Projects
- Introduction
- The Museum of The Black Watch, Perth
- Clackmannanshire Council
- Aberdeenshire Council
- Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders Museum, Stirling
- The Gordon Highlanders Museum, Aberdeen
- Museum nan Eilean, Lewis
- Museum of the Isles, Skye
- West Lothian Council
- Kildonan Museum
- Highland Council
- Hunterian Museum & Art Gallery
- McLean Museum & Art Gallery, Inverclyde Council
- Orkney Islands Council
- West Dunbartonshire Council
- Argyll & Bute Council
- Dysart Primary School
- Erskine Hospital
Project Title: Hidden Highland Histories WWII
Exhibition: Bomber Command
Bomber Command
Assets in this exhibition:
Volunteer For Flying Duties Poster
Description
This is a Volunteer For Flying Duties poster which was aimed at new recruits for the RAF.
Source
Date: 1939-1945
Contributor: Jonathan Foss
Avro Lancaster transport aircraft
Description
This is an Avro Lancaster transport aircraft of the RAF at Prestwick Airport circa 1944. This is similar to the type of plane that Andrew Mackenzie flew.
Source
Date: 1944
Contributor: Scottish Aviation Ltd
Location: Prestwick Airport
Original Source: Museum of Flight, National Museums of Scotland SCRAN ID 000-000-487-237-C
Flying for the first time
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Description
Andrew Mackenzie describes how he felt the first time he flew in an aeroplane.
Transcript
Well it’s exciting isn’t it! All of a sudden you’re to do something you’re not supposed to do. If God had meant man to fly he would have given him wings I was told. It’s exciting because you’re in an environment that is strange and you’re a long way off the ground. And the pilot is pretty good, excellent in fact!
Source
Date: 2009
Training flights
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Description
Andrew Mackenzie describes what he and his crew would do on days that they weren't flying on missions.
Transcript
One of the important things is knowing if anything happens to the aeroplane how to get out of it. There’s no point in wearing a parachute if you can’t get out of the aeroplane. So, we would spend quite a lot of time in the hanger in a grounded aeroplane just practising getting out. We would all sit in our positions and I would say, “Abandon aircraft, go!” and we would scramble to get out. We did training flights. We used to go and meet a fighter aeroplane, usually a Spitfire, which would make dummy attacks on us and we would try to get away from him. Now, remember a Lancaster is a big lumbering aeroplane and a Spitfire is a fighter aeroplane, but you can get rid of him if you do a corkscrew. If you go down starboard, right, and then reverse and go down left and then reverse and come up right and reverse and come up left, he can’t follow you. He’s going too fast. So that’s what we used to practise because it was a way of getting out of trouble. It was called the Corkscrew. It was very handy at night-time when the night fighters came after you.
Source
Date: 2009
The best thing about flying
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Description
Andrew Mackenzie describes his favourite things about flying.
Transcript
Landing! Safely! No, there are many things. I think flying can be terribly, terribly beautiful. It’s not the country that you’re flying over that’s beautiful because you can’t see it, it’s 20-30,000ft below you so it doesn’t mean anything but the cloud shapes. We used to float around flying through cumulus. I remember flying back to base one night at dawn and it was almost as if we were flying through Princes Street in Edinburgh with the Scot monument and the castle. It can be quite wonderful the flying bit of it and doing aerobatics was nice. I used to be a fighter pilot too you know not just a bomber pilot!
Source
Date: 2009
Earning the Distinguished Flying Cross
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Description
Andrew Mackenzie decsribes a terrifying mission in which he ended up flying at 500ft during a bombing raid and his plane was badly damaged. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
Transcript
Well it was after D-Day and the army was bogged down just west of Caen in Normandy. I think there were 200 like us who were to bomb the German lines. Now, this was a bit tricky because it was only about 150-200yds from the British lines so it had to be done in daylight and it had to be done so you could see the target. There was no point in using target indicators, you had to see the target. Well, we had custom early. If the bombing altitude for a trip had been 20,000 ft we used to fly at 19,500ft because if an anti aircraft shell from the Germans was fused to go off at 20,000 ft we were 500ft below it we thought. Now whether it was a good idea or not I don’t know. I don’t think it probably was but that’s what we did. So on this particular run in to help the soldiers it was daylight, we were briefed to bomb at 7,000ft but the cloud began to lower in front of us so the aeroplanes which were above us had to start coming down. So we had nowhere to go so we had to start going down too and eventually we had to go down to 500ft which is pretty low when you think that you’re dropping a whole bunch of explosives and people in front of you are dropping a whole bunch of explosives and people about you are dropping a whole bunch of explosives on you! One of the bombs went through the left wing of the aeroplane but it didn’t go off fortunately but I saw the target, I saw this shimmering thing. That was blast I didn’t know. It didn’t occur to me it would be blast and we had to fly through it. I didn’t want to do this, “Mummy, get me home”! But we had to, we did it and the aeroplane got itself badly mauled. That was exciting! ‘’Exciting’ is the wrong word, ‘terrifying’.
Source
Date: 2009
Favourite aeroplane
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Description
Andrew Mackenzie describes why the Lancaster Bomber was his favourite aeroplane.
Transcript
Oh I think it has to be the Lancaster because that’s the one that got me and my crew through 30 operational trips. Yes, it would have to be the Lancaster. It wasn’t the biggest but I think it was probably the best aeroplane, best bomber of the war. Far better than the Flying Fortress. We used to have a little song that irritated the American airman. “You can take a Flying Fortress up to 40,000ft, you can take a Flying Fortress up to 40,000ft, you can take a Flying Fortress up to 40,000ft but you’ve only got a teeny weeny bomb!” Because they had limited bomb loads. Well, that used to please them!
Source
Date: 2009
Close encounters
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Description
Andrew Mackenzie recounts some close encounters with the enemy during the war.
Transcript
That business about the night-time where you don’t actually see what’s around about you. You could be right next door to an aeroplane and not know he was there because you can’t see him. But there was one occasion I remember, I don’t remember where we were going, but there was an aeroplane which must have been 150 yards away on our left hand side which was hit in the bomb bay by an anti aircraft shell. He blew up and it was an absolutely beautiful sight, it was a horrible sight because people had died, but it was beautiful. But that was close, probably as close – no, I had forgotten that we had an anti aircraft shell go through the aeroplane once. One of the nice things about that one was that anti aircraft shells burst upwards. When they explode they burst upwards so if they blow up beneath you that’s horrid. But this one actually went through the aeroplane and exploded 20ft above us so it all went up. There was a bit of a bump that’s all.
Source
Date: 2009
Dropping bombs
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Description
Andrew Mackenzie describes some of the feelings and emotions he experienced as a pilot dropping bombs.
Transcript
What you’re doing is a job of work. Now it may be a horrible job of work but nonetheless in these days that’s what we did. I think that probably, I don’t that know relief that the bombs have gone is important, it was then because it meant that no longer have you got 6 or 7 tonnes of explosive beneath you but it has gone and the aeroplane is lighter, you’ve finished, you’ve been there, you’re going home. So relief, not any thought for where the bombs were going. I don’t think you could probably live with yourself if you worried about that sort of thing. Anyway, that wasn’t the thinking in these days.
Source
Date: 2009
Reflections on war
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Description
Andrew Mackenzie speaks out about his difficulty understanding why people are now questioning the morality of World War 2.
Transcript
Bomber command lost 55,000 people (damaged area) well that’s a lot of people, 7,000 aeroplanes, Lancasters. Now this particular programme is saying that we had no right to bomb the people who we bombed. Now this is saying that now, the person who is saying that wasn’t living during the war. He has no right at all to tell us that we were doing the wrong thing as he wasn’t there. He had no way of knowing what it was like. Well, why did the Germans for example bomb Canterbury? It’s a cathedral town and it (damaged area)
Source
Date: 2009
Bomber Command
Andrew Mackenzie was born in 1923 in Edinburgh and volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1941. He trained in England and Canada, eventually becoming a pilot of Lancaster Bombers and flying many missions to the continent. Andrew now lives in Dornoch in the Highlands.
During World War 2 the role of the RAF was to defend Britain against the German bomber planes as well as support the British Army around the world. The main campaign was the night time bombing raids in Germany in 1941 with up to 1,000 aircraft being involved.
Andrew Mackenzie has a Distinguished Flying Cross medal that he received while in the RAF.
