Interviewed  by  George  Dick  and  tape-recorded  at Brisbane  on  7th  July  1992.

As a young lad, perhaps like many youngsters of the day, one of my consuming hobbies was making model aeroplanes, and this interest in aviation was furthered when I had my first flight in an aeroplane when I was age 14. I lived in Western Queensland and quite a few of the early fliers staged through Winton. In the early 1940’s I was on the Atherton Tableland managing an estate agency at William’s Garage in Yungaburra, and when one of the recruiting trains came to Mareeba I went down there to make enquiries about enlisting. I was only interested in joining the Royal Australian Air Force because of my love of and deep interest in aviation matters right back to the age of six. I filled out an application form and submitted it to the recruiting officer

There was quite a delay between being accepted for aircrew training in the Air Force and receiving their letter enclosing a rail warrant and telling me to report to their office in Creek Street. There was an interval of something like 14 months. It’s possible that they took trainees living closer to Brisbane before calling up those in the country. But I was certainly on a reserve for quite a long time.

After being sworn in with others at Creek Street, we were taken down to Sandgate where we were issued with our kit, and started on a three month course at No 3 Initial Training School.   Units of the American Army Air Corps had just arrived in Brisbane and one of their Air Cobras crashed into the sea only about 500 yards away from the ITS camp. Some of the Air Force fellows waded out to the aircraft and collected some ammunition and there was quite a stink about that.

After that I was sent to the Elementary Flying Training School at Narromine; the School was equipped with Tiger Moths, and my instructor  Sergeant ‘Shagger’ Ross forecast that I’d become a fighter pilot for sure. Not many of the instructors held commissioned rank, and I recall that one of them impressed on me that every flying instructor must be addressed as 'Sir' irrespective of his rank. Some of them were dedicated and conscientious fellows, but there were a couple at Narromine whose main aim appeared to be to scrub two of the four trainees they were given at the start of each course so that they could sit back and have an easy ride.

From there I went to No 1 Service Flying Training School at Point Cook, where, contrary to ‘Shagger’s’ forecast I was trained on the twin-engined Airspeed Oxfords. Jim  (Palmer? was my instructor there, and at about 35 years of age was thought to be nearly over the hill as far as flying was concerned. The Commanding Officer at that time was 'Speed'  Le Good, and while I was at Point Cook I saw an American flier practising skip bombing. At the graduation parade, the successful trainees, including myself, were presented with their wings.

My next posting was to No 8 Service Flying Training School at Bundaberg as a flying instructor for s short time, and then I was sent down to the Central Flying School at Tamworth to undergo a flying instructor's course on Airspeed Oxfords, after which I was sent back to Bundaberg.

The Commanding Officer was Jeff ('Horse') Atherton, who later became CO of a fighter squadron in New Guinea. He wasn't a flamboyant character by any means. but just to show the Yanks who were fiddling around doing beat-ups in their Black Widows at Noemfoor, 'Horse' took off downwind in a Kittyhawk, rolled over, extended the gear on the base leg, and on final leg rolled the right way up.

My next posting was to No 5 Operational Training Unit at Tocumwal, where Wing Commander Brian ('Blackjack') Walker was the Commanding Officer , and I have an idea that 'Torchy' Uren was the Chief Instructor. That Beaufighter training course included Gordon Fenton, and his navigator Rowley Nelson (both of whom were later posted to No 30 Beaufighter Squadron and were shot down at Boram in A19-146 on 13th July 1944). Then there was Bert Moody and his navigator Bert Aitcheson ( who crashed on Bomberai Peninsula in A19-209 on 20th September 1944; the story we heard that both were captured, tortured by the Japanese, and then used for bayonet practice).

We went through the usual hardening course at Sandgate and then went through an involved business of getting up north to join No 30 Squadron - our next posting. I had a spot of leave in Brisbane, and was then put on a troop train which took me to Townsville, where I reported to the Transport and Movements Section for onward travel. We were quartered at some camp a few miles out of the city and as there was nothing at all to do but sit and wait for a seat on an aircraft going to Tadji, time hung heavily on our hands. However, eventually we were called out and put on board  the Canberra and this took us across the Coral Sea to Port Moresby where we stayed for about three weeks. A message came through that a Beaufreighter would be coming through Moresby so I hitched a ride on that as far as Tadji. The Allied strip at Tadji was about 30 kilometres or so east of the village of Aitape.

Wing Commander Gibson and Corporal Murphine had been killed when their Beaufighter slammed into a bulldozer during take-off from Tadji, which was right on the water’s edge. Gibson’s fatal crash  happened in A19-115 on 11th June 1944 - just two or three days before my arrival. Jack Sandford was temporarily commanding the Squadron., which was now under No 77 Wing . Gordon Fenton arrived a day or so after me and he eventually took over as Temporary Commanding Officer, but he had that post for only about five days, being shot down over Boram.  Jack Sandford  (who was doing a second operational tour in the Squadron) took over temporary command again until Carey Thompson arrived in October 1944.

Tadji was held by the US Army and the Nips were pushing hard against the small perimeter so higher command sent in more troops, but no more food. So for about three weeks we lived on tropical spread, flapjacks, and tinned meat once a week, although at other times although the food was adequate it wasn’t exciting. Squadron personnel lived in American-style bell tents fitted with wooden duck-boards which were dispersed among the palm trees of a Lever Brothers plantation at Tadji.

I distinguished myself on my first operation in a Beaufighter by flying through the tops of the coconut trees at our target ( either But or Cape Martin?) It was my first experience of anti-aircraft fire, and the stuff was coming up and it seemed to me that our best chance lay in keeping low and keeping y finger on the firing button during our run into the target. But not being used to the flying a fully-loaded aircraft in conditions of poor density/altitude, when I pulled out at a lower height than was perhaps prudent,  the aircraft splurged and I went through the treetops about a metre from the tops. With negative G the carburetion system of the Hercules engine was such that it produced a momentary cut-out. My splurge caused both engines to cut for a fraction of a minute - although it seemed to be an abnormally long time. It seemed obvious that I was going to prang and as I had absolutely no intention of being burnt to death when the aircraft exploded, I put my hand down on the gang switches and knocked the master switch off so that there would be no hot things to light a fire when we crashed. But just as I did that one engine came on, followed by the other.

When we got back to Tadji we found that both engine nacelles were damaged very badly - flattened in some places - and I thought that I would be sent home in disgrace. I went to the Commanding Officer, told him about the damage, explained what had happened and said I had made an error of judgement, and expressed regrets. He told me to join the club; no pilot was regarded as operationally experienced until he’d been through tree-tops three times!

Since their arrival at Tadji from Kiriwina the Beaufighters had been strafing barges along the New Guinea coastline between Wewak and Muschu Island. They had been fitted with bomb racks under the wings at Kiriwina and on arrival at Tadji they started to do some bombing; they carried a pair of 226 kg bombs. I recall one Beaufighter sortie where I used bombs against Amahai No 1 Strip, which was heavily defended, and which I attacked the following day in a Boston. I don’t think that bombing from a Beaufighter did much to impeded the Japanese operational effort; the bombs were so small that they’d just make a small hole in the strip which could be filled by the next day. The smaller anti-personnel bombs were probably more effective; they had an extension rod stuck on the front so that they blew on impact and scattered metal fragments about at about knee height.

Gordon Fenton and Rowley Nelson were killed while on an operation on 13th July 1944. Two other crews were lost that night:  Baldock and his navigator Abbott in A19-185, as well as  Satchwell and his navigator  McNamara in A19-174.

Ten days later the Squadron lost another crew when John (‘Blue’) Hutchinson and his navigator  Roy Wagner crashed while taking off from the strip at Tadji in A19-173 on what was to be their second operation. The aircraft swung just after he started his roll, but instead of stopping the aircraft, which would have been the right thing to do when the swing developed, he elected to keep going, yanked it off and, veered off the flight path and clocked the top of the control tower. I was just behind him and stopped my roll when I saw what was going on;  I got roasted by Ron Rankin , who was flight leader for that operation). He impressed on me that I was never to do that again when I was in his flight;  if the strip was clear, then I was to go. Despite that particular ear-bashing, I got on well with Ron; he was a pleasant fellow, perhaps something of an extrovert, but an experienced Beaufighter man and a good leader. I got on very well with him.

Not all the Squadron had moved to Tadji; quite  large number had remained at Kiriwina, and in time they loaded all our stores and heavy equipment on to an American  Liberty ship and sailed up to Noemfoor. The Tadji people — nearly 200 personnel all told —  flew up to the new operational base and the Squadron was established on Noemfoor on 4th August 1944. When the Beaufighters arrived the crews found that the campsite had been partly cleared and the camp was beginning to take shape. ‘Woody’ and I were told to get a tent from a pile near the Barracks Section, put it up and settle in. Eventually we had quite a comfortable establishment with a wooden floor raised on stumps, although the area was never flooded because the water simply drained away through the coral and the whole sit was quite clean. Bert Moody and Bill Aitcheson were our tent-mates for a few weeks. 

Peter Bird was the Squadron’s Medical Officer, and I found him to be a very pleasant young man. He told me that he knew very little about practical medicine and patient treatment. He’d finished medical school and had done very little more than prescribe for coughs, colds and dirty holes. He was despairing a little bit that his skills were rather limited and that he had had no opportunity for developing them. I don’t recall that I ever had an occasion to report to the MO while I was in the tropics.

The Dental Officer attached to our Squadron was John Cole - another very pleasant fellow. He treated me while I was at Noemfoor and one of my molars blew up He decided not to fool around, so took it out. Fortunately, I never had to have any of my teeth drilled with that awful pedal-operated drill such as I had seen in my teenage days in the surgery of the dentist at Winton.

All the officers and all the aircrew used the Aircrew Mess, which was accommodated in a large marquee. There was a very pleasant atmosphere in the Mess amongst all its members and this camaraderie must have benefited the Squadron in its operational role. I was aware that there was not the same feeling among the aircrew of No 22 Boston Squadron, whose camp was near ours, and where the NCO aircrew had to use the Sergeants’ Mess.

 I filled in some of my spare time at Noemfoor playing cards — bridge and Chinese Checkers;  Ralph Clay, Ron Graham, and myself had a regular thing going. Of course there was the movies — they were always on somewhere around the Island, and there were visiting entertainment shows, such as Bob Hope, Frances Langford , and a female dancer called Thomas. Occasionally we had Chips Rafferty and his concert party  and during one of their visits they put on a very rude version of Cinderella, at which our Padre was most displeased. It was a gem.

Some of the less-than-polite songs we sang in our off-duty time included “It’s Hard to go Wrong in the Kunai”,  You Should Have Been Here for the Do, Boys”, “Beaufighter Bastards” and “We’re Here on Noemfoor Isle Never Mind”. Bert Braithwaite sang the latter song in the Mess one night and it apparently offended Jack Sandford and Ron Rankin for they got up and walked out the Mess straightaway.

When Selwyn, the Adjutant went south, Carey Thompson appointed me as Adjutant and Canteen Officer. I found that the Canteen had little cash in hand and I wanted money to buy stock to replenish the shelves. I didn’t have that kind of dough, but I knew that my fitter IIE — Darkie Nolan — had made a substantial amount by making foreigners which he sold to the Yanks. He agreed to loan me a great roll of guilders and I undertook to repay him. However, I went south at short notice and clean forgot all about that loan, and found out later that Darcy had had great difficulty getting his money out of the system — especially as there was no documentary evidence about the loan.

While the Squadron was operating from Kamiri Strip the aircraft were fitted with rocket rails and began training with those weapons. A team under FLight Lieutenant Lavery flew up from one of the Aircraft Depots in Australia to show the groundstaff how to handle the rockets. I fired rockets on only one or two sorties, and I’m not sure that other pilots used them very often.

Some pilots found that the Beaufighter was not a particularly easy aeroplane to fly, and became quite apprehensive at take-off and landing. Added to the discomfort of life in rather primitive conditions in the tropics were the tensions brought on by flights over unfriendly territory and attacks against defended targets. It was inevitable that the less robust individuals would feel stress and try to avoid any kind of air activity. There was one pilot who would go down to Kamiri strip every day and spend the entire time staring at the brilliantly-white coral. The medics eventually had to send him home because of eyesight problems, even though it was known that it had been deliberately induced to avoid further operational service.

While we were at Noemfoor No 30 Squadron was one of the RAAF units that was transferred to the Operational Command of 1st Tactical Air Force, which was gearing up for the Borneo landings. American units had captured Morotai Island from the Japanese, and our Beaufighters flew there on 15th November 1944.   While taking off from Kamiri strip in A19-206, Reece Porch swung, just managed to avoid the control tower but skidded along on its belly. Reece and his navigator, Mark Harty, were killed, but the two groundstaff who were sandwiched in the fuselage between tents and other gear, were not seriously injured. I was about 300 metres away when the aircraft hit the ground and ran towards the crash. I think it was a guard who got there just before me and had pulled Mark out of the burning plane; Mark’s skin peeled off as his rescuer removed his Mae West. The fuel had flooded into the front cockpit and poor old Reece was fried. A horrendous affair. When it burned out there was just a trunk left.

Early in the piece I had some pangs about killing other people with my weapons, but I suppose I became conditioned to it after a while and it never worried me from then on. Probably because the killing wasn’t on a man-to-man or face-to-face basis; it was what you might call remote control. ‘Woody’ Woodgate had a narrow escape when a light ack-ack shell came up through the floor of the aircraft and just missed his back because he had the seat swivelled round and was leaning towards one side of the aircraft while taking a photo of the target we had just attacked. That was the only damage we sustained from an enemy, but it was damaged by a shell from a friendly. My fitter found an unexploded 20mm shell just near one of the fuel tanks, and we reasoned that it must have been a richochet from one of the accompanying Beaufighters while strafing that day’s target.

I must have something of a fatalistic streak for I never worried about being taken prisoner after a crash in enemy territory or of being killed outright in a crash - although I had a dread of being burnt to death. If the circumstance ever arose that my Beaufighter became unflyable and I had to put it down, given the choice I would have preferred to make a ditching at sea rather than crash land in the jungle. Although the Beaufighter went down awfully fast when it hit the water, it seemed to me that the crew had a good chances of surviving that crash, and the experience was that most of the fellows who ditched were picked up.

There was an exception to that when Flight Lieutenant Plowman borrowed my aircraft - A19-171, LYX - and had to make a ditching in Gelvink Bay on 10th September 1944. The navigator got out, but when he turned round the aircraft had sunk - taking the pilot with it.

While the Squadron was at Morotai we were sent out to Palu on the West coast of the Celebes to intercept the Japanese float-planes which were said to be there at dusk. However, they weren’t there that evening so we strafed the accommodation area and started a few fires - all of which brought out the flying foxes. I flew through a whole patch of them and got the windscreen and leading edges spattered with their blood.

Night fell on our way back to Morotai and when our ETA came up and there was no sign of the base, Woody rang from his navigator’s station to say that he hadn’t a clue where we were. I said we ought not to muck about and told him to get on the radio to the ground Direction Finding Station and send a Mayday. He kept transmitting that emergency message for some time without result. In the meantime I was trying to decide what to do. I reasoned that I could bail out of the bottom hatch and might survive if I hit water since I had a one-man dinghy strapped to my behind. But the navigator’s dinghy was a separate pack which he would have to hang on to during his parachute descent;  His chances of doing that appeared to be minimal. However the D/F station eventually came on the air and gave us a course to steer for Morotai and we made a night landing without further incident. Later, I went round to the ground station and thanked the Negro operators for saving our lives.

Our camp at Morotai was a couple of miles inland from Pitoe and Wama strips, and became most unpleasant and muddy when it rained.

The strips ran roughly east-west and were parallel to the southern shore; our aircraft were dispersed at the eastern end of the strips. RAAF Kittyhawks were lined up along the length of the fighter strip.

Wing Commander Carey Thompson had taken over as Commanding Officer early in October 1944. About six weeks or so after assuming command, and when we were based at Morotai, he invited some Army nurses round to the camp where he and a couple of his mates were to entertain them. This was somewhat resented by a couple of those who hadn’t been invited to the affair who decided to express their displeasure by burning down the toilet which Carey Thompson had had constructed near his tent. That brought an end to the pleasantries. Two or three days later the CO summoned the Dental Officer ( John Cole) and myself to his tent and told us to douse the airmens’ toilets with fuel, and set it alight without being seen. Which we did. But burning a toilet down became the fashion, for night after night there were flashes of flame as other were set on fire.

Officially, we weren’t supposed to have any liquor on the Island; all the Messes were dry. But, of course, there ways around that. Everyone was a bit steamed up that night because someone had got hold of some medicinal alcohol and mixed it with a good dollop of citric powder. And boy, it was just dynamite. Ralph Clay’s navigator, Kim Mackenzie,  crawled on his hands and knees from the Mess past my tent to his own, which was close to mine.

At Morotai we went on to American rations and that included a couple of bottles of beer per man — Pabst Blue Ribbon. The aircrew were entitled to a nip of spirits after every operational flight. Woody didn’t drink at all, and I drank only occasionally, so we just collected our operational ration, saved it up in a bottle and sold it to an American when the bottle was full. The going price was 60 guilders — 10 Australian pounds. Later, we came under the command of 1st Tactical Air Force, and our rations were then supplied by the Australian Army.

Originally, No 30 Squadron was equipped with English Beaufighters assembled in Australia  (the A19 series of aircraft) but the Australian-built machines (the A8 series)  started to come into the Squadron late in 1944  when it was based at Morotai. Perhaps the first two allotted to the Squadron were damaged by the Japanese raid on 24th November. The early English Beaufighters did not have dihedral tails — or they had tails with only a slight dihedral — and they were quite vicious machines to handle. When you went into a steep turn the ‘plane would wind up and you had to ram hard on the control column.

The Beaufighter was a typical British aeroplane; like British motor cars they always seemed to go wrong somewhere. They designed and built them to do the job, and almost as an afterthought it was decided to put a pilot in to fly the thing. So the layout of British aircraft was always poor. In comparison, the layout of American aircraft was exceptional; that of the Boston A20, for instance, was very good, the only thing wrong was that the flap and undercarriage controls were down behind the bulkhead and you couldn’t see them. You could get away with a lot of things in the Boston, whereas they were  just not on for a Beaufighter. When No 22 Squadron lost most of its Bostons during the Japanese raid on Morotai and were re-equipped with Beaufighters, quite a few of the pilots developed a hate for the new aircraft.

In my view, the things wrong with the Beaufighter included the lack of sufficient armour plating, cockpit layout (which was anything but convenient),  the stalling speed and the cruising speed at 20,000 feet were almost identical (the had been designed as a night fighter), and in the tropics they had very little blade angle, which meant that on idle the cylinder-head temperatures climbed at an alarming rate. However, nothing could beat the Beaufighter as a low-level weapons platform; they could wreak hideous damage, and were ideal for the tasks they were given in the Pacific.

Towards the end of my first tour, the call came out for volunteers to stay on, so Woody and myself — as well as Ralph Clay and Kim MacKenzie put our hand up to do a second operational tour.  I had a short spell of leave between the two tours.

For an attack against the Japanese at Sanadkan, the Commanding Officer had obtained some napalm-filled canisters which were fitted to the Beaufighter’s bomb-racks.  As we left the target area I saw that a canister was still hanging on one of Carey Thompson’s racks and I broke radio silence to warn him.  He shook it off on the way back to Morotai, but when we landed he told me that although he appreciated the thought behind the warning, radio silence really meant that there must be no radio transmissions.

 At the end of my time in the tropics with No 30 Beaufighter Squadron I came back to Australia n an American C47 which dumped me at Archerfield in July 1945.  After a spell of leave they posted me to No 36 Transport Squadron at Archerfield, but I did only two or three trips with them.  One of them terminated at Morotai, where 30 Squadron was still based, under D’Arcy Wentworth; but they were all disconsolate as they weren’t doing anything at all.

After leaving the Air Force, I flew around with a small air transport company in DH84s for a time and then applied for a position with what became Trans Australian Airlines.  I joined them in about September 1946.      

PERSONAL  PARTICULARS


NAME       :       ROBERT  McINTOSH  WEMYSS
BORN ON    :    14th May 1918   
BORN AT    :    Charters Towers, QLD
FATHER    :    Robert  McIntosh  Wemyss
MOTHER    :    Susan  Maria  Blackshaw
EDUCATED AT    :    All  Souls,  Charters Towers
MARRIED TO    :    Shirley Joyce Evans
MARRIED ON    :    14th December 1959
MARRIED AT    :    Taringa, QLD
CHILDREN    :    Anne Fiona
            :    Robert Ian McIntosh
ENLISTED AT    :    Creek Street Office, Brisbane
ENLISTED ON    :        ..... 1942
DISHARGED AS:    Trainee Aircrew
DISCHARGED ON:    10th October 1945
RANK on DISCHARGE      :    Flying Officer
OCCUPATION after DISCHARGE:     Air Transport Pilot