D-Day 80 The Last Veterans: Bert Hammond

Bert Hammond, Age 99, RAF

Interviewed 23 February 2024

An air gunner on a Lancaster bomber with a crew of seven, Mr Hammond’s aircraft spent the week leading up to D-Day - and the night of D-Day - attacking enemy installations in Northern France.

Before that he had been on bombing missions to Germany and other parts of occupied Europe. The longest of these was a nine-hour trip to Poland.

He said: "It got to one point I will be honest, I didn’t think I was going to make it. Because of the losses. Other crews came in and left - never came back.

"An air gunner of course is the eyes of the aircraft. The point is you search and search and search for enemy night fighters because they were the bugbear of Bomber Command."

The bombing targets began shifting to France in the run-up to June 1944.

"We were allocated around that period targets to help the Army boys,’’ Mr Hammond said.

"I did actually five operations in eight days. These were all sorts of targets to help the lads. Primarily the defences of the Germans. Big railway junctions. Anything you could do to cut off transport.

"The build up was some targets near Paris. Some further inland. But they weren't actually (Normandy).

"That came way closer to D-Day."

He remembers the day of the invasion clearly.

"We were being briefed in the briefing room. If your skipper is on the battle order you are on Ops that night. We were being briefed for a target and suddenly it was stopped. Cancelled for 24 hours. No one leaves the camp.

"The phone is cut off in the sergeants’ mess and the officers' mess. It was the first we ever knew about it.

"Everybody was ‘this is it. ’We are finally going to get the chance to free Europe’. No-one could stop talking in the briefing room. 

"We were doing day ops by then. We had never done that before. We were not on during the actual day of D-Day. We went later that night. We didn’t see the fleet or anything. All you saw was a lot of gunfire.

"We were bombing selected targets to help the enemy lads. And then we just concentrated on the invasion for a while."

Mr Hammond’s logbook from 1944 shows targets that night included railway yards and a bridge.

By war’s end Mr Hammond had completed more than 30 bombing missions and is the only surviving member of his crew, which he likened to a band of brothers. 

He said: "Whatever we did we hope it helped. The freedom we enjoy today is what you were looking for then. It’s what we were fighting for."

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