Soldiers Lost After VJ Day

Heroes Remember

Soldiers Lost After VJ Day

Transcript

My skipper being a wing commander we did a lot of formation flying mostly. I'd say 75% was formation flying, of which the wing commander would be the lead aircraft and the others would follow behind in boxes of four. So we did a lot of those missions and one in particular I recall, it was a trip to Rangoon, and we tucked in really close, 64 airplanes rather, 16 from each of the four squadrons. The quadrant that I've mentioned and uh did a masterful job on the field dumps there and came back again. Another trip we did which was rather unique, the B-29 squadrons of the US airforce had an operational training unit south of Calcutta, southwest of Calcutta and they wanted to on their final, just wanted to do some bombing from 30 000 feet. They were practicing for moving through the Tokyo area, so we. They wanted a target marker so they asked us if we would go and we took four airplanes in formation at 6000 feet, flew to the target and we had to drop the, put the incendiaries right on the target within thirty seconds of when they were approaching on their bomb run. And I was the lead navigator on that occasion, and I used some unique techniques to get us there. The bombs, the flares blew five seconds off time, which was rather nice.

Description

Mr. Emslie tells a story about his co-pilot Roy McCloud and a Japanese Admiral in Singapore who refused to accept that the war was over.

John “Jack” Emslie

John Emslie was born in Vermilion, Alberta in 1924 with the military in his blood. His father was a WWI Veteran and Federal Government employee in the Soldier Settlement Branch. His grandfather was in the Boer War. Mr. Emslie joined the Air Force in 1943 with the entire male component of his high school graduating class, all on the same day. He trained as a navigator in Edmonton, near where he grew up. Mr. Emslie took part in the Burma Campaign, where he flew in the Wing Commander’s crew. After the war, he finished his education in Alberta and Toronto and became a meteorologist.

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