"That DC3 is a marvellous, new aircraft and Aer Lingus are great to have got one!" So said Colin Skelly, my young Guinness colleague in the Belfast office in the spring of 1940. A local lad, Colin was an aircraft "buff" so I paid attention.
Many years later, I read how in April of that year, enterprising Aer Lingus men had collected their first DC3 in parts from a US ship at Antwerp. They had it assembled and then flew it to Ireland from Brussels. For its journey home, the aircraft was painted orange with an Irish flag on it. No partition there! After all there was a war on and we were neutral!
The plane started service on May 7th, 1940, just three days before Hitler launched his onslaught in the West. Little did I know then how well I would get to know the DC3 in a few years' time.
By the end of June, Hitler had laid France low. Throughout the British Isles we had subconsciously believed that the great French army would contain the Germans. Now that dream was gone. Britain's defence seemed puny even if W. H. Conn of Dublin Opinion wrote in his "Ultimo" that although the lion had been asleep, he had not forgotten how to fight. Just as well!
Passed fit
In August, four of us signed on as RAF aircrew recruits at Belfast's Clifton Street. My three companions were a solid Fermanagh man and two "Methody" old boys. We were selected and passed fit at Padgate near Warrington, Lancashire and given all our uniforms and medical "jabs" at Torquay in September. Drill and marching on the promenade at Aberystwyth followed until Christmas. On cold, grey, winter evenings, I looked longingly out to sea and wished I was home again in Dublin.
The New Year brought flying training in the ice, snow and cold at Scone airfield near Perth. Macbeth's Dunsinane Hill lay close to the end of the runway. Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor starred in Waterloo Bridge at the local cinema. The popular song was Room 504.
At Easter, I parted with my three compatriots who went on for twin-engined training on "Airspeed Oxfords". I was "remustered" as a navigator and sent to Prestwick. We never met again. Alas, the others did not come through safely.
By the end of 1941 I had joined Mervyn Murphy of Brisbane in a Bristol "Blenheim" IV crew at Bicester near Oxford. He was already "Spud" to his Aussie mates. He enjoyed a good party of a night and as I was still an innocent, Irish boy, he christened me "Doc" and we gelled well.
Just before Christmas came a momentous decision that changed - nay saved - my life. We were told that we would fly to the Middle East. In February, 1942, Spud and I managed to make our somewhat hesitant way to Gibraltar, Malta and the Pyramids. At Cairo, another change. Then it was Burma, by then being overrun by the Japanese. We ended up in Bengal as the monsoon brought the Burma fighting to a halt. Spud gave up flying and I saw my 300 "Blenheim" hours with "Sandy" Webster, a burly Scot who had already won a DFC and Bar in "Hampdens" over Europe. He was well able for General Tojo's coastal supply ships and "Zero" fighters. He liked his gin; but handled a "Blenheim" like Joey Dunlop his motor cycle so the Japanese never caught up with him - or me!
End of occupation
In 1943 Burma was an occupied and forgotten country. I read that in the 1930s it had produced eight million tons of rice and exported half of the crop. It would never repeat that. But in 1944 and 1945 the Japanese occupation would come to an end. I was to have a front balcony view of the drama and that in a "Dakota", as the RAF called the DC3. Now, like Aer Lingus and Colin Skelly back in Belfast, I would know just how marvellous an aircraft it was.
On 62 Transport Squadron, I crewed with Derek Crouchen, a cheerful, dark-haired, youthful Englishman. We sat beside each other for close on 500 hours during which we loaded, dropped supplies or ferried almost everything under the sun. Ammunition, petrol, food and drink. Milky-skinned prize bullocks to haul heavy loads - they got eaten instead! Moody, rangy mules to serve General Wingate's "Chindits" - long range penetration columns whose soldiers we flew by night over Japanese heads on to jungle airstrips in the remote forests north of Mandalay.
Wounded soldiers
Some days, after shedding our three tons of supplies for front-line troops, we erected stretcher-carrying equipment in the empty fuselage as we flew to collect 20 wounded soldiers from paddy-field landings grounds. Grey-faced, sunken-eyed, almost bloodless looking, the men had been snatched from near death in the jungle by light, hedge-hopping Fox Moths and brought to the rear. In a couple of hours we had flown them to hospital beds. By the end of 1944, I knew the Burma landscape as well as my much bicycled, much loved Wicklow peaks and valleys.
Supply-dropping in wartime is an unglamorous business calling for skill, patience and steady nerves. Eight circuits over the Dropping Zone take half-an-hour. Night-time or mist add to the hazards. As the loads are pushed out the back door, the aircraft must be at minimum height for parachute items and stay straight and level. A different story for sacks of flour, sugar, lentils. At 50 feet and over 150 mph, they come out in a lethal cascade!
General Mutaguchi, Japanese C-in-C, Burma, had seen 1944 as the year in which to attack and occupy India. His legions rolled forward towards Assam, but were halted in bitter fighting at Kohima high up in the Naga Hills. Allied Spitfires and Mustanges ruled the air and our Dakotas met every Army supply need. The Japanese retreat became a rout.
There were many, many heroes in Burma; but the palm must surely go to that marvellous aircraft, the DC3.