Odd Bods In WW2 - Speech At Australian War Memorial - 15/8/2019

The video for the public talk about the contribution of Odd Bods in WW2 can be found below. This discussion took place at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on 15th August.

Flypast At RAAF Museum Point Cook

Here are some more photos and a video taken after the Friends Of The Odd Bods Committee Meeting at the RAAF Museum at Point Cook on Sunday 18th August. A big thank you to David Gardner and staff for their hospitality.

Friends Committee Meeting At RAAF Museum Point Cook Celebrates 65 Years of Odd Bods

The first official Odd Bods meeting was held on 24th August 1954 and 65 years later Friends Of The Odd Bods Association Inc. celebrated the occasion at the RAAF Museum Point Cook.

Museum Director, David Gardner OAM, graciously provided our meeting room, a light lunch, and then treated committee members to a fly past of historic aircraft.

The location was significant for a number of reasons, and particularly because one of the agenda items at this meeting was the treatment of historic memorabilia. The museum is in the process of setting up displays for Fighter Command, Bomber Command, Coastal Command, and Odd Bods.

A number of items of Odd Bods memorabilia have already been presented to the museum and David Gardner has asked us for historic information about the Odd Bods (UK) Association and Friends Of The Odd Bods which will be passed on in due course.

Greg Smith taking this selfie with L-R Robyn Bell, Jenny Hibbens,
Jan Dimmick, Bruce Waxman, Peter Randell, David Gardner (Museum Director), Terry Maher, Stephen Trask.

Odd Bod Sacrifices In WW2

A stirring address by FOTOBAI Patron, AVM Peter Scully (Rtd), at our reunion luncheon on ANZAC Day 2019, is recorded below. The address sets a challenge for members and indeed all Australians to remember the sacrifices made by RAAF personnel in WW2.

ANZAC  DAY  2019

ADDRESS TO ‘FRIENDS OF THE ODDBODS’

Mr President, Oddbods and Friends of the Oddbods.   It is both a great privilege and a pleasure to be with you once again this year.   Thank you for your kind invitation to give a short address….but Bruce, how long is a piece of string?

However, I would like to say a few words on why I think you are one of the most important of the many ex-service organisations in our country – and I mean that most sincerely.

At the beginning of World War Two, all realised that this would be a war in which airpower would play a major and dominent role.   So much so that Britain and the old Dominions, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and later on South Africa entered into an agreement:  The Empire Air Training Plan, or more usually called the Empire Air Training Scheme – EATS.   Britain, despite its small size would be able to manufacture the necessary aircraft – and nearly all aircraft involved were in fact manufactured in that country – but would be unable to produce the numbers of aircrew required.  So, the dominions agreed to develop a training programme to supply the necessary aircrew.    The RAAF’s responsibility was an immense and daunting one, tasked with producing over 27,000 aircrew in Australia plus an additional 10,000 in Canada and 700 in Rhodesia.

The RAAF grew from 27 to 3037 operational aircraft plus another 2808 training aircraft.   38 new flying schools were established, the number of Qualified Flying Instructors grew from 27 to 3061.  The force grew from 10 officers in 1939 to 20,000.  Airmen increased from 3179 to 144,000 together with 18,000 airwomen:an absolutely incredible undertaking.

The RAAF served in every theatre of that war, including Russia.  5036 were killed in action in Europe and the ME alone – and another one third were killed in training accidents.  Indeed, of the total Australian battle fatalities, Army, Navy, Airforce, in all theatres of that war, over 30 percent were RAAF in Europe and the ME alone.  3 percent of the RAAF served in Europe but suffered30 percent of casualties.

At the end of the war, the Australian War Memorial produced and film, ‘Sons of ANZACS’.  It lasted 124 minutes, the RAAF coverage lasted just 10 minutes and the RAAF’s contribution to bomber/fighter/Coastal Commands received NO mention at all.

The then Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sir Richard Williams, referring to the RAAF in Europe stated: “They did not realise that most of their achievements were not recorded in Australian history.”

Even to this day, the great majority of our population is totally unaware of these great RAAF efforts and sacrifices; awareness made less likely by the current ‘political correctness’ which denies our British heritage. 

I’d like to give another example of how our RAAF history has been lost.   Some years ago I was asked by the Australia National University to write an entry for the Australian Dictionary of Biography on an RAAF airman, a Russell Foskett.   I accepted thinking that the task would be pretty simple and as I had many contacts with WW2 aircrew (most of my early instructors were pilots who had served in Europe).   No-one had ever heard of him.   So, I applied to the National Archives for his file.  It contained but two entries; his enlistment documents and his discharge documents.  There was no record of his overseas service in Australia.   It seemed I’d reached a dead end.

However, from his enlistment details at least I knew where he used to live.   So, I armed myself with a Sydney map and phone directory and wrote to everyone by that name within a 10 mile radius of his home address.  What luck – I managed to get in touch with his two spinster sisters.  Unfortunately, one had just entered a nursing home and had thrown out his log book and associated documents.  Nevertheless, we established good friendships and I learned much about his early life.

Next, I wrote to some RAF contacts I’d made during my time as Airforce Advisor at the Australian High Commission in London.  This produced some useful information.  Foskett had an impressive record with the RAF.  He’d earned an OBE and DFC and flew Hurricans and Spitfires in the Med, Greece and Yugoslavia.  He’d become a flight commander on No 80 Squadron RAF and then Commanding Officer on No 94 Squadron RAF.  He lost his life following an engine failure at low level preventing his parachute from opening properly.  His body was recovered by a Royal Navy warship.   He died just eight months after his younger brother who was a navigator on a Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft shot down over Berlin.  They were both ‘Oddbods’.

I hope this might give you a better understanding of why your organisation is so important.   You have the opportunity to keep alive the memories of these Australian airmen who served their country so selflessly and at such a tragic cost.   Please spread the word because there seems to be  no-one else to do so.

COPY OF A LETTER WRITTEN HOME BY

FLYING OFFICER BRUCE W. FOSKETT, (413755), RAAF

     Since I have last written we have started what we have for so long been training.   We've a few trips in now, all to the Ruhr, and oh boy is that one hot place.   No one who has ever seen a target in there, as we go to work and blow it all to hell, could ever believe what it is like.   It is fantastic almost and how on earth we can go through it and come out unscathed as we have done so far, is beyond me.   The amount of hate Jerry throws up at us, everything but the kitchen sink, and even that at times I think, is amazing.   And I don't blame him, for, although they are Germans and all that that entails, I sometimes feel sorry for those people that we give such an awful plastering to.   There was never a closer thing to a living hell I don't think, than one of our raids at its height I know I'd sooner be up where we are than down on the ground under us, catching all the stuff we let fly at them.

     The first thing of course is the searchlights.   The feeling of security you have in all the enveloping darkness of the night as we scream across enemy territory on the way in, goes west the moment those light get cracking.   We've only been caught once so far, and then only for a couple of minutes, but I thought we'd had it.   Up there with something between 20 and 30 lights on us, I felt as though I was standing naked on the stage of a full theatre and it appeared we'd never get out of that blinding, dazzling glare.   We must have been living right though, for somehow one moment there we were lit up like a Christmas tree just waiting for it and the next moment we were out in the clear and we were back in the darkness again.   Boy, did I have my fingers crossed, especially when  I could see they had us bracketed with flak, six bursts on each side every few seconds, right at our height and gradually creeping in on us, closer every salvo.  

     Next thing to the lights is the flak.   All over the sky you see the pin pricks of bursting flak, everywhere it seems, but when they cone a kite they just pour everything up those beams till they either get the kite or the kite beats them and gets out of the cone.   All over the place you see aircraft coned.   All around these targets for miles you see these cones, 20 and 30 and often more lights to a cone, and away up where the beams cross is an aircraft looking just like a moth and absolutely surrounded by flak burstsThis light stuff is green and red and blue and silver and its an awesome sight to see it pouring up.   Then there are the hundreds of flares, theirs and ours, all colours and types bursting all over the sky in great showers of fire spreading out and gradually falling like a giant coloured blanket.   There's some kind of stuff they put up that's silvery in colour and breaks out like tinsel, shimmering and shivering in the sky, amongst all the other strange lights and flares.   Maybe you'll see a kite go for a burton and murmur a silent prayer for the boys with her who are not having the luck you are.   But that part of it is not a nice sight.   And then there is the target, its terrific, just one great area burning and smoking like hell, even from the height we bomb we can see the ugly dark red flames as the incendiaries we drop get a hold and the building start to burn

    

          I hope you haven't minded me telling you about the work over here.   My only wish is that you don't let it worry you.   We've been through it a few times now and can do it again as many times as we have to.   There's nothing else I can tell you of what we do without perhaps overstepping the censor.   I thought perhaps you'd want to know how it impressed me and what our job is like.

Vale Joe Shuttleworth MBE

We wish to inform you all of the death of Joe Shuttleworth on Saturday 10th August 2019. 
Joe was one of our Odd Bod veteran members and was present at the Anzac Day Reunion this year.
He was always at the Remembrance Day Service at the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital having worked there for most of his career.
Joe was a rear gunner on Lancasters during the war.
His funeral will be held on Monday August 22nd at 10:30 am at the chapel at the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital.

Link: IBCC Interview #5: Joe Shuttleworth, 50 Squadron Rear Gunner



COMMENTS:

On 19/08/2019 1:16 pm, Peter Randell wrote:

I attended Joe Shuttleworth’s funeral today and represented the Association at that.        

I checked on our banner - still looking good with George and Walters signatures on the order of service documents next to it

For Joe, they did a great service including the Ode and Last Post as well as particular reference to his war service and time on Lancs

Very well done indeed 

And, for all you Carlton supporters, note that Joe was a big Hawks fan, so that was the song played as we walked him out, the Hawthorn Footy Club song!

Cheers 

Peter

Odd Bods Feature In War Memorial Presentation

Odd Bods are to feature in a free public talk at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on Thursday 15^th August 2019. Members are invited along but if you are unable to attend we will post a link to a Youtube video of the talk as soon as possible after the 15^th.

The Australian War Memorial

Treloar Crescent

Campbell ACT 2612

Free public talk

BAE Systems Theatre, 12.30pm, 15th August 2019

"The Second World War saw tens of thousands of Australians take to the air as members of the Royal Australian Air Force. Most of them served in Australian units, while the remainder served as “odd bods” in British, Canadian, or New Zealand squadrons. Among these were two Australian Victoria Cross recipients. This presentation will highlight the stories of some of these men who flew a diverse range of aircraft around the world in non-Australian units."