Norman “Jock” Cameron RAFVR – 608 Squadron/103 Squadron/276 Squadron - Wireless operator/Air Gunner - 755392
An account of her father's life by his daughter Dani Cameron
Norman Cameron survived a number of crashes during his eventful RAF career and was a member of both the Goldfish and Caterpillar Clubs while is possibly not unique but certainly rare
Norman (Jock) Cameron (born 4th July 1917) fell in love with aviation as a teenager and joined the Auxiliary Air Force on 12th July, 1936, and the RAF Volunteer Reserve at West Hartlepool on 27th June 1939. Throughout his career he was inordinately proud of his service number, 755392. because it marked him out as a VR.
Despite leaving Aycliffe Diamond Jubilee School, Bishop Auckland, at a very young age, he became — if not the first, one of the first Master Signallers in the RAF, had a private pilot’s licence and owned his own Tiger Moth. He was involved with pioneering work on radar and damaged his lungs high flying without oxygen in the course of this research. As the result of further injuries to his spine, sustained during various crashes in the war, he was eventually “grounded” and ended his career in the RAF. Eventually he was awarded a 100% War Pension.
For my entertainment he would recount tales of his war adventures, in a very modest and self-deprecating way. However, the event of anniversaries and encouragement to look at the war experiences of individuals, led me to take a closer look, and I am saddened that I never had the chance to tell my father how very much we admired what he and his comrades achieved, and that he was a hero. Both my husband and I were Private Pilots so we have a special insight into his experiences. Thankfully my eloquent husband had, at the time of my father’s death, coined the epitaph;
NORMAN (JOCK) CAMERON, RAF Retd.
4.7.1917 - 3.7.1981
“To such as you we owe our freedom.”
He spent 35 years after the war in pain from war injuries and mentally tortured by events he had seen which haunted his sleep. He was never bitter and was proud to have done his duty. However, when the media and revisionist historians began to denigrate the work of “Bomber” Harris in 1973, he worried so much about having bombed civilians that he had a breakdown and felt that the loss of his first grand-daughter in a Cot Death, was a punishment.
He had two major air crashes in the Auxiliary Air Force in which he had severe head and leg injuries, and always spoke of having been involved in seven crashes in all. Crews always wanted him on board both as an Air Gunner and Wireless Operator as he was considered to have a charmed life. He was to have two spectacular crashes with the same crew, all Sergeants:
W. Crich, and G. Arthur Farley, (the pilots) F. Waern (Navigator), J. Layfield (W/Op) G. Chad and Norman (Jock) Cameron (Front and Rear Gunners,)
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In Bomber Command with 103 Squadron, on 9 January 1941 he was in a Vickers Wellington, the mainstay of the night-bomber offensive against Germany. They took off from Newton, Nottinghamshire, to make a night attack against the synthetic oil producing plant at Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr Valley. The bomb load comprised five 500 lb. high explosive bombs and bundles of “Nickels” (leaflets) to be released in the target area. Wellington R3215 piloted by Sgt. Crich, dropped bombs on target from 13,000 ft., seen to burst in factory buildings. Heavy and accurate flak was reported around the target area, and they were hit.
The observer pinpointed his position over the Dutch Coast, as twenty miles off course. Short of fuel and without radio communications after an hour, the pilot realised that the position was hopeless and was left with the choice of abandoning the aircraft or attempting a forced landing.
On the ground in a field near “White House Farm” Llanover near Abergavenny a searchlight unit stood-to. Orders had been given to treat all aircraft in the vicinity as “hostile” and any assistance in landing that the searchlight unit could have given was therefore withheld.
Sgt Crich lowered the undercarriage and selected a field in which to land. The snow camouflaged the slope of the field down to the river Usk. Not allowing for the unseen slope he burst a tyre on landing and came to a halt, feet from electric wires slung across the field! Had they been hit the aircraft would have burst into flames. The six crew suffered cuts and bruises, and one a broken arm. A guard was mounted to keep the gathering crowd at bay. After being patched up, the crew were given lavish hospitality at the home of Major D Berrington, Pant Y Goitre House. (His own son was to be killed 18 months later, near Ross on Wye, piloting a Halifax.)
The crumpled Wellington was dismantled, loaded onto lorries, reassembled and put back into service. Locals remembered visiting the crash site with their school as small children, and seeing the field strewn with leaflets.
My father told the story as a typical RAF “lark”. He said that when they were looking for a place to land they saw mountains and snow and thought that they must have been flying the reciprocal of what they had plotted, and were over Switzerland. When they got out of the plane “men speaking a funny language and pointing guns” at them “confirmed” the theory. They therefore in ‘pidgin French and Franglais’ tried to say they were British Airmen etc. This, of course, convinced the men with guns — who were of course Welsh — that they were not English as they were speaking in such a strange way.” A fact beyond doubt was that they very much enjoyed the hospitality of Major Berrington’s cellar and my father always wanted to find him and thank him.
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Compiled from reflections of the 2nd pilot, an extract from “Accident of the Month” (publication unidentifiable) — subtitle Flight Safety ASRS speaking and Tee Emm Publication.
10 February 1941 the same crew from RAF Newton were returning from a successful general attack over Hanover and were hit by flak. They were 30-35 miles off the coast, East of Aldburgh. Their Wellington had an engine failure and the crew could not gain height, so the captain decided to ditch in the sea. At 75mph the aircraft stalled and at 10ft “pancaked” into the sea. The gunners were ordered to leave their turrets, and the flotation gear was prepared. There was no time to jettison 250 gallons of fuel or guns and ammunition. Cameron, the tail gunner, was last to leave, by which time he was up to his waist in water - and a non- swimmer. Sergeant Pilot Farley, despite a broken collar bone, pulled him clear and he only sustained muscular injuries to his arm at this stage. Neither injured man was properly braced for the crash.
The dinghy was released automatically by immersion switch. At first it was found to be only partially inflated, and turned over. The two mooring lines, the wireless, the wireless aerial and sundry other lines were all entangled but eventually cut loose. The ration container, distress signals and paddles were lost at this time. The crew mustered three water bottles each three quarters full, drogue, fluorescent dye and nine dinghy leak stoppers. Otherwise they had nothing. The crew sat on the narrow inflated rim. They crossed and re-crossed their own sickly green fluorescent wake all night. The following morning at 19.00 hours two Blenheims were sighted twice within a mile or two of the dinghy at about 1,000ft. The crew, each wearing his yellow hat waved a large white scarf but failed to attract attention.
A Wellington appeared making a square search and passed at less than 1,000 feet and only 300yds away, but did not see them despite attempts to attract it using a mirror as a heliograph. The motion of the swell made members of the crew so sea-sick, as well as cold and wet, that one of the crew wanted to let himself slip over the side into the waves
On the second day a strong easterly wind sprang up. By using a white scarf as a sail and their flying boots as a paddles and bailers they advanced towards the coast. At 22.00 hours that night three ships were seen within hailing distance. Each ship answered and the last one stopped. It was the SS Tovelli. The airmen were exhausted and suffering from exposure and severe frost bite of the feet. Too weak, from lack of food, to help themselves they had to be hauled up the sheer side of the ship with the help of sailors. (This experience was allegedly the catalyst for canopies being added to the dinghies.)
SS Tovelil
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His RAF record shows “missing” - 10/2/41 scored out, and 13/2/41 “reported safe” Meanwhile at a pub near Newton a wake had been held for them which was remembered still in the 1960s — and quite a reception awaited them.
Bone and muscle mended but the frost bitten feet injuries persisted. 29th May 1941 he was declared fit for non-operational flying and sent to 276 Squadron Harrowbeer for Air Sea Rescue duties as “a rest”. Some rest! He felt very vulnerable and a “sitting duck” in the lumbering sea planes. Picking decaying bodies out of the sea when searching for newly ditched airmen was to give him horrific nightmares for the rest of his life.
276 Squadron Walrus Cameron crew
In April 1943 - he was still only 26 - and a Wireless operator on “Walrus” sea planes. He rescued a “Spitfire” pilot who had bailed out 75 miles out to sea. They picked him up in very rough seas and could not take off. The crew spent 13 hours taxying until they had to be towed back to land.
In 1944 another Spitfire pilot bailed out just off the Hague and Cameron’s Walrus was sent to the rescue. Despite very rough sea they landed within 400yds. To the crew’s dismay the 10ft waves made it impossible to reach the dinghy and after repeated efforts they tried to take off to get more help. In the meantime the German shore batteries had opened up so the pilot started to taxi out to sea and smoother water; the crew were afraid that the plane would break up. Spitfires of their own squadron were circling the Walrus but they could do nothing about the shore guns constantly firing at them. A Catalina came out to them and they signalled not to land — but the American did. The Walrus crew got into their dinghy and boarded the Catalina and one of the fighters set fire to the Walrus to prevent it falling into enemy hands. The huge seas broke the perspex panelling of the Catalina as it dipped a float under the sea, half flooding the aircraft.
With no food and wet through, the two crews spent a miserable night bailing water. After a seemingly endless night, two naval motor launches arrived from England at 9am, and took most of the crew off. The ‘Cat’ then taxied to smooth water and took off. They had been at sea 21 hours — mostly under fire.
Norman Cameron left with his 276 Squadron crew
276 Squadron Walrus overflies a dinghy
When telling me about this ’lark’ he would say that there was so much water in the bottom of the plane that there were fish swimming in it. For someone who could not swim, had frost-bitten feet and was on “non-operational duties” he had the misfortune to spend quite a few hours in and on the water. He was awarded membership of the exclusive Goldfish Club which was for those who had survived by ditching in the sea.
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After the war, he bailed out of a burning Wellington over Pocklington on 5th November 1949 which earned him membership of the exclusive Caterpillar Club. There cannot have been many airmen entitled to membership of both clubs. He was greatly saddened by the lack of recognition afforded to Bomber Command as opposed to that of the “glory boys” in Fighter Command. He would have appreciated recent changes in attitude. In 1975, because he could not join them, many members of the Air Gunners Association signed a photograph of a Lancaster for him.
Norman pictured postwar
When with 276 Squadron at Knokke Le Zoute he met my mother (a Belgian) and on 28th November 1944 he heard that his father had died. Sadly, he was not named and at the time of writing, I do not know where.
Norman and Mrs Cameron
He dropped food over Holland and flew in the Berlin Air Lift where several colleagues were killed in accidents. During the 1950s his health deteriorated and he became dependent on pain killing injections which my mother taught herself to administer. After months in various hospitals, at Roehampton they found two hairline fractures in his spine. Caring for him was very isolating and when he died at 64 my mother became totally dependent on us. When she started with dementia she re-lived the terror of being in an occupied country and the fear of arrest whilst carrying the many messages she took under the pretext of visiting her sisters who each had young children. She was arrested twice and stopped on numerous occasions. But hers are stories for the Belgian Archives!
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On a lighter note, one story he used to tell, I would not have repeated without issuing grave caveats, as it had all the elements of “an urban myth”. I had no idea on which RAF station it had taken place — just that he and the camp tailor had moved an unexploded bomb which was denying him access to the Mess and the camp tailor, to his business. He had “just arrived at the camp and did not know the layout.” However, at Easter 2005 I was clearing my mother’s home and found the following letter from a witness.
Vine Cottage, Edith Weston, Rutland.
28th Oct 1976
Dear Mr Finn,
For some time I have been meaning to drop you a line in reply to your request for help in the Summer edition of Air Mail. I did not serve with 103 Squadron, but with 150. The incident I describe concerned a certain Air Gunner of 103 Squadron and the Station Tailor. I cannot remember their names but can vouch for the authenticity of the story.
One afternoon during the early part of 1940 the station was attacked by a German intruder aircraft which dropped two bombs (neither of which detonated). The first, a high explosive of about 500 kgs dropped behind the airman’s mess and embedded itself in the road. The second, a fairly large incendiary, fell on the parade ground. The bomb disposal squad formed the opinion that the HE bomb had a delayed action fuse and was too dangerous to move. The result was the evacuation of all buildings in the immediate vicinity which included the airmen’s mess, the NAAFI and the Station Tailor’s shop. All airmen were then fed from a field kitchen hastily erected at the far end of the parade ground from the airmen’s mess.
Some evenings later a Sergeant Air Gunner of 103 Squadron was returning from an evening out in Nottingham — having had more than his fair share of beer. On the bus he met the Station Tailor who was unhappily telling him of the inevitable fate of his shop and equipment when the bomb exploded. Being in an expansive mood the Sergeant told the tailor that he would move the bomb for him, so that on arrival back at Newton they sought out a suitable vehicle, which turned out to be a two-wheeled cart for carrying lead acid batteries. They located the bomb, pulled it out of the ground onto the cart and trundled the thing through the camp, past the barrack blocks and the Sergeants and Officers Messes. Apparently in their drink-happy frames of mind they staggered a few times and dropped the bomb more than once. On the way the Sergeant wanted to leave the bomb on the doorstep of the C.O’s house but was dissuaded by the tailor and eventually they were just about to leave the bomb in the middle of a field when the Orderly Officer appeared, and in reply to his ‘who goes there’ received the reply ‘its only us old cock, where do you want this bomb’.
Fortunately the C.O. was persuaded to see the humorous side of the affair and gave the Sergeant and the Tailor a dressing down instead of ordering a Courts Martial, as apparently was his original intention. Naturally there were a few red faces in bomb disposal.
I trust this incident may be of some use to you . Good luck with your book.
Yours (Signature illegible)
The story is exactly as my father told me he did it. In his version he emphasised that he had only just arrived at the station and did not know the layout.
Having to gather material for this project has prompted me to write an expanded view of my father’s life, mostly his RAF career, and research his family history. Anyone would be proud to be related to him and I do not want the sacrifice of his youth and his health to be forgotten. He had the usual array of campaign medals which he claimed were for “drinking NAAFI tea”, was awarded the Air Efficiency Medal, and was twice mentioned in despatches. Indeed, “ To such as he — we owe our freedom”.
Item written by Dani Cameron who supplied most of the photos
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