RCAF
Western Air Command, Bomber Command Europe, 1940-45

Cliff Black (1917 - 2016) was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. He joined the RCAF in 1940 and trained on Fleet Finch's in Windsor Mills, Quebec before being sent to Kingston, Ont where he trained on Harvards. He was commissioned to Western Air Command at Patricia Bay, B.C. with 120 Squadron where they trained on Hudsons. After the attack on Pearl Harbout he moved to Coal Harbour on the north end of Vancouver Island where they flew Stranraer aircraft on submarine patrols over the Pacific.

He was then sent to the East Coast to setup the Instrument Flying School with 161 Sqn near Halifax. In January 1944 he was sent overseas to Europe where he flew 18 operations in Lancasters with 419 Sqn. In January 1945 Cliff and his crew were posted to 426 Sqn, where he was awarded the DFC.

Interview with Cliff Black

Cliff Black, RCAF. Interviewed July 2011

Missing Tape: After the original interview with Cliff Black was conducted, it was discovered that the video tape from the second part of his interview had gone missing.

In 2022, a search was undertaken which led to the discovery of a single backup DVD copy which had been made shortly after the interview, and which had been kept in the archives of the TMM Library.

This DVD became the source of part two of Cliff Black's interview. After previewing the contents, it was discovered that the last few minutes of the DVD copy had unrecoverable disk errors which fortunately, only affected the last minute of Cliff Black's interview. A summary of this last minute was partially transcribed and is included below.

Story about Cliff Black's DFC: During the interview, Cliff talked about two incidents that he requested should not be recorded. His request was granted for the first story, but for the second story the camera was left running.

In this second story Cliff described the mission for which he was awarded the DFC. It was out of modesty that he had asked this not be recorded.

We have chosen to leave this story in with the interview because we consider it important to Cliff's legacy and for his Squadrons significant contribution to the war effort. We hope that Cliff and his family will understand and accept our decision on his behalf. He served his country well and considering he and his crew put themselves in harms way on every mission they flew in an effort to secure our freedom, we feel this is the right decision.

Partial transcript of the last minute of Cliff's interview.

57:50 CB: ...lots of time when you're in the bomb line, when the armies are moving in Europe you have to have accurate (information) on where the army is, because at night you can't tell anything.

In daytime maybe you can see far enough to see the units or whatever but, the Battle of the Bulge you remember, you've heard about that, when the Germans finally (broke through), you could see it at night, the artillery fire,

Interviewer: you were able to see the gunfire from the air?

58:30 CB ...that night the gunfire was particularly impressive.

The next 15 seconds are inaudible, and the interview ends. The interviewers then thank Cliff for his time and generosity.