Page 56 - ABA Salvoes 1999-2024

peculiar to No 5 COBU) I had Lieut Bagley. My tels were John Cutts, Khan and Chandra, with Ray Elliott as my driver operator. It was raining constantly and bitterly cold at night, so we were sometimes given a rum ration. One night I detailed the shifts to keep watch in the OP, each to wake his relief when his 2 hours ended. I gave each one a tot, except young Ray, who in spite of my urging, said he did not drink. When morning came I found nobody on duty. The reason Ray found it so cold that he decided to have a tot after all, only he had drunk the lot and was out for the count!
Part of our time in the Arakan was spent getting used to the vagaries of mules to carry our gear, or rather, not carrying it, but chucking it down the hillside so that we could go and pick it up again. The unit supported many operations down the coast of Burma, but the only time my party operated in the support of an assault landing was on Ramree Island. when HMIS Narbada was one of the ships in support. I had a small problem when supporting 5th Nigerian Rifles. As a party we had life in common and shared everything, but the CO said that our white chaps must feed with his officers and the Indian tels with his black troops. Apart from the fact that they did not eat the same food as Africans, I could not allow this discrimination, so we used to withdraw to some private clump of bamboo and do our own thing. Bill Knight, on
one landing on the south of the island which turned out to be unopposed, was met by a chap coming out of the jungle. He was wearing a baseball-type cap with the peak turned up, a pair of shorts with a belt festooned with hand grenades, jungle boots with a knife stuck in the top and carrying a large automatic. He saluted, held out his hand and said, “Howdee soldier, aam Lootenant Hooker. Aam an American” (What else?) Bill replied, “How do you do. I’m Captain Knight. I’m an Englishman”. The yank then said that he was in the OSS (Officer Strategic Services) and was looking for a Japanese knee mortar. Actually there was no such thing, but when Bill said he had not seen one, the Lootenant said, “Guess aal have to look some place else”, waved goodbye and disappeared back into the jungle. I had hoped to return to Burma via Rangoon, where I had landed just before its capture by the Japanese in 1942, but I had applied for LILOP (UK leave in lieu of repatriation) and so before the unit was engaged there I was sent off to a transit camp near Karachi. to await a flight home. Meanwhile the operation went ahead. Sadly. L/Bdr Ray Elliott, having joined Bill Knight’s party, was killed when the landing craft he was in struck a mine as it sailed up the Rangoon River. I arrived in the UK on VJ Day and was married the next month. I returned to India after my leave to find 5 COBU disbanded and myself posted back to 1 Indian Field Regt, in Moulmein.
NAVAL BOMBARDMENT AND THE AIR OBSERVATION POST - JUNE 1944
By Lt Col Ian G. Neilson DFC, TD, BL, RA (Retd)
Colonel Neilson was a founder member of the first Air OP Squadron, No. 651, formed at Old Sarum in August 1941 and subsequently served in 652 Squadron in the run-up to the Normandy Invasion. In November 1944 he was GSO2 Air OP in HQRA 21st Army Group. Later he formed and commanded the War Crimes Investigation Unit in Germany for the Judge Advocate General. In 1948 he raised and commanded until the end of 1953 No. 666 (Scottish) Air OP Squadron Royal Auxiliary Air Force.
There were two important aspects of Air OP work which by mid-1943 we had not yet explored. One was aircraft carrier deck landings, and the other was directing the gunfire of bombarding ships of the Royal Navy. Both were of course planned for the forthcoming invasion of Northern Europe and our 652 Air OP. Squadron R.A.F. was earmarked for the preliminary trials. So in the Summer of 1943 we were provided with a splendid Deck Landing Control Officer, Lieutenant Tony Le Cayo R.N., who fitted into our Squadron so well. We did innumerable ADDLE’s — Aerodrome Dummy Deck Landings and became very proficient with our Auster Mark III aircraft (1 hour 10 minutes endurance). While all this was going on we began much practice in the use of the Clock Code for observing the fall of shot. Unlike our normal Gunner procedure where one corrected the ranging rounds and bracketed the
target, one observed the Clock Code which was estimated to sit over the target with North always at 12 o’clock and always with concentric circles (A-E) mostly at 100 yard circles round it. We began working with bombarding ships, and these varied from destroyers both young and old to the battleship HMS Rodney. I had the privilege of arranging and conducting the first Air O.P. shoot by her in September 1943 onto an uninhabited part of the Mull of Kintyre from a position roughly North of the Isle of Arran in the Firth of Clyde. On the previous day I went out to her from Ardrossan in a very small R.A.F. Rescue launch in grey and pretty rough conditions — certainly Force 6, gusting 7. I managed to board her, and was duly escorted to meet the BLO and the Gunnery Officers. We made the arrangements — the shoot was to be over 14,500 yards. On the morrow I checked the aircraft and radio and took off. It was not a nice morning — very grey and windy and with occasional rain squalls. The Mull and Arran both looked suitably menacing. The radio worked well and there was an instant response from the BLO and his telegraphists. I kept well away from the line of fire and the fire from HMS Rodney was truly impressive: the shoot was successful and I returned to Heatfield — next door to Prestwick.
Later that Autumn we had our first Deck Landings on
54 | Amphibious Bombardment Association