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Mr. Rupert Nelson Boyes, Flight Engineer 419th Squadron,
R.C.A. Middleton St. George. They didn’t have de-icing paste
on the wings, we were testing out some new equipment that
had just arrived. Now just what it was, I don’t remember,
probably G, or something like that. We flew into this cloud
of, it’s called super-cooled water, it’s rainwater, but
it’s on the verge of freezing, and when anything touches it,
it freezes.
So this is what happened there, we flew into this cloud, and
everything froze, it gathered on the leading edge of the
wing and everything else, and you’re going to become so
heavy that you can’t maintain your airspeed, and when you
lose your airspeed, the nose goes down and down you go….. We
were assured that we wouldn’t encounter any freezing
conditions up there. The plane got heavy, we lost our
airspeed and then the nose went down. Then we gained speed
rapidly, because we were going downhill. Since everything
was frozen we couldn’t pull the nose back up. We had lots
of speed at that time, but the controls didn’t work. The
captain gave the order to jump, the order is “Jump! Jump!”
You don’t ask any questions, you get into your parachute and
you’re supposed to jump. I put my parachute on, it hooks on
the front of your “Mae West,” which is a floating thing. It
was the jacket that we wore, and if you landed in the ocean
it would fill with air. But before I put my helmet off,
which had the earphones attached in it, my pilot, Jim
Errington, he stringed back on the column-control as hard as
he could, and he said “Rupe…Give me hand!” So I stopped
right there, as I knew we were getting awful close to the
ground too, I didn’t know if I’d have time to get out…I
couldn’t have anyway, the hatch that I was supposed to pull
out was frozen too. Anyway, I tried pulling back on this
thing, the bombardier was supposed to follow me down to the
nose and go out of the same hatch. When he saw what was
happening, he just reached over, and all 3 of us were
pulling back on the control-column just as hard as we
could. We weren’t having any success. In between the pilot
and me, beside the pilot’s seat, there’s a round wheel, I
think it’s about 7 inches in diameter. To turn this wheel,
it turns another little tab on the elevator that the wind is
supposed to catch, and to drive this elevator whichever way
you want it to go. It is to assist the pilot in flying
straight. If the nose wants to drop a little, you just pull
on this wheel and it straightens it up. But anyway, I don’t
know how close to the ground we were, but I turned the wheel
counter clock wise, and all of a sudden, the nose came up,
and the plane rose up. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what
helped break the ice loose, and up we went. I don’t know
how close we were to the ground because the windshield was
also iced up, you couldn’t really see that good. We were
going 425 miles an hour, I remember looking at the
airspeed. 365 was the maximum in a dive, but we usually
flew at only around 150 to 175 miles an hour.
The others, that were in the back, they were not able to
open the door, they couldn’t get out. When they saw that
they couldn’t get out, they put their back against the
bulkhead that runs between the two wings and they were
sitting there with their heads between their knees, waiting
for the impact. It was going to be quite an impact when we
hit that farmer’s field down there. We had been told that
there was U-boat in this fjord in Bergen. Whether we hit it
or not, I don’t really know, it was a pretty small target,
and we were flying at 17,000 feet. By the time we got to
camp we were pretty happy about, you know getting back,
there was an awful lot of planes that didn’t. Another time
our pilot had been hurt in a motorcycle accident, so he was
in the hospital when they’d made a big raid on Duisburg. We
weren’t a full crew, so we didn’t go on the day-raid, but
they took our wireless operator as a spare, and he never
came back, so we lost our wireless operator.
It got to where you just expected it, but you had to do what
you had to do. |
Mr. Rupert Nelson Boyes - WWII Veteran
Flight Engineer 419th Squadron,
R.C.A. Middleton St. George.
The order is “Jump! Jump!” |
