Tracy Brown speaking about aviation

To hear veteran Tracy Brown click below.

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Well, my job was observation - taking photographs ten miles over with these faster planes, so that we could get back, and all of a sudden it's just as though you went plump into a stone wall. These bursts of shell fire, which you've seen - all of a sudden they explode. It's just like running into a brick wall, that's all there is to it.

It's a fascinating thing. It's a matter of having in your mind exactly what you're going to do. Don't hit telephone wires, don't try to turn unless you've got a thousand feet, and the toughest one I had was later on. These special fighters, they gave me a week off and then they sent me up, and the Germans were retreating and this was at Tournai a town on the river between France and Belgium. My job was to pin-point the condition of the bridges so our troops could cross. I'd fly up here at about five hundred feet. I had a Canadian observer. His name was Justin. You turned around and you could here ping ping ping. I don't think that he knew what it was, you know, but as the bullets go through the pilot fuselage and you can hear this little ping ping and we just got through and we were gonna head for home when a bullet hit the oil tank and from then on, don't ask me. Then my oil, all over my goggles, smothered in oil. I thought, thank God it wasn't a gasoline tank. And we got used to landing in small fields.

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