Gordon Mellor was the Navigator in a Lancaster Bomber shot down over Belgium.  He survived and was fortunate to meet members of the Comète Line, who secreted him to Belgium, France and eventually over the Pyrénées and into Spain. He recently discovered that not only had his group been infiltrated by the Germans, but one of his RAF travelling companions was the cousin of Lord Haw Haw. He passed away in January 2018. Please note that not all of Gordon’s interview is currently online. Contact us if you would like to see more.

Gordon was evacuated at the start of WW2 but was back home in time to witness German bombing of his town. He joined the ATC as a teenager and was pleased when conscripted into the RAF at Christmas 1946, just after turning eighteen. During training he specialised as an airframe engineer in Transport Command. He focussed on working on the Avro York, a transport derivation of the Lancaster bomber. His first overseas posting was Gibraltar, then back to Britain for a short while before being given two hours’ notice that he was assigned to the RAF base at Wunstorf in Germany at the start of the Berlin airlift. The effort to keep Berlin supplied was unrelenting and during one period Gordon was on duty every day for ten weeks, with some aircraft flying three sorties a day. In his opinion only a young person could maintain a schedule like that. On leave they travelled to nearby towns, although fraternisation with the Germans was discouraged, along with warnings regarding the hazards of venereal infection. A fatal crash at the base of one of ‘his’ aircraft affected him, and he also flew in an aircraft that had engine failure. He feels that the Berlin airlift was a good thing and that his service helped him in later life.