Page 7 - Derek Braithet Holland

This is Derek Till, the crew’s pilot’s comments on this period:

‘On July 4 our six member crew completed the course on Wellingtons at 30 OTU, Hixon. We
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were then posted to1661 HCU at Lindholme, but did no flying there. We left on July 20 and
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arrived at 1662 HCU, Blyton on Aug 4 , presumably after 2 weeks leave. This is where Derek
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joined us. Our first flight in a Halifax V was on Aug 9 . Derek was obviously very competent and
soon became a well-liked member of the family.
I well remember my first night solo in a Halifax with just a flight engineer, I think it was Derek,
perhaps it's in his log book. We had almost attained take-off speed when we realized that we had
no air-speed indicator, no altimeter and lacked other instruments on the panel. It was too late to
abort, so we climbed out and did a very careful circuit, with the flight engineer setting the revs and
boost that would be typical of normal conditions, and estimating our height with no lights to guide
us. We landed at a higher speed than usual fortunately the runway was long and the brakes good!
The ground staff found that the two cubes conveying info from the pitot head had been reversed
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by a careless mechanic. From Aug 31 to Sept 9 we were at 1 LFS, (No. 1 Lancaster Finishing
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School) Hemswell. We did our last training flight the morning of the 12 , were bused to 576
Squadron, Elsham Wolds in the afternoon, and I had scarcely unpacked my kit when I was called
to join an experienced crew as ‘second pilot or second dickie’ (for experience) to bomb Frankfurt
that same night!. We then did two long training flights, with loads. Our planned op to Calais on the
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24 was aborted because we burst a tire while taxying for take-off. Then we bombed Calais on the
27 , our first op.’
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The Till crew:

Flying Officer Derek Till - Pilot

Derek Holland - Flight Engineer

Flying Officer John Shorthouse - Air Bombardier

Flying Officer Charles Bray - Navigator

Flying Officer Geoff Griggs - Wireless Operator

Sergeant Kevin Oliver - Mid Upper Gunner

Sergeant Bob Hamilton - Rear Gunner

RAF Elsham Wolds (13 Base) was the Base station and Administrative centre controlling two other
RAF stations; RAF Kirmington (166 Squadron), now Humberside Airport, and RAF North
Killingholme (550 Squadron). 576 Squadron was formed on the 25 November 1943 from ҅C’ Flight
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of 103 Squadron and four crews from 101 Squadron from RAF Ludford Magna near Louth, the
remaining crews coming from No. 1 Group's Heavy Conversion Units.