Allan Edgar as Flight Lieutenant, Coastal Command, Second World War, interviewed by Chris Goddard

Allan Edgar discusses his early life growing up as the son of a headmaster (himself a First World War veteran), which resulted in the family having to move to at least six times (Albury, Coolamon, Kandos, Inverell and Sydney); his memories of the dust storms around Albury; his first and only fight in the early 30s; his memories of the family’s first radio and listening to the England/Australia test matches; growing up in the Depression; moving to the city for the first time in 1937; his jobs after school; his memory of the declaration of war; his decision to join up and how this curtailed his engineering degree and his desire to join the air force.
The interview continues with his memory of the Japanese attack on Sydney Harbour; his motion sickness and its influence on his decision not to muster as a pilot, but instead as a navigator/bomb aimer; elementary training in Australia; his first in-flight navigation exercise when at Cootamundra, where they instead ended up at Condobolin out of fuel; his memories of the sea voyage to America aboard the Dutch ship Klipfontein, having to climb to the crow’s nest, terrified; the American reaction to Pearl Harbour; time in Canada as part of the EATS programme; his voyage to England aboard the Queen Mary; undertaking goodwill talks at the WD & HO Wills Company and his posting to Ballykelly in Northern Ireland, joining 59 Squadron RAF (part of Coastal Command).
Included are his anecdote of Australians on the train trip to Ballykelly, paying the driver to stop at every pub along the way; and then the reality of 15 hour patrols in the Atlantic; the aching cold; the use of two navigators aboard their Liberators; the cold weather gear they had to use; posting to a detachment at St Eval just prior to D-Day; posting to 120 Squadron; his lack of sightings of U-Boats; the use of Leigh lights and their near collision with the Queen Elizabeth; a collision with a flock of seabirds; and his becoming the senior RAAF officer at Ballykelly and an anecdote about a flight sergeant , a pregnant mother and two pregnant daughters; the end of the war and return to Australia. The interview concludes with Mr Edgar discussing his engineering career after the war and his meeting with his wife Joyce.