Page 5 - John D. Cormack

Shortly after his posting John was taken seriously ill and hospitalized with others
from the station, initially with Jaundice then later Mumps. He was hospitalized at
RAF No. 4 Hospital, Rauceby near Cranwell in Lincolnshire.

As a result of being isolated from his aircrew, they were not often able to fly from
January 1945 to May 1945. John with his crew did 11 operations in total including all
the Operation ‘Manna’ flights where the RAF dropped food parcels to the starving
Dutch population.

Further operations undertaken by the crew included Operation ‘Exodus’, the
repatriation of Prisoners of War from Germany and Operation ‘Dodge’, the return of
Prisoners of War from Japanese Prisoner of War camps in the Far East.

Post war operations were conducted by the crew disposing of war munitions in
designated dumps in the North Sea, English Channel and Irish Sea (Operation
‘Wastage’). This would be the last time Lancaster crew’s were required to take off
with a full war load.

The RAF also undertook operations designed to test the captured German radar
systems (Operation ‘Post Mortem’). This operation involved Main Force Lancasters
flying en masse towards the continent whilst being monitored by the captured
German radar systems. This exercise would over the years to come help British and
American scientists develop better radar systems to monitor the growing
Russian threat.

576 Squadron was finally disbanded on the 13 September 1945 after a brief 22
th
month existence and all remaining squadron aircrew were posted to RAF Sturgate,
they being split up between 50 and 61 Squadrons. John together with his crew were
th
posted to 50 Squadron for 8 months until 30 May 1946, The squadron started to
convert to the Avro Lincoln (known as the Lancaster Mk 4). Some 624 airframes
were built but the type was soon eclipsed by the new jet engine Bombers that would
post war start to appear off the production lines.

Awaiting release from the Royal Air Force he was posted to 11 Air Crew holding Unit
at RAF Bruntingthorpe near Leicester with other aircrew. Here he was
decommissioned from his rank of Warrant Officer.

This caused resentment with aircrew as the reason to decommission senior aircrew
NCOs was purely so the ground staff NCOs could outrank them as aircrew NCOs
were senior to ground crew in the RAF hierarchy. John was demobbed in
October 1946.
On returning to home he resumed his studies in Gas Engineering, qualifying as a
Chartered Engineer in 1949.

In 1947 John had the wonderful good fortune to meet in the Bournemouth Pier Head
swimming baths the ‘Light and Love’ of his life, Beryl. They became engaged in 1948
and married in 1950, moving to Leeds to take up an Engineering appointment at the
Headquarters of the Nationalized North Eastern Gas Board.