105-Year-Old WW2 Bomber Pilot Shares a Century of Wisdom | Colin Bell (E405)

0:02Well Colin, you're three days away from turning 105. Correct. You truly are one of the last men standing from those Mosquito pilots in World War II. Probably. Over 50 missions over Germany, 13 of them over Berlin itself. And we want to find out from you today what it takes to fly into hell, and most importantly, what it takes to come home again. I'd simply say that it was a job to be done. We had to defeat the Germans because they had some very nasty plans of what they were going to do over here if they ever subjugated us. You just had to get on and do it. It didn't help to have too much imagination.

0:48I always remember that Sailor Milan, who was a Battle of Britain pilot, a very experienced Battle of Britain pilot, He said that in his experience, survivors were those possessed of not too much imagination. Fear kills. And so it's not in my nature to be fearful. I'm not boasting. I'm just stating a fact. I don't fight an easy, and I just got on with it. and I had the very good great fortune to have with me a superb Canadian navigator, the name of Doug Redman. He started out life as a lumberjack, and then he became a navigation instructor. I was an instructor of American cadets out in America when I finished my training.

1:50So we were both instructors. We were both very experienced. I was an experienced pilot. He was an experienced navigator, and we were a good team. And again, Doug didn't get frightened, except on one occasion when a shell exploded under the aircraft and it lifted us up, and we lost power on both engines. And he said to me, what do we do now, which I thought was a bloody stupid question. And I said, well, we wait, don't we? So we waited, and hallelujah, after a brief period, the power came back on again, and we edged our way away from Berlin. And at that point, I leaned across to him, and I said, you weren't frightened, were you, Doug?

2:44And he said, no, I wasn't frightened. He said, I was bloody terrified. and that was dark. Why were you not bloody scared when the shell exploded under your aircraft? I think probably I was. I know my knee is knocked. I've got a job to do. I've got the aircraft in the air. I've got to keep it in the air. and when you've got a job to do, it tends to cut out fear, at least in my experience it does. There we are. People react differently. Take us into the cockpit of a mosquito because this is an experience, particularly in wartime, that no one on planet Earth will ever have again. What's it like inside the confines of a mosquito?

3:41Well, it's a bit cramped. Yeah. Is it uncomfortable? No, I wouldn't say it's uncomfortable. Compared with flying in a Halifax or a Lancaster, it's much more comfortable because you didn't have to wear heated suits. You could wear what I wore in the mess, a battle dress. I flew in a battle dress because it was a beautifully warm, heated cockpit. And it might be 30 below outside, but in the cockpit, it was as warm as it is in your studio here today. And where would the navigator sit? He'd sit to the right of me, a bit lower down. and I always felt that his position was a lot less comfortable than mine but that was his bad luck being a navigator, wasn't it?

4:46And were you in constant communication? Yeah, excepting we didn't talk about last night's film. We were purely professional. He would tell me the courses to fly and then complain if I didn't do it properly. I think it's important as well to explain to people that the Mosquito was partly made of wood, had two... What, entirely made of wood? Entirely made of wood, two huge engines. Two Packard, in my case, Packard Merlin engines. Some of the Mosquitoes, the ones that are built over here, of course, have got Rolls-Royce Merlins. No guns? Huh? No guns? Well, it depends which type of aircraft you'll fly.

5:40A bomber mosquito had no guns because the object of the bomber mosquito was go in, bomb, and get out. So with no guns, in a plane made of wood, flying towards Germany, was there not a fear that as soon as a German fighter with guns saw you, there was trouble? Well, you must understand that the majority of, in fact, I must go as far as to say, all the propeller-driven night fighters, German night fighters, couldn't go as fast as we could. We used to fly at 25 ,000, and they did get some Focke-Wulf 190s up at 30 ,000, cruising around, and they called them wild boar squadrons. and these chaps used to sometimes dive down on you with the added speed of coming down in a dive.

6:39But you could generally see them coming and if it was dark at night, well, they couldn't see you. You couldn't see them, so it wasn't a problem. But if it was a clear night and you could see them coming, it wasn't difficult to avoid them. and once they'd passed you, they'd never be able to turn around and catch up with you again. So night fighters, propeller-driven night fighters, weren't really a problem. The real problem was a German anti-air warfare, which was intense and lethal, accurate. And that was, well, that's just something you had to contend with. We'll be right back after a quick word from our partners.

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8:26This is it. Head to waldenu.edu and take the first step. Walden University. Set a course for change. Certified to operate by Chev. I don't know about you, but I love keeping my money where I can actually see it. Unfortunately, a big wireless company seemed to like keeping my money too. And after years of overpaying for wireless, I finally got tired of those high wireless bills, the extra fees, the so-called free perks that actually cost more in the long run. so I decided to switch to Mint Mobile. Mint helps you save money on your phone bill. Plans start at just 15 bucks a month and you'll get high-speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network.

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9:46Well, that was our first trip. and it was the one time that my wonderful navigator was rather cocked up and he took me back over Emden and I always remember that as we approached Emden we saw some gunfire ahead and he said to me, I wonder what they're firing at and of course the next few moments we knew because German naval gunners are very good, very competent, and they were banging shells around us all over the place. And this is when I talk about fear. At that stage, I did feel fearful, and I put the aircraft into a dive, and we were 25 ,000 feet, and I went into a very steep dive to get away.

10:43And, of course, I did get away, but we built up at enormous speed, far in excess of what the mosquito was designed to do. And when I tried to get out of it, it wouldn't respond. And although I hauled back on the stick, the stick wouldn't come back. And that was very bothersome. but I had a device known as a tail trim which was operated by a wheel on my left arm and I wound this back and that forced the elevator at the back upwards and with the aid of that, I'm still pulling back on the stick. We finally leveled out but we were going at a hell of a speed And if I hadn't succeeded in doing that, well, that would have been the end of Colin Bell and Doug Gridman.

11:46So you were being shot at from the ground? Yeah. But you dove down towards the ground? The guns weren't travelling along underneath me. I was travelling away from them. Right. So you just wanted to get as much speed as quickly as possible? I wanted to get away from the anti-aircraft fire. and by increasing my speed and changing height, I achieved that. And had you been coned at this point? You were regularly coned if you went over a target, and where Berlin was concerned, the searchlights would pick you up on the way in, they would cone you on the way in, you would be coned all the way over the target, coned out of the target.

12:37And not only that, but all the time that you were coned, they were firing shells at you. I mean, they were intent on destroying you. For people that aren't aware, being coned is the cone-shaped light that finds the aircraft. What did it feel like inside the Mosquito when suddenly it was almost like daylight? You were just lit up from below? Well, of course, you lose the horizon. You can't see. You have to fly on instruments. You can't relate yourself to anything. Because you're blinded by the light. Because of the blinding light inside. In fact, sometimes it's difficult to read the instruments, but at that time you have to fly what was known by the seat of your pants.

13:21When you've been coned over a heavily fortified city like Emden, with anti-aircraft fire coming at you, even in that moment, did your imagination not start to think, maybe this is it. Maybe my time is up.

13:39No. Wow. No, not at all. You're trying to make certain that your time is not up. Can I ask you about anti-aircraft fire? Yeah. What is the experience of facing that? Because I've always assumed unless it hits you, You don't really know where it is. What's happening around you outside the aircraft in those really difficult combative moments? There is a time lapse from the time that the shell is fired to the time that it reaches you, okay? That's why anti-aircraft fires known as predicted gunfire. The Germans on the ground are predicting where you are going to be when the show arrives. And if you've got any sense, you make bloody sure that you're not there.

14:39You're somewhere else. And that is the secret of staying alive in respect of anti-aircraft fire. You don't stay in any one place for very long. You shift your position, you shift your height, you change your direction. Except here, of course, in the last stages, when you are actually on your bombing run. At that time, you have to fly a steady course and at a set height to enable your bomb aimer to do his job. And that's when you are most vulnerable. and the Germans would know as you came in towards your target that you won't be changing course you won't be changing height because you're about to release your bombs so in that moment is it just a case of hoping that their aim is out?

15:35that's when you need religion tell us about that tell me more I've said it in one word that's when you need to pray And would you pray? No. I want to talk a bit more about flying the Mosquito. Very well. So you're given a parachute. Would you be wearing the parachute all the time in the aircraft? The parachute formed part of your seat. Right. And after that incident where we were blown up, in the morning we came down and we looked at the aircraft and the rear half had got full of holes. And my fitter came up to me and he said, would you like to have a memento of last night's raid? And I said, what memento?

16:31And he produced two shell fragments about that long. And I said, oh, where did you find them? And he said, they were in the parachute that you were sitting on. And I said to my son later on, you never realize how you might never have come into existence. I said, for two reasons. One, the sliver might have gone through me, and then the other, I might have been left with a high-pitched voice. Well, it sounds like it was close. Colin, would you tell us about the revolver that you took with you on your flight? Ah, yes. Well, one day, Scotty, our wing commander, said, we have it on good authority that Goebbels and Hitler are encouraging the local populace to lynch you if you parachute out and they come across you.

17:34So they had lynch mobs out. and in fact they did lynch a lot of Americans some of our jobs

17:47so Scotty said it's up to you what you want to do about it but he said if only you feel like drawing a Smith & Wesson 38 from the armament store 20 pounds of ammunition you might find that a comfort if you come down I thought well that's for me So when people said to me, you know, did you have a mascot on your trips over Germany? I say, yes, it was a Swiss and Mersen 38 and 20 pounds of ammunition. What would have been the process of parachuting out of a Mosquito? Was it a case of climbing from the aircraft? Well, you climbed into the aircraft through a hatch in the nose. You had a ladder. So if you wanted to parachute out, you would jettison the hatch, and then you would just climb out and let yourself drop out.

18:52You had, in fact, an escape hatch above you, but the difficulty with that is that if you climbed out there, you would get caught by the winds by the slipstream and that would take you back and you'd probably find yourself cut in half by the tail fin. So it wasn't a very good idea to climb out while you were actually flying. And when you think back to the 50 missions that you did which one stands out in your memory? Oh, being chased by a jet fighter. That was very dangerous. He could go 100 miles an hour faster than we could. This chap came up behind us, and when he switched, he wanted to get a visual on us, because once he got a visual on you, you were dead, because his firepower was immense.

19:51And I knew he was coming up behind, because when he turned on his air-to-air radar to locate us, to close in and get a visual, a white light appeared on my instrument panel because I got a device at the back of the aircraft that picked up his radar signals, okay? And as soon as the white light appeared, I dropped down 10 ,000 feet to get away from him, at which point my navigator said, what the hell are you doing? Because of course it upset all his instruments, you see. And I said, well, you saw the white light, didn't you? Ah, he said, but I've heard that ghosting doesn't necessarily mean that it's a jet fighter coming out behind you.

20:41And I said, do you want me to hang around and find out? Which quietened him down a bit. But I had a lot of trouble avoiding this guy, but I knew one thing, that his endurance was 45 minutes to the time of takeoff to return to base, his base. So I took him all over the sky in the dark, and then I also took him down low because I knew that if you go down low, jets consume proportionally a lot higher amount of fuel low down than up high. and all the time of course I got my navigator bellyaching because he would never accept that it was truly a jet fighter. I never was able to convince him but I spoke many, many years later I spoke to that wonderful aviator Captain Winkle Brown and when I described the circumstances to him, he said, you were bloody lucky to be alive.

21:59You did absolutely the right thing. I wish that Doug, my navigator, would be still alive so that I could have quoted this to him, but by that time, sadly, he'd died. There was another instance, too, when I was interviewed by a reporter from The Times and I described the circumstances to him. And when I read his write-up of our conversations, he said a number of aircraft mosquitoes were shot down over Berlin by jet fighters. And I phoned him up and I said, hey, hey, hey, I never said that. He said, I know you didn't. He said, I got it independently from the Ministry of Defence. Wow. So it did happen.

22:50Yeah, it did happen. There is a term of becoming overcome by events that many pilots can sometimes become distracted by what's going on around them. So how would you teach the cadets about staying calm and doing your job? I think really what you're coming around to is the emotional reaction. There's no place for emotion in wartime. You've just got to get on with the job. If you start becoming emotional, well, then you're not fit for the job. But the emotion is still very real. How do you learn to override the emotion with logic? Can you share for our listeners? I think this is a present-day attitude.

23:42I think if I go back to when I was a young man, people didn't get emotional. It seemed to me, I don't know, something has happened to people today. Apart from overeating and getting too fat and not fit for work, then there's all this emphasis on emotion and breastfeeding. In my day, people weren't like that. You don't think it's a good thing? No, I think, well, it may have a place in domestic life, but it has no place in wartime. In the dead of night, when you've had to evade a German fighter plane, and it's cloudy and there's flack and there's no light from the moon. How on earth does Doug work out where you are and how to get you home?

24:49Well, that was his job. What tools did he have? Huh? What tools did he have at his disposal to work out where you were? Oh, he had radar. He had what was known as G. And a little later on, he had an American device, I think, called Loran. But these were merely tools to assist him, and he was just brilliant. I always remember how on one occasion we were in the mess, and some American generals came in, and they always had nurses with them, left-headed nurses. I wonder why. and anyway they all came in and shuffled into the mess about three o 'clock in the morning I was finishing my ham and eggs when I saw this contingent come in and I got the story eventually they were on a I don't think it was a globe master but something like that they had flown straight out of America across the Atlantic and their navigator missed the UK completely and they went out over occupied France.

26:11And the first thing they knew was that shells were coming up all around them. So they practiced a 180-degree turn and they headed back across the Atlantic when the navigator went into the cabin and said, I don't know if you guys have got any religion, but if you have, you better start praying because we're lost. That's a certain way of building up morale. And anyway, they sent out a May Day call and our chap at Downer Market picked it up and he gave them some courses to fly and eventually they landed at Downer Market with about enough fuel in their Globemaster to fill a cigarette lighter. Yeah.

27:05And they came shuffling in, looking incredibly shaken. Would you and Doug ever spend any time together outside of the cockpit? No, he wasn't a very sociable man. We'd go up at Kingsland and have a few beers together, or we'd go down more often to the Crown Inn in Downer Market and have a few beers there. My wife would come along, pushing my baby daughter in a prem, and we all used to convene together at the Crown in Downer Market, and where I still go. How would you describe 20-year-old Colin to us? I was very conscious that I'd got a lot of... You grow up very fast when you're in the RAF, and I regarded it as a privilege to be selected for aircrew.

28:07I regarded it as a privilege to be in the RAF, and I certainly regarded it as a privilege to fly the best aircraft in World War II, which, in my judgment, was the Mosquito. And what was your relationship like with authority as a young man? I think, by nature, I tend to be a bit of a rebel, and sometimes you have to curb that tendency. When I was on the 608 Squadron, I had a boss, which was a chap called Scotty, and he was an Australian wing commander, and I brought a lot of respect for Scotty. He was a man's man.

28:56When he moved on, we had a navigator who recently trained as a pilot and I didn't like him and he didn't like me. I thought he was an old woman. and so I think a lot depends when you say how do you get on with authority I think a lot depends who is your commanding officer Can we talk about some of the statistics that you've already told us about so one in four didn't make it, didn't survive how did you handle that uncertainty? You were in war, people get killed and you had us have to accept that and you have to accept the possibility, possibility, not the probability, the possibility that you'll be one of them.

29:49We had Rolls-Royce Packard Merlin engines and some of those, not many, had got weak conrods. Do you know what a conrod is? No, I thought you wouldn't. It's the thing that connects the piston to the crankshaft. and if you're taking off at night in an aircraft, a mosquito is bombed up, it's got tanks full of petrol, including winged tanks, it's got the flaps down, it's got the undercarriage down, and you start off at night with a full bore with the throttle wide open and your engine fails, there's nothing you can do. You can't continue climbing. You've just got to land, but you've got fields and trees in front of you.

30:52Scotty was asked, what do you do in such circumstances? And he said, well, you're going ahead and die like an officer and a gentleman. And when someone said that, Like, how were you not petrified to get in the aircraft the next day and fire up the engine? It's just a risk. You just have to accept that it's a risk. And there's a risk when you drive on the road, isn't there? It's, you just had to accept. I mean, the suggestion came from one of our number that the aircraft should all be grounded until the engines could be inspected and the weak conrods are identified and replaced. And Scotty said, no way.

31:47He said, this is a war. We're getting on with it. You've just got to take your chance. And, of course, he was quite right. You can't stop operating just because one or two aircraft will file on takeoff. You know, you just have to live with these risks, don't you? It's rather like flying up in the air and being shot at. You can't say I'm not going to go out on this tour because I might get shot down. And as one of the lieutenants, as someone who was training cadets and encouraging cadets to believe in themselves and be confident and go to war, what would you find was helpful to say to men younger than you and less experienced than you to calm them down?

32:38Well, my advice to youngsters these days is to be bold but not reckless. In point of fact, I appeared, they displaced the Coca-Cola advertisement and Piccadilly Circus for a short while and they put me up there saying and my advice is be bold but don't be reckless. And was that the same advice that you gave to your young cadets you were training in the war? I wasn't considered with their morale. I just expected them to do as they were told and get on with it. Would you explain the difference between being bold and being reckless? Being bold is analyzing a problem and taking the course that you think is the most prudent and sensible, but still doing it.

33:35That's being bold. Being reckless is saying, oh, I just thought the hell, I'd just get on with it anyway. For example, you might have a situation where there are three alternatives. Being bold is choosing what is the best one of the three. Being reckless is just ignoring and getting on with it and paying no attention to... It's a different approach. And what were you like with pilots under your command who you were training who were reckless? My American cadets were a very good bunch. They were very powerful chaps. They all looked as if they'd come off the football field. And I was only five foot six, weighing about eight stone, eight stone, and about 130 pounds odd.

34:31They were big, muscular blokes, probably weighing 220 pounds. So it was a strange, you might think it's a strange relationship, But in the American Army Air Corps, the instructor is God, and the cadets are rubbish.

34:58So as I was an instructor, believe it or not, I was God. And in your book, Colin, you talk about a promise that you made to these recruits. You talk about, you said to them, I may be half your size, but I have the guts of a British lion. I have the guts of a lion and a British lion at that. Yeah. And what was the promise that you made to them? You see, under the American system of training, if you put a foot wrong, you were liable to be washed out, which means taken off the course, eliminated, which was terrible. I mean, all these chaps were sort of busting their guts to become commissioned officers in the United States Army Air Corps pilots.

35:51But under their system, they had hanging over them the threat of almost instant dismissal at any stage in their career. So when I had my six American cadets, I said, my system is different. I said, it's different. I'm not criticizing your own system, but my system is different. I said, unless you do something diabolical, I can guarantee every one of you will graduate. And I could almost see them sort of relax like that. and I think my system was better. I think people learned more and when they're not under emotional pressure and all my chaps in fact did graduate excepting one but that wasn't my fault.

36:55He failed on ground school. And how would you deal with the death of one of your cadets in wartime? I gave my cadets the best advice I could to become competent pilots and to avoid getting killed. I couldn't do any more than that. That was the limit of my ability and responsibility. If, unfortunately, they got killed, well, that was something you just had to shrug off. how would you get the balance though between allowing your cadets to make a mistake to learn but not punish them for making a mistake i never thought in terms of punishment if they made a mistake my job was to see that they didn't make the same mistake again we'll be right back after a quick word from our partner are you a trailblazer a risk taker maybe someone with countless tails of epic adventure.

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40:28I'm interested in your relationship with your partner, your wife, Kath, who was your wife for 74 years. How did you handle going off on these raids in terms of your relationship with her? First of all, she was a very gutsy woman. She had to be. if anybody deserved a decoration, it was her, not me. So we start off with that. How did you meet? Oh, it's simple. I was working in a chartered affairs office. We had a middle-aged secretary, and the middle-aged secretary moved on. I was 19 at the time, and this drop-dead gorgeous 17-bitman train girl came to replace her. So we were in the same office together.

41:22I suppose I brainwashed myself into the certainty that I'd always come back. I mean, I believed it. I just convinced that I would, you know, complete the tour. You call it brainwashing, call it what you will. but I was convinced I would. And in turn, I brainwashed Kath. I mean, the first two or three times that went out, I came back. She was a bit emotional. And then I said to her, look, darling, I can assure you without any doubt that I shall always come back. After I'd done 10 or 15 more operations and I came back on each case, I said, well, there I told you. And so I brainwashed her. Was it hard for you knowing that she was waving you off, watching you leave, waiting for you to return?

42:24Did you feel the pressure of that? Did Kath have a baby during wartime? Yes, she did. She had a six-week-old baby. How did that change things for you? Well, of course, you're on to this emotional attack all the time, and I'm not an emotional person. I just got on with it. People in this day and age spend far too much best beating and wondering what ifs or whatever. What they really need to do is get out there and get stuck in and bring in the money for the wife and the family. That's what matters, not best beating. What do you think is the secret to a happy and successful marriage? Secret of a happy marriage or tolerance.

43:08Tolerance, without doubt. being willing to overlook the things that people do that they shouldn't do in a marriage. You need tolerance. I mean, I'm much more tolerant now than I was as a young man. But in one word, yes, tolerance. That's the secret of a happy marriage. What's the biggest lesson you learned from Kath in your 74 years together? Kindness. Kindness and tolerance. Can you give us an example of that? If I was driving a car and I was perhaps, there was danger of coming up ahead, Kath was much faster in recognizing this than I was. If she thought I was driving a bit recklessly, she wouldn't say anything.

44:07She just put her hand on my arm, and I knew exactly what she was saying, you know, cool it, take it gently. So she was a very restraining effect, had a very restraining effect on my behavior without being bossy. She was a very clever woman. She could see much, much further ahead than I could, and not only on the road. For a man who doesn't talk an awful lot about emotion, how have you coped with her passing, with her death? It was very hard, very hard indeed. But as time goes on, they say time is a great healer. I found the first year very hard, but I decided, And we had discussed what might happen to one or other of us if we died.

45:13And naturally, I expected I'd go first. It didn't happen. We agreed that whatever life was left to us, we'd make the best of it and not grieve too much. Well, it's easy to say that, but it's rather difficult in practice. My real saviour was the Royal Air Force Club, which I regard as my second home. I was left in a very nice flat in Tunbridge Wells where my wife died. I was left alone in it. So therefore I used to go up as often as I could, like every day, to the World Air Force Club. And I developed many friends up there. I'd been using it quite a lot beforehand because I worked for the government until I was 60 as a charter surveyor.

46:22and at 60 I took my pension and my lump sum and I'd been playing the role of gamekeeper for the government and then I suddenly switched to being a poacher on my own account because I set up my own practice and I worked until nearly five years ago But when I was in private practice on my own account, my clients almost used to queue up to go to the RAF club because it's such a lovely place. And so I developed in that time that I lost my lovely Kath, I developed lots and lots of friends up at the RAF club. Can I ask you, you've already mentioned Scotty. Yeah. But there were other leaders such as Hamish, Mahadi, and Bennett.

47:18Bennett, of course, was a brilliant man. He, too, was an Australian. He could fly better than anybody else. He could navigate better than anybody else. And damn me, when he came down to our station at Down and Market, he was more accurate on the firing bats than any of our gunners. and now as I say you don't want to feel inferior even if you are but there's one story about Bennett that I rather like and that is that when he was on his honeymoon he took some time off to write a chapter on the book that he was preparing which is called Air Navigation now I don't know about you chaps But if I were on my honeymoon, I think I'd find better things to do than take time off for writing a chapter on air navigation.

48:19I think so. I think we could think of better things. But I also think that you lived through and operated in a time where people had a real sense of their duty. And maybe that's what he was feeling. What do you think of this modern world where we talk far more about our rights than we talk about our duties? Well, I've already told you that I've got a great admiration for the young people of today.

48:49Inevitably, there are some that don't measure up. But I suppose, really, there were some that didn't measure up in the period running up to World War II. I always remember that there was a motion put to Oxford Union which said we will not fight for king and country and it was carried with acclamation. That was in the late 30s. It probably encouraged Hitler to attack us because he thought we were decadent not. But of course those self-same young men who voted in favour of the motion, we will not fight for king and country. When war broke out, they queued up to join the armed forces. What are the parallels you see between the 1930s and today?

49:47In the 30s, my father and mother were all appeasers to a man and most of their friends the same. They would have, having seen the awful slaughter in World War I, they'd have done anything to avoid and repeat. And they thought appeasement was the answer. Well, we now know, of course, it isn't the answer. Appeasement really encourages despots like Putin and Hitler to attack you, particularly if you are weak. The first requirement of any government and people is to put defense at the top of your list. Without defense, you have nothing. And it saddens me to see that in a recent poll, the population put defense as number eight, after pensions, NHS, and everything else.

50:54But you see, unless you've got a good defence, if you're subjugated, you don't have a pension, you don't have any NHS. Defence is absolutely the number one priority. I cannot overemphasise it. And do you fear that Britain in its current state is vulnerable? Yes. I'm sorry to have to say so. We were, of course, vulnerable in 1939, but thanks to the dedication and skill of fighter command, we held the Germans at bay. I like to think that even now, if we were attacked, we would still be able to hold the line. but we're very vulnerable. And incidentally, the point is, of course, and I can't again overemphasize it, that there was a Roman general 2 ,000 years ago who said, if you want peace, prepare for war.

52:05What he meant was that if you arm yourself up by preparing for war, you'll have peace because people won't attack you. What would you say to Sir Keir Starmer today if he asked you? what his approach should be. My answer to him will speak, borrow and steal to build up the defences of this country as quickly as you can and put that as your number one priority. And he'd say to me, but if I do that, I shall be voted out of power. And I'd say, well, bad luck. That's what leaders have to accept. Churchill was advising what should be done in the 30s, and I remember clearly because I was a teenager, I could hear all this, my father and mother, talking about these things, and they said, we don't want that man Churchill in power.

53:05He'll have us into a war the day after tomorrow. Well, of course, we now know that Churchill was right, and we now know the appeasers were wrong. Churchill once described as appeasement being like feeding a crocodile in the hope that you would be the last to be eaten. What would you like this generation to understand about what you chose to fight for? Well, I just hope they'll listen to what I say and accept it as being correct. And you've got a lovely Latin phrase that you live by. Would you share your Latin phrase with us? It's at the right of the end of my book, and I seem to remember it is, you know, Nel nisi bastardia carporandum.

54:00And for those that don't have an understanding of Latin, the translation is don't let the bastards grind you down how do we do that? how do we stop the bastards from grinding us down? what's the secret? be strong some of our questions on emotion I know that you weren't welcoming them but I think some of it is because of our modern day understanding of post-traumatic stress disorders that so many people that served have suffered from. How do you view that these days? Well, I think it is a fact of life that people who are in war situations do suffer from traumatic stress. And I think they are deserving of treatment.

54:56That doesn't mean that you need to spend too much time wondering if you're going to develop it. But can I ask a question around that then? Because so many people talk about the debrief after a mission being important, the ability to share the experiences and process it. What was the debrief like for you and Doug when you would come back? Well, in point of fact, I always let Doug do the debriefing because I used to be pretty sleepy. I can sleep almost drop of a hat. And I used to let Doug deal with all the questions. He enjoyed doing it anyway, so I let him get on with it. Love that. Can I ask you what you think about luck?

55:51Because two days after you stopped flying your mosquito, after your final mission, your mosquito was shot down. That is the element of luck, isn't it? In our case, it was luck that we weren't shot down. Never underestimate the power of luck. Machiavelli once said, half of your life is luck. and the other half depends on yourself. You can't underestimate that element of luck. Or, as our Australian wing commander said, live every day as if it were your last, and one day it will be. Time for some quickfire questions. What do you believe are the three non-negotiable behaviours for life, the three most important behaviours for life?

56:53Keep healthy, be true to yourself, be honest. What's the greatest piece of advice you've ever received? Avoid those horses and fast swimming.

57:07You're almost 105. You worked until you were 100. You still drive. Yeah. You still go out. What is the secret to a long, happy life? What's your longevity trick? Well, the secret, of course, is exercise, alcohol, and the love of good women with the odd bad ones thrown in. What advice would you give to young Colin? I've already given that advice. Be bold but not reckless. Colin, what a fascinating conversation. Well, I hope you enjoyed it. I did. Absolutely. truly remarkable and thank you for the time. Damien. Jake. The oldest guest we've ever had on High Performance and he corrected me, not 105 yet, 105 in three days' time, but a man who I think we can learn so much from.

58:08We don't even have to agree with all of the things that he says to still learn from the things that he believes. Oh, what his experience, what he's seen, what he's learned And what a privilege for us to be able to sit in his company for a couple of hours and pick his brains. What I thought was interesting was that there was going to be more conversation about psychology, right, where you would be talking to him about overwhelming the cockpit, about the importance of having an emotional connection to the guy that was his navigator, how he compartmentalised the pain of losing fellow pilots during combat, how he processed emotionally the end of the war and becoming a civilian, there was none of that.

58:49I mean, there was no conversation about emotion. So with someone who's got the experience you have, was Colin born without very much emotion? Or was Colin the man who was taught in a really intense period in his life that in the things he had to do to stay alive, there was no value in emotion? I think it's a brilliant question. I think the answer is probably a bit of both. I think certainly the conditioning of that generation, you know, like you're a fan of the Stoics, Jake, and that idea of sometimes you just get on with the job, do the task, don't think too deeply about it. That very much was that pragmatic generation that had to do it.

59:25And I really welcome the challenge that Colin gave us is don't talk too much about this stuff. Don't dwell too much on it because that gives us a perspective from what life was like from his point of view, from being a young man and the conditioning that I don't think it is a bad thing to be able to do it, but I think that was the way that he survived. I think also there is an argument that we do internalize things too much. We do think too often about how does this impact me. We are too concerned with our own emotions and our own issues and our own thoughts and feelings. And actually, the more time we spend internalizing, the more anxiety, the more stress, the more pain it causes us.

1:00:03Colin is the master of just externalizing everything. It's not about what's happening inside, it's what's happening outside. And there is a value in that. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think that, and again, it's a different time. So like diagnosis is very different. But I think like cases of depression, unhappiness, anxiety is a lot higher today. And partly is because we're more aware of it than maybe that generation was. But I do think there is something we can learn from that generation of sometimes being stoic in the face of challenges and difficulties. And he was a brilliant example of that.

1:00:36and also every time I open up any of my social media apps I see people on there kind of congratulating themselves for being heroes and there was a man who risked everything for us and when I dared to say do you feel like a hero I mean he was basically offended by me telling him he was a hero wasn't he yeah yeah but do you remember when we were lucky enough to sit down with Dame Stephanie Shirley when she came with us and she was our previous oldest guest at 93 she had a very similar outlook to life didn't she of like how do I make today a life worth saving that's a question that she asked, that she would ask herself.

1:01:11Collins was just, how do I get the most out of today? Regardless of what he's asking for, it wasn't the best of everything or the best opportunities. It was just, how do I get the best out of the plane that I'm flying? How do I get the best out of the relationships with Doug in the cockpit? That's a man that has got lessons to teach so many of us. Absolutely. And don't let the bastards grind you down. I know that was from Norman Stanley Fletcher in Parrish, wasn't he? That was his philosophy. So I was delighted that Colin shares the same philosophy. Absolutely. Thank you, mate. Thank you, mate.

1:01:45I really hope you enjoyed this conversation. If you want to, you can check out the back catalogue of high-performance content wherever you're enjoying this episode. And I hope that there was something in there that just made you think a bit more about your life, about the way that you're living. And maybe there's someone you know who needs to hear this conversation. If there is, make sure you send it on to them. And also hit subscribe wherever you're enjoying this episode. and we'll see you again soon for another High Performance.

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