The following story was written by Jack Shipway for the 2003 Bulletin

It was in Jerusalem during 1944 when I first met Geoff Bradley and Peter Matthews, Cliff Kershaw and I were among a group of Air Force personnel who had been sent to the Middle East (instead of Bomber Command in the UK) and in the Mess on the first night Cliff introduced me to Geoff Bradley; we had a talk and the 3 of us decided we could work together, and as a result , the nucleus of the crew was formed; however, we required a navigator/bomb aimer to complete basic 4-man light bomber crew. Bradley piped up and said he had met a young Australian navigator who might blend in.  A meeting was arranged with the young bloke (Peter Matthews), resulting in the four of us agreeing to take our chances together.

A few days later we found ourselves in a road convoy on our way across the Sinai Desert to Egypt, pausing for the night at the lousy flea ridden transit camp of Port Taufig opposite Suez.  There was no sleep that night as the ferocious fleas fed on us poor mortals.

Next day we were on our way to No. 75 OUT in the desert west of Cairo at a place called Gianaclis, which I remember as a place of hard clay pans and sand.  It was to be our home until we became familiar with the Baltimore light bomber.

Our “sprog” crew did not see much of each other for the first couple of weeks as Bradley converted to this twin engined aircraft.  Peter learned to fit himself into and work in the confined space of his “office” in the almost fully Perspex nose;  Cliff and I found out all we could about the radio;  the gun turret with its .50 cal twin guns and .30 cal loose mounted bottom guns; and the rest of the bits and pieces in our domain.  Eventually we came together as a crew and finished the OUT course with pretty decent results.

Another Aussie crew was with us at this time comprising Bill Rawlinson (Pilot), Lou Stamper (Nav/Bomb Aimer), Frank Raynolds and Ray Riekie (Wireless/Air Gunners).  Ray Riekie flew with us on the last trip Bradley’s crew made, which was, (as far as 454 Squadron was aware) the last operational sorties by Desert Air Force.

Anyhow, off we went to war and eventually arrived at our posting, Squadron 454 located at Falconara, Italy (about 10 miles north of the Adriatric port of Ancona).  It was a group of tents nestling on the camouflaged confines of an orchard with messes and quarters connected by duck boards.  Mud squelched over the tops of our rubber boots if we happened to stray off the well marked tracks.  Boy, what an experience!  It had been raining heavily before we got there and continued to do so for some days.

We were checked off by various senior Squadron personnel who decided we were “no threat to the present company”, so we were let loose on the enemy.  Our first operational target with the Squadron was Pola and I remember the whole sizable mission as a bit of a "Schemozzle” as well as “a hairy incident”.  I remember Geoff Gillingham’s aircraft hurtling down when a piece of shrapnel took the canopy from over his head and his goggles were swept to the top of his head by the wind blast.  His aircraft was making a good impression of a dive bomber as it hurtled down.  He had to let the column go so that he could reach up and pull the goggles over his eyes.  Meanwhile in our Baltimore the intercom became very quiet as Bradley exclaimed “….?x!  we’re out of gas!”.