The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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105423 Albert Victor Haig "Smudger" Smith Royal Air Force from:Leyton, London My dad, Albert Smith, told me he was stationed on Isle of Man during the war, I think he must have been at Jurby. He was a Police officer stationed in London and so did not get called up until about 1942/3. He was trained as a pilot/navigator/bomb aimer but mostly did the bomb aiming. He said that he always remembered the boat trip over to the Island because the North Sea could get so bad and so many men were really sick but he was O.K. One story he told always made my blood run cold. He said he was coming back from a raid one night and was feeling so cold that he decided to get up from his bomb aiming position and walk back along the aircraft to get a drink from a flask of tea. Unfortunately the bomb doors had not closed and he fell through them, just managing to throw his arms around a strut and cling on for dear life. He was shouting to the crew but no-one could hear him because of the engine noise and the slip stream was pulling him out. Finally one of the crew realised that he was late coming for his tea and went to see if he was all right and on discovering him managed to pull him back into the aircraft. Thank you unknown friend - you saved my life too, for if you had not pulled my dad back into the plane I would not be around to write this story!! My dad went back to the police force after the war and died in 2001 aged 83. June Bennett Add to this record.  Related Content: RAF Jurby Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.