The air contingents from Belgium and Holland were two of the smaller groups to see service in Britain, and they were distinct from the others previously examined, in that their governments began their time in exile with substantial colonial holdings still in their possession. True, the French also had imperial territories, but because of the partition of France into the occupied northern area and the puppet administration in Vichy, de Gaulle was sometimes forced to seek colonial loyalty to his cause at the point of a gun. This is not to say, however, that either Belgium or Holland enjoyed a trouble-free time in exile. In the Belgian Congo there were some 48,000 white Europeans and approximately 200 indigenous tribes, some friendly, some not so. The Belgians would have preferred to conscript a large army of liberation from the Congo, but this would have exposed the rest of the population to a potentially disastrous situation, therefore the government’s fears for the safety of those settlers led them to rely only upon volunteers.
The Dutch position was more complex still. Out in Indonesia, the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) comprised some seventy million souls kept in check by a mere 80,000 Dutch colonists. Like the Belgians, they could in theory have drafted a vast force from the NEI, but they probably would not have had a colony to go back to at the war’s end. Worse still, the territories lay in the direct path of the Japanese. The Dutch had taken a stand against the Japanese invasion of French Indo-China by refusing to transport oil and other goods via the NEI to Japan, and since the holdings promised fabulous wealth for any power which could secure them, Tokyo made elaborate invasion plans long before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The military defences that existed were thinly spread and in some cases obsolete, such as Gen van Oyen’s air force, and it was believed by many and known by some that any spirited attack by the Japanese would have been impossible to repel. Both governments therefore had plenty of problems with which to contend when they arrived in Britain during 1940. From the British point of view, however, colonies were good. Colonies meant first and foremost that they might not have to pay for the military upkeep of the reconstituted armed forces, and they also meant that having such external preoccupations might keep the governments themselves relatively stable.
But each administration’s reputation preceded it into exile. The Belgians had been totally overwhelmed by the German Sixth Army in May 1940 as part of Hitler’s attack in the west. Some 6,500 Belgian soldiers, many of them reservists, were killed in the onslaught, and about 15,000 civilians also died. Faced with a defeat on this scale, King Leopold surrendered his country and her defences to the invader on 28 May. What darkened the skies as far as the British authorities were concerned were the rampant accusations of treachery which accompanied the collapse of the Belgian war effort. The French were even more convinced that a substantial Fifth Column had been active inside Belgium. As one historian phrased it, the circumstances under which Belgium succumbed ‘led to a marked decline in appreciation of all things Belgian.’1 Furthermore, the French were adamant that Belgian refugees, and even some of the military made themselves scarce on French soil, such was the fear of a stab in the back. As a result, Britain was virtually forced to admit large numbers of civilians both before and after the defeat of France in June 1940.
As for the Dutch, they clung to their neutral status as if it were a talisman warding off evil spirits. Dutch intelligence warned time and again that the Germans, if only for strategic reasons, were almost certain to invade should a war in the west ignite, but the government preferred to hope that such predictions were wrong. To that extent, the Dutch forces had not even mobilised when the Germans attacked on 10 May. The reservists were hastily contacted, but only the small regular army was able to do battle, though it managed to scramble together an impressive show of resistance. But the real damage to the Dutch cause had all been in the planning, or lack of it, and after six days the government ordered a general surrender. By that time the army and navy had sailed for Britain, and Queen Wilhemina had arrived to take up her royal exile. The small Dutch Air Force had also managed to get some of its personnel onto the boats.
Yet even though the government had been forced into exile, it still preferred to adopt a largely neutral stance, at least for the first few months. Holland had endeavoured to maintain good relations with Britain since the mid-sixteenth century. It was a relationship which was mutually beneficial, for Holland recognised and promoted Britain’s interests in the Western European balance of power, and Britain in return promised to uphold Dutch neutrality. That cosy arrangement no longer applied after 1940. As Janet Eisen has demonstrated, the Dutch government ‘gradually accepted the doctrine of mutual obligation and co-operation’.2 In other words, it would have to throw in its lot with Britain – economically, militarily and politically – because there were no other options available to it.
The early contacts with both governments were therefore on the cool side, but at a military level things were a little better. In theory at least, both nations had a good stock of air expertise which could be effectively utilised in the service of the RAF. The Belgian pre-war order of battle comprised 198 first-line aircraft spread across a range of uses, with army co-operation work, fighters and reconnaissance bombers formed into a regiment each. The Dutch had a smaller force and a different organisation. The emphasis here was on army co-operation, and the second of the two Dutch air regiments was formed entirely for that purpose, the aircraft being the Fokker C.5 and the Koolhoven F.K.51. One group of the first air regiment was reserved for fighters, and the British estimated in 1939 that the Dutch were operating thirty-six Fokker D21s and six Fokker G1s. In all, Holland was defended by approximately 146 first-line aircraft with little in reserve, but no one seriously doubted the professionalism or the abilities of the men in either air force.3
The initial assessment of the incoming aviators after the fall of France was in the same vein, and there was none of the furrowing of brows which had greeted the news that the Poles and the Czechs were heading across the Channel in large numbers. Even before France had asked for an armistice, the Air Ministry was busy discussing plans for the formation of national units, and it is clear from the records that the Dutch and the Norwegians were to be granted squadrons as soon as the personnel became available –a status initially denied the Poles, despite their considerable numbers. The Directorate of Intelligence estimated that the number of suitable Belgians who had made their escape might not be sufficient to man a full squadron, but they had no objection to the rapid formation of flights which could then be attached to British squadrons. This must be set against the decision taken at the same time to reject Czechoslovak crews, and Archibald Boyle was the guiding hand behind all of it. There can be no doubt that Slavs of whatever nationality were not to Boyle’s liking, but the West Europeans were an altogether different matter.4
By late May 1940, the Belgians had 180 pilots and ground crew in Britain. They insisted that this was enough to form two squadrons, but it was apparent that the British were not going to entertain the idea because a large injection of RAF technical personnel would have been required to make the units operational. The Belgian government had requested thirty Hurricanes and twenty Blenheims, the argument being that they could re-train pilots quickly enough to fly them in action. Boyle said no, but then offered to take the best pilots available for individual service. ‘The Belgians were disinclined to accept this,’ he minuted, and it was clear from their attitude that they expected the reconstitution of the Belgian Air Force in its entirety. This was always going to be out of the question – they had far fewer men than the Czechoslovaks who had already been pushed into the RAFVR – but on this occasion the British could reasonably use their argument that insufficient numbers made the formation of national squadrons unrealistic. As a result, individual Belgian airmen soon found their way into British fighter squadrons with the blessing of Hugh Dowding, AOC Fighter Command, who needed them badly as the air war with Germany developed.5
On the political front, it was Churchill again who was driving the policies forwards. By early June 1940, the Belgian government was still on French soil, and proposals to form national units of any kind were still subject to French sensitivities. As with the Czechoslovaks, the British decided to play safe and direct any conscripts or volunteers over to the Continent for enlistment. A parliamentary question in the Commons requested confirmation that the Belgians were determined to continue conscripting men in spite of King Leopold’s surrender, and the answer received was an emphatic yes. But this did not mean that Britain would turn away airmen who were considered to have the skills necessary to join British units if vacancies existed, and in response to some urgent prodding by Churchill, the Air Ministry elicited the approval of the Belgian authorities in Paris. The reaction was largely negative. Col Wouters, the Assistant Air Attaché, let it be known that if any transfers to the RAF organisation were to take place, they had to be conducted in the spirit of a future intention to form national squadrons when the circumstances permitted. This the British were reluctant to promise, so as the battle of France drew to a close, those airmen who had been selected for service in Britain got on with their re-training in the knowledge that they might well do their combat flying in France. In the event, most of them returned only to seek evacuation a few days later.
However, yet again the British were faced with a resolute ally, and we have seen before that standing firm usually produced a determination to resist in equal measure. The Belgians were making reasonable demands, but in no way would the RAF allow the establishment of any precedents in regard to allied service in its ranks. Besides, it was clear by July 1940 that yet another government was moving into exile with divisions in its ranks. The Foreign Office heard that several hundred Belgians – mainly Walloons – had applied for service with the Free French, their leaders declaring that they were ‘disgusted with King Leopold and the Belgian government’. Some souls in Whitehall thought the idea a good one, not least because it removed a potential responsibility from British shoulders onto those of de Gaulle, but in the end it was vetoed at a higher level.6
Nevertheless, such divisions merely warned the British that the Belgians would need careful handling if they were to become a bona fide ally in exile. The British experience of Belgian refugees had not been a happy one in general, and it was important to regenerate public confidence in their abilities and commitment to the common cause. As the dust settled on the French beaches after the evacuations in June, it became clear that only a handful of Belgian pilots had managed to get out successfully. The Chiefs of Staff report noted that some twenty or thirty trained men had reached British soil, and about another twenty were believed to be on their way. This was plenty to form a squadron with air crew only, but scarcely any ground crew had managed to get away, therefore Wouters was told firmly that all men would be commissioned or enlisted into the RAFVR. By mid-August, the numbers had risen to ninety-four, of which twenty-eight were already in service with British squadrons or passing through OTUs. But as with the Czechoslovaks, the contingent was top-heavy with officers or professional fliers, both civilian and military, and pleased though the British were that another sixty or so pilots were said to be en route from North Africa, there still remained the problem that no Belgian squadrons could be formed without the necessary ground crew.7
This was a situation which embittered the early relationship with the Belgian military authorities, and as preparations got under way to create the usual agreement with them, the Foreign Office was aware that its guests were a little touchy regarding their new status. It was pointed out in an exchange of notes that Belgium had sought and preserved a strict neutrality both before and after the German attack on Poland, therefore demands that she be treated as a full ally now that her strategy had been exposed as worthless were, to put it mildly, a bit rich. In the eyes of the British, RAFVR membership was a fair compensation, and one which guaranteed active service against the enemy. Anything else would not be on offer, no matter how hard the Belgians pushed. Roger Makins at the Foreign Office decided to soothe the tattered nerves by showing the Belgians a copy of the standard agreement being touted around the offices of the other governments then setting up shop in Britain, but ‘to invest the occasion with slightly more significance’, he thought Alexander Cadogan should be the prime communicator, the logic being that by dealing with the Permanent Under Secretary to the Foreign Office, the Belgians might not feel so put out by the otherwise frosty attitude.
The text of the main agreement differed little from those arranged with the other allied powers in exile. There was no promise to liberate Belgium in the preamble, merely a recognition of ‘the common interest in maintaining the armed forces of Belgium’. This was enhanced by a statement which carefully skirted the term ‘liberation’. All of Belgium’s forces in exile would ‘be employed either for the defence of the United Kingdom, or for the purpose of regaining Belgium, or for other tasks to this end’. This provision contained a multitude of possibilities, and it gave rise to some inter-governmental squabbles later on, most of the emphasis falling on the last clause. In theory, this meant that Belgian forces could have been deployed in any theatre of the war if it could be argued that their activity was helping to win the war as a whole, and therefore by extension, free Belgium from occupation. Furthermore, and unlike other agreements, this one contained no Air Appendix, the Air Ministry having decided at a very early stage that all Belgian aviators would be drafted directly into the RAFVR.8 Thus the British were keeping their hands free of yet another entanglement with an allied power, for in the Belgian case its forces were either directly absorbed into those of the hosts, or remained flexible enough to be deployed anywhere on a technicality. This gave the British the power to prevent the Belgian government from insisting that its forces only took part in operations directly connected with defending Britain or the battle for Belgium – a useful loophole should the Belgians decide that their forces be kept in reserve for such a purpose.
The new agreement was a long time in coming, and the Belgian government spent the first six months of 1941 arguing about jurisdiction. Where no specific Air Appendix existed, the airmen were automatically subject to Royal Air Force law; but in the Belgian Army (approximately 800 strong) their own military codes applied. The Belgian government wanted a re-draft which noted the ‘temporary arrangement’ in regard to the pilots and ground crew, a clause specifying that British law would only apply to RAFVR personnel ‘so long as they continue to serve in that force’. The British were well aware that this created the potential for a later argument based on demands for independent status or at least national squadrons, but in order to see the thing through to a reasonable conclusion, the Foreign Office relented with some reluctance. It was a smart move by the Belgians. By means of the long delay they tested Whitehall’s patience, and without an explicit call for independence they managed to push open the door a little with a carefully worded amendment.9 Yet even this draft failed to satisfy all the parties, and it would not be until 4 June 1942 when the final version was signed, and by that time the Belgians had succeeded in gaining a clause explicitly promising ‘liberation from German occupation’ and a provision which allowed for inter-governmental discussions on the use of their forces.
The Belgians had a long wait before they acquired their first squadron within the RAFVR arrangement. This was not due to the delays surrounding the agreement, but because of the lack of trained air crew and ground staff. Their numbers in Britain increased only gradually, and they were almost entirely dependent on escapees from Europe rather than volunteers from elsewhere. It was not until 12 November 1941 that 350 Fighter Squadron was formed, and even then it took a further six months before the unit was declared fully operational. Once active, however, it delivered a fine record of service. It saw action at Dieppe, and accompanied the advancing allies into France after OVERLORD, finally moving onto its home soil in December 1944.
But before the formation of 350, most Belgian airmen fought their war from within British squadrons, the South African Air Force, and even the occasional French unit, this latter option being open to them for reasons of language and the short but effective joint training scheme initiated in 1940. The Chiefs of Staff reports regularly paid tribute to the skill and courage of the Belgians, and the tally, even by August 1940, stood at ten enemy aircraft confirmed destroyed and one unconfirmed: an impressive haul from a contingent which only had thirty pilots in the air. But still it took a long time to gather and train enough men for a squadron of their own. By August 1941, they felt strong enough to press for a national unit, having amassed a total of 22 men in British fighter squadrons (with 11 of those in 609), a further 38 in fighter OTUs, and another 8 in training schools. When the proposal was put before Sholto Douglas (then AOC Fighter Command), Dore at the DAFL noted that the chances of getting enough ground crew to form a fully integral unit were slight, though he accepted that a slow trickle of about six pilots per month should be enough to cover losses in the air. Dore accepted that the situation was a little touchy, especially given the amount of time and trouble taken with the French to ensure that they manned their own units, but he added: ‘I feel that some weight should be given to political considerations and national prestige’, and if British ground crew could be found, then the squadron should be formed.10
Yet even though their numbers were limited, the Belgians continued to put in a fine performance. By March 1943, they had a total of only 353 men in service, but had accounted for sixty-seven enemy aircraft. The Chiefs of Staff reported the morale in 350 Squadron to be ‘very high’ to ‘excellent’ in all of their reports down to the end of the war. Furthermore, the Belgians had received an added boost on 10 November 1942, when a second fighter squadron, 349, was formed in Nigeria from men who had volunteered for service in the Belgian Congo. At first they flew Tomahawks and spent much of their air time in ferrying duties, but the reputation of 350 prompted the Air Ministry to bring 349 to Britain in the summer of 1943, when it re-formed on Spitfires, becoming operational on 5 June 1943. In fact, by that time the Belgians were in the happy position of having surplus pilots, and entire crews were posted to British units to form Belgian flights. Most of the men in 349 came from the Force Publique, a training scheme in the Congo which provided pilots for both the RAF and the South African Air Force. Apart from around 200 pilots in various stages of training, there was a welcome fillip to the low ground crew numbers with another eighty-five mechanics going through trade testing in Africa. In all, the Air Ministry was becoming decidedly content with its Belgian allies by the end of 1943, and a DAFL minute noted that morale ‘was very high throughout’, and the attitude ‘exemplary’.11
The strength of the relationship should not, however, lead one to suppose that the RAF was unaware of the political problems which plagued most of the exiles during their time in Britain. As with the Czechoslovaks, who pursued their own disastrous attempt at gaining independence in 1943, the Belgian government also made a lunge at the same prize at the same time. At the end of June, the DAFL informed the Air Ministry that there were three types of Belgian personnel then in service: those in the Belgian section of the RAFVR; those of the Belgian Military Aviation section attached to the government, all of whom wore Belgian uniform and were subject to their national military laws, and those of the Force Publique in the Congo. Most of the latter group had escaped through Spain and had trained in South African air schools, later to see action with the South African Air Force. This organisation was too fragmented, argued the DAFL: ‘The total personnel of these three sections combined is only about 1,200 but owing to petty intrigue, personal jealousies and the lack of a co-ordinating head, the problems attached to them and the administrative work entailed is out of all proportion to their size.’12
To solve the problem, the DAFL recommended that all of the Belgian air sections be brought into the RAFVR, in line with the Czechoslovak precedent. In return for sacrificing that slice of independence, they would be granted an inspectorate and a national depot. Wouters, the Air Attaché, was said to be in favour of the scheme, and he seemed to think that most of his airmen would feel likewise. Resistance came from the Minister of National Defence, Pierlot, who preferred to push for independent status in tandem with the Czechoslovaks. It might have been coincidence, but in the very week when the DAFL issued its devastating critique of the Czechoslovak proposals, Pierlot was reported to have been ‘coming round to our way of thinking’. As for the man most likely to become Inspector-General, the DAFL supported Wouters, but in so doing they rejected others who would be unacceptable at any price. Again, as with Janoušek in the Czechoslovak Air Force, the British selected rather than accepted the men who would lead the national sections of the RAFVR.
Further resistance came from the Congo. A request had been made for ambulance and coastal aircraft which had subsequently been rejected by the Air Ministry as unnecessary, but that did not stop at least one senior commander from refusing to transfer any men to Britain. According to the DAFL, he was trying to gather more power to himself ‘irrespective of the greater and more important needs of the Belgian Air Force as a whole.’ In retaliation, the Air Ministry threatened to withdraw training provisions from the Force Publique, and put pressure on the Belgian government to insist that the whole Congo contingent, around 250 men, be posted to Britain for enlistment in the RAFVR. Pierlot at first agreed, then changed his mind, apparently suspecting that there was an ulterior motive behind the plan to gather all the men in Britain. In all probability, there was. Standard Air Ministry procedure when dealing with the smaller allies was to minimise the risk of intrigue and division in the air forces as a result of similar tensions in the national governments, and their method of stabilising the situation usually meant throwing a British blanket in the shape of the RAFVR over the whole force.
In the event, this particular round ended in a draw, at least in the short term. With Pierlot still proving obstructive, the British baited the hook with a promise of six Oxford air ambulances for service in the Congo if all the surplus personnel were then sent to Britain. Pierlot accepted the aircraft with thanks, and in the mid-summer of 1943 they duly made their way to Africa. The DAFL waited patiently for the Belgians to fulfil their side of the agreement, but after a couple of sharp prompts, Pierlot wrote to Portal in mid-August and declared that the Belgian government of the Congo had decided to keep as many men as necessary to service all the aircraft then in the territory, plus the six Oxfords. Unfortunately, this left only 102 out of the 250 men available for service in Britain, and even they had been informed that RAFVR service was not compulsory, so they might well end up in the land army after all. The British had been outflanked, and it is a pity that the DAFL’s response is no longer in the London files, though we might guess that it was not a pleasant read.13
But the DAFL would not be thwarted. It applied more pressure on the Belgian government, mainly through Wouters, who was growing tired of being the middle man. Then the Belgians launched another gambit. They let it be known in November that the remaining men in Africa would soon be on a ship bound for England. Then it was suggested that in return for a new protocol to the existing agreement – a termination date when Belgium had been liberated – everything would be done to persuade the Congo authorities to send the remaining men to Britain. Nonplussed, the DAFL sought guidance from a higher power, the Allied Forces Committee (AFC). No other allied agreements had termination dates. The arrangement had always been that each nation would continue to serve until the war was won, no matter which was liberated first. It was not so much a question of what the Belgians would actually do when their country was free – there had been no hint of a sudden severance of the alliance – but the bare fact that they had the gall to request the option in the first place, even if by implication. The Air Ministry advised the AFC that the whole thing was to do with internal Belgian politics and should be ignored – advice the AFC handsomely appreciated. Wouters, it seems, had not been consulted on the matter, and again it would appear that his government treated him with as much suspicion and disdain over political matters as the Czechoslovak administration treated Janoušek. Yet again, this stands as another case of a government with its own axes to grind using its most visible fighting arm to further its own agenda.14
This time, the Belgians came unstuck. The AFC had no hesitation in rejecting the proposed protocol because it would have been a dangerous precedent to set at a time when plans for OVERLORD were well advanced. The Air Ministry held two trump cards. The first was the fact that Wouters had made clear his irritation at not being consulted on the matter, and the British thoroughly disliked it when inspectors were unhappy because that threatened the harmony of the relationship. Second, the men in the Congo were entirely unemployed apart from routine work, and there had been some pressure from them upon their own officers to let them be with their countrymen. In any case, the Air Ministry knew well that the Congo detachment was unsustainable, and its very existence outside the main war effort was embarrassing to the Belgians anyway. It was, however, being used as a chip in a game of political poker played by its government, and the net result was a general cooling of relations between all parties. From then until the end of the war in Europe, the British treated the Belgian politicians with just a touch more contempt.
As always, the inevitable compromise was struck. A new protocol to the agreement was signed on 30 March 1944, but although it did not substantially alter the relationship, it did allow for the establishment of an Inspectorate-General and a fully-fledged Belgian section of the RAFVR, formalising the de facto arrangement which had existed since the previous autumn. The British also agreed as far as possible to group all Belgian personnel into national squadrons, but that was their policy anyway. However, the Protocol did not give them independence, which was what they actually wanted, though they were permitted to wear Belgian uniforms with national ranks when not on duty. These were small concessions, but they kept the peace.15
When victory was in sight early in 1945, the British offered to maintain and expand the Belgian Air Force once Germany had been defeated. Again, this was in line with the provisions of COS 120 and the policies directed towards the other allied governments. But again, as with the French, the Americans objected. It was Washington’s policy to resist all attempts by the British to steal the march on matters of postwar rearmament, and apart from the Mutual Aid agreements, no military supplies not destined for the common war effort were to be sent to any allied force. The British sidestepped this by following expansion plans which could easily have been claimed as legitimate provisions: the supply of aircraft for training purposes, the formation of a pilot school, and the enrolment of a few men on specialist and instructor courses, all of which were supposed to maintain the supply of men for the western front, even though everyone knew the war would be over long before they were ready for action.16
Both 349 and 350 Squadrons finished their war with the occupation forces stationed at Fassberg. In Britain, meetings were held to discuss the final disbandment of the Belgian Section of the RAFVR and the termination of all agreements. As with the previous years, many thoughts were turned towards the likely rearmament policies, and more to the point, whether those policies would be acceptable to the Americans. Mutual Aid had provided the cover for the training and a large proportion of initial re-equipment, but a fillip was given to British hopes when the Belgians made it clear that they would reorganise their air force along RAF lines, implying that they would expect to receive new British machines when reconstruction began. The Americans could not intervene in this transaction. It was easy to veto British proposals to hold sales drives in Europe, but impossible for them to ban customers from choosing their own wares.
The official date for the restoration of a newly independent Belgian Air Force was set for 1 September 1946, with demobilisation and transfer of stores to be phased over a period of six weeks. On 15 October, the final day, Tedder wrote to the Belgian Chief of the Air Staff, Gp Capt Leboutte, and filled the page with thanks and hearty sentiments. The Belgian pilots and ground crew had fought a hard war and won much respect, not to mention three DSOs and over forty DFCs and DFMs. In addition, they had destroyed 138 enemy aircraft by VE Day; and by 1943, five RAF squadrons were commanded by Belgian Air Force officers. On 24 October, a lavish cocktail party in Brussels marked the end of a long alliance, and one which was only occasionally troublesome.17
In the years that followed, the Belgian Air Force drew heavily on RAF experience and equipment. Training continued at RAF Bottisham and Snailwell, and it was not until November 1948 that the first Belgian pilots trained on their home soil were ready for service. Much to the delight of the Air Ministry, the skies were thick with British aircraft heading for Belgium, primarily Tiger Moths, Spitfires and Mosquitoes. The British also assisted with the development of a transport wing which flew Ansons, Dakotas and Oxfords among others. In March 1948, Belgium, Holland, Luxemburg, France and Britain signed the Treaty of Brussels, a slightly backward-looking agreement which was directed against a resurgent Germany, but one which nevertheless symbolised European desires to move towards real stability on the continent. The alliance had ended with more smiles than tears, and that in itself was a victory when one considers the fate of the East Europeans.
Turning now to the Dutch, their experiences broadly mirrored those of the Belgians. However, previous experience tended to determine their war roles perhaps more than any other allied group. At the beginning of the war, Dutch air power had been divided into two arms: the Royal Netherlands Naval Air Service and the Royal Netherlands Army Air Service. Neither of these two had been particularly well maintained during the interwar years, but as a result of the political machinations which accompanied the arrival of the pilots in Britain, it was the naval wing which gained the first advantages and tended to dominate for the rest of the conflict.
This was demonstrated in the formation of 320 and 321 Squadrons at Pembroke Dock on 1 June 1940 – the fastest assimilation into the RAF’s order of battle of any exiled force during the war. The Dutch had the advantage in that they brought most of their own aircraft with them, for when their home bases were in danger of being overrun they simply evacuated the entire unit to Britain. Thus, for several months until September 1940 when a shortage of spares forced them to re-equip with Ansons, 320 flew its own Fokker T-VIIIW floatplanes on anti-submarine patrols – an interesting irony in itself. On the other side of the bay, 321 was formed on Ansons and flew similar patrols until 18 January 1941, when it merged with 320, at which time the combined unit operated Hudsons as well. In March 1941, the squadron moved to Scotland for a long year of North Sea patrols, scoring the occasional success against enemy shipping.
Although this neatly took care of the naval wing of the Dutch air forces, the men from the Army Air Service were not so easily employed. As the German assault in the west gathered pace, the French informed the Air Ministry that around 150 Dutch Army Air Service personnel had escaped from a flying school and reached Caen. Writing to Sholto Douglas, Cyril Porri noted that the French were ‘very anxious’ to get the men to England. Sholto Douglas contacted AM Sir Richard Peirse, the VCAS, who gave his assent to the immediate transfer of the group to Britain. Within two weeks, they had disembarked at Porthcawl. Other men had scrambled onto the boats as they left French shores, and a total of 191 were interviewed by the security services at Haverfordwest in Wales. Of these, eighty-seven were pilots, and at once politics entered the scene when the Dutch government announced that the men were to stay in Britain instead of the destination required by the Army, the Dutch East Indies.18
Their numbers continued to grow as the men were assembled for trade-testing and attestation. Towards the end of June, a further fifty had made their way to Britain and registered for service. Such a sudden influx, combined with all the other allies, was causing headaches at the Air Ministry because of the limited training opportunities which existed as the Battle of Britain began. The British were pushing through their own recruits at breakneck speed, but it was swiftly decided that the best of the Dutch would be hurried through into operations if they could fill establishment posts and had sufficient spoken English. The Dutch authorities had no objection to this idea, but they insisted that all of their personnel be brought together into national units when the opportunity arose. But this still left nearly ninety men idle, and the RAF argued that a British trainee would be displaced for each Dutch pilot, no matter how experienced he might be, who was fed into the training programme.
Then someone came up with a new idea. If the entire contingent was shipped en bloc to the training schools in Newfoundland, the problem would be solved. Sholto Douglas gave his enthusiastic approval, but there then followed an interesting mix-up in attitudes and actions. Dealing directly with the Dutch Liaison Officer, Capt Berdenis van Berlekom, the Air Ministry proposed to promote the plan over the heads of the Dutch government, which, in the mean time, rejected the idea. In a letter of 5 July from the Dutch Military Mission, the government informed the Air Ministry that ‘after careful consideration’, the Newfoundland plan had been deemed unsuitable and all personnel should instead be sent to the East Indies to reinforce the air force units there. Indeed, arrangements were in hand to begin the transfer immediately.
This was something of an embarrassment to Boyle who had despatched Berlekom to Hednesford on 6 July to test the waters on the Newfoundland plan, and to offer them the only alternative of going out to the East Indies as a full contingent or as a last resort, enrolment in the Dutch Army. The men were paraded and asked to make their choices, though to ease things along they were not given the full list of options, but asked only one question: ‘Do you want to go to the East Indies?’ Of the 24 officers present, 14 refused the offer outright, 7 agreed to go ‘under the strongest protest’, and the remaining 3 accepted. Of the 114 men other ranks, all but three refused to go. The minutes state that ‘all the men there were most depressed and almost broken-hearted’ at the thought of going to the East Indies. They were told that their own Minister of Defence had turned down the Newfoundland offer. In a longer note (made available to Berkelom), the feelings of the men were even more tragically recorded:
They referred in bitter terms to the fact that the French, Poles and Czechs are going to be allowed to fight in the air against Germany, but that they, the Dutch, are apparently not going to be allowed to do so, and they consider this to be a reflection on their honour.
The report also claimed that many would have stayed in Holland with their families had they known that this shambles would have come to pass, and by this account they accused their Ministry of Defence of ‘lacking courage and imagination’. The report closed with a recommendation that the Dutch government be informed of these views, and that ‘it would be an act of criminal folly not to make use of this enthusiasm’.
Obviously, this gave the British a strong hand to play in its game with the Dutch government, and Boyle prepared a typical finesse to clinch the matter. He proposed writing directly to the Dutch Minister of War and asking whether his government was still prepared to fight alongside the British, and if the answer was yes, then the Army pilots should be trained in Newfoundland ready for service on the western front. If the answer was no, then the Dutch could do with them as they wished. Whether Boyle sent such a note is unclear, but he certainly engaged the help of Sinclair in communicating these ideas to the Dutch, though no doubt the Secretary of State for Air was a little more tactful in his representations.
Within a couple of days, the Dutch returned with a list of queries which, when amalgamated, cast many doubts upon the British ability to really secure the necessary materials if the Newfoundland plan went ahead. Could they, for example, guarantee that accommodation, food supplies and suitable aircraft would all be on hand if the army contingent were sent at once? Van Berkelom, batting for the British, assured his superiors that their hosts were quite capable of such a venture, that they had already demonstrated their commitment by rapidly setting up the two seaplane squadrons with Coastal Command, and that it was in everybody’s interest to see the group return from Newfoundland as experienced pilots and ready to wage war in the common cause.
On 10 July, Medhurst chaired a meeting with various representatives of the departments affected by the problem. Mr R.B. Ewbank of the Dominions Office rang a negative note when he reported that the Canadian government ‘did not view the plan with favour’, and that the Newfoundland government might object ‘to having in their midst a people of a Germanic race of whom only about 10% had a knowledge of English’. Medhurst retorted that the Norwegians had made similar approaches to the Canadians who had happily accepted them. The meeting then heard that most of the men were content to go to Newfoundland, but were being thwarted by the wishes of the Dutch Army. As for Ewbank’s point, the political sensitivities might be overcome if the Dutch could be persuaded to involve the local community in the project, either as workers in the camp or even as trainees in their own right. The cost of the exercise was liable to be borne by the Dutch government, ‘who have substantial reserves of gold in the United States’, and the meeting decided in closing that every effort would be made to push the plan through. An added sweetener might be that the presence of a Dutch force on the North American continent could act as a banner for recruitment in America.
But no one on the British side seemed to pay much heed to the realities of training in Newfoundland – something the Dutch took the trouble to find out for themselves. For a start, the British would have needed to build several huts and hangars at the Hatties Camp, and because of the conditions in winter, the snow on the runways would need to be packed hard with rollers to enable aircraft to land and take off using wheels instead of skis. No operational flying at all could take place for four to six weeks in the depths of winter, and the spring thaw would also make conditions extremely hazardous. Extra water and sanitary services would also need to be supplied because the camp was already in use by a 900-strong battalion of the Canadian Army, and all utilities were stretched to capacity. For a race of people used to the relatively mild climate of Europe, or the cloying humidity of the Far East, such a sojourn would have been grim indeed, every bit as chilling to the Dutch heart as that which the poor Tahitians experienced when they were posted to the Free French unit in Scotland.
This was a battle which the British ultimately lost. It is not clear whether it was the result of sustained pressure from the Dutch Army, or the tendency of the Dutch government to still keep at least a little distant from foreign entanglements, or even the more logical desire to protect their imperial holdings in the Far East, but the end result was rejection for the Newfoundland scheme and an announcement that all untrained men would be sent to the East Indies while the more experienced pilots would go to the Coastal Command squadrons. A brief telegram sent to Hatties Camp on 2 August confirmed the decision, but it also seems unlikely that the Canadians would have given their blessing anyway. The Dutch, unlike the Norwegians, had still been tainted with a strong whiff of the Fifth Column after the collapse in the summer, and although we know now that this was a gross and unfair misjudgement, we are not in the fraught days of 1940 when defeat or survival hung by a thread. To a certain extent the Dutch suffered from this widespread suspicion, as indeed did the Belgians. In the event, not many men actually embarked for the Dutch East Indies. Apart from the trained personnel sent to 320 and 321 Squadrons – given as twenty pilots and thirty-three mechanics – eight instructors were retained, while fifty-eight other ranks either went to the Dutch Army or made the long trip to the east.
Looking at the figures, one feels compelled to call this tussle an honourable draw. The Dutch government recognised that Britain needed all the pilots she could lay hands on, and many Dutch pilots went straight into RAF squadrons if they had a sufficient command of English. Indeed, one such group flying with 167 (Gold Coast) Squadron eventually made up the core of the third Dutch unit in 1943. But we must also accept that Holland had imperial possessions which needed defending, and although her government had sought sanctuary in Britain after the French defeat, a vast and extremely vulnerable territory with tens of thousands of weakly defended citizens lay at the mercy of the Japanese. Therefore, we should not be surprised that the Dutch Army dug in its heels and demanded that at least some reinforcements be sent to the beleaguered colony. Equally, the British might well have had reasonable concerns about the commitment to the war effort demonstrated by small but powerful sections of the East Indies’ community. In September 1940, the Foreign Office heard from the Consul-General in Batavia (now Jakarta) that many high-ranking members of the government ‘are not particularly disposed towards the United Kingdom or the allied cause’. However, this was largely considered to be the result of the Gestapo placing 431 leading Dutch personalities into concentration camps as a reprisal for alleged ill-treatment of German internees in the Dutch East Indies. The Foreign Office noted the comments, but dismissed the tales as having originated from ‘unreliable sources’.19
Balanced against this dark propaganda was the irrefutable evidence that the Dutch colonists had deep pockets. In October 1940, the Sunday Times reported that the people of the East Indies had raised £334,000 in a ‘Spitfire Campaign’ and a further £323,377 for bombers, enough to buy forty fighters and eighteen Hudsons, collectively known as the Wilhemina Fund. But the money was being delayed in Batavia, in the face of strong public protest, by elements within the government who believed the money should be spent in Java. The Foreign Office regarded the issue as a test of the government’s will to resist supporting the Western allies. Besides, they were already aware of the fundraising and a parallel recruitment drive as early as July, and an interesting comment on the matter reveals that the Air Ministry was not in favour of receiving Dutch pilots from the East Indies because of the ‘Quisling danger’, though why escapees from Europe were not so regarded is at present unknown.20 However, this attitude might explain the reluctance of the Air Ministry to let the Dutch governments send men to the Far East, but when all is said and done, they were not there for very long.
The day after the Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, the Netherlands declared war on Japan. Between then, December 1941 and 1 March 1942, the day when Japanese forces first landed on Java, the plucky but hopelessly outclassed Dutch forces suffered defeat after defeat. Ten days later, the entire territory had been lost to Tokyo, and in another mass evacuation what remained of the Dutch forces made their way to Britain, a few of them for the second time. During their absence, their countrymen had continued to fight the war in the west much to the satisfaction of the RAF. Perhaps more importantly, the Dutch government had succeeded in keeping a reasonable political distance between the two allies. The two Coastal Command squadrons stood as independent units of the Royal Netherlands Naval Air Services, a condition granted by the Air Ministry largely because of the golden purse with which the Dutch financed themselves, but also because they could supply nearly all of the ground crew for the two squadrons.21
By the time the eighty or so men arrived in Britain after the Japanese conquest of Indonesia, the Dutch government had been picking away at the drafts of the usual military agreement for more than two years, a major sticking point being the application of Dutch military law in the two Coastal Command squadrons. Despite the best efforts of the British to convince them that it would be easier ‘for reasons of practical convenience’ to apply RAF law, the Dutch held out for this supreme symbol of independence. Neither did the Dutch request a ‘liberation clause’ to be inserted into the agreement’s preamble. Even this would have bound them in some degree to an alliance which we cannot interpret as anything other than a reluctant one, not for reasons of distrust or compulsion, but because it so perfectly mirrored traditional Dutch foreign policy since the seventeenth century. From the very start, and to the very end, they were determined to keep their hands free, and what makes them so different from all the other allies (with the possible exception of the Norwegians) is that they succeeded.22
The new influx from Java were interviewed and trade-tested before being sent to 320 Squadron, now even more self-sufficient after its merger with 321 in January 1941. But in August 1942, 321 Squadron was reborn in the Far East. Dutch crews had managed to salvage a number of Catalinas and fly them from Java to Ceylon, and another detachment marooned in Australia joined them at China Bay, which became the unit’s base until the end of the war. In Britain, the Dutch Army pilots at last realised their dream in June 1943, when 322 Fighter Squadron was formed at Woodvale. Drawing upon the experienced core of pilots who had seen much service with RAF units, 322 was initially mounted on variants of the Spitfire V and flew convoy patrols and sweeps over the Irish Sea and the English Channel. Here, however, the Dutch success in gaining independence petered out, for one of the conditions attached to the squadron’s formation was that it should be within the RAFVR. This was not a retaliatory strike by the British; rather, to have granted the unit independent status when its physical presence was so small would have been a tempting challenge to other exiled governments who sought similar status for their own larger air forces.
By 1943, the Dutch had a total of 614 officers and men in units attached to the British home forces, but by this time recruitment had become spasmodic. All who could have escaped – or who wanted to escape – had largely been accounted for, and only the occasional soul brave enough to risk his life managed to report for duty. Even so, unlike the Czechoslovaks, the Dutch had no qualms about maintaining their highly active air forces by drawing from their army contingent, recognising that apart from their propaganda value, the air crews were becoming highly experienced, combat-toughened individuals who would have much to contribute to a postwar reconstruction policy. Karel Janoušek in the Czechoslovak camp had exactly the same vision, but Edvard Beneš was a man who wanted everything and came out with half-measures.
Much of the work of 322 Squadron was taken up in ‘Diver’ patrols, or the shooting down of V1 flying bombs launched from the continent as part of Hitler’s last stand. Towards the end of 1943, a Combined Dutch Navy and Army Committee was formed to co-ordinate the expansion of a unified air force principally for service in the war against Japan after the final defeat of Germany. After the launch of OVERLORD, morale in 320 Squadron began to dip over concerns of the fate of Holland as the Germans fell back before the allied advance, but the Chiefs of Staff accepted that little could be done to employ the naval crews in any meaningful operations while the land engagement was of such vital importance. As for 322, its success in destroying 110 flying bombs earned it a mention in the allied forces report for the third quarter of 1944, but at least the recruitment problem was eased with the early liberation of southern Holland, and a mission from Britain was sent to campaign for volunteers to top up the air force establishments.
This in itself was a successful operation, and numbers surged. The Air Ministry was presented with a plan which envisaged fifty-four men a month for air crew training, and a further 200 a month for the maintenance teams. The long-term view was that all three Dutch squadrons would eventually depart for the Far East to liberate the East Indies from the Japanese occupation. To act as a central authority for this reorganisation, a recruiting centre was opened in Eindhoven with the full blessing of the Americans who saw much to be gained by having an experienced ally in the war against Hirohito. But it was not to be. For apart from 321 Squadron, already in Ceylon, the two British-based units finished their war on European soil with the occupation forces. One reason was that Holland proved remarkably difficult to liberate in its entirety. Five years of occupation had given rise to a formidable police state and a pro-Nazi force of about 50,000 men, many with the SS. The Dutch government admitted in 1949 that it had imprisoned nearly 150,000 collaborators, though a great many others simply disappeared, their fate decided by the Resistance.
After the war, the Dutch government pursued much the same rearmament policy with the British as did the Belgians. The Air Ministry happily supplied spares and maintenance materials for the Spitfires flown by 322 up until 1951. Training also continued in Britain for a few years after the war, for the air force as well as the army, and the re-equipment agreement reached in May 1946 enriched the British coffers by £1.8 million. As for the Dutch government, they had learned well that small nations need big friends if they are to survive, and in the postwar environment they lent themselves more readily to co-operation in the wider interests of European security, and from the unsteady alliance of 1940, a stronger, more communicative friendship emerged from the common battle so bravely fought and deservedly won.
1. Buck, M., ‘Feeding a Pauper Army’: War Refugees and Welfare in Britain, 1939–1942 (Berghahn Books 2000). Extract from pre-publication paper.
2. Eisen, J., Anglo-Dutch Relations and European Unity, 1940–1948 (Hull University, 1980), p. 1.
3. AIR 40/2031: Orders of Battle, 1939. In a subsequent report prepared for the Chiefs of Staff, the airmen of both nations were considered to be of the highest quality in Europe.
4. AIR 2/7196: DCAS Conference (Conclusions), 25.5.40. Sholto Douglas later minuted that Polish pilots should be used in British fighter squadrons if they were satisfactorily trained.
5. AIR 2/4213: Minute to file by Boyle; DCAS Conference minutes, 27.5.40.
6. FO 371/24366: Correspondence, 5.6.40 to 23.7.40.
7. CAB 66/10: COS Reports 1–3, 22.7.40 to 12.8.40.
8. FO 371/24368: Drafts, Anglo–Belgian Military Agreement and comments, 13.8.40 to 7.10.40.
9. FO 371/24369; Correspondence, 15.11.40 to 30.11.40. See also FO 371/26448, minute to file by J.G. Ward, 13.6.41. Ward noted that the details had been ‘exhaustively discussed’, and regarded the entire debate as ‘extremely tiresome’.
10. AIR 2/5595: Dore to Sholto Douglas, 22.8.41. This letter was written in the middle of the heated debate over the maintenance of 340 (Free French) Squadron by French naval personnel. Most of the Belgian air recruits were being drawn from the army.
11. AIR 2/8238: DAFL Quarterly Reports, 10.10.42 to 16.4.43.
12. AIR 8/778: DAFL to CAS, 30.6.43.
13. AIR 8/778: Correspondence, 1.7.43 to 17.8.43.
14. FO 371/42298: Correspondence, January 1944.
15. FO 371/42299: Correspondence and minutes, 11.3.44 to 14.4.44.
16. FO 371/50748: Reconstruction correspondence, 9.2.45 to 15.2.45.
17. AIR 20/7270: Correspondence, 8.10.46 to 26.10.46.
18. AIR 2/5152: ‘Disposal in England of Dutch Army Air Force Personnel and Aircraft’; general correspondence, June–July 1940. Subsequent references are drawn from this file until otherwise noted.
19. FO 371/24717: Walsh to R.G. Howe (Far Eastern Dept), 16.9.40.
20. FO 371/24717: Correspondence, 9.7.40 to 27.10.40.
21. FO 371/24366: Medhurst to Coleridge, 14.8.40; Air Council minutes, 12.7.40.
22. FO 371/32207: Anglo-Dutch Agreement, May 1942; see also CAB 85/20 (AFO(41)12), 17.2.41. The no ‘liberation clause’ was a final compromise to a dispute which had started in August 1940. The Dutch had originally wanted RAF command to cease the moment they crossed into Dutch territory, but we have seen earlier how the Air Ministry refused to sanction such a clause when the Belgians advanced a similar demand.