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Description
Mr. Yarnell talks about all the flying they did. He also recalls what they did during downtime.
Cyrill St. Clair (Cy) Yarnell
M. Yarnell est né le 9 août 1920 à Carlow, en Irlande. Il a déménagé au Canada à l'âge de 8 ans. Il s'est enrôlé dans l'Aviation royale du Canada (ARC) en 1940 à l'âge de 20 ans. Il a suivi la formation initiale de pilote à Victoriaville (Québec), où il a appris à piloter le Fleet Finch pour enfin maîtriser le Harvard. Il a suivi la formation d'instructeur de vol à Trenton et formé des pilotes d'un grand nombre de pays. Après avoir été instructeur pendant un an, M. Yarnell a été envoyé outre-mer. Il a effectué des missions aériennes au-dessus de l'Afrique du Nord, de l'Italie et de l'Allemagne et participé aux batailles de la vallée du Liri et de Monte Cassino. Après la guerre, il est demeuré dans l'Aviation royale du Canada (ARC). Lorsqu'il a pris sa retraite de l'ARC en 1975, M. Yarnell avait le grade de colonel. Il est membre de l'Association des Forces aériennes du Canada et participe activement aux activités du musée de l'Aviation de Trenton. M. Yarnell et son épouse, Phyllis, ont trois enfants, sept petits-enfants et un arrière-petit-enfant.
Transcription
A tour of operations on Bomber Command was 30 trips, 30 trips. A tour of operations on fighters was 250 hours. Our flight times on our squadron would be an hour, an hour and a half. Once in awhile they’d strap on extra gas tanks on the bottom of the bird and I think my longest trip in a Spit was maybe two hours and 30 minutes. You, once you get airborne you’d switch to the reserve tank and when it drained you’d jettison it you see. So that our trips were shorter but many more, 250 hours. Matter of fact I can tell you the number in my actual log book. Again, some of our flights would last, if we were doing bomb line patrol and we were close to the bomb line our flight might be 45 minutes but on the longer ones it could be well over two hours.Some days you would go maybe two or three days and not fly at all, but then other days you could do maybe two, three flights in a day.Interviewer: What did you do on the days you weren’t flying? Not a hell of a lot. We could go into the local town, I suppose and, but basically being on a tactical squadron not unlike the boys who were based in England where they got to know the local people, they could knock off and go into town and we couldn’t do that. Now when I was flying in England of course we could. And after my first tour, right from Italy I went back to England to take the gunnery leader course, that’s where operational pilots who had finished a tour on ops on fighter aircraft would go to the gunnery leader school and there you would train using fighter tactics, methods of attack and things of this nature and then you were supposed to go back to a squadron and become what’s known as the gunnery leader instructor, you’re supposed to teach the other guys.