Mervyn Utas - Oct 1924 - Nov 2010 - 223 Squadron
Rear row L to R: Andrew Barron (Nav), Mervyn Utas (Co Pilot), Jimmy Bratten (W/Op) Mick Stirrop (Beam Gunner). Front: Mulligan (RCAF) (Beam Gunner), Mick Parrack(RCAF) (Tail Gunner) Vic Green (F/Eng) and Sim (RCAF) (Mid Upper Gunner).
Mervyn was Co Pilot in Tony Morris’ crew, in which I was Navigator (after their 4th Sortie). He joined the RCAF in October 1943 as soon as he was 18 and gained his wings when he was just 19, after which he was posted to GR School on Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St Lawrence and from there to 111 OTU in the Bahamas where, to his annoyance due to his age, he was not given a Command but assigned as a Co Pilot.
Posted to the UK his crew was pitchforked into Bomber Command to crew the Liberators of the newly re-formed 223 Squadron at Oulton. After a few minutes into their third ‘Big Ben’ patrol off the Dutch Coast they found themselves in the centre of a salvo of flak. Their Navigator, John Wallace, was wounded and they aborted the Operation.
Mervyn wrote in his ‘memoirs’ that ….
‘… the trip changed my outlook on the war….Up to that time the war had been a bit of a game. You got to fly aircraft … had a nice uniform to wear…the pay was reasonable and people respected you. I now realised that people on the ground were trying to kill you. I knew that they were shooting at us because there was no one else there … we ran into a lot of flak on later trips …. It was more impersonal as there were a lot of other bomber aircraft there so you felt that they were … shooting in the hopes of hitting someone. The optimistic outlook of young people!’
I was offered John Wallace’s position as at the time I was 2nd Navigator, to Freddy Freake, in Scotty Steele’s crew and, effectively, ‘redundant’, flying as Front Gunner! Mervyn completed a further 36 sorties, culminating in the last Bomber Command sortie of the War on the 2nd of May 1945‘ He left Oulton on the 6th May and arrived back in Canada (via New York) on 24th May.
He was due to form part of Canada‘s ‘Tiger Force‘(the British/Commonwealth Bomber force destined to attack Japan). This was cancelled so in July he was offered the choice of staying in the Air Force or his Release, which he took to go to University. At the end of three years (of a four year course) in Mining Engineering he took a Vacation job down a gold mine in Yellowknife (Northern Territories). Soon deciding that 5000ft above ground was preferable to 5000ft below he quit University and started looking for a job in Aviation. Unfortunately all the Airlines had all the pilots they needed. Luckily he received an invitation to rejoin the Air Force. Attitudes don’t change! The Senior Officer on the Interview Board refused to believe that he’d completed a full Tour at the age of 19! Someone should have told him that the average age of Bomber Command’s crews was 22!
After several years in Search and Rescue, in 1958 he was posted to pilot a ski-wheel DC3 on glacial research (Canada’s contribution to the International Geophysical Year which involved landing on glaciers in Ellesmere Island (83 degrees North!) at 4000 and 6000ft, the first time ever for such a large aircraft. He was sent to Europe in 1961 amongst Canada’s NATO reinforcements, transferring in 1962 to Paris for the very pleasant job of flying Senior Officers etc, to Northern destinations in Summer and Southern ones in Winter! He had hardly returned to Canada when he was sent to Kashmir to fly a STOL aircraft for the UN for a year. He spent his final 2 years in the RCAF flying CL44s, retiring after 25 years in 1969.
He joined the Canadian Department of Transport in1969 flying as an Air Carrier Inspector checking Airline Pilots for Type Endorsements and Annual and Route Checks.
Having lost his licence for Medical reasons he was made Project Manager for the introduction of the Micro-Wave Landing System and, later, Canadian Member on the ICAO All Weather
Operations Panel, finally retiring in 1987 after 45 years in Aviation.
Andrew Barron
This article is from the Spring 2011 issue of Confound and Destroy
