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Interview with Benny Goodman

Benny Goodman grew up in London and hoped to become a pilot. He volunteered for the Air Force and was originally posted to RAF Abingdon as a ground gunner before beginning his flying training. After qualifying as a pilot in Canada, he became an instructor to Navy pilots. He survived his ship being torpedoed before he finally joined the Queen Mary in New York and returned to England. He flew operations with 617 Squadron and discusses a fire in the cockpit of his Lancaster, narrowly missing and mid air collision and flying alongside a Me 262.01:31:12 Audio RecordingCB: My name is Chris canada goose uk black friday Brockbank and today we’re in Bracknell talking to Benny Goodman about his experiences in the RAF and today is the 7th of April 2016 and Benny is going to start off with his earliest recollections going through to what he did after the war. So what do you remember first Benny?LBSG: When the war broke out you mean?CB: No. When you, your earliest recollections of life.LBSG: Oh.CB: In the family.LBSG: We lived, we’re Londoners from a long way back and I remember I was born in Maida Vale and lived there for the first five or six years of my life and then we moved to Hampstead and we lived cheap canada goose there and we were still there when the war broke out.CB: Keep going.LBSG: Yes. I was CB: So you went to school locally.LBSG: No.LBSG: I was a boarder. I was away at school.CB: Where were you canada goose uk shop at school?LBSG: In Herne Bay.CB: In Herne Bay.LBSG: Herne Bay College. Yes.CB: Right. And if you just keep going on what you LBSG: Well, I left, yes, because my father CB: So LBSG: Had, I’ll keep going, an interest in an electrical engineering factory in Birmingham. It was considered that I should go up there and study at night and work during the day in the factory. I did this and found it fairly hard going doing, doing both things because there was no, very little free time. However, in September 1939 we all listened to a broadcast by the prime minister who told us that we were at war with Germany and so that of course made quite a difference to me. I decided to contact my parents. canada goose I was about a hundred miles from London at the time and discuss with my father what I wanted to do. I was only eight/nineteen, eighteen or nineteen at the time. It was agreed that I would go home and I decided I wanted to join the RAF. My father backed me up. My mother was horrified but in the end I went to a recruiting office at, in Brent, North London. It was the nearest RAF one and did all the necessary things canada goose jacket outlet to make sure that I would get in, get in to the RAF. Of course I said I wanted to be a pilot. And the officer, it was a flying officer who interviewed me raised his eyebrows. I didn’t really realise what that meant and I noticed he’d put down on the form that he was filling in for me ACH ACH/GD and I thought that meant that I was definitely going to start training as a pilot immediately. Of course nothing could be further from the truth. In due course I went for a general medical and when I passed that I was sent across to the RAF section to have an air crew medical which I passed and then we were, we had to be attested as we were volunteers and so we all had a little ceremony within the medical centre. About twenty of us took the oath of allegiance to the king and the crown and all the rest of it. I was then sent on leave for a little while, a few weeks, and got my call up papers and I thought this is it. I’m going to be a pilot in two canada goose outlet uk sale weeks. Didn’t quite turn out like that. I went to Cardington, kitted out and we did a bit of marching which wasn’t really on the agenda. We didn’t realise we were there until we were posted and eventually, after about ten days we packed our kit bags and were marched off to a railway station and of course nobody had any idea where we were going but we ended up in Bridgenorth and we, and it was snowy, it was snowing, I beg your pardon and the roads were quite icy but we had to march canada goose black friday sale up the hill from the station at Bridgnorth to Bridgenorth RAF camp and it was quite slippery but we all got to the top official canada goose outlet and we were all very wet behind the ears there’s no doubt about it. We had a flight sergeant barking at us and we ended up in canada goose outlet parka a hut, about twenty of us, well maybe fifteen in a hut and there canada goose outlet shop we went through six weeks of square bashing of every sort, type and description you could imagine. There was a corporal to every goose outlet canada hut and he had a bunk to himself in the hut which was, part of our duty was to sweep his bunk out every day and make the bed and we did that of course. We had to. And we had various other delightful jobs as you can imagine. I can remember spending I think a week in the cookhouse peeling potatoes which didn’t impress me very much with, as you can imagine. However, we eventually got a posting, I and another chap and we were told we would be going to RAF Abingdon and we knew that was a straight through course on Whitleys. By straight through I mean you did ground school, you flew a Tiger Moth, and then an Anson and then a Whitley. So we had every hope that we were going to be on that course. There was no reason to suppose that we wouldn’t be. Things turned out rather differently. Instead of that we were sent to a dugout on the airfield and there was a nissen hut there with six beds in it. No, no sheets, no pillow cases, of course. Just blankets that didn’t smell very good and the latrine, latrines had to be dug out and there we lived for about six months https://www.rheingoenheim-info.de and all thoughts of being pilots, we had become ground gunners. We didn’t know it until, until we had to learn all about ground gunning and how to take to pieces a cow gun, that’s a Coventry ordinance work gun, a Lewis watercool gun and so on and we did that pretty well because we were, we had to do it Canada Goose Parka day and night we would, and the only part I remember, of course we had to name every part we, we’d handled but the only part name I can remember was the rear sear retainer keeper and I cannot tell you why I remember it nor do I really remember where it fitted. However, we were there for about six months and we were both quite fed up with it because it was four hours on canada goose uk outlet and two hours off during the day and at night we had to patrol around the airfield every night and challenge anybody who was walking there. Well, we had to challenge, ask for the password and if we didn’t get the right answer we were supposed to arrest them. However, there was no option, we did have to challenge them because the station duty officer and the warrant officer and the orderly officer all at various times would come around with a couple of NCOs and if we didn’t challenge them we were in trouble and we challenged many more airmen and it was winter and they were trying to find their way in the blackout to a Whitley they were working on with their tool bag in one hand and to have some idiot airman like me challenge them saying, ‘Stop. Who goes there,’ And believe me we used to get some fruity juicy answers. We never got a password from them [laughs]. It would canada canada goose coats goose outlet uk be more, would have been more than our life was worth if we’d really tried to try to stop them. I mean it would have been ridiculous. We could, canada goose outlet toronto factory we could see that. And the fear at the time when I was a ground gunner was that the Germans would invade by air at dawn. So at dawn we had to march around the perimeter track with, we always had, by the way one bullet up the spout. That’s one loaded in the, ready for firing but the safety catch was on and we marched around canada goose coats on sale the perimeter track and for some reason we had to wear oxygen, I beg your pardon, gas masks. I don’t know why because if the Germans were dropping paratroops I can’t believe they were going to drop with gasmasks on. However, that was the order so that was it. Our food was brought out in hay boxes. Breakfast, lunch and a sort canada goose outlet reviews of tea, dinner and of course as warm as the hay boxes, hay boxes may have been by the time they got around to us on the other side of the airfield in a dugout it wasn’t very warm. But it is extraordinary, you get used to everything and after about three or four months this other chap and I had given up all hopes of becoming pilots or training and in our off duty by the way, we had a off duty half day and if we were lucky occasionally we’d get a pass in to the, go and walk into the local town, in Abingdon but if you could get past the SPs because you went to go, if you went to go out they had to inspect every inch of you and if they didn’t quite like the way your tie was tied or one button didn’t look properly shined then you were sent back and told to come back again so sometimes you never really got your half day off. I don’t know, we got used to it, it’s extraordinary and because we were very young I don’t think we took, I don’t think we got too, took too much umbridge about it and as, I think I’ve just said this other chap and I had given up any idea of being trained as pilots. We thought here we are and here we are going to stay but one day we were sent for and we wondered what we’d done but we were told we were going on a pilot’s course and we couldn’t cheap canada goose believe it. It wasn’t at RAF Abingdon because the Whitley course that we saw was the last one that they, the straight through course was the last one and so we never had any hope of getting on that and we, I was sent to, this chap and I separated unfortunately. We’d become good friends by that time but we were separated and I went to a reception centre at Stratford on Avon. Now remember I’d been a ground gunner for six months and my uniform, to say the least, was tatty because we spent day and night in the, well, at night, walking around but days in the gun pit and sometimes we had, when we were off we, it wasn’t, we couldn’t get undressed, we slept in it. I mean everybody did and of course I looked really tatty and crumpled. There was no doubt about that. I walked canada goose outlet store uk in to the orderly room in the reception canada goose black friday sale area at Stratford on Avon and somebody barked, ‘Airman you’re on a charge.’ And I looked around. I want to interrupt.