David told his story on the BBC Wales Bus. The following is a transcription based on the interview.

I was 19 when war broke out, just the right age to be called up. I didn't particularly want to go into the Army so I volunteered for the RAF. I was called up in June of 1940 and they put me down to be a wireless operator. At that time I had no intention of flying, but as time went on I changed my mind and I became a wireless operator / air gunner. I did all the training and eventually qualified as a wireless operator / air gunner in 1941. I then went through the normal training routine and joined a squadron as a sergeant air gunner, wireless operator / air gunner on my birthday - February 8th 1942.

At that time we were flying Manchesters which were a horrible aircraft really, they wouldn't fly on one engine, we were always told to bail out if we lost an engine and I did six operations on Manchesters, some of them not very good, shall we put it that way.

Then the Lancasters started to come along to replace the rather, how can I describe a Manchester, well it wouldn't fly very high, it had numerous things go wrong with it and with only two engines, if you lost one, you were in a mess.

The Lancaster was a beautiful aircraft and they started coming along in the middle of '42. In the Manchesters, you used to fly with a second pilot and a second wireless operator. I was a second wireless operator and then they would take the second wireless operator and second pilot to form a crew of their own. So I volunteered to become an air bomber / bomb aimer, because we didn't have them in the Manchesters, but with the Lancasters they replaced the second pilot and second wireless operator with a bomb aimer and a flight engineer. So I did a six week conversion course to a bomb aimer and in the meantime my crew was shot down, so I had to find a new crew after qualifying as a bomb aimer.

I think the first trip I did in the Lancaster was round about July to August '42. I went on to complete 34 raids as a bomb aimer. These included raids to all the main German cities and to Italy. We did a long daylight flight to Milan in Italy and we also were detached to coastal command for a while to assist in the Battle of the Atlantic and during that time we attacked a ship in the Bay of Biscay. We sent out six aircraft and lost four of them. We were very badly damaged, there was a hole in the wing which the seven of us in the crew, could sit in.

I finished that tour in December of '42 and went as an instructor, did an instructors course and we used to have a period of rest in between the flying tours. In March of '43 I was awarded a DFM (Distinguished Flying Medal)and I went to Buckingham Palace with my parents to collect it in June or July of that year.

In December of '43 we got together to do another tour. Our first trip on my second tour was on Christmas Eve that year, to Berlin. I continued flying to mainly German cities; I was flying with the Flight Commander at that time as Squadron Leader. I was commissioned on D-Day June 6th of '44, having been made a Warrant Officer two years previously.

We flew twice on D-Day, once to bomb the gun emplacements on the beach, we could see the invasion fleet down below and it was sight I'll never really ever forget. I came back, landing at about 8 AM, went to breakfast and they sent for me because my commission had come through.
So I flew as a Warrant Officer in the morning, had lunch in the Officers' Mess and flew as a Pilot Officer in the evening.

I went on to continue the trips to Germany mainly, but as D-Day was approaching, these changed to French targets and back-up for the troops. The buzz bombs were becoming very active then, so a lot of our trips were to buzz bomb sites and targets in France; ammunition dumps, railway stations, troop movements and so on.
I finished my tour in July of '43 and was again posted to a training unit. I did another course as a bombing leader, spent the rest of the war instructing future bomb aimers and wireless operators.

After the war ended, I decided to stay in the Air Force. I stayed in for another eight years and by this time bomb aimers were not required, so I re-trained as a navigator and went to fly in Lincoln aircraft, essentially a larger type of Lancaster aircraft.
I stayed in the Air Force until 1954, came out and went to work locally.

David Davies DFM

More WW2 stories from Clydach