John Ellacombe DFC, pilot to Richard BOB Peel

He returned to 151 in July 1943 to complete his Mosquito conversion. Based at Colerne, he covered some of the Baedeker raids and at Predannack helped Coastal Command on long range patrols.

The Mosquito was very nice. A lovely aeroplane, made of Plywood and Balsa, also called ''Wooden Wonder'' I mean, it wasn't as tight manoeuvring as a Hurricane but it was a good stable aeroplane with plenty of ''guts'' and masses of fuel. The Germans called it ''Achtung Mosquito''

John joined 487 Squadron. Richard BOB Peel was assigned his favorite Navigator. Some of these Mossie pilots had been instructors in Canada and had completed over 2,000 hours flying - with no blackout, so it seemed a very experienced and confident night fighter and bomber squadron.

During the summer of 1944, they assisted the ground forces to proceed through the French Falaise Gap dropping bombs and flares over targets on the route ahead, towards the River Loire. John and Bob could see some of the cannon shells exploding on the men below and with four Mosquitos they could easily hit about a hundred vehicles:

The road was choked. I mean there were bodies as well. So the road was blocked and they would try to pull off the roads and, you know, it was pretty horrendous. I mean, that is where the hatred would come out and you would say "Got them all, those bastards!" ... you had your four machine guns, four cannons, which was a hell of a blast, and you would just go down ... at a hell of of a speed, all low level....

Interviewer "Was there a feeling on the squadron that you were kind of all doomed?"

No. It was always going to be the other stupid bugger. Not us !!!.

Ellacombe & Peel attacked airfields, trains on railway lines and sometimes just general 'targets of opportunity'. In July 1944, information from the SAS suggested 2,000 SS troops who had murdered all inhabitants in Oradour sur Glane were moving into barracks in Poitiers and the RAF was briefed accordingly. Three squadrons, 24 Mosquitos, were to attack, again bloody low level !

I had a section of four Mossies and I was leading the second section... as we attacked, there were three storey buildings, you could see the whole bloody thing just collapse, and strangely enough, I flew over there a year, no, two years later, and they hadn't even dug the bloody bodies out. This was an attack on the SS, who we knew were absolute bastards.

John completed 37 sorties with 487. In October 1944 he moved to Number 30 Operational Training Unit at Finmere, then to Middleton, Bob was then assigned to FL Kemp

Remark from Robert Peel: