Escape from Siam

The Mission Beginning

by F/Sgt. William “Bill” Pugh,
RAF Wireless Operator/Airgunner.

Quite a peaceful day, sweated almost continuously. We were briefed about a very special job that night to carry four American OSS underground agents, three to be dropped at the DZ (Drop Zone), the other to observe. Take-off was scheduled for midnight.

Ditching Drill at Kolar Yacht Club, Kolar, India
Back Row: Bob Poole, Les Ladds, “Lofty” Brenchly, Jack Draper, “Timber” Woods
Front Row: “Curly” Copley, Bill Pinkney, Taffy Parsons, Bill Pugh, “Smithy” Smith

We all went for supper, not much as usual, but no point in complaining. The Gharries picked us up about 22:30 hours and off we went to dispersal. We were flying in “P” that night, not a bad kite, done a tour for 159 squadron and had new engines, straight from the Maintenance Unit. Timber and I climbed in and did our check over, set-up the Auxiliary Power Unit (APU), everything in order, parachutes, rations all in position, then went for a smoke on the other side of the dispersal. When the Americans arrived our Dispatchers for the trip F/Sgt. ‘Taffy” Parsons and Jim ‘Ramsay’ Roe helped them do a dry run by putting on and adjusting their parachutes and equipment. The gear these fellows carried was amazing! Bob Poole, our 2nd pilot, kept saying to me, “I hope these guys don’t get jammed in the hatch with all that gear on!” Believe me it was a job fixing them up, however it all had to come off again until we were 30 minutes or so from the DZ.

At 22:30 hrs. Smithy, Bob and Taffy were running up the engines. “Okay, pile in boys,” signalled Smithy. It was more pleasant taking off at night, no sweating, just cool and refreshing.

At the end of the runway we could see the moon coming up, the weather looked pretty bad down south. We called up Control for permission to take-off, nobody else out the same time as us, so there was no delay. No sooner had the Control RT said, “you may ” than Smithy let go of the brakes and we lurched down the runway, with those four great engines roaring as if they wanted to break away from us. We were taking off into the wooded area of the airfield and, with an all up weight of 64,000 lbs. (This was the maximum weight limit although many flights were over weight by as much as 9,000 lbs). Nearly everyone was a bit wary of takeoffs in this direction at night. We were well airborne and on the Intercom I heard ‘Lofty’ Brenchley our Navigator and Jack Draper our Bomb-Aimer (who also assisted with navigation on these long flights), report from their position as did Cyril ‘Curly’ Copley who was now in his rear turret. Lofty called up on the intercom and confirmed with Smithy that we were on course for ‘George’. Everybody settled down.

It was quite bumpy and raining heavily as well. Out over the Bay of Bengal Smithy decided to come down to 500 ft. in order to miss the heavy clouds above and ahead of us. The radio was crackling like heck and I could barely hear Control Broadcasts. Everybody seemed unusually quiet that night, maybe because we were all feeling a bit tired. The poor weather and being knocked about in the sky did not make any of us feel like singing although we usually did. At about 04:15 hrs we crossed the Coast and altered course for Nakhon Sawan Province, Siam.

Escape from Siam RAF 358 Squadron, Burma 1945

More Siam 1945

RAF Memoirs of SE Asia: 358 Squadron Special Ops and P.O.W by William A. Pugh

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