WAG on the Lancaster

So as you went through the preliminaries of training, the powers that be pretty well assigned you what section, I mean a person might have wanted to be a fighter pilot but there were too many fighter pilots and they needed gunners in Bomber Command so automatically they put you in Bomber Command. Once you were slated for a certain category of Bomber Command, they didn’t even say Bomber Command in those days. It was either fighter command or other. I was what you called a WAG, a wireless air gunner, which meant that I was fully trained on handling the guns either in the rear turret or the mid upper turret as well as look after the wireless set receiving or transferring.

Interviewer: And what type of aircraft did you fly in?

During the war, actually in action was the Lancaster. The Lancaster was the number one Bomber Command aircraft. It was a fantastic four-engine aircraft and could withstand terrific damage from flak or fighters and so on. And it had a long range, wonderful maneuverability and as a matter of fact, at the end of the war it was pretty well selected as the number one bomber aircraft on our side, on the allied side.