Vincent Ball enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force on his 18th birthday.
“I wanted a nice blue uniform, and I wanted to be a Spitfire pilot. I worked at the Australian General Electric in Auburn, and I told the manager that when I was 18 I was going to join the Air Force. He said, ‘You can't join the Air Force. You're in a protected industry.’”
“When my birthday came along, I sat on my hands and didn't work. They called me inside and eventually relented.”
Vincent enlisted at Bradfield Park and was made a Wireless Air Gunner. He was then sent to Canada to complete his training as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme.
“I trained in Calgary and Edmonton, then we went down to Miami. We were there for about four weeks, and we flew across to Nassau to do our operational training. We converted to Liberator bombers and went back to New York, where we boarded the Queen Mary and went off to the business end of the war.”
Vincent joined the British Coastal Command. He was first stationed at Brighton then he went to Thorney Island and formed up as a crew.
“I was on a Liberator bomber and wireless air gun. I'd be either on the radar or the wireless. Now and again I would go out in the middle upper.”
A portrait of Vincent in his uniform.
Vincent was later stationed at Leuchars in Scotland where he was tasked with maritime patrols.
“We would fly for 10 hours. The skipper was pretty firm about idle chat and sometimes we had radio silence. We didn't talk at all.“
“We patrolled up and down the channel and then after D-Day when the allies were moving closer to Germany, the Germans were sending U-boats from Danzig and our job was to stop that.”
“To get to Danzig, we had to fly through the Skagerrak, which is the water between Norway and Denmark. We would fly singly at night and would operate under cover of dark and below the German radar.”
“We would fly across Sweden, and they would fire anti-aircraft guns at us to appease the Germans. We had fire in front, behind and either side of us, but not at us. We would fly across Sweden, turn right and cross the Baltic to Danzig, where we did a patrol.”
These patrols could be dangerous. Vincent remembers a night where German vessels opened fire on him and his crew.
“One night I picked up three blips. I homed the aircraft on to the target and there were two U-boats with two escorts. We went in straight in and all hell broke loose. The two escort vessels opened up. They hit number 3 engine. The aircraft had built-in fire extinguishers so the skipper, Fritz, switched the fire extinguisher on. The Russian wind and the extinguisher put out the flame.”
“I had a big hole just above my head about six inches away. A bullet had gone past me and hit the reinforcements around the legs of the mid-upper gunner.”
The flying conditions were also dangerous for Vincent and his crew.
“We kept below 10,000ft, so we didn't have to wear an oxygen mask. You froze coming back from the patrols. When we were shot up by the U-boats and the escort vessels, we were about 500ft above the North Sea. We had the bomb bay doors open, and we thought we were going to get wet. If we had any problems, we would have had to ditch in the water and we’d freeze. That was that was always a worry because if you got wet in the north in winter, you would only last 20 minutes.”
Vincent had the same crew during his service in the British Coastal Command, and they formed a camaraderie.
“The skipper was a Scotsman, the second pilot was Canadian, there were three Australians and an Irishman. I could always tell an Australian by just looking at him.”
“We had a camaraderie that was good. I think everybody was frightened. Nobody said ‘I'm frightened’ because all your mates are with you and you never say to your mate ‘I'm frightened’. I learned not to be afraid of doing things because I sometimes felt I was on borrowed time anyway."
Vincent and his air crew.
After Victory in Europe, Vincent was sent back to Australia to serve in the Pacific. However, shortly after he arrived back in Australia, Japan surrendered, and the war was over.
“I was away for nearly four years. We came back on the boat through the Panama Canal, and we'd stopped at Honolulu and at Wellington in New Zealand. We were all out on deck to get the first glimpse of Australia. We marched from the Mauretania along George Street and caught the coaches to Bradford Park where our parents were.”
“Mum and dad were there to meet me. I remember mum and dad rushing across and giving me a big hug, and that was the end of the war for me.”
After the war, Vincent received a Rhodes Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and became an actor. He has credits in many British and Australian films and television shows.
