Air artificer Ron Swinn, in Voices in Flight: The Fleet Air Arm - Recollections from Formation to Cold War

On 9 April 1942, my birthday, we were walking back from the dining hall after breakfast when my mate and I heard a low drone of aircraft engines in large numbers. ‘Sounds like the Hermes aircraft returning,’ was the observation of my mate ‘Sammy’ Samuels. ‘No two-engined aircraft on her,’ was my reply. By this time, I was a clear twenty yards ahead of him, and galloping off to our machine-gun emplacement. As we dived in, all hell let loose. The station was caught unawares. Bombs dropped in the first wave set off a bomb dump near the hangars and further heightened the din. One Japanese aircraft dived into the oil tanks and set them on fire. The raid was over almost as soon as it had started. Bewildered officers and ratings appeared from the shelter holes to survey the carnage, ammunition from the RAF supply dump and a merchant ship was exploding all the time and the hangars were blazing. Amidst that entire spectacle, I could still murmur to myself, ‘Thank God, at least that damn compressor will be out of commission now, and I’ll be detailed off for a new job.’ Gathering a few of the ratings together, we made off to assist with the firefighting and, after a few hours, had everything under control. Hot, sticky and terribly dirty, I made my way to the hangar housing the compressor; the building was two-thirds gone and still smouldering. Imagine my amazement, after inching past the wrecked aircraft and peering through the smoke, to see my monster still in A1 condition, with only a bit of paint blistering and a cracked dial or two but otherwise intact. I need not have bothered anyway, since their Lordships decided that China Bay had had it for the time being. So, once again, the draft was carved up and I, plus a dozen more, was sent overland by truck to a small fishing village on the West coast of Ceylon called Puttalam, where we were to start up a storage section. Our ‘field’ was a strip hacked out of the jungle and, as we moved in, it was still being constructed. It consisted of a mere dirt strip with a perimeter track that was also made of dirt. At intervals around this track were small loops, which led in and out again. These contained hides for the aircraft, which could be pushed into them with wings folded. It was in these hides that we carried out maintenance. Our complement of planes was a rather mixed bag. There were some Swordfish, Albacores, Hellcats, Bearcats, Corsairs, Fulmars, Hurricanes, Harvards and a Gladiator. Nobody seemed to know where the last one came from. The Swordfish was also an unknown but came in useful in the monsoon season when it was used as an airborne truck to fetch supplies from Colombo if the road traffic could not get through. I remember that it came back once loaded with bags of spuds.