In 1943, BBC correspondent Wynford Vaughan Thomas and his recording engineer Reg Pidsley survived a night-fighter encounter during a bomber raid on Berlin. Tom Allett recounts their story
An attack on Berlin was enough to test the nerve of even the most experienced Bomber Command crews, so imagine the fear felt by war correspondents when participating in a bombing raid over ‘the big city’. That was the situation facing BBC commentator Wynford Vaughan Thomas and recording engineer Reginald Pidsley on the night of September 3, 1943.
The RAF had offered the BBC War Recording Unit a rare chance to send a reporter on a night raid against Germany and capture recordings of combatants in action. After agreeing to take the assignment, Vaughan Thomas and Pidsley travelled to Bomber Command HQ in Grantham, Lincolnshire. There, they learned they would fly with 207 Squadron based at RAF Langar in Nottinghamshire. Surprisingly, given the potential propaganda opportunity the raid offered, the BBC team was asked to “not put any trimmings” on their experiences, just “tell the truth.”
They arrived at Langar on September 2, met their crew and spent the evening in the mess, “drinking and singing rude songs” as Vaughan Thomas later recounted. As t…
