Yesterday was the funeral of my Uncle Alwyn (Olly) Thomas who died on 8 January at the age of 91. During the service the vicar recollected some of Alwyn's times during WW2 in Wellington bombers. My mother had written to the local paper a few months previous telling them of these accounts. I have copied the piece that was published below. You might find it interesting.
Why flying bombers was a risky business
IN the January edition of Remember When we told the story of the untimely death of a young man from our area, Stan Hathaway, who died when his Wellington bomber crashed after a mission in World War Two.
The survival rate among aircrew in Bomber Command was very low and the more missions they flew the lower the odds were that they would survive the war. Here we have been given the story of one survivor still living in our midst, Alwyn Thomas from Stockton. Alwyn had a very lucky escape from two terrifying incidents, neither of which were actually caused by enemy action, but terrifying just the same.
The account was sent to us by Mrs Gwendoline McDiarmid of Stockton, on behalf of Alwyn Thomas, her brother who tells his story. "In 1941 the crew of my Wellington bomber was transferred to Africa so that our squadron could be deployed against the railways and docks on the African coast which were part of Rommel's supply lines for his Afrika Corps.
"One evening we were in the bomber ready to go on a mission when the air raids sounded, so we had to exit the plane and run for cover, a hit on our fully loaded plane at this point would have been catastrophic.
"After a while, the all clear sounded and we went back to our planes for take off. I was the rear gunner on the bomber so entered the plane separately from the rest of the crew via the gun turret.
"In my hurry to leave the plane during the enemy air raid I had rolled out of the turret backwards and in doing so my foot had somehow taken my oxygen mask and microphone off. By this time the plane was gathering speed and I was unable to retrieve my mask, therefore, I had no oxygen and no way of communicating with the rest of the crew.
"It was too late to close my door to the turret so to stop it from jamming I had to jettison the door. With no door I was in danger of being sucked out, so I hung on to my machine guns by clasping my arms and legs around them to keep me in the plane.
"By the time we got over the target there was enemy flak coming up and bursting all around us but still I hung on. As you may imagine I was in quite a state when we landed, everyone considered it a miracle I had survived. "Later on, we were flying missions which meant we had to negotiate the Alps. The Wellingtons were too heavy, when fully laden, to fly over the mountains so we actually had to fly through the passes. Sometimes when the moon shone on the snowy mountains, the scenery was breathtakingly beautiful. "After one mission, when we were landing, a tragic accident occurred caused by a fault in our plane's green and red recognition lights. We had just landed when we found that another Wellington was actually landing on top of our plane. Out of 12 crew from the two planes 10 were killed, myself and an Australian were the only two survivors."
Alwyn's story shows us that even without enemy action, flying missions with Bomber Command was a very risky business often with fatal consequences.
