little drome, it was still being extended so that up the top end the army had great ditches dug on both sides of what was a really only a winding ... well, it wasn't winding, but it was an up-and-down country road really, it wasn't much wider, it was a very difficult strip to operate off. And everyone was sick. Because, you see, unknown to all of us, Australia knew the Japanese were coming. They had been moving into ... Gull force into Ambon in October-November, they were building Moresby strip in November. This is the extraordinary thing, that so much preparation had been going on, and what is critical here - and it's in the history book, I think it's the medical story of the RAN and the RAAF - that the labour force had intense gastro-enteritis there in November the previous year, and this was probably ... the outstanding impression I have of the Battle of Moresby is that we all got it. I've told you I've got `shits' entered in my log book with my first combat; that wasn't fear, that was the fact that it was trickling down my legs because I had gastro-enteritis. They were feeding us on tinned bacon which was dreadful, tropical spread which was worse, baked beans, and somewhere or other they had captured (laughing) one of those Liberty ships full of goldfish, er, what do you call them? - herrings in tomato sauce. And that was what we were supposed to eat. And the baked beans would blow up in your stomach, you already had gastro-enteritis, and so ... there was nowhere to wash your clothes, so you'd take a spare pair of shorts down to the strip and when you landed you'd clean your aeroplane up, wash your shorts, put your other wet ones on, and so we lived in wet clothes. And this is no exaggeration. And the other thing is that, despite that, there were no latrine trenches dug and so our only hygiene was a shovel and a roll of paper in the nearby kunai around where we had to be on standby from before dawn until after dark. Now this is no exaggeration, that is the truth. And so we were nearly defeated by gastro-enteritis, we were all suffering acute gastro-enteritis the whole time. 

 

Given that problem, that health problem, would you then say that, despite the initial relative success at least of the squadron over the Japanese, that morale was - when you arrived - that morale was low? medium? high? How would you see that? 

 

Oh no, it was ... morale was never low. That's ... you see, this is the thing. I've told you about all these accusations of cowardice - direct ones - already. And yet I never saw anyone behaving in a cowardly fashion. But you just didn't talk to anyone. You did your job, you went home at night. We used to get one bottle of beer between two people about three days a week I think, and you'd have that and go to bed and get up in the morning, put on your wet clothes, and go down to the strip again before dawn - unless you had a day off which ... for a while, we got one every two or three days, but for the last two or three weeks we had hardly any at all because pilots had either been killed, or had gone sick, seconded for other duties, or ... you know, there we were, not many of us.  

 

That's interesting, Arthur. Well, you've described very clearly the general living conditions, and certainly this problem with health and so on. Turning to actually flying, flying against the Japanese; what's your first recollection of being scrambled, or sent off to fly in a hostile situation? What occurred? And how did you feel? 

 

(25.00) Well, we went off ... the first real air contact I can remember, we must have got early warning, because we were slightly above the bombers when they came in, and ... You know, we`ve talked about tactics; as soon as action started everyone seemed to disappear and there would be you and the enemy, and you couldn't see anyone else, they were all busy. And we were outnumbered. But this time we were on ... above them, and I found myself, by some magical magnetism or something, attacking the bomber, the rear bomber on the starboard side. I got quite close to him, and I fired a burst and saw the rear gunner's compartment - which is just back behind the base of the rudder and between the elevators - disintegrate. I've shown you a camera-gun picture to show you that you can sort of see these things happen. And then I was fired at by other airc... guns from the formation, and I broke off. And then I saw an aeroplane go ... er, a fighter, going down with smoke coming out of it, and I swung in and took an early shot at him and then realised that it was a Kittyhawk, and found myself eventually back on the ground again where I found that the first fellow down was Johnny Piper who'd been shot through an oil cooler. So I went over and sort of apologised to him, and he said `Ah boy,' he said,`you'll never hit anything from that far away!' (laugh) 

 

              What was he referring to, Arthur? 

 

Oh, I had a shot at him, you see. I said I'd had a shot at this aircraft with the oil coming out of it. It was Johnny Piper.  

 

Ah, right, I'm sorry, I missed that, that you'd actually shot at him. 

 

Well, I had sort of had a quick squirt before I ... I don't know whether I actually fired or not, but it ... You know, that was the whole thing: the recognition part was difficult, because it's only a matter ... I've shown you that picture of what happens in three seconds, and you only did that if you fired when the aeroplane was there. Well, strangely enough, it was quite hard, for a while, to recognise a Kittyhawk from a Zero, although the Zero had a radial engine and we had an in-line. But there was something strangely alike about them, just at certain angles. And we used to have a rosette on the side with a red centre; and they woke up to this eventually and painted the red centre out so we only had white and blue like the Americans, because that red centre seemed to glow up, you know, and ... Well then, that leads on of course to what I was saying to you about the intell... the combat reporting, because that was the time when I went in to make my combat report. We didn't write our own combat reports, we were interviewed by the intelligence officer who wrote down and put it on a form and we were given it to sign. 

 

              And what was his name, incidentally? 

 

Collie, Stew [Stewart] Collie. He was a lawyer from Melbourne. Well, I don't know about Stew. I've got to be unkind about him because I told him what had happened. Now, I've also shown you another combat report that I wrote in another part of the war where we wrote our own combat report, and it wasn't structured, it wasn't on a form, we wrote down what had happened. Now, I think that is the stuff that history has to be made of; what people saw and what people did, sorted out later. But Collie used to sort out our impressions according to his mind and put it down, and that's all that got through. Now, Collie told me that Betties didn't have rear gunners - now, I've shown you a picture of a Betty and the gunner's compartment - and that staggered me because I'd been there. And this subject came up about four years ago: I was invited up to be one of several who visited 75 Squadron to Darwin, and there on the wall they've got a beautiful picture taken from inside a Japanese formation, they ... the fellow had photographed the others ahead of him; and I ... and Jack Pettett was there, and I said `Well, there you are, I've been there, you see.' Now if I hadn't been there, I wouldn't have recognised it. And Jack Pettett then told me that on one occasion he came back with a cannon shell through him and he said he got that from the rear gunner of a Betty, and he was told that they didn't have rear guns. So that reflects on this whole thing of training, not only on Stew Collie. Stew didn't know, no one knew, that Bettys had rear gunners; but they had a great cannon there.  

 

That's most interesting. I mean, there seems to be a clear level of ... well, inadequate training, inefficiency perhaps. 

 

But it also reflects on how much credibility the so-called war diary had, you see, that I've seen several sets of reports on that air battle, in the War Memorial book that bomber ... no one else is mentioned, the bomber is attributed to another gent altogether. Dave Wilson indicates that three of us attacked ---------[The tape cuts out in mid-sentence] 

 

END TAPE 2 SIDE A 

 

BEGIN TAPE 2 SIDE B 

 

Tape identification: This is Edward Stokes with Arthur Tucker, Side 2 of Tape 2 (or Side 4 of the whole lot). 

 

Arthur, just turning to this ... to your first combat experience - and this, incidentally, isn't a personal question at all - pilots often describe the fear of combat, of controlling this big machine in the sky and facing up to an enemy. How often was that felt by people? How strongly was it felt? 

 

No, I honestly don't know. I have a story about this. But I found that if you got ...  I'm a fearful, tense person; but I felt strain, but I didn't feel fear, you ... you see, it ...  My brother-in-law asked me this recently, he'd just been down the War Memorial and I was telling him about your visit, and ... this is incidental, but he was saying he was terribly pleased to hear what you're doing, because he said `I'm interested in the Battle of Moresby,' he said, `then I'm interested in 75 Squadron, last of all I'm interested in you, way down. But I'm terribly interested in how it all went.' And he'd been asking me about fear, and my answer to him was that ... He said - you know, I was showing him that camera-gun shot of the Zero at Merauke - and he said `How did you feel, then?' And I said `Look, would it be unbelievable that I didn't feel anything, because it was a sort of technical thing?' I said `It's there on the film, and you can see more there now than I could see then; because I was flying around, there was something, I was doing something I was trained for, it was a long way away, and I was concerned that somebody would get on to me. But I had all the anticipation of danger, but I didn't have any feeling of it. That came at night and at other times.' 

 

My general feeling, which built up rather quickly, along with the gastro and what was happening to everyone else, was that I genuinely felt that I was unlikely, that in fact I would not, survive Moresby, but it didn't ... I had so many other troubles - the gastro, various people treading on my toes, and what not - that the only time when I could ...  I can describe an actual physical reaction which might interest you, and that is that you'd be waiting all through the day, from before dawn until after dark, at any time ... I think they used to fire three shots and we'd run to our aircraft. You'd get in and people would hand you the straps while you plugged yourself in, and then you'd just wait. Right, two shots you'd go and wait, and then over the radio they'd say `Okay, take off!'  But if they said `Scrubbo' - in other words, it was a false alarm - the first time that happened to me, I threw my straps off, pushed my legs over onto the wing - and I've told you it was a bit high - my legs collapsed and I rolled down, fell off the wing and landed in a heap on the ground, and I couldn't stand up. 

 

(5.00) Now, you've heard of people going at the knees; it's an actual physical thing, that ... and I've found it on other occasions, but I never let that one happen to me again. When that happened, I would always throw the straps off and talk to my fitter and armourer until I could feel my feet again, then I'd get out of the aircraft. The first time I had to say `Aw, gee, I slipped, you know. How the hell ...?' but in actual fact I couldn't stand up. Now, my theory, sort of semi-medical, physiological, is that you get a tremendous burst of adrenalin which, if nothing else was about, you'd feel fear and tension and everything; but while you've got something to do, it's all right. It's only when the stress, the occasion for which you're ... the actual action for which you're stressed up, if that's taken away from you, there is an overload of adrenalin which absolutely paralyses, particularly the legs. And that was ...  We might get around to another flight at Milne Bay, at which I can tell you a little bit more about reactions. But is that the sort of thing? 

 

Yes, well, that's interesting. Well, why not talk about the Milne Bay flight now if it's along this theme, Arthur? 

 

Well, we ... Milne Bay was a nasty place. It's a big bay, it's about forty miles east-west, and twenty miles north-south. And on the north, south, and western sides there's a mountain range of about 3000 feet, and you've got an opening then out to the Pacific down the coast. And our airstrip was in the top left-hand corner. We took off, and we were doing standing patrols there - the 75, 76 - and we were up at about 25,000 feet when we were called down because the Japs were raiding the bay. The weather in Milne Bay was dreadful, and I think I only saw the tops of the mountains on about one or two occasions in all the time I was there. So that meant you had this bay with a lid on it, and getting into it was the problem because you couldn't see where it was. And on this occasion we had to get in quickly. So what our leader did, and I thought it was quite sensible, the Bofors guns had self-destroying flak, it used to explode at about 7000 feet, so we went down through our own flak because that marked where the aerodrome was, you see, and if we were a bit south and heading that way we'd be all right. So we went down through our own flak, came out underneath, and I came out in front of two Zeros, one of which ... I got one hole in my starboard wing just near the aileron hinge - that's all I could see - but my ailerons were jammed, so that we were ... the cloud was only at about 700 feet, I'd two Japs following me, and the only thing I could do was to try to fly down the bay. Now I couldn't control my wings other than - without ailerons they were jammed central, fortunately - I'd have to use a rudder, you see, if the left wing went down then you have to speed that wing up to bring it up again. They chased me all the way down the bay, and firing at me every so often; every time they'd do that I'd jam some rudder on for when they fired at me, and then I'd have to use the other rudder to get level again. So this all saved me quite a bit. And meanwhile I had time to look back, you see, and to observe that the Zero used to sight with his two machine guns firing through the prop, and then when his tracer was near you, he'd fire his cannons. Now they only had sixty rounds for each cannon - I didn't know that at the time - and it had a poor trajectory so that they'd reach you with their machine guns and miss you with the cannon. So I was chased all the way down the bay and finally in desperation deciding that there were ... you know, that I'd just about had it, I did what I shouldn't do and I climbed up into the cloud. One of them came across, com... - er, the other made off - and then he must have run out of ammunition and so he came up alongside me just as I went into the cloud. And I ... now, I had the problem of cloud flying without ailerons. I went ... came out, went out right round Normanby, came back, and there was one area where we were used to going in, there was a little notch and you could get in under the cloud. Just as I was heading for that, three Zeros who were finished their raid joined in the tour, you see, and chased me home again. Well, then I had to land it with jammed ailerons, on a strip between a lot of coconut trees, and I managed to do that. And the funny thing is - I mean, looking back on it now, it wasn't a bad bit of flying, but no one took any notice of that, the fact that I'd managed to get it down in one piece with jammed ailerons - but that night, I really had the shakes. 

 

(10.00) And Alan Whetters whom I used to share a tent with thought it was a great joke, and he laughed mightily. And you can ask him what sort of a state I was in. So, even then, you see, the reaction only came after the realisation that in fact if you got knocked down in that sort of thing you'd never know. You are doing something; while you've got something to do, while there's something you can think out and nut out, or I had ... I had more trouble with the aeroplane. Does that sort of answer your question? 

 

Yes. No, that's very interesting.  In other words, I suppose to summarise that, you were so preoccupied with the actions of doing it that fear was removed until afterwards, when it hit very hard.      

 

That's right. Oh, it hits hard then. Yes, very very slowly. But next day you're back on the job again, you see. You get quite numb to it. You can be terribly depresssed, I'm sure I was terribly depressed, I was sure I ...  I've told you the story about Ellerton asking me, you know, `Which will it be there, you or I, tomorrow?'. 

 

Actually I was just going to ask you that story, it's an interesting one. This was the pilot who was told off to escort the Airacobras I think.   

 

No, this was the one who I shared a tent with. He ... oh well, no, that's right. It comes into it, eventually. 

 

              Yes, that's right. Mmm, you shared a tent, and ... 

 

Yes well, we'd ... during ... about halfway through April, it would have been, we had had ... I just don't remember now, I have an impression it was four - we'd lost three or four  people out of our tent in that week. So we were still there but the beds had been sort of turning over. And I came in after the mess meal - as I've told you, we'd have a meal and just go to the tent and go to bed - and we had a kerosene light, and Ellerton was sitting on his bed reading a letter which was on blue paper so I knew it was from his new wife. He'd had scarlet fever in the Middle East and, coming back on the ship, he got close to one of the nurses and they married. And she'd written to him. And he looked at me quite calmly - I suppose this is fear again, you see, or depression, or what - and he said to me `Well, Friar ...' and he went through these various ones, and he said `I wonder which of us it'll be tomorrow, you or I?' It seemed a logical sort of question. I don't know that I answered it. About an hour later, Les Jackson came down to the tent, and said to him `Well look, Dave,' he said, `Dave, I think it's time you had a bit of a rest from combat flying,' he said, `I want you to take Vern Sims down in the morning, there's a Fortress will be going out at about five o'clock. Go down to Bankstown, there's a couple of aeroplanes there, bring them back and after that, okay, you're off combat duty.' 

 

Well of course the dreadful thing was that he was coming back at the time when the first squadron of Airacobras travelling in two flights - I think there were about nineteen aircraft in all, and we were waiting, we were right down, we only had three or four aeroplanes a day to put in the air - they were on their way up, and they all force landed between Cooktown and Horn Island in some odd sort of weather. Ellerton saw one of them there and I suppose, being from 3 Squadron and used to landing on sand, he landed. I can't imagine what purpose there would have been in it. He landed just where the surf rolls up on the beach, turned over, and drowned in the ... trapped in his cockpit. You know, it always seemed to me to be a paradoxical sort of situation. 

 

Could I ask you how easy it was to live with the knowledge of the death of your friends? - particularly in that sort of situation, not where you were all in some combat situation together and by chance someone was hit and shot down, but there, where somebody was picked out, but it might have been you who'd been picked out? 

 

No, well ... we must have been quite dreadful people. Another story at Kingaroy just shortly after the overseas people joined us: one of them on his first flight went up through some overcast at Kingaroy and was apparently aerobating it or something. Next thing we heard a bit of a clatter, he came down in an inverted spin, and crashed just along the road, just on the other side of the strip. So I was sent down - because everyone from the town came out, and I was sent down, and we all carried a pistol in those days to keep the townsfolk away - and when things had settled down and people had turned away, I walked back up toward the wreck. And Nat Gould - I think you're seeing him - Nat was walking round and round the trunk of a tree, it had been lopped off at about head height and it must have been ... oh, ten or twelve feet [sic] in diameter. And Nat came over to me, and he said `You know what I think, Friar?' I said `No, Nat, what is it?' He said `Wasn't he lucky he missed that bloody stump!' 

 

(15.00) Now, that is the sort of reaction that ... I suppose it was a sort of protective action. Now that is an unvarnished story of ... If somebody pranged, he was always looking for it, or he was asking for it, or something like that; there wasn't any ... well, you didn't have any friends. Alan went missing, that night he went ... landed in the kunai, didn't get back till the next day. Well, I went looking for him; but I can't remember it touching me at all, and he was the closest I had to a friend.   

 

Mmm. I was actually going to ask you just about friendship, Arthur. You were obviously - as a young man, and later through some of these differences - something of a loner within the squadron. Now, you just mentioned Alan Whetters was a close friend. Was there anybody else you could really confide in, or not? 

 

No. 

 

And what about other men? Do you think they did confide in one another? Or was it at the level of hail-fellow-well-met and covering up feelings? 

 

Well, as I've told you, there were several groupings and they seemed to be close. The doc, I think, admits that he kept close to the command group round Les and, you know, they formed very close personal ties I suppose. But I couldn't answer for them. And I'm not a cold person but I think the ... this is probably what ... How you survived - and, after all, I survived - was that you cut yourself off, and it was easy for me because I was already a loner. I think at times, particularly in later life, things have affected Alan more. He's felt ...well, he's felt impelled to talk about it a lot. And I like to talk to him, and then our wives tolerate this and it unloads a lot. But I've had other things that I've been more involved in; Alan's been retired for longer. And - this doesn't diminish my feeling for him in any way when I tell you this - I feel we were a little unique in the ...  But then again, you see, we both felt impelled to do something about it, and we had a joint purpose, and that ... once you've got that it sort of overrides ...  Intense personal emotion was something you didn't build with anyone. 

 

Yes, that's interesting. A lot of other men have said that, as a ... obviously partly as a defence mechanism. Uhm, Arthur, I want to ask you about some aspects that I think are interesting that you've mentioned about the command structure and the general running of the squadron in a moment. But could you just tell us before that perhaps: in a general sense, how were you as a pilot used? What kind of operations did you fly against? - generally against fighters? reconnaissance? - what were you mostly doing?  

 

Right. Well I ... by missing that first fortnight, I missed the period during which the squadron was free to make ranging aggressive attacks, because you know the Japs were surprised suddenly to find ... they probably didn't expect it, they'd been pushing everyone back everywhere, they probably didn't expect an aggressive response or a determined response. And for the first couple of weeks they may not have even thought it was a ... you know, they probably didn't get as organised in trying to wipe it out. I remember that about the first ... a week after I got there Tokyo Rose - now, I don't know how we got to know this - but Tokyo Rose broadcast a threat to us about `You boys in 75 Squadron, you ought to watch out because you're going to be ... ' You know. So they suddenly realised. And remember that they knew that they were going to try and take the place at the end of May. So that, if you look at the pattern of the actions which you'll ... Alan Whetters will give you on Friday - he's done a terrific job, he took Dave Wilson's book and analysed the day-to-day ... the number of day-to-day personal contacts reported, the combat reports - and you'll find that in the first couple of weeks, although there are those victories reported, they were ... you know, they weren't the intensive sort of things - a bomber came over, they chased it, and they knocked it down; no mean feat, but there was a difference there. And when you go over and you've got the initiative, you go over, you hit them - okay, we lost people there, but it would be nice to have the opportunity. 

 

(10.00) But suddenly then the Japs decided that we had to be neutralised, because the bombers were being brought up from Townsville overnight, going off in the morning, hitting Rabaul, going back, and the aerodrome was becoming ... was a problem. And they suddenly started ... and there's a very intense block of action in the last month. Now, that's the period I was there, and during that period we lost more aircraft, we lost more pilots, and there was this ... towards the end of that month, the last ten days or so, the Japs were coming over with waves of Zeros, they'd send one flight over and get us up in the air and keep us there so that the other ones would come in about the time we'd be out of petrol and landing and then they'd strafe. I got strafed in landing on one occasion. Alan had to land in the kunai because they were still over it. They were getting us up the air, running us ... they were intent on ... Now, you get ... this was defence stuff, and we were getting ...  We didn't have radar or anything like that, our warning came from coastwatchers who were over near Lae, they'd count them off and count them back again, which is how we know that the squadron did effectively knock down quite a few. But they'd come over, they`d make a sweep, a bombing raid, and turn back. And we'd climb up underneath, and therefore ... here we had aeroplanes that could outclimb us anyway and they were always on top, and then there'd be a fight, and we were mostly tangled up with their fighters. Now, this wasn't terribly effective with respect to knocking down bombers, or probably even knocking down a lot of fighters. But the fact was that it was an aggressive defence which prevented them from coming through and making repeat ... from picking their targets and making repeated bombing runs. They'd make one sweep and go away, even when we only had three or four aeroplanes to put up underneath them. And this was a dreadful situation to be in. 

 

I don't know whether I told you that it appears to have been much the same sort of thing that happened in the Battle of Britain. Those people who were down at Biggin Hill and down toward Dover used to do this when the first raids were coming in from Germany. And then later they formed 11 Group I think it was to the north of London and they had this theory of `the big wing.' They'd get all their aircraft up in squadrons in a wing and then they'd come over and hit the Germans. That's if the Germans were still there. Now the same thing happened in Moresby. After we were relieved, the Americans had two squadrons of ... but they used the same principle, they used to take off, climb ... go south over the sea to 15,000, come back, and then they'd hit the Japs if the Japs were still there. Now while that was happening, the Japs were doing bombing runs. That's how they sank the ...  what was it? - the Macdhui, or something like that.  

 

              Yes, that ship in Port Moresby. 

 

Now, the tactics were right, they are the tactics that you ... to conserve aeroplanes, and everything else. But if we'd done that, Moresby would have been clobbered well and truly. But it only needed an aggressive response, however pitiful and mean it was, and so the squadron defence was effective. And I suppose, looking at it back at this stage, you could say it was heroic. But it wasn't the heroism of individuals, it was the heroism of a ... that you only see in retrospect, and you couldn't attribute it to any ... grace or ... activity on the part of individuals. And we weren't even organised. So that there's a tremend... you know, I think there's a big lesson in this, that if you respond and you're sufficiently aggressive about it, people will back off even ... no matter how small your ... that response is. Does that make sense? 

 

              Yes, it does. It's interesting - and that most of your flying was generally defensive flying in the Port Moresby area. Well, just turning to a couple of other things that I think are interesting. I know you're somewhat critical of tactics. By this stage were there real tactics in place? Or, when you were scrambled when  warning came of an imminent attack, was it just a matter of everybody somehow getting up there and doing whatever they could as ...? 

 

(25.00) Well, I think I've told you that the tactic was to be there and to respond. With regard to flying organisation, there was none. The leader would take off and you scrambled to follow him. He didn't ... there was no ... we didn't have any tactics at all, except that we tried to stay together and tried to stay alive. There was no defensive tactic, there was no ... we ... there weren't enough of us to do more than just fly up and then cop it when they came down. That's not to say that I don't think we should have done better. And we did try to do better, as I told you about 86 later. But there were none then, and in fact when we get down to Moresby I've told you about of a flight sergeant who was upbraided by the CO for saying this very thing. Mark Sheldon, I think, said to Les `Look, can't we have some tactics?' and as - you'll get the story from someone else - but Brownie told me that Les's response was `Look, you mind your own business, Flight Sergeant Sheldon. The next thing we'll know, you'll buy it.' And the next ... the poor bastard was shot down the next day. So that you see there was no ... it wasn't a subject that you were allowed to mention. 

 

Was there talk in the air, on radio? Was there during ... when you were setting up an attack on planes coming in to bomb Port Moresby? 

 

No, you maintained radio silence as much as possible. Radio silence was absolute at Milne Bay, even when you were in trouble for getting back into the base; we weren't supposed to let the Japs know we were there. At Moresby I suppose there were the occasional things; somebody might give somebody a warning if he ... But, no, we had a controller who was called `Golden Voice' who used to tell us what was coming in. But of course you see there was no radar effective, there was no real information they could pass to us apart from telling us to scramble or to ... I think the word ... they used to call `pancake' when they wanted us to land, hoping the Japs wouldn't know what we were talking about. But apart from that, there wasn't anything to talk about. (a little laugh) 

 

So would it be true to say that, having scrambled, got up in the air, generally got in some kind of a gaggle - if one could - that once the planes actually came over it was simply a matter of each ... 

 

You scattered, and you were on your own, and there were some Japs there and you tried to do what you could about it.  

 

Could I turn to something that is indirectly related to this, Arthur, the issue of leadership. Of course, John Jackson was the squadron leader, was later missing, and then killed of course. He was this ... he'd been in northern Italy too. Was he, in your perception, part of that group of men in terms of the divisions within the squadron? Or not? 

 

He was the only bright spot of it. And I would say that had John F. Jackson not existed, the squadron would not have been effective in that defence role for as long as it was. He was the one who ... there was a tactic, and the tactic was that you climbed up, you tried to stay together, you had a squirt at something, and if it looked as though they got on your tail you bunted - that was, put everything in one corner - dived away to get up speed, and then come back and have another go, but on no account were you to try to dog-fight the Zero because that was not on, and that you just kept on doing that while you could and that was it. Now, when he was shot down and the period before he was recovered, and then when he was killed, for the period to the end of it, there just wasn't any contribution other than that. So the whole spirit of John F's leadership, and I suppose his final sacrifice, was the thing that made 75 Squadron. He was a magnificent fellow, middle thirties, ex-estate agent, and he was that sort of wonderful, solid, Australian countryman that we all like to think most Australians are but few ever reach that sort of stature. Quite unlike any of his other ... of his colleagues.  

 

What was the effect on the squadron then of his going missing, and during the period until he returned? 

 

Ah well, as soon as they found out he was all right - you know, that we heard he'd been recovered - well, things went on much the same. But his death devastated everyone.  

 

There is an interesting anecdote that you mentioned in brief before, Arthur - and it was shortly after, I think, John Jackson's return, after he'd got himself back - and it was the issue of pressure being put on him, and erhaps therefore indirectly on other pilots, pilots who were `dingoes'. Could you recall all that? 

 

Yes, well indeed, because it ... that wasn't only when he returned. The pressure, although ... 

 

Sorry, Arthur. I think we're just about to run out.  

 

END TAPE 2 SIDE B 

 

BEGIN TAPE 3 SIDE A 

 

Tape identification: This is Edward Stokes, Arthur Tucker 75th Squadron. Tape 3 Side l (Side 5 of the whole lot); and this is continuing the issue of John Jackson pilots who were, quote, `dingoes'. 

 

We've got to take a general aspect of it, that ... I've told you that Australia was in a state of absolute panic and defeatism and lack of leadership, and this was reflected in a most insidious policy being put in place. I've shown you the textbook Medical Services of the R.A.N. and the R.A.A.F., and the paragraph which deals with the fact that soon after the war started in the Moresby area they said there were numbers of people - I think they say mostly over forty, married - who wanted to be sent out of the combat area who were presenting themselves with nebulous complaints, and that since this disease - in other words, fear - was infectious they decided to treat it by singling out cases of neurasthenia, sending them south, and that this cured the epidemic. And I've pointed out to you that this could not be done anonymously, that if you're going to single people out for that sort of treatment they ... if the individual wanted to go south anyway then he'd be happy, the only way it could affect other people was by publicising the fact that he had been so treated and that that's what anyone else would get. 

 

Now, that is why I've told you that there were constant pressures put on people, every time a pilot reported a misfunctioning aircraft it was put down to pilot trouble and very loudly, and various individuals were loudly talked about - one was singled out and it led eventually to his suicide back in Australia, another one who was an absolute gentleman and I believe a very valiant and proper pilot, for years afterwards was spoken of by the then CO in most defamatory terms, and it was totally untrue. So that then ...  and it would have been difficult for me to tell you this story had I not found a poem, which we'll mention later, published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1974, because it would be the only confirmation I think you're going to get, because I've never been able to get anyone to admit to me they were present at the meeting I'm going to tell you about. But John F ...  

 

Excuse me. Could I just pause for a moment just to put something on the record. This is a poem published, in the Sydney Morning Herald I think it was. 

 

Mmm. 

 

The date is the Sydney Morning Herald, 10th August 1974, page fifteen, the poem, opposite a picture of Captain Cook, titled `Pedrina, Port Moresby' :

                  Pedro, the day that you flew in

                     With your four Hudsons, Pearce said

                     'The bastard's scared.'

And then the poem goes on by David Campbell. Right, back to you ...  

 

Right.  Well, the significance of that is that Pedrina was one of the very valiant Hudson pilots of 32 Squadron at that time, and they lost ten aircraft out of twelve - forty crew, er, forty men then - and that they weren't anything but valiant upholders of the Australian defence. But there you see ...  

 

(5.00) Could I just interpolate, sorry. There was something we should have added there I think: that that poem does go on, in a rather eulogistic fashion I think, to describe Pedrina. 

 

Yes. So when I read that in 1974 I was fired to write a lot of this, and I sent it off to Nugget Coombs' Commission on the Australian Government Administration so I haven't been exactly silent about this, but obviously not ... I haven't gone public about it. However, that Pearce was one of the two wing commanders at Moresby during the period that we're talking about, Gibson and Pearce. And they called John F. Jackson in - no doubt to discuss with him what had happened in the period when he'd been coming back over the Kokoda Trail. And John F called us together in the mess, and he said `Now, things have got to change. The wing commanders naming them, are of the opinion that you're not pressing the enemy, you're not engaging them, you're not getting close to them,' he said, `you're not dog-fighting them.' Whereupon there were one or two howls `But you know we can't dog-fight them! You told us not to!' John F said `Tomorrow I'm going to show you how.' Well, he did. He was killed, and his very good friend Barry Cox was killed, various other aircraft were injured. Now that man would never had got himself and his colleagues into that position, because that was exactly what he'd told us not to do and it's the only reason any of us survived. 

 

Could I just clarify a few points. This is I think a most interesting, important episode. First of all I understand that the general expression `dingoes' was used, as describing ...  

 

Dingoes was the word they used. 

 

              The wing commanders? 

 

Yes. 

 

Right. Secondly, let's just turn back to Jackson's general views about fighting Zeros. And I understand that one was that you simply couldn't dog-fight because you couldn't beat the capabilities of the Zero. 

 

You couldn't turn with them. That's absolutely true. But you could do this bunt. You see, you were not escaping when you bunted. I've told you that the aircraft had this peculiar built-in special ability to fly upside down or in negative-G without the motor coughing, and therefore the defensive manoeuvre was immediately to bunt; whenever you saw evidence of attack - which were like flaming cricket balls going past your head, that was the tracer - you bunted, the Zeros engine cut out, you gained speed, and then you came back and had another go. And that was the only thing you could do. I must say, too, along with this bunting, that the war diary written by Collie has abso... made the fly ... the air ... reports of air combat of 75 Squadron absolute laughable nonsense, because he's always talking about stalling and spinning. Now, he didn't understand what pilots were telling him when they would tell him they put everything in one corner, or got the hell out of it, or they dived out, and he always put stall or spin because he obviously knew nothing about flying. And that was ... there was one circumstance under which in combat a Kittyhawk would stall and that was that, if you were chasing an aircraft at altitude or the Zero was zooming up from you and you lost speed and you fired your guns, the moment you fired your guns a one-second burst would knock about sixty mile an hour off your speed, in which case the Kittyhawk would flip. But that was all right too, because you could recover in a downward direction and then gain speed again. But, you see, the technicalities of this completely corrupted any reports I've seen of air fighting at that period. 

 

Mmm, that's most interesting, Arthur. Just turning back finally to this episode with Jackson, and his exhortation to people to in fact do precisely what he'd always recommended them not to do ...  

 

Mmm. And we'd never been told to do it. 

 

... Are you sure it was the next day that he was himself shot down? 

 

Yes, yes.  

 

              Right, okay. 

 

He said `Come up tomorrow and I'll show you how.' Everyone said `You can't do it! You've said yourself!' He said `Tomorrow I'll show you!' - and he was killed.   

 

              Right, okay. 

 

And, as I say, I don't know who could corroborate, there aren't many alive now. And I probably wouldn't dare to say this had it not been for that poem being published in the paper, because quite obviously the same pressures were put on 32 Squadron, and I repeat that they lost ten aircraft, forty men, out of twelve aircraft crews in the same period. So they weren't exactly being cowardly and ducking combat, were they? 

 

(10.00) That's the Catalinas? 

 

No, that was ... they were the Hudsons. They were doing a wonderful job - but you can only do a certain job up to the limit of your capacity. And they went on doing this week after week, just as 75 went through their hanging on.  

 

Right, that's most interesting. Well, perhaps let's just move on to the end of the period in Port Moresby. Roughly how long were you yourself in Port Moresby, Arthur, after the death of John Jackson?  

 

Ah, I'm not sure when John F died ... [Break in recording] 

 

Right, this is continuing. John Jackson - we've just checked - died on the 28th, and Arthur's working from his log book here. 

 

On the 29th was a big day; the Japs ... I was telling you about them sending repeated flights over to wipe us out, and I was engaged in three different combats with Zeros on the 29th. The last of them lasted two hours twenty-six minutes, and that was the day I had to land because I was absolutely out of petrol, and I was shot up soon after I landed, I just dived out of the aeroplane and they were still waiting. So I was just lucky; their intended tactic - you know, of catching us taxiing down - didn't work, but they got the aeroplane. So that was the 29th. And then I did a cover patrol on the 1st, and on the 3rd I flew the famous last sortie when the engine ... when I flew Alan Whetters' aircraft that ... and it overheated. I was the last Kittyhawk ... er, so that was 3rd May.   

 

Yes. Could I just ask you about that, because I think that is important too because it does relate to this general debunking of people. This last sortie that you flew was in the same plane that ...  

 

Well, Alan had landed A29-26 on the 26th. He ... that was another period when there'd been flights of Zeros over, and rather than get shot up on landing he did a most extraordinary thing. I've never heard of anyone else doing it. He landed the aeroplane in open New Guinea countryside. He landed in the kunai grass, which is like sugarcane and as high, much higher than your head. On landing he decided he probably had enough petrol, he got some natives to cut him a short path and he took off. When he got in the air he found that the gauges looked as though there wasn't enough, so he landed again. Then an army patrol overnight got him some petrol from a dump, and he flew back on the 27th. Now, the thing you have to think of is that ... imagine landing an aeroplane like that, with its radiators under the engine, and landing it in sugarcane for instance, something like sugarcane; now, the propellor would chop all that vegetable matter up and it would go straight back into the coolers, and he ... 

 

Now, that was the same aeroplane which I flew on the last sortie. And the Airacobras were there then, I was to take off - I think there were eight Airacobras took off for an incoming raid, and in any ... in the best of circumstances a Kittyhawk engine-overheat light would come on as soon as you started up and taxied down to the take-off area - I had to wait until Fortresses, Mitchells and Marauders took off downhill, then I took off uphill, and then some other aircraft were taking off, and I was circling at about 3000 feet and I couldn't get the engine-overheat light off. Now, I mean, quite obviously in that terrain there was nothing you could do but to land the aeroplane again, but I had to wait - and I was very lucky that the engine kept going - until I had a clear path. I landed, and swung off halfway up the strip, on the right-hand side was a place where the old Ford tri-motor had been burnt early along, and there was a Bofors gun crew were waving madly to me, I dived out, and just as I dived into their protective sandbags the bombs came down and one tipped the aeroplane up on its nose. Now, once the raid was over the CO drove up, and tore a strip off me first of all for parking the aeroplane there - `why hadn't I taken it round to the dispersal bay?' - you know, he obviously hadn't listened to my telling him about the engine overheat, because that would have been one sure way of making sure that it seized, to taxi it around. 

 

The second thing was, in view of the sequence I've just told you about the bombing raid, I'd have been out in the open with the aeroplane right in the middle of the bombs that were bombing the strip. And finally, he obviously didn't believe me. And I've shown you what I regard as a defamatory remark published in the War Memorial '39-'42 book about that incident, the point being that that must have been written from some record that somebody put in. And, in view of the attitude of the wing commanders, I would say Les Jackson was quite prepared to chase ... to throw me to the wolves.         

 

Mmm, that's most interesting, Arthur. Perhaps just for the record, would you like this sentence read out? 

 

Yes, please.  

 

              It's The Royal Australian Air Force 1939-42 ...  

 

By Gillison, isn't it? 

 

... by Gillison, on page 547, bottom paragraph of page. The sentence reads: `Next day the squadron recorded the last operational sortie before being recalled. Tucker took off to join eight Airacobras in intercepting twenty enemy bombers escorted by Zeros, but the weariness of the machine as well as man was emphasised when engine trouble forced him to land without making contact with the enemy.' - I must admit I'd just like to say for the record myself, Arthur, that that's not necessarily how I would interpret that. 

 

Well, there's no need there, in the circumstances. It was not the weariness of the man ... er, of the machine; that machine had just been landed in kunai a couple of days before, and I would say that the radiators were well and truly gummed up. There was no way ... that would have been the reason for the overheat.  

 

              Yes, sorry. I'd just like to make it clear ...  

 

That's not weariness. And it wasn't ... the man ... if it's weariness of man, of machine and man ...  This is the whole thing; this weariness, was I supposed to get out and carry the thing back on my bloody shoulder? I was lucky to land it, I mean, I'd have been ... In fact, the thing I should have done was to bale out of it and I'd have been all right. But I didn't, I landed the bloody aeroplane. And in fact it did fly again, and it was in a crash at Bankstown at the end of the year. So in fact I saved that aeroplane. 

 

Yes, sorry, I don't think you quite got what I was trying to say, Arthur. I was actually simply saying that ... No, I certainly wasn't questioning the fact that that plane, having been in grass, was in perhaps no real state to fly; but just that my interpretation of that sentence isn't a judgmental interpretation on you. That's how I read it; but of course I respect your ...  

 

No, well, what you don't ... you see, you're not taking into account all these pressures that were put on us then, and subsequently, the ... I've told you about on the way to Milne Bay, and the aeroplane I flew all the time at Milne Bay with a defective, wrongly-assembled fuel pump which got me a number of accusations of being yellow because of actual times when I got the thing back after the engine had cut repeatedly. 

 

Yes. In fact I'm not sure if we recorded this episode. But the end result of that was that it was found to be defective - is that correct? 

 

The pump had never been properly assembled, the engine pump; and I had been flying it, taking off, and whenever the engine faltered putting on an electrical booster pump. Now, the aircraft had a ... 24-volt batteries which were subject sometimes to failure. And that was an aeroplane that I flew down to the Belarmi Passage, and down to the Deboyne Group, which meant ... you know, probably 1500 miles over open water, with what they finally admitted ... they ... when, on the final occasion that I reported it and they looked at it and found it, they said `Oh, we're sorry. You were right.' But for a month or six weeks people had been saying I was yellow because I kept telling them that there was something wrong with the fuel pump on the aeroplane.  

 

Mmm. That's very interesting. Perhaps just to finish this section on Port Moresby, Arthur. That last raid is flown, the one that's described in that book there, of course there's this great tension of the possiblity of the invasion of Port Moresby from the sea and so on, and then a few pilots remain behind ... 

 

Well, we all drew straws. I was lucky, I didn't get one. And then it turned out that the invasion didn't come. 

 

              What was the mood of the men who left, who ... ? 

 

Well, the mood of the meeting was very tense when they were drawing the straws. And ... 

 

And how did the people feel when they ... when it turned out that they were the ones to go home? 

 

People just went quietly away. It was ... you know, it was a dreadful ... I don't think we had any feeling left at that stage. 

 

(20.00) Do you see those three planes remaining ... would you regard that as a military significant force, or was it purely symbolic? And if it was purely symbolic, was it a sensible thing to do? 

 

No, it was stupid; because, if I had to take off with the one aircraft they said was serviceable - and I've told you that I don't think it was - then what about the other three that they left behind? They can't have been up to much chop either. And in view of the flying conditions around there, it's that sort of gesture that should be resisted. It was some sort of a gesture perhaps to the Americans that we weren't going to leave them to it; but, you know, that isn't heroism, that's just stupid administration. Because the fact is those aircraft weren't serviceable for combat, so what was the point of leaving them there? 

 

And I imagine you could argue that the pilots who were going to fly them were more valuable than the planes. 

 

Ah, oh yes. Well, I mean if ... 

 

I mean the pilots staying, and possibly sacrificing their lives, was futile. 

 

Well, that's like that first ... that last sortie of mine, really, when you think ... if somebody ... if the engine ... if the maintenance people had really looked at that aeroplane, it wasn't fit to fly. The radiators, you know, they ... I don't think it had flown from the time Alan brought it back. I don't know whether there's any way we could find out. But, you know, they must have just wheeled it out and said `Well here, it'll start up, let's fly it.' But the terrain around there was such that, you know, there was no way out for you. It wasn't like Europe where you had lovely big farmlands and something. The whole of that place, that land, is untenable. 

 

Just going back once again to this decision of Les Jackson to stay with a couple of other pilots, and I think Bill Deane-Butcher stayed too, plus ground crew. Did other pilots see it as a rather vainglorious action? 

 

We never discussed it. We weren't staying, and that was it. I mean.. ah ... 

 

I find that a little hard to believe that it was never discussed, that wisdom ... 

 

It wasn't. We were never told. We were never briefed. We were never told what was going on. I don't think we knew there was a fleet coming. There was absolutely no briefing at any stage. There might have been with a small in-group; Butcher now tries to tell me that there was, and I've said `Well, it might have been your mates talked about it.' And he did say `Oh well, I must admit I am surprised that there weren't more meetings of the pilots.' Because there weren't any. And that goes for Milne Bay too. 

 

But just going to the meeting when the straws were drawn as to who was to leave and who was to stay, Arthur. Was it then known that there was the strong likelihood of an invasion? 

 

Oh well, they might have said there was a.. you know, some ships coming or something. But it wasn't a ... Look, we were dead from there up. No, honestly, it really ... you'll have to ask ... I don't think Alan could tell you. I was well under ten stone when I went on to the Taroona, I'd been there eating biscuits, cheese, and straw... apricot jam, and ... I'm thin at eleven-seven, and I was under ten stone.  And I don't really have a ... you know, as I say, I'm completely dead to it - I was there, and I didn't have any feeling one way or the other, it was `Okay, well, go and get your things and get on the Taroona!', so we went down and got on the Taroona. 

 

Mmm, that's interesting. Just as a perhaps side comment on that weight you mentioned, you're certainly a tall man. I know my weight at ten stone would be getting a bit light and I'm a lot shorter than you. 

 

Mmm. 

 

Just finally then, you leave Port Moresby by sea. Are there any recollections of that voyage back to Australia? 

 

I remember there was a Zero pilot who was a prisoner of war, and we were a bit curious about him; but he wouldn't look at anyone, and I remember him sitting on the deck. And I remember that we had some rather good nosh. And I think we slept on deck, because somebody was talking about submarines possibly. And Alan got sick - he tells me, I don't remember. 

 

(25.00) The Japanese prisoner of war, the Zero pilot - what was the feeling towards Japanese? How was he treated? 

 

Oh, we were a bit curious about him. But no one intruded on him, a bit sorry for the poor bugger and no one intruded on him or made him uncomfortable. He was obviously unhappy, and I can just remember that he was there and he sat on the deck, that they had some people guarding him there. But I just remember ... I think we would have liked to have communicated with him perhaps, but it was obviously impossible and he ... so that was it. I just remember him being there. And that's about my one recollection of the trip, apart from the fact that I think we had some rather good meals occasionally. 

 

Right, well I'm sure they would have been appreciated. Let's just pause here. [pause]  Right, this is just continuing after a break. Just two final questions about the Port Moresby period, Arthur. You seem to believe that in the last period, in the last very desperate days, that there was something of a wastage of young, or very inexperienced, pilots. Could you elaborate on that? 

 

Well, it's an impression I've had, looking at ... in my memory the sequence of events was less accurate than I ... then when I looked at David Wilson's thing, and I find that young Munro was killed within the last week, and he was sort of new, just being blooded to the squadron, I think he was knocked down on his first trip. And then in the last day or ... I think it was probably the 2nd or the 3rd, I see that West crashed on take-off and wrote his aeroplane off. Now, I could see no advantage at all in sending up newly arrived reinforcement pilots in that stage. I've told you that on the 29th there was that intensive series of Zero strafing raids where they tried to get us up and write us off. I think I flew for about four and a half hours and was shot up just after landing out of petrol after the last one. Now, just to survive and get back again at least showed that I knew which way was up; but a new pilot wouldn't have a hope and, with the odds that were there, there wasn't a chance that he was going to do anything useful. So that it wouldn't have been regarded as unfair I'm sure by any of the pilots who were there that those people should not have been used in that last week or so, because there was no earthly hope they'd do any good, every chance that they'd get knocked off, because as I recall we all had a firm feeling that if you were going to ... if you could survive your three, then you knew your way around and you had a good chance of lasting. So I thought that was a complete waste.  

 

And would it be true to say, that last ... well, that period, that there were in fact more pilots than planes and that therefore there were experienced men who could have flown instead? 

 

Oh yes, because ... well, you had three or four to leave behind and some of us to send off, and I see I had days there where I ... you know, I wasn't called on. I wasn't on the 2nd and ... I mean, `in for a penny, in for a pound', that at that stage, however one might have felt about it, no one would have felt that a ... somebody completely new to the area should go up in such desperate circumstances. And there were people there who could have flown. Les could have flown.  

 

              Did he? 

 

Why not? - He could fly an aeroplane better than they could. 

 

              But I'm asking, did he? 

 

I don't think so, not..  You know, I mean ... because there   

were only one or two aircraft taking off, you know, I'm sure we had more pilots than ... I'm sure we didn't need to use absolutely new replacements at that stage.  

 

Right, well that's interesting. One other question, and this relates back to the episode just before John Jackson's death and the question of pilots being, quote, `dingoes', Pearce was the wing commander ... 

 

Pearce and Gibson were. They were joint.  

 

              Right. Did they ever visit the squadron at ... 

 

No, never. No senior officer spoke to me in an operational area, between the time I've told you about when Thomas spoke to me at Garbutt before the ... when the squadron first went up, and when Jones came to visit us at Merauke. He was the Chief of Air Staff; he stood in front of us and traced diagrams on the sand with his toe and told us how our mothers wouldn't like to see us all crumpled and not wearing our flying badges and badges of rank - which of course was absolute nonsense, because the .... 

 

END TAPE 3 SIDE A 

 

BEGIN TAPE 3 SIDE B 

 

Tape Identification: This is Edward Stokes, Arthur Tucker 75 Squadron, Tape 3 Side 2 (Side 6 of the whole lot). 

 

Arthur, just going back to clarify - at Seven Mile Airstrip, the wing commanders never came out there? 

 

Mmm. 

 

It would seem to me that kind of issue, the issue of a squadron's pilots being cowardly, would not only be an important matter for senior officers to communicate directly but also one would expect them to be enthusing and providing the leadership and boosting morale and so on. How did people feel about that? Or certainly how did you feel? 

 

Well, we disregarded them because we didn't think they could do us any good. But I'll tell you one incident that really upset us. When Ozzie Channon was killed, the next day we went down to bury him, and we stood there for three quarters of an hour because the station padre wouldn't come out because there'd been an air raid alarm, so we stood beside the grave till he felt it was safe enough to come down and bury the poor bugger. 

 

Mmm. Right, well let's move on then perhaps to the later period. Of course after you came back to Australia by sea, the squadron refitted at Kingaroy. I understand here there was - or from somebody else I've been told there was - some tension between pilots who'd been through the Port Moresby period and new pilots to the squadron who'd come from England. Do you recall that? Or not? 

 

Oh yes, quite strongly, it ... I felt sorry for them, but ... I've only just discussed this matter with one of them, two or three years ago, and pointed out that they'd also been wrongly aggrieved between some of us, they had blamed all of us for a hostility that might have ... that I told him had been generated entirely by the small command group and that there were a number of others who were already in that sort of problem, and when they arrived we became the jam in the sandwich. He seemed surprised to find out our feelings were so much like theirs. But this was not something that was ... well, it couldn't be talked out at the time. They felt very put upon, and it was partly - I've talked to you about the value of the Kittyhawk and the Spitfire - they'd been overseas, many of them had flown the Spitfire, not ... I don't think they'd had any great deal of experience, and I don't think they were looking forward to combat in the Kittyhawk, and we tried to tell them that a Kittyhawk was really surp... you know, a very good aircraft for the conditions. And so the whole thing ... you know, it didn't matter what you talked about, it was a potential ... potentially contentious. And I talked to you earlier about the lack of esprit de corps and how every group that came along wasn't necessarily unified anyway, and it was a very unhappy situation. Some of them have admitted that they thought we were sort of shell shocked and what not, and I guess we were. But nevertheless it was one of those situations which meant the squadron, which had always been split up, went back to Milne Bay more split up than ever.  

 

(5.00) Mmm, that's interesting about the relative capabilities of the Spitfire and the Kittyhawk. Somebody else has certainly said that, and in fact it was somebody who would appear not to have had a lot of experience in fact in combat with Spitfires. Just briefly, the organisational aspects of refitting the squadron, very important, new equipment and whole thing of being brought together into a highly pitched situation again, or one would hope. How effectively was that carried out?   

 

Well, we went down, and we picked the aircraft up and ferried them back to Kingaroy. And ... well, there was, you know ... the very fact ... I believe that these ... the most important thing in refitting - the physical part was done all right - but the most important part was in welding together an operating team. And there were no lectures, there were no discussions, there were no swapping of experiences. There were these silly little arguments. But a proper command would have detected this, and we would have gone back with some unification. But it was a very unhappy group. I'd like you to talk to Alan Whetters about that, because he ... I mean, Alan was a great healer, a great one for trying to put things right, and I'm sure he made efforts and he will be able to express an opinion. And on the refitting, because I've told you he was a boy fitter, he ended the war as a specialised engineering officer with his own Spitfire dealing with the engine troubles they were having in Spits in Darwin; and he'd give you a proper answer on this whole business of the refit.   

 

Right. Well, I'll see him in a few days. Just one final point about the Kingaroy period. You've certainly been critical already about the lack of tactics. Was that issue addressed? Or not? 

 

No, absolutely not, nothing was ... absolute blank. Nothing, nothing was done to mend the situation at all. Nothing was done to discuss what we'd done, or what we could have done better, or how we should do it in the future. Ah, total blank.   

 

It would seem to me that an important issue here, and flying through into the Milne Bay period, is the character of the commanding officer, Les Jackson. You've been very clear about his brother. How do you perceive Les Jackson? 

 

He should never have been let out of his cage. He was a ... 

 

Those are very harsh words. Could you be clearer about what they imply? 

 

He was a ... well, a nasty bastard, in the kindest words I could put to him. He was a divisive, degenerate, drunken lout, without any sense of responsibility whatsoever. Now, he's dead now and people that ... but, well, I don't know, I ... if you can you turn that off a minute, I'll tell you something. 

 

[after taping resumes]  Right, well, continuing on from there, Arthur. Of course, the squadron goes on to Milne Bay. There is one interesting little anecdote here that perhaps does say something about the command structure; and that was flying via Port Moresby, and in the anecdote of the mess and how you were received in the mess. Could you describe that again?  

 

Well, when the Battle of Moresby was on, the staff officers in the mess couldn't do enough for us. If we could get in there, you know, they really made us very welcome and it was very warming and encouraging. But when we went back in July, late July, on the way to Milne Bay, all sorts of headquarters staff had arrived, and when the fellows in transit went down to the mess the newly arrived staff wanted to exclude them because they were in flying clothes. And this is in Moresby (laugh). And that will give you some idea of how the changed atmosphere and confidence had allowed lots of people to come up there and all sorts of formality to arrive in an area ... you know, it was absolutely staggering.  

 

Just one quick one, going back to what you were saying before about the two wing commanders. If you went regularly during the Port Moresby period to the mess where the staff officers were, there must have been some social contact with them.  

 

I don't recall ever seeing them. I mean the COs and maybe some of the others did, but at any time I was there I never saw them. And, after all, I think one of the things that one would expect of a senior command who are asking people to take extraordinary risks - though they obviously didn't think they were - would be to try to build up the morale, particularly if they thought the morale was failing, and to talk to the people directly involved, not to wait till an absent CO came back and then drop it on him what a lot of din... of ... you know, incompetent and unworthy people he had. They should have acted to raise the operational status of the squadron while he was away. But there was never anyone. No one ever talked to us. Never. 

 

(10.00) So there was a complete vacuum during ... 

 

A complete vacuum, in command. 

 

Mmm, that's very interesting. Well, going on to Milne Bay. The tape is running out a little; I was going to ask you some things about weather and terrain, I might perhaps skip over that, because other people have talked about it and those are fairly objective things I guess to talk about. But, just generally, what was your first impression of Milne Bay, of the organisation that was set up to receive the squadron, and your first days living there and flying? 

 

Well, it was a ... because it was so wet and we had that matting down, it was a very difficult strip to operate on, the mud used to come up through the ... so you had to land and whip your flaps up so they wouldn't be bent and then you were likely to slide off to the side. But they couldn't help that. The living conditions - well I think it's been recorded, the lack of malarial protection; and, once again, the food was ... I stuck to my old proven diet of the biscuits, cheese and apricot jam because that was the only ... that hadn't improved at all. 

 

Arthur, just to pause there a moment. The lack of malarial prevention. It's a very important issue. 

 

Oh, yes. 

 

              What was provided? 

 

Nothing. You see, they ... for one thing they had us dressed in shorts and short-sleeved shirts, which meant we got chewed by the mosquitoes, whereas the rational thing is to wear long pants and buttoned-down cuffs. And the mosquito nets were quite unsatisfactory because you couldn't keep your arms away from the side and so you'd wake up in the morning with your arm all swollen. And of course I got malignant malaria. As I told you, I was invalided out on the second day of the invasion. I got the malignant malaria and, quite frankly, there are whole gaps in the next four or five months I don't remember because I kept ... I was dreadfully ill. 

 

That's interesting, the point about long sleeves. I do know a senior officer who in fact was there later and who insisted on that as a preventative measure. What about things such as ... mosquito nets in particular, and anti-malarial drugs? 

 

Well, I don't remember this anti-malarial thing, somebody else will have to tell us. I have felt that we ... I'm doubtful whether we got regular anti-malarials. Somebody might correct me on that, because I simply don't remember. 

 

              And what about nets? 

 

Nets. Well, as I told you, we had these army nets - you know, little square things - but they only came down on a camp stretcher, and you couldn't lie on a camp stretcher and keep your arms away from the net, so you might as ... it was a little more comfortable, but you might as well not have had a net from the anti-malarial point of view because you'd wake up in the morning with your arm all swollen where the mosquitoes were biting you where the ... so it was no protection at all. And of course the short-sleeved shirts and shorts were absolutely suicidal things to wear in a fighter cockpit, because if you had a flash fire then it was hopeless, you didn't have any protection at all. 

 

How conscious were pilots of fire, as a danger? Was it a ... how much was it feared? 

 

Well, I've told you about the accusations of cowardice, I've shown you the medical book that said that nebulous symptoms were to be treated as neurasthenia. And, quite frankly, the doctors were not only not sympathetic but they'd dob you at the first shot, you see. Later, when I finished my second tour in Merauke, I think you'd find my records probably claims that I was claiming nebulous symptoms, because I went to our doctor in Merauke in about December 1943 complaining of an intractable itch whenever I had a shower, I just couldn't bear to wash myself. And I remember Carl Ross Stephens taking his shirt off, he was a big fat bloke, and showing me all the different itches ... er, rashes that he had - I think he must have taken a little scratch from every one that came along and planted it somewhere - and then he really dressed me down on this business of neurasthenia. 

 

(15.00) Now, this was at the end of my second tour. I went back on ... on ... and I had disembarkation leave, and at home I ... we had a visitor, and I'd had a shower before she came because there was a visitor, you see, and I was sort of obviously in discomfort. And she said `What's wrong with you?' and I said `Well ...', and I told her - and she was an English nurse who'd been in Borneo and she'd then come down to Australia - and how I'd have a shower and this would happen and I only had a wash when I ...'  And she said `Are you on malar... on quinine?' And I said `Yes.' And she said `Well, you've got quinine poisoning.' - See, after having got the malaria in Milne Bay, after that, and having a lot of recurrences, I went on to ten grams daily. And she said `How often do you take it?' So I told her. And she said `But you have a break every three weeks?' I said `No, I've been taking it continuously.' She said `Well, that's what's wrong with you.' She said `You stop it!' Now I did; and within a week it went away, and then I could take it for three weeks, and as long as you have a break. Now, it's only in recent years I've seen a condition written up which is now called aquapruritis which means that water makes you itchy, and apparently this is a ... and was well known to the colonial nurses as being a side effect of quinine. Along with that I now have no sense of smell, I've got almost complete nerve deafness in the left ear and very little hearing in the right ear, and one or two other things which are also the long-term effects of that. Now, you see, our doctors didn't know anything. But what was more, there again, at the end of 1943, the doctor was saying that I was `troppo'. 

 

Mmm. That's most interesting, Arthur. There do seem to be some ... well, appalling gaps in knowledge and ... 

 

But they were so intent on always putting it back on neurasthenia, and without thinking or listening; and therefore no one learnt anything and people went on being made sick and it not being recognised. 

 

Mmm, that's interesting. Can we perhaps just turn to another issue. Could you just tell us - perhaps fairly briefly, the tape is ... we are running out of tape - briefly, the kind of flying you engaged in when you first went to Milne Bay? - the kind of tactics that were employed, and what was done. 

 

Oh well, we were ... there, we were on absolute radio silence and we were expect ... they were expecting an invasion. So a lot of the work the 75 and 76 shared, high level standing patrols. But I've told you what the weather was like and the cloud, so that you had to go up through the cloud and come down through it. There are two stories. The other one was, we were doing long-range ... er, ocean patrol, I suppose you could call it, down the island chain down through Misima to the Deboyne Group and [Belarmi Passage?] and back again. Well, there are two stories. Number one, the effects of flying during that. We were going up one day when we heard 76 were in trouble - they were just brief radio messages, although we were supposed to have an absolute silence - indicating that they couldn't get back through the overcast and were force- landing on Goodenough. And there we were on the way up. Coming back, because we had met a flying-boat pilot - his name just esc... he's well known, his name might come to me in a moment - who'd told us how to get in when it was shut down - I think Brereton was leading us that day - we went down well south of the mountain ranges, got down gradually through the cloud, came out at about 800 feet above the water, turned north till we got to Samarai, turned west and flew along to the mouth of Mullins Harbour. And we'd been told that the thing to do was that ... Mullins Harbour was a deep one, so you could see the shore here and here and the cloud in between had to be the mouth of Mullins Harbour, so we'd all been told about this and knew what he was doing; so he went into Mullins Harbour, into the cloud there, flying north-east, climbed hard for about ten minutes, turned east and let down, and that should bring you in, when you let down then you should be over the bay, you see - which we were, only just, we weren't all that far off the north shore. And then we ... once again the cloud was only about six or seven hundred feet above the water and we turned and got ... But you see, you know, that's really fl... that's flying by the seat of your pants. This is the sort of thing that experienced New Guinea pilots of course have done all the time. But when you're taking a squadron in like that, that's the sort of thing you had to do. And so that the Japs were ... to some extent, they were a minor irritation. The very fact of conquering those prob... you know, those flying problems, was quite a strain, as you can imagine. 

 

(20.00) Now, the other story you wanted me to tell you about was - reflecting, once again, on what I said had always irritated me - was this flying indiscipline, which distracted people from being effective. We were there for a particular purpose; now, we were never ever given a proper ... er, any sort of general briefing on why we were there at Milne Bay, what was likely to happen, no one told us. But one gathered they were nervous. And they were sending these flights out, down as far as Deboyne and [Belarmi Passage?]. We were supposed to be looking for Japanese ships coming in. On the particular flight I'm telling you about, the leader took us down along the island chain the way we're supposed to; but I got upset, because when we got down to the Deboyne Group there was a beached, wrecked Japanese seaplane there, and the other three went down and wasted most of their ammunition shooting up this wreck which ... you know, I thought ... well, we were still about 500 miles from home and we were supposed ... (a little laugh) well, it didn't seem very smart. Then we turned round and went back; and I had a set to about Les, about the way we entered the bay again, because on the eastern tip of the southern arm there was a naval anchorage, and only a few days before the naval officer had been in to tell us that the fellows were flying over their ships, and obviously with the invasion soon to come - they knew. And they said, look, they couldn't tolerate unidentified aircraft swooping down over the clouds for them, and that if we persisted in doing it they'd stick a four-inch shell up somebody's jack, see. And they wouldn't like to do that if it was one of us, but they couldn't afford to take the chance. So there we get there, and our leader goes in straight over the naval anchorage up along the southern shore. Being a nervous and gutless person, I wouldn't do that; I swung off, took my number two, and we went up the middle of the bay, landed; and a while after that Les called me in and gave me a hell of a dressing down for deserting my number one and what would happen if the Zeros were there and all the rest of it. And I said to him, I said `Now, you know very well what the naval officer in charge told us. You heard it as well as I did. That's what he did.' And I said `I don't care what you or anyone else does. If you're going to throw away machines and lives doing something purposeless and useless, I'm not coming with you. Now,' I said `you can do what you like about that.' Well of course he left me alone, he knew about me then. But this is the sort of thing I'm telling you about, this is typical of the ... of what I ... you know, I just wonder that the squadron was able to achieve what it did in this dreadful state of indiscipline that existed, and ... Well, that's the story. 

 

Yes, well, that's most interesting, Arthur. We'd better move on fairly smartly, because the tape is winding up. Just briefly, do you have any other really significant memories of the Milne Bay period?  

 

No. I don... I told you earlier on about being chased down the bay; and that's a significant one, I can tell you! I'll never forget that day (laughing). But ... 

 

And was that on ... when we were discussing before? Or on the tape? 

 

No, I think it's on the tape. 

 

              That's right. It was when we were discussing fear.  

 

Yes, that's right, and I was telling you about that, and the Jap's armament and how it wasn't all that good.  No, I ... it wasn't a very intensive period. I mean, they did a lot of strafing after the invasion. But we had some - one or two, you know - ding dongs, and it was an interesting thing that they were mostly the new people from England who got knocked off. I pointed this out to one of them the other day, the bloke you either saw or are going to see soon, that they lost much the same percentage that we'd lost. And it had a lot to do with waiting till you got acclimatised to the combat role, because they weren't all that combat experienced, I don't feel. 

 

(25.00) And it is a shame that we all of us shared such stirring times and came out of it un-friends and have remained so. Because, come the end of Milne Bay, comes the end of that period that I was talking about in Kristen Williamson's book when the Australians were fighting and succeeding and taking over Buna and Gona, going all the way back, all the credit that should have been given to Australians, because the Americans hadn't got their act together then. Now - and Alan will tell you from his reading, and I agree with him - that probably the reason that the Japs didn't overwhelm us after that was that the American marines moved in in such strength in Guadalcanal that they simply diverted the effort that they would have. I believe there was a big raid, actually the eng... I believe the Japs had their engines turning over, they were going to have a big raid on Milne Bay and then they were diverted to Guadalcanal - the big air raid that probably would have clobbered us just about the time of the invasion. I believe a lot of their troops that were meant to come in for the invasion of Milne Bay actually went over to the Solomons. So, you know, we didn't do it all on our own; but effectively the defence of New Guinea was done under appalling conditions by badly led people who nevertheless did the job. And, you know, I think there could be a tremendous ... this story doesn't have to be a miserable one as long as people realise that what I've been complaining about is the myth of what didn't happen, and the sad conditions under which it was done; and how one would hope that Australia's defence in the future is going to be better - but I doubt it. 

 

              That's very interesting. 

 

END TAPE 3 SIDE B 

 

END INTERVIEW  

 

ARTHUR TUCKER  

[3SQN repaired version of original transcript on https://www.awm.gov.au/images/collection/pdf/S00987_TRAN.pdf ]

SMH OBITUARY -  September 12, 2009.  By Geoffrey Robertson

3 Squadron RESEARCH

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