By the time navigator Eric Burke came on the scene, the Blenheim had been replaced on operations by more modern American equipment, and the war had shifted its main focus to Italy.

“I was posted to 13 Squadron; it would have been in January ’45 that we started ops. We were converting from Baltimores to Bostons, and we started operating mostly over the Po Valley. We were in support of the 8th Army basically. The army used to set out oil drums in the shapes of letters, L, E or something, and give us courses to bomb. We did recces, we were light-armed reconnaissance people, at comparatively low-level, bombing and strafing troops and MT columns, and going for bridges. Getting towards the end of the war, but to me it was quite a tough three months. We did about twenty-seven ops as far as I remember.

“One night we were flying one of these army co-ops, climbing to a higher height than normal, and we stalled. We recovered, but we still had a bomb load aboard. So the pilot pulled up and said, ‘sorry about that folks, we’ll go up again’, at which stage, the gunner called up: ‘he’s gone!’ (The wireless operator was sat in a hatch at the back.) The pilot was usually quick on the uptake, and he said: ‘what do you mean, he’s gone?’ ‘He’s baled out’. So we had to drop our bombs in the Adriatic. We came back, and the gunner was quite upset, so we said to him, ‘you go to bed, we’ll talk about this in the morning’. We then found out that Bill had come down, lost a flying boot on the way, but he came down luckily on our side of the bomb line. The army picked him up and he returned to us the next day.”

THE GERMAN VIEW

Prior to establishing great success as a night fighter pilot defending his homeland, Heinz Rökker flew the Ju 88 in the Mediterranean.

“I started action in 1942 in Africa, against Malta and North Africa, Sicily, and Crete. We came back to Belgium, then once more to Sicily in 1943, and then we came back, Rommel was defeated at that time.

“I was shot down once, in Africa. I shot down a Wellington and one motor was burning, so we flew very slowly and I had too much speed and so I flew past them and he fired with the front turret with two machine guns. Two motors were hit and I was hit and my observer hurt his leg. I saw that the temperature was too high on one of the motors and stopped it. We were very near the ground because I came from 1,000 metres to 200 or 300 metres and so I tried to fly with one motor. Then the other motor began to go higher, and because we were very low we could not jump out. It was very dangerous, so I decided to belly land and all was good.

“My first shoot-down was a Beaufort, in daylight – the only one. They were en route to Messina to drop torpedoes and we were en route from Sicily to Crete. We had a very new Ju 88. We were flying at 1,000 metres and the weather was good, we looked down and then two ’planes came across our route. We suddenly saw the roundel and we got down and in the same moment they dropped their torpedoes. I shot too early – I made four or five attacks but I didn’t hit anything, but he hit me with his two guns. I could not shoot because I had a problem with my electric gun equipment, only one gun was firing, and at the same moment he touched the water. He broke free but the motor caught fire and so he touched down on the water and they came out, three men, in dinghies.

“We circled them and my radio operator got contact with an E-boat. He told them we had shot down an English aeroplane in the water. They could see where we were and they said we should stay there until they came. I had twenty-five holes in my ’plane, one of them could have been in the wrong place, then it would have been likely that I joined them in the water!

“We lost all our ’planes in Africa. There was an English commando raid, they came in the night and destroyed all our machines. So we had to fly in a Condor 200 from Tobruk. Only our chief could fly with my aeroplane because I landed when it was all over and it was the only aeroplane that was left.

“We had to land many times in the desert. Maintenance in the desert was a problem, with the sand and everything, sand got everywhere. Tobruk was in our hands, the English had to retreat from there, and so there was a big stock of English food. It was the first time I ever ate peaches in tins.”

FAR EAST OPERATIONS

The surprise Japanese attack on the United States Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 7 December 1941, finally brought America fully into the war. US Navy storekeeper chief (SKC) Alfred Rodrigues was about to eat his breakfast when the attack started.

“We heard all these explosions and rushed outside to see aircraft attacking the harbour. We knew they were Japanese because we could see the red discs on them and they were flying so low you could see the pilots’ faces. I got hold of a machine gun and started shooting back at them. We could see them attacking the B-17s landing after their flight from the States. I never did get to finish my eggs and bacon!”

However, the Americans were by no means alone in fighting the Far East campaign. As had happened in Europe in 1940, initially the Japanese had great success, and rapidly advanced across the Pacific, and the RAF was called upon to help defend India and Ceylon from possible invasion. Jack Biggs at first flew Hurricanes in the defence of Calcutta, operating from an improvised airstrip close to the centre of the city, before moving on to Ceylon.

“When we got to Bombay they said, ‘You’re posted to Calcutta’… to 17 Squadron, and here’s how you get there’. So we walked, and you remember the old-fashioned topees we used to have, sun helmets. We walked up into Red Road, and the ground crew said they had never seen such a sight! Talk about ‘Weary Willie’ and ‘Tired Tim’ in the Comic Cuts. We were so raw to be out there, but we did as we were told, we wore the sun-helmets.

“M C Cotton – ‘Bush’ Cotton – Australian squadron leader (DFC), nice chap, he took over the squadron. On the Red Road you had concrete balustrades as it was a cambered road, so you had to plop down the middle; if you didn’t you were off. Only our squadron and 136 were allowed to land there. At the end of it you had the Maidan, which was a big grass strip that used to run behind the back of Queen Victoria’s monument, where we used to hang our parachutes to dry. Sometimes we used the grass strip if it was dry, but if it was wet we used the road. You literally came down Old Court House Street, you had buildings on either side, and you did your approach and landed on Red Road. It was only about 600 yards from Chowringi which is the main thoroughfare of Calcutta.

“When we were not on immediate readiness, you had fifteen or thirty minutes stand-by or you had set-down, so you were clear, you could do what you liked. That’s how they kept the squadron, on immediate readiness in which case your parachute was in the ’plane for you to jump in, and you had them on the end of the road so you could take-off quickly, there was no use trying to taxi them out. We were the aerial defence of Calcutta.

“This was about October ’42, and they’d just lost Rangoon, so we didn’t have the upper hand. If they wanted any assistance to do any sweeps on the Arakan, the CO or the flight commander, would say, ‘You, you and you, take the Hurricanes’, four of you or six of you, a detachment, we’d fly to Chittagong and across the Bay of Bengal. Then we’d refuel and go down the Arakan to Ramry and Cox’s Bazaar and places like that, and do what was needed to try and shoot up the Japs. When you got to Chittagong a big Sikh major would give you the bomb-line, tell you where it was. When you got there probably it was somewhere completely different, and you ended up shooting your own troops up, which happened quite often, because it was so hit and miss.

“We used to be on night readiness for the Japs coming in to Calcutta. We’d go down to a forward grass strip, and we were scrambled from there. I got scrambled one night, and I was number two because I was only a lowly sergeant pilot – my number one didn’t take off, and I took off on my own; I had to because we’d been scrambled, but he couldn’t get going. I got vectored onto this thing, and I kept doing what the controller was telling me to do, I was scared to death. I saw this thing ahead and I thought, ‘I think I’ve got it’, and he saw me at the same time. He scarpered, and I thought: ‘Thank Christ for that!’ Firing guns at night is no fun! It makes a hell of a lot of flashes and you go blind for a few seconds. Then the Japs did come and bomb Calcutta. But I was on sick leave, because I’d contracted dysentery. That’s why I missed the bombing; perhaps they wouldn’t have bombed if I’d been there? When I got back Calcutta was an empty city – the people had all left. I had friends who had watches in the repairers and they were still there because everyone fled to the hills, they were terrified.

“We used to have a rest from the Red Road, and go to Alipore, which was a big concrete runway. Again, we used to go to a forward strip for our night readiness, because they thought we could probably catch them before they got to the city. During the monsoons they used to put metal planking down and say, ‘Come in, don’t worry, you’ll be all right’. It looks as though you’ve got six inches of water, which you had, but you had something solid underneath. Then we went up to Agartala, up on the Assam border, Imphal way, and from there we used to do sweeps.

“Going out on the boat, we had this sergeant major, and he gave us talks. ‘You air force boys, you pilot types, don’t you worry, you’ve got nothing to fear from those Japs. Their eyesight is so poor, they won’t even know you’re there.’ I was down at Chittagong once, and the Japs came over the end of the bloody runway doing slow rolls! Because the advanced warning system was so pathetic, nobody knew they were there. I thought: ‘Oh, they’re the blokes who can’t see!’

“We used to do weather recces on our own, ’cause with two you were running the risk of hitting each other in the cloud. When it was your turn, you just hoped to God it would be a nice day. The last one, I must have got up to about 25,000 feet, and there wasn’t a break at all. So I just came down, and that’s when you had to remember where your railway lines were, because you had no ruddy idea, you didn’t do any dead-reckoning and say, ‘I’ve done 300 miles at so-and-so…’ You just came down and then you got back to the unit, and thought ‘Oh God I’m a clever bloody pilot, I’ve found a way home’.

“Tex Barrick was flight commander and we were doing a sweep, down Ramry and Cox’s Bazaar. We were shooting up troops, and we got them on the latrines, which was rather gratifying. Poor souls, I don’t think they appreciated it. Tex had one that went up in the breech, we had cannons, and it blew his top panels out. Of course that made flying a bit of a problem, so I took him into Cox’s Bazaar and I landed at about 120 to make sure he didn’t stall.

“The Japs used to put trip wires across the rivers; just about the height they expected you to be flying, so they wanted you to fly into them. And they had a lighthouse there with remote-controlled guns. They had no men there, but you’d approach this just off the end of Ramry, and suddenly there’d be bullets flying past your head, and it was this lighthouse with machine guns set up in it; remote controlled by somebody down the bottom. They were crafty people; very brave too. A couple of times we were sent up to chase some Dinahs away, but mostly we were ground-strafing because we had a 20mm cannon, and they were formidable when you were hitting enemy ground units.

“They said we were going down for the defence of Ceylon to Trincomalee, China Bay. It was a grass strip again, then we were posted down to Vavuniya, which is in the middle of Ceylon. We were on the unit with 135 Squadron, and they said, ‘You’re both here, and you’re going to change your aircraft, and it’s a toss-up whether you get Thunderbolts or Spitfires.’ I don’t know whether the two COs tossed up or not, but ‘Bush’ Cotton got the Spitfires, and the other squadron got the Thunderbolts – that was in April ’44.

“One day we went on a sweep with Bradbury and Shorty Miller, a Canadian. Bradbury was an Australian, and Fred Pepper and myself were Englishmen. We went in two twos, I was with Shorty Miller. We attacked a gun emplacement down the Irrawaddy. Bradbury went in, and suddenly Fred went straight in; we never knew what happened to him, he just fell out of the sky. We got back to base and the CO asked: ‘What’s happened?’ and we said, ‘Fred Pepper’s not with us anymore’. Fred had left his money, as we all did, and we all got pissed on Fred’s money. Because that was the way you did it, otherwise you’d never take off again.

“Flying a Spitfire at night was tough, actually it’s not flying it at night, it’s landing it that’s the problem. You didn’t have any of those beautiful runway lights, they used to run down with a torch and light them, and then as soon as you’d landed they’d run down and put them out! That was those gooseneck things; it was primitive stuff, but I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, it was really most enjoyable.

“We escorted Sir Bertram Ramsey the admiral of the fleet, C-in-C Far East. He was on the Queen Elizabeth and we flew by him with our Spitfires, and they had some Beaufighters as well. We came in and landed, and a Beaufighter spun in on circuit, just off the edge of the field. Because Rowdy and I had been on this escort, the CO said, ‘Would you like to go to the funeral of the Beaufighter boys?’ So we went to represent the squadron. They had AC2s and LACs carrying the coffin, and they buried them the next day. The coffin seeped, and all the gunge came down this poor airman’s bush shirt. I felt so sorry for the lad, it was disgusting really. How the hell he ever got over it I don’t know.

“By then they’d built a runway at China Bay, because the Yanks came in with their Superforts, and they took over the mess. We used to eat in their mess rather than ours ’cause the food was far better. One day we lost a pilot, he was an American. One of the bearers brought in his Christmas cards, and the caption inside said ‘don’t worry, it may never happen’. He’d hit a kite hawk taking off on the Red Road, a simple way of going, just piled in. That brought a lump to the old throat you know, you think ‘that could happen to me’.

“I did an air test in an aeroplane, it had been into maintenance. All you did was just stall it and make sure that the wings didn’t fall off; you couldn’t do any more. The CO wanted to have a Balbo, a twelve-squadron formation. We often had them, but obviously not everybody could fly so having done my air test, I didn’t get the chance. Willie Buchan took the aircraft up that I’d tested, they did a break right, and poor old Willie spun in – he baled out. He could have been a bit too enthusiastic on his break, but then again you can do a high-speed stall. It’s only a question of losing your flying ability, whether it’s a high-speed or a low-speed; if you lose it, you lose it.”

Sergeant Charlie Browning also flew Hurricanes, this time with 42 Squadron at Ondaw in Burma.

“I joined up in ’42, but eventually by early ’45 I was on the squadron. It’s always extremely difficult if you have to go to war, but the best part is when you’re winning, and right at the end.”

Having flown both the Hurricane and later on the Spitfire with the same unit, Jack Biggs was very clear which of the two he liked the best.

“I preferred the Hurricane to the Spitfire. She was such a lovely old thing, she wouldn’t misbehave and you could be as rough as you wanted, she’d never let you down. She wasn’t fickle; the Spitty could be on occasions, you had to make sure that for one thing you turned all the way into the deck, rather than come in with the oleo down and over-heating, and you had to taxi like nobody’s business. But the Hurricane, you didn’t have an oleo sticking down in front of your air intake or radiator, it was purely and simply a well-designed aircraft, that had the radiator in the middle.

“I think when Charlie Browning talked about his first take-off, he about summed it up. It’s just like he said, your head in the ‘office’ and you haven’t got a clue what you’re doing and you’re pulling back on the stick. They were so fast by comparison with what we’d flown. To be tootling along at about 180 miles an hour and not knowing what you’re doing, it was a bit disconcerting.

“It lent itself to its duties – it was a gun platform and an absolutely wonderful aircraft to fly. I liked the fact that when you stalled it, it behaved so beautifully. There might be a little bit of a wing wobble, but for the most part it would come straight down. But the Spitty sometimes, when you were stalling, she could probably flick a wing on you, and you’d get yourself in a spin if you weren’t careful.”

Tim Elkington too, arrived in theatre, but too late to get involved in any meaningful operations. He mainly flew Spitfires, plus the occasional Mustang and Thunderbolt.

“We had the aircraft but no real task set for us. Thus most flights were just flights of fancy, there were no comparative or operational trials. Except for the P-47, where we did dive-bombing, gun and napalm trials. My canopy shattered one day whilst over Everest and I was in shirt-sleeves! The best use of some aircraft (P-47 and P-51) was taking me down to Trincomalee to visit my WRNS girlfriend. I got down there one afternoon, got a room, unpacked, only to find she had left for the hills. So re-pack, re-start (fortunately) and off into the wild blue yonder en route to Ratmalana, although there was just one problem, it was getting dark. Where the hell are the lighting switches? I had never flown it at night before. I climbed higher and higher to keep the sun as illumination. I finally found them, but the radio failed and I was alone up there in the dark without a friend. Or any idea of how to get down. At last – CONTACT! I was way out into the ocean, but got down, into a mail van, and up to the hills overnight, where I camped on the Queen’s Hotel floor until dawn.”

Jack Rose also encountered the Thunderbolt very late in the war, while he was officer commanding 113 Squadron in Burma; he was not impressed by it.

“Right towards the end, about May, we were down in Burma at Kwetnge, and we flew the Hurricanes back to Wangjing in the Imphal valley and got rid of them. Then the first Thunderbolts came and compared to the Hurricanes, they looked like huge sort of flying dustbins! The AOC was there to see the first one come in and the American colonel pilot said, ‘Would you like to fly it?’ However he didn’t want to, so he got in it and just had a look around. When he got out he was asked by the colonel what he thought of it, and he said: ‘Well it’s a marvellous piece of machinery but I can’t see it superseding the aircraft!’”

The Burma campaign also made substantial use of transport aircraft and supply-dropping bombers in supporting army operations deep in the jungle. Pete Jackson was one such crewman.

“I was an air gunner on 194 Squadron during the Battle for Burma, also paratroop jump master on the invasion of Rangoon. When war ended I was attached to 232 Squadron (Liberator and C-54), repatriating POWs back home to Australia via the Cocos Islands.”

Mike Nicholson trained to fly the Liberator in Canada, then found himself flying one out to the Far East to join in the supply operations.

“We collected a brand new Liberator from Montreal to fly it out to the Far East. We flew first to Gander in Newfoundland via Goose Bay. I was twenty-three years old, and in charge of a crew of ten. The longest leg we flew was fourteen-and-a-half hours. We set off for the Azores, eleven-and-a-half hours in 10/10ths cloud and I was told to let down by the Canadian navigator. I said, ‘Are you sure? I can’t see a thing.’ We broke cloud 200 feet above the sea and went straight into Lajes, Azores.

“We arrived on 358 Squadron at Jessore. I remember the fruit bats, and the vultures who would appear every three days or so and overeat. In the mess there was a fan in the ceiling and a rope going out through a hole in the wall to a punkah-wallah, the original ‘electric’ fan. We used to play the gramophone endlessly, and I am always taken straight back there whenever I hear the Ink Spots, the Mills Brothers, Paper Doll and Myra Hess.

“Our duties were to drop supplies to the Chindits at drop zones (DZs) in the jungle. We also supplied the Chinese, flying over the hump to Kunming (Ledo Road, 1,000 miles long, was built by the Americans and abandoned after the war). We dropped propaganda leaflets in seventeen languages, so we had to be careful to drop the right ones to the right people, the language changing as we went south. We also dropped the occasional Frenchman into Saigon, French Indo China. On long night flights our wireless operator could pick up Californian commercial radio 7,000 miles away as we flew home after a drop.

“The ground crew were led by Wing Commander Blackburn, the engineering officer. I don’t know what he did, but he tinkered with the carburettors and transformed the Liberator. With bomb loads of 3,000 to 8,000 pounds we had a range between 1,800 and 3,000 miles; fully loaded you had nine tons of fuel. The engines were very reliable, even though they were so complex – there was a danger of them blowing up if you let the turbos overspeed.

“On operations we usually flew at 18,000 feet maximum. The navigator warned when we were approaching the DZ, usually in steep jungle valleys surrounded by mountains, so we reduced height until we were flying just above the trees. Dakotas were better at it then us because they were more manoeuvrable. The DZ was a clearing with either a smoke or sheet indicator. The navigator handed over to the bomb aimer for guidance; flaps down, open up the engines, down to 200 feet, bomb doors open. Package away, flaps up slowly otherwise you’ll sink, and you’re only at 200 feet, then climb up – will you be able to turn in time? And repeat at the same place.

“During the build-up of the south east monsoon, one chap flew right into the centre of a storm and lost 1,500 feet altitude and didn’t know which way up he was. They were impossible to avoid, and lasted for up to fourteen hours. We had torrential rain and lightning and only UV lights lit the control panel. The storms buffeted the ’plane and you could see the wings flexing – it had marvellous wings. We would get St. Elmo’s Fire coming off the props.

“Our longest trips were sixteen hours, and landing in the dark was pretty tricky. You’d let down through the storm, put the landing lights on and look out for the flarepath. They just had simple paraffin flares, and the runway was awash from all the monsoon rain. Check for drift against the side wind, flaps down, open up the engines and kick it straight just before touchdown, but don’t brake too soon! Taxi back in, press the oil dilution for four minutes then shut down. All is calm.

“Rats got into the food on the camp, then into the aircraft. One aircraft lost two engines after the rats had chewed through the electrics. On one occasion I took off with a full load and had no airspeed indication because the pitot cover had been left on. We got back down OK, and the marvellous engineering officer came racing out in his jeep to meet us, took off the pitot cover and put it in his pocket. We never heard any more about it.

“We did not have an Elsan on board, and one of our crew was particularly smelly, so we always made him go before he got on board. If you had to use the tube, it came out by the rear turret and sprayed all over it, obscuring the gunner’s vision. You had to warn him so that he could turn the turret to one side.”

Navigator Flying Officer David Johnson was also part of the Liberator force at this time.

“As the Japs had retreated south through Burma and Thailand towards Singapore, it was too far for the Liberators to bomb them from their bases in the Bengal area, so 99 and 356 Squadrons were moved to the Cocos Islands, only just over 1,000 miles from Singapore, from where they could go and get back. We then went to Kolar to do a thirteen hours refresher and familiarisation course, although I think by then we were pretty well familiar! Our next move was to collect another Liberator to deliver to 99 Squadron and to complete our posting to 356 Squadron on the Cocos Islands. By then, the war was nearly over and our main occupation was to locate and drop supplies to the army on the ground in the Singapore/Sumatra area, and subsequently the aircraft had panniers fitted in the bomb bay, with not very comfortable seats to form part of the ferry service for the less fit army POWs from Singapore/Cocos/Ceylon/Bombay to get them back to the UK as quickly as possible.

“In November 1945, 356 Squadron was disbanded and I navigated a Liberator to Cawnpore in India, which was the collection point under lease-lend where there were hundreds of American aircraft, most of which were just bulldozed.”

Less well known was the unsung activity of second-line units. Squadron Leader Jack Parry commanded 221 Group Communications Flight, which was formed in Calcutta in early April 1942 and based at Dum Dum airfield.

“This was when the whole of the RAF in Burma finally evacuated Magwe (the Burma Oil Company’s oil fields in the Irrawaddy) and retreated to India, where the group had been reformed in Alipore, Calcutta. We had arrived with seven or eight Tiger Moths, a Curtiss Wright P22 Falcon and a Yale – and to add to these the flight acquired a motley assortment of civilian light aircraft, plus a Dominie, Anson, Harvard, two or three Lysanders and a non-operational Hurricane IIb. We were also given our ‘flagship’, a nearly new Lockheed 12A, as the AOC’s aircraft.

“Our duties consisted of carrying army and air force VIPs, ranging from the GOC-in-C (Lord Wavell) and the AOC–in–C (India), all over eastern India and to operational areas on the Burma front. In eighteen months I landed at no less than fifty-five airfields/landing grounds in over twenty different types of aircraft. Maintenance of the menagerie by our ground crews, British and Burmese, was magnificent, much of it in primitive conditions and with lots of improvisation. In September ’42 we were designated air HQ (Bengal) communications unit, having grown too big for our boots as a squadron. In about February 1943 AHQ (Bengal) moved from Calcutta to Barrackpore some twenty-five miles north of the city, and our unit was shifted to the Barrackpore racecourse, from which we flew for about four months before returning to Dum Dum.

“I managed to fly unscathed slap bang through the middle of a balloon barrage covering the Kidderpore docks, Calcutta. I was bringing back two army officers in the Yale from Ranchi to Calcutta. It was getting dark, the sun was setting behind us, and I was losing height and musing at what a pretty sight the Hooghly river looked, as a bright silver streak in the dusk, when there was a squeak from behind me, ‘See the balloons?’ I hadn’t – and too late to take evasive action, I could only duck down a bit, hope and keep straight. Seconds seemed like minutes as balloons shot by overhead and cables whizzed past our wingtips. My passengers’ remarks when we landed were more polite than I expected – perhaps they were too scared to say any more. Strong though a Yale is, I wouldn’t have put much money on it as a wire-cutter.

“We received a request for an RAF staff officer to be taken to Chittagong; we kept one of the DH Moths ready with a BVAF (Burma volunteer air force) pilot. On arrival of the officer we discovered that he was a group captain, had a double-barrelled name and he was an officer of RFC vintage. He considered it degrading to be flown to Chittagong by a BVAF pilot of PO rank, particularly in an aircraft such as a Moth, and insisted that he would take the aircraft and fly it himself to Chittagong. Although we were to provide an air transportation service and not to hire aircraft, we reluctantly provided him with a Tiger Moth after taking into full consideration his rank as a group captain.

“So off he flew, but by late afternoon there was no sign of his return. Then we received a signal from him, ‘Slight accident, aircraft OK. Send a propeller. Flying back.’ In the evening before closing down for the day another signal came in, ‘Send tyres and wheels too’. That night a third signal was received, ‘Send undercarriage. Aircraft OK. Flying back.’ Next morning while we were deliberating whether to send another aircraft to pick up the group captain from Chittagong and/or arrange a ground party to bring back the aircraft to Dum Dum by rail, yet another signal came in. This time it stated, ‘Send tail wing unit complete with rudder. Aircraft OK.’ So instead of sending all the spares we sent another Tiger Moth to retrieve the groupie and arranged for a ground party to bring back the aircraft by rail.

“One day LAC Bibby, my clerk, told me that he had never flown in an aircraft and was unhappy about it. If the war were to terminate and he had to go back to Epping where his home was, he did not want his friends and relations to know that he had never taken a flight in an aircraft. I therefore informed Sgt Goldsworthy about Bibby’s plight and asked him if at any time he was putting an aircraft on air test, to allow LAC Bibby to take a flip. ‘Goldy’ remembered the request and one afternoon when they were about to air test the Zlin, Bibby went for a flight. I was in the orderly room below the grandstand of the Barrackpore racecourse when I heard the Zlin taking off from the strip between the race-track rails. Very soon afterwards I heard the crash tender and the ambulance racing along and the hue and cry of personnel in high pursuit. I ran out and saw the Zlin rocking on a tree-top at the far end of the race-track. Soon Bibby appeared with no injury, followed by Sgt Crombie, the pilot of the Zlin, also unhurt but looking very dejected. Bibby however was smiling and looking very pleased with himself. Sgt Crombie said that he pulled up a little too late to clear the big tall tree. Bibby said he now had something to tell his relatives and friends in the pubs at Epping; he had not only flown in an aircraft but had the rare distinction of climbing down a tall tree without having to climb up the tree first.”

FLEET AIR ARM

Substantial Fleet Air Arm forces operated throughout the Pacific war from a sizeable fleet of aircraft carriers. Having survived his Martlet flying in the Western Desert, Jack Routley returned home to convert to the far more capable Hellcat, ready for service in the Far East.

“885 was the Hellcat squadron in the escort carrier, HMS Ruler in the Far East. We formed up in Ballyhalbert in Northern Ireland in 1944. I took command of the squadron in October/November, and we worked up. Our carrier came by, we did our deck-landings, and we shipped out to the Far East. By the time we got there we had twelve Hellcats and four Avengers. We didn’t know until we left Colombo where we were going, and we were relieved and pleased to hear it was Sydney. After two or three months everybody was rusty, and we had a ship full of aircraft but we couldn’t do any flying en route. So we had to do a work-up in the Sydney area. Then we headed out for the forward area and we operated in and out of the Leyte Gulf, which was halfway between Sydney and the operating area.

“The Japanese didn’t offer the opportunity for combat. They didn’t take any action against us; we were providing fighter cover and anti-submarine for the fleet train, which was the logistics support organisation to the forward area. The fleet train included escort carriers, destroyers, hospital ships, oil tankers, naval stores tankers, and things like that. It brought everything from personnel, to mail, to avgas, and would rendezvous with the striking fleet during replenishment periods. The Japanese were getting heavily beaten-up by the Americans anyway; most of their naval stuff had disappeared.

“By that time, I had done a spell at the navy fighter school, which was at Henstridge near Yeovilton, and I did the RAF Central Gunnery School course at Sutton Bridge, which was a sort of ‘Top Gun’ course during World War Two. They had all the aces gathered together to guide us, Al Deere, ‘Sailor’ Malan, Johnny Checketts, people like that, and it was very intensive Spitfire air-to-air firing and air-to-ground, air tactics and fighter leader, and we did ground school work at night on ballistics and interceptions. Excellent value, and I emerged from that and my experience as an instructor, flying Spitfires at the navy fighter school, and reckoned I could take on anything the enemy offered. From that moment I never saw another enemy aircraft!

Wg Cdr Al Deere DSO OBE DFC and bar flew with 54, 601 and 611 Squadrons and ended the war with seventeen victories; Gp Capt Adolph ‘Sailor’ Malan DSO and bar DFC and bar was Fighter Command’s highest scoring pilot with twenty-seven victories while flying with 74 Squadron and as Biggin Hill wing leader; Wg Cdr John Checketts DSO DFC flew with 611 and 485 Squadrons and 142 Wing, with a final score of fourteen victories.

“The first series of operations during our time there, was against a group of islands called the Sakishima Group; it was during the time that the Americans were sorting Okinawa. They were concerned that the Sakishima Islands could be used as a staging post for the Japanese to interfere with Okinawa. So the British Pacific Fleet was targeting the area. We covered five replenishment periods during that time, the fleet would attack for several days, then withdraw to a replenishment area 300 or 400 miles away to seaward of the mainland, and they would stay for two or three days, and top-up with personnel and stores. The aircrew could be rested because we provided the air cover for fighter and anti-submarine protection while they were refuelling. That would have been a memorable time if the Japanese had had the resources.

“We went on to the attack where the British Pacific Fleet was part of the combined fleet with the US fleet, for operations against the Japanese mainland. Not to be forgotten was the Kamikaze threat, which was a very major concern, and the Japanese made good use of this. Against the American wooden-decked carrier it was a very grave threat. The British carriers had steel armour-plated decks so Kamikaze attacks against British carriers would tend not to be too disruptive. They bounced off or, on occasion, they hit the island and were swept over the side with minor casualties, but flying was able to be resumed fairly soon afterwards.

“The Hellcat was a really good carrier aircraft; the Martlet had a narrow-track undercarriage and tended to ground-loop on landing on a runway unless you were alert. It was OK for flight-deck operations, but narrow-track undercarriages were not things that I was very fond of; even in the Seafire, that tended to bounce around a bit. The pros for the Hellcat were performance; it was an absolutely wonderful carrier aircraft. It had a big wide undercarriage, and it sat down contentedly on a deck when you arrived. It had the performance to out-perform the Zero, it had speed and altitude advantage. I don’t know about manoeuvrability, maybe the Zero was a more manoeuvrable aircraft; I’m not sure. So the Hellcat was good value, it had six .5 calibre machine guns, rocket rails, and could carry 500lb bombs; it was a versatile aircraft and a good one for the theatre.”

Jim Langford was also in theatre at this time, but in his case he was part of the Fleet Air Arm’s bombing force, which extended its operations right into the Japanese homeland.

“We joined 820 Squadron Grumman Avengers, and we waited for HMS Indefatigable to come back from her first set of operations against the Japanese. We eventually joined her, went up to Japan, dropped bombs on aerodromes, shipping, and the last raid the British Pacific Fleet did was on the day the war finished, 15 August. 820 Squadron lost one observer, and the Seafire squadron (887) lost one of their pilots on the last day of the war.

“The Pacific Fleet stayed up there, and we had been about 100 miles off the coast when they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. And then we came back to Australia, did a goodwill tour of Australia and New Zealand, and then eventually took passage on a ship home to arrive back in March ’46.”