Counting The Planes

Heroes Remember

Counting The Planes

Transcript

Interviewer: I also understand that one of the things that you fellas used to do, when the bombers would go out, you’d wait for them and count them coming back? Yeah, our, our Tiffies would go out, say, I remember at one time, twelve went out, and you had a pretty good idea where they were going and when they’d be coming back and maybe an hour into the journey you’d start wandering down in the airfield and you’d just sit and wait, and you’d wait then all of a sudden you’d see one come in then you count, one, two, three. And if twelve went out, you wanted twelve back. Well the one instance there was one guy was late getting back, he was about twenty minutes late, we were just waiting, he finally made it. But another day, twelve that went out, only seven came back and something like that happened, you felt pretty bad about it and you just sat there and the CO just, “Okay, shut ‘er down.” And he shut the thing down for a couple of days and that was it. Nobody talked about it. There was nothing you could do. You lost five aircraft, you lost five good people.

Description

Mr. Abdallah explains how they counted the planes as they came back in from a mission to see if everyone made it back safely.

Wilf Abdallah

Mr. Abdallah was born in London, Ontario, in 1923. His father immigrated from Lebanon to the United States at the age of 12 and eventually ended up in London, Ontario, where he was a candy maker and owned a few stores in the area. In 1936 the family moved to Petrolia and then on to Sarnia. Mr Abdallah attended high school in Sarnia before moving back to London in 1939-40. After lying about his age Mr. Abdallah joined the Royal Canadian Air Force when he was seventeen. He went to Toronto for three weeks training at Manning Depot before going to Paulson, Manitoba, to complete his training. In March of 1944 he sailed on the Louis Pasteur to Bournemouth, England, where he was stationed with 129 Airfield. Mr. Abdallah worked with the tactical air force, building airfields and then joined the air force’s return salvage unit. He moved through France, Belgium and Holland recovering aircraft to be repaired or stripped for parts. When Mr. Abdallah returned to Canada after the war he went back to live the rest of his life in London, Ontario.

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