Flying high with the RAF's ground crew!

The family moved into Donnybrook Cottage which was right on the flight path into Eglinton Aerodrome and as a teenager Norman recalled some hair-raisingly close encounters with some of the aircraft that came in to land.

"Our house was on the main road, on the Kee Road, but it was known then just as the side road and it had no name, but our house was on that corner. I was in the ATC then (the Air Training Corps) when I was at Limavady Tech, and I was 15. A very good friend of mine, Wilson Curry, he was at the Tech with me, but he went on to fly as navigator and made it into the flying section."

Spitfires

But the influence behind him signing up was that flight path: "When the war started our house was surrounded on three sides by the Army and the Air Force, and the big fluorescent lighting tube they had for the aircraft was at the top of our garden. During the day, being a young fellow I used to go up on to the barn roof at the back, and you could nearly have touched the Spitfires going over the top of you! See, they only had another couple of fields to fly before touchdown, so they were nearly on top of you coming in," he said.

Although a noisy spectacle, for the most part the Air Force only flew in daylight, so the family weren't disturbed at night by the low-fly zone.

"They were here at that time to protect the port, but then there was more or less a training ground and the cockpits used to be opened as they were coming in to land and sometimes you would have seen - even though they were watching where they were flying - you would have seen the gloved hand coming up to wave," he said, mimicking the movement.

That's what made teenage Norman think 'This is the job for me'. Except that he never actually became a pilot - although he did travel the world, plumb the depths of the ocean and watch a scaredy-cat general get kicked out of a carrier craft during parachute training...

"That was why I wanted to join the RAF, but you had to be 17-and-a-half, and I joined I joined on my 17-and-a-half birthday you may say," he says laughing at his own impatience to sign his life away: "I couldn't wait".

Norman went into the RAF as 'a fitter' or mechanic, and after signing up he realised that far from being 'an elite' he was one of thousands of guys who had similar aspirations.

"We did 'our square bashing' at Cardington (Bedfordshire]. That is where the R101 flew from - the big airship. She crashed on her maiden voyage in France and at that time only one person saw her go down, but he was a poacher and he wouldn't come forward because he would have been caught for poaching," he said, going on to relate another interesting little snippet related to the R101...

Fall Out!

"They used to march us down to a little church in Cardington Village. They used to march us down there on a Sunday morning for the church service and when you halted - things are very different now, but then there was a big squad of you and the Sergeant in charge of you or the vice-Sergeant would shout 'Fall out Roman Catholics and Jews' because you were going into church, but a few of the fellows who were Protestant Christians used to fall out along with the Roman Catholics and Jews.

"Now, when you went into that little church they had the half-burned flag from the R101, and that half-burned flag is still in that little church. When she went down she went on fire. Believe it or not, the next time I saw it I was in the Hampton Museum over in England and there they have the burned out flag in a glass case; they had brought it out of the little church outside Cardington."

Norman's memory of his RAF days are crystal clear, despite the fact that he signed up in 1947, and he recalls with vivid clarity the heavy snowfall that forced the Cardington RAF boys home.

"Believe it or not there was heavy snowfall in England and we were sent home. Now, we made it home to Northern Ireland but the chaps from Scotland couldn't get through because the snows were very bad. We came back from that and then we went up to RAF Weeton for our driving instruction, and I enjoyed it that much that I just stayed at the driving," he said, adding that he spent the rest of his six years' service behind the wheel.

By the time he had this leg of his training over him there were various aspects of conflict and active service going on in the world. He was posted to RAF Abingdon, and a great variety of vehicles required his motoring skills - a job that most boys dream of...

Dakotas

"The first thing we got involved in was the Berlin Airlift in 1948 and we were transport command, with the result that they were flying Dakotas and supplies into Germany for that length of time that Stalin had put up the no-fly zone," he said. (Stalin insisted on an Anglo-American no bomb and no fly zone anywhere near his armies because he didn't want to lose them to friendly fire.) It proved a busy time for Norman and his RAF colleagues, with planes taking off every three minutes to keep up with the post-war support work for civilians in need.

"The German people were left in quite a bad way after the war, so that was a busy time at RAF Abingdon. I then moved back down to RAF Cardington and I got a job as a driver. At that time Cardington had continued on after the R101, and was the main supplier of hydrogen, so what we had to do every weekend was, I was driving a truck and a trailer every weekend with hydrogen bottles, other fellows were carrying the parachutes and furniture removing vans," he says almost dismissively of the danger he was in if an accident happened.

"We went to different Army camps each weekend for the paratroopers to do their jumps. So we were in Aldershot and elsewhere...and I always remember one day," he says, a twinkle forming in his eye, as he pauses for dramatic effect, before continuing: "One weekend we were up in Aldershot. Now it was mostly TAs who were dropping, and you had to do your jumps to get your yearly bounty. One weekend as soon as we got the barrage balloons down we went into town like all young lads. Here we got the word that there was a Colonel coming to get his jumps in. So we had to keep a balloon for him here so blah, blah, blah, there was no fear of you volunteering, you were told 'You, you and you, you'll stay'. When they took the box up with the paratroopers in it they would have loaded eight or six people to a jump, including the instructor. But this guy was going up on his own, right, so they needed ballast for balance, to keep the balance, the barrage balloon went up and you jumped out through the door.

"So, of course, you, you and you were going up and we had parachutes on us. I'd never parachuted before, but I do remember my mate Ginger Godwin was driving the winch and if you didn't operate the winch properly she would have snapped on you and we lost one balloon once and they had to shoot it down over London or wherever. And Ginger said to me 'I'm breaking the cable Norman!' If that had happened you would have had to jump.

"So this Colonel went up and the instructor was there and five or six of us to balance the cage, and the Colonel was at the back and he had to take a run at it, and said to the instructor 'Right, I'm ready' and away he went. He got about a foot from the door and all you could hear was the steel of his boots digging into the bottom of the cage. He stopped. 'Don't worry, don't worry, I'll do it again'. He'd lost his nerve you see, so back he went again. So there was another mad charge and the brakes went on again. The boys were muttering because we were worried about getting down the town.

A good kick!

"Eventually, the third time he came again and this time the instructor was waiting for him and hit him a good kick in the backside and out he went. But he had to do three jumps, which meant you had to bring the balloon down and then let it back up again, so we were late getting down the town that night, so this Colonel wasn't very high up in our thoughts as you can imagine," Norman chortles.

Back at Abington, 13 of the RAF lads were picked to go to the tournament at Earls Court, which ran for years.

"They had the gun teams operating, you had the artillery all parading around, it was a great show. that was the first year the RAF took over the drill squad from the Army, and all the Army boys were waiting for the RAF to make a b***s up. And not once did we. But we had the job of taking the paratroopers up into the roof - it was the first time they had tried it - and the parachute was already opened and when we got the word we just let them go and we winched them down into the arena," said, adding that there was always a great sense of rivalry between the RAF and the Army.

Although there was intense competition, there was also lots of room for fun, and the boys knew how to ham it up in style.

"One thing I was talking to Richie Burns about the other day, which I remember was...the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool. We were stationed at Weeton and my mate and I went in this night to the Tower Ballroom and we met two girls; of course we decided to take them home and said 'goodnight' and all that, and as we came back through the town this fog came in and we never had a fog in Northern Ireland anything like this. A pea souper.

"We managed to grope our way through the town with the lights, but when we got out to the country there was nothing, and that was the time when you just had the old lamps, but we couldn't even see them.

"So this boy he had to skinny up and tell us where we were going. We got to a crossroads, groping our way along the road and the next thing we heard this vehicle coming behind us...headlights...oh...right. So, it was a double decker bus! A Ribble Bus Company bus! It stopped beside us and all these RAF fellows were in it, so in we jumped. In those days the back of the bus was opened, and you could stand there, and we were no sooner in than she started off again, and I says to the mates that we would need to give a bit of money to pay, and this other RAF fellow standing beside us said 'Don't worry. It's an RAF corporal who's driving it!"

Stragglers

Norman goes onto relate how all the RAF stragglers who were out wetting their whistle and had been caught out by the fog had been collected at various points by the unofficial bus run courtesy of a lateral thinking and rather cheeky corporal...

"He had lifted the bus out of the bus depot. So we left her about half-a-mile from the camp and everybody ran! You got that type of thing going on but there was never any maliciousness," he says relishing the memory.

After a short lull, Norman takes off again: "Another interesting thing that happened me was when I got back from Earls Court I was put on driving the station coach (bus], a Bedford, and that was quite a good job because you were driving ones into the theatre in Oxford at night and different teams and football teams at the weekend. One weekend I had this job of taking a coach load of senior NCOs to HMS Vernon at Gosport - and you talk about rivalry. What happened back then was a coach load of RAF officers would have gone down to Navy camp and then a coach load of Petty Officers would have come back up again. So I took these boys down to Vernon anyway. They were senior NCOs like flight sergeants and warrant officers and stuff - I was only a senior aircraftsman, but anyway they took me in with them that night and the following day I had to drive them down to the dockyard. And what were they doing? There were six submarines, and they were put in three or four of these submarines and they were taking them out.

"I pulled in and say there thinking 'Away yous go' and this warrant officer, he says, 'Paddy, you don't think you are going to sit there waiting for them and that they are coming back this evening or tomorrow, do you? You are coming with us'. I says 'I think not', but before I knew it I was in a submarine..."

Asked what it was like, Norman's eyes almost glaze over with the recollected horror of being shut in...

"As soon as he closed that tower, I just felt the claustrophobia coming over me, I thought I'd never survive. Then I looked round and I seen the rest of them, and the boat crew...so anyway, we went out on an exercise and the boat we were in, we were supposed have got hit so we had to go down onto the seabed..." he said, missing a beat before going on to talk about the trouble in the Middle East, Korea and Malaysia, but it is not long before the humour creeps back in, and he recalls a nightmare of a boat journey he once took.

Kitted out

There was the Malayan emergency, and whenever I got back from that the next thing I was posted overseas. As a young fellow you looked forward to overseas postings. But you always got disembarkation leave, and you took two or three weeks and we went up to Staffordshire, which is where you left from and you got kitted out with your overseas kit.

"So I went up to Liverpool and it was one bad, wet, cold night and we boarded the Devonshire. Now, we had never seen a boat like this before and this looked alright, you know? Of course we were put down into the Mess Deck and, of course, it was hammocks.

"Well now, I had never seen a hammock, never mind let sleep in one, and they were slung over the tables that your ate your food off and they were bolted to the floor so if you fell out of your hammock you got a very sore landing! Once you got used to them they were great. We set sail anyway, and in daylight we were going down past the Bay of Biscay when the engines failed. I have never had a day or day-and-a-half like it in all my life...they sent tugs out from Spain or Portugal and some came from Ireland, but the water was that rough they couldn't get near.

"Well, green water...and we were downstairs and there were families upstairs, but we were steerage at that time, you know? The lowest of the low. Oh the water...she broke a terrible lot of furniture that time. You didn't really ever know where you were going, but when we got into the Mediterranean things calmed off again, and when we got to Port Said we had to get a lot of new furniture on. They even tied the piano to the wall and it broke the ropes, in fact the ship's Warrant Office was talking to a fellow afterwards and said if she (the ship] had went another couple of degrees she would have coped. I didn't think a ship like that could cope like that, but...she had no engines and she was at the mercy of the seas."

Even in his darkest hour, there was humour...

Laugh

"You have got to laugh at your troubles, then they don't seem so bad...but this was very bad. So, what they did was ask if there were people who would go up and help entertain. Now there was an old tannoy system and you had a speaker like that (gestures] in the corner, and they were asking people to go up and entertain through the tannoy system. Now, we had a Corporal who was a great singer, and sang John McCormack songs...great singer...so said 'Go on up Paddy, and give us a couple of songs'. Now the people who run those boats also feed you. So, irrespective of how sick you were they'd still come running with food...so anyway, Paddy went up to sing, and I always remember the song because it was a favourite of me mothers, 'I'll take you home again Kathleen'."

It gets worse: "So, he started off," says Norman singing: "I'll take you home again Kathleeeee, and with that he was sick, right into the microphone, and everybody on board dived for cover away from the speakers! You can imagine the noise coming through the tannoy! So, if nobody was sick until then, they were certainly sick then!"

Norman goes on to relate how, years afterwards he saw the same ship in Portrush: "I was looking through binoculars and I thought 'I know all about you, girl!'"

With post-war security still at a premium, the RAF boys were never told where their next posting was going to be, but each stop that was made, crew were ordered off at the Middle East, Columbo, and they travelled to Singapore, and he got word that he was to be dropped off at Singapore before the ship went on to Korea. Norman spent almost two years in Singapore, which included his 'King's Year' and thoroughly enjoyed his time in Changi, which is where the Japanese POW camp was.

Horrors

Momentarily recalling the horrors that had taken place there, Norman revealed he was on the embarkation team, which involved a lot of driving, before being posted into the VIP bay to drive for the officer Marshall Ackerman until he had his time put in.

"There was a lot of evening work and it just showed you how the British lived then...you have heard of the Raffles Hotel? The houses that the officers had were palatial and they had a boy to do the running, and every married family had an 'Alma' who cleaned the house and did everything. I am still in the Changi Association, but there were other guys went on to Korea," Norman recalls.

Norman came back on the Estoria, an ex-emigration boat, and he remembered how he was offered 7 or he could go and get a 'de-mob' suit, but you had to go to Woking for that...

"We thought to ourselves and thought 'to pot with this 7 business' and we opted for the free travel down to Woking and back to where we lived. So we decided to go down to London for the free weekend. So we got kitted out with these de-mob suits, they were bright, flannel with white stripes in them and a sports jacket, and you would have been seen from here to the far side of the City. The jacket was a white tweedy thing...it was quite bright.

"In fact when I came home when the father's uncle had died when I went over to the grave yard, I had nothing else to wear and the undertaker was asking who this person was dressed in white at a funeral. They must have thought I was an American," he laughs.

Union Jack Club

"After we got our suits we came out and we were going to stay at the Union Jack Club in London, and we came to a crossroads and at that time there would have been a cop directing the traffic, we were rolling past him thinking we were wearing civvies, and as we passed him he said 'Union Jack Club on the left lads'.

Admitting he felt a bit lost without his brothers in arms, Norman said he felt better after joining the RAF Association, and in 2001 he was awarded the MBE.

He has devoted about 55 years to the Association at this stage and as you can probably tell, Norman Orr and his RAF tales are still going strong.