RAFA YORK NEWS

RAF ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE - 19-20 OCTOBER 2024

The Annual Conference took place at the Wyboston Lakes Centre over the weekend of 19-20 October. Our Branch Delegate, Ron Ford, attended as did the Branch Chairman Andy Bryne. This year's conference was particularly significant as the resolutions included voting on whether to adopt the long-discussed "One Member One Vote concept. Conference business commenced with the adoption of the Association Conference Committee report (99% in favour) followed by a comprehensive financial report for 2023, given by the Honorary Treasurer, Sally Munday. It was noted that 88% of every pound raised was spent on welfare. The RAFA Annual Report was given by the RAFA Chairman, AVM Reid. This was followed by discussions and voting on the 15 resolutions. All resolutions passed, opening the way to a one member one vote system and a removal of the requirement for an annual conference branch delegate. After voting, an update on the RAF was given by Air Mshl Paul Lloyd, Deputy Chief of the Air Staff (Engineer Branch).

At the end of 2023, RAFA had 273 branches (including RMGs). There were 227 Geographical branches, 4 virtual branches and 42 Regional Members’ Groups (RMGs). There were 46 Branch Clubs operating. By October 2024, there were 213 branches, 38 RMGs and 45 Clubs. Fifteen branches had closed so far in 2024.

One of the success stories for RAFA over the last year has been the increase in support for RAF families with pre-school children by the provision of nursery education facilities at 13 RAF units (RAFA Kidzone).

MILTON W ROBINSON

Notes about his service in the RAF during World War II

Milton Robinson was one of our oldest members. He died at the age of 103 on 11 June 2024. His funeral took place at Tockwith on 9 July. Some Branch members attended and Gordon Murden paraded the Branch Standard. The following (abridged) notes were made by an old friend, Steve Crossland over a period of time. He wrote, “ The notes were written following numerous conversations I’ve had with Milton during the 50 odd years that I’ve been privileged to know him. Everything he told me was from his amazing memory without any reference to notebooks or diaries'

ln 1939 Milton was working for Rowntrees at their Wigginton Road factory. War with Nazi Germany was looking increasingly certain and he volunteered to join the RAF. Milton was called up in February 1940. He was kitted out at RAF Padgate in Lancashire, then transferred to RAF West Kirby in Merseyside for 16-week initial training for RAF recruits. He was issued with a Lee Enfield Mark 1 rifle, of WW1 vintage, and 50 rounds of ammunition, with which to repel the German Army should they invade. From there he moved to RAF St. Athan in South Wales and joined No. 4 School of Technical Training, learning basic mechanics and working on Rolls Royce V12 Kestrel engines, Blackburn radial engines and AVRO Anson planes.

A further move followed to RAF Harwell near Wantage in Oxfordshire and No. 15 Operational Training Unit, where he worked up through AC 2 (Aircraftman 2), to AC 1 and finally qualified as a LAC (Leading Aircraftman). As well as training he remembers loading propaganda leaflets into Vickers Wellington bombers to be dropped over towns and villages in France. ln 1941 Milton was posted to North Africa. He sailed in convoy on the troopship "Strathmore" (which was a P&O liner requisitioned by the Admiralty from 1939/40 until 1945). This was a 6-week journey, the convoy having to zig-zag through the Atlantic to avoid U-8oats, then round the Cape of Good Hope and through the Red Sea to Asmara (Eritrea) where he disembarked. (The much shorter sea route past Gibraltar and through the Mediterranean was too dangerous to take at that stage of the war.) The convoy was delayed in Cape Town after the sister ship to the "Strathmore", the P&O liner "Strathnaver", collided with the cruiser "Devonshire" and suffered bow damage which had to be repaired. From Asmara the troops moved by road and rail to Khartoum in the Sudan, then northwards into Egypt. Milton was billeted for a while in a horticultural college and spent time in Almaza and Heliopolis, both suburbs of Cairo.

From Heliopolis it was west into the North African Desert where Milton was to spend the next four years "breathing sand", as he later described it. He was stationed at numerous airbases (most were just strips of levelled sand with tents providing accommodation and shelter), often nameless and identified only by a code number. Here he was servicing and repairing planes being staged through the desert to the war front after being crated and shipped to Takoradi on the Gold Coast in West Africa where they were reassembled. Milton worked on a whole variety of aircraft types including Supermarine Spitfires, Hawker Hurricanes, Curtiss Kittyhawks and Mohawks. One of the worst jobs he had was recovering the bodies of pilots whose planes had crashed. Worst still was recovering the crews of tanks that had been hit by artillery fire and "brewed up,'(caught fire). Any dust on the horizon had to be treated with caution as it could be Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps troops on the move. German spotter planes were active and could call up artillery fire on the airbases. Much feared and respected were the 88mm Flak guns used by the Germans (these were originally designed as anti-aircraft guns but were formidable anti-tank and long-range weapons, capable of destroying tanks at a range of a 2r/ mile and accurately firing shells at ground targets at a range of almost 10 miles). More than once Milton and his colleagues were detailed to guard Italian prisoners of war, armed only with trusted Lee Enfield rifles and a few rounds of ammunition. Fortunately the prisoners had no intention of escaping - not that there was anywhere to escape to. They just seemed happy to be out of the war.

Milton had to be flown to Egypt once with a dental problem that needed expert attention. The only available seat on the plane was in the rear gun turret. This turret was hydraulically operated by a set of controls. During the flight Milton, being an engineer, couldn't help but fiddle with the controls with the result that the turret turned through 90 degrees and jammed. There was no way back into the fuselage and no way to exit the turret in an emergency. More fiddling with the controls eventually persuaded the turret to return to its normal position. Like most combatants, Milton collected souvenirs from the battlefield. He sent home via the Church Parcel Service a very fine German Afrika Korps helmet which he still has. He also acquired a wristwatch and a German pistol, possibly a 9mm Luger. He remembers bringing the pistol home safely but cannot remember what happened to it afterwards. Possibly it was handed in during a subsequent firearms amnesty. Eventually the war in Europe ended and VE Day, 8th May 1945, was celebrated with camel racing, Milton leading his race until his camel's legs got tangled up in some tent guy-ropes.

For his service in the desert Milton received the Africa Star, awarded to those serving in North Africa between 10th June 1940 and 12th May 1943, with the North Africa 1942-43 Clasp, awarded for Air Force service in specified areas from 23rd October 1942 to 12th May 1943 and denoted by a silver rosette on the ribbon. With the war in Europe over, Milton travelled by train to Port Said where he boarded the troopship "Olympic" which sailed through the Mediterranean into the Atlantic and finally to Liverpool, arriving at 4am on a Saturday morning. The ship stood off Albert Dock at low water until 9am when a pilot was taken aboard. and it finally berthed. During the voyage, Milton lost his wristwatch souvenir. A fellow serviceman offered to clean it for him and that was the last Milton saw of the watch and the "gentleman" concerned. The troops were met with cups of tea served in sheds on the dockside. Afterwards it was a train journey to Morecambe for tropical kit to be exchanged for normal uniform.

From Morecambe, Milton travelled by train to York. He was shocked to see the devastation that had been caused in April 1942 by bombs landing in the station area, where the rail network had been targeted. South Parade, where his parents lived, had suffered badly when a bomb had hit the nearby Bar Convent and several nuns had been killed. The windows in his parents' house had been blown out and were boarded up. They had put decorations up to welcome him home, but Milton took them down. There were large shards of bomb casings scattered around, one of which Milton has kept.

The war with Japan was still being fought and, after 15 days leave, Milton was posted to RAF Driffield, next to what is now Normandy Barracks, and from there to RAF Bassingbourn, north of Royston in Cambridgeshire. There he worked on more aircraft and remembers a very delicate job repairing an engine in a Bristol Beaufighter in which a spark plug had stripped its threads. No-one else was keen to do the job. He was seconded to an Australian Squadron, because of his experience, who were bound for the Far East and the Pacific War. He appealed against this posting on the grounds that he had served his time in North Africa and that his parents badly needed him at home. He was finally excused from this draft. Sadly, several of those he had got to know in the squadron were lost in the Pacific Ocean when their ship was torpedoed by the .Japanese. From Bassingbourn he was posted to a Heavy Conversion Unit at RAF Stoney Cross near Lyndhurst in the New Forest, where he worked on planes fetching back troops from the continent.

Milton was demobbed at RAF Cardington, Bedfordshire, in the huge hangars where the ill-fated R101 airship had been built in 1929. This brought back memories for Milton when as a boy he saw the rival airship R100, designed by Barnes Wallis and built in Howden, East Yorkshire, on a test flight in 1929 over York. It was an impressive sight as it flew over at low level. It also reminded Milton that the Senior Stress Engineer of the R100 design team, Neville Shute Norway, had later, in 1931, set up an aircraft production factory in the former trolleybus factory in Piccadilly, York, building Airspeed aeroplanes. On his way to and from school Milton would often look through the open doors at the aircraft being built. (As there was no airfield in York, the police allowed completed planes to be towed at night on the public roads to the airfield at Sherburn-in-Elmet where they could be properly ground tested and flown).

ln February 1946 Milton married Elsie, who he had met whilst on a training course at the carburettor manufacturer Claudel Hobson in Wolverhampton before he was posted abroad. On March 16th 1946 he rejoined Rowntrees to resume his interrupted career and worked for them until his retirement.