Category: Aviation Historian

As part of a series of blogs commemorating the 75th anniversary of V-J Day, I will reflect on the part women played in the Far East during the Second World War.

It is hard to tell the story of women in the Far East war because there is no single story. Many will remember the 1980s television drama ‘Tenko’ about Australian, British and Dutch civilian women taken prisoner after the fall of Singapore in 1942. The horrors faced by women prisoners of war and internees were captured in testimonies at military tribunals after the war.

Women did not only fight for survival in prisoner-of-war (PoW) and internment camps. They fought in and supported resistance movements in Japanese-occupied territories, and female war correspondents reported the Far East war from the front line. Marsali Wood, who sadly passed away in April, was a wireless operator for Special Operations Executive (SOE). Patricia Rawlinson was an SOE coder. Based in Colombo, she decoded agents’ messages from across the Far East. Ursula Graham Bower led Naga guerrillas and fought herself against the Japanese armies that invaded Burma in 1942.

Following significant advances by the Japanese and the capture of Singapore, Malaya and Hong Kong, British forces retreated to India. South East Asia Command (SEAC) was formed in November 1943 with Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten appointed Supreme Allied Commander.

In February 1944, Director of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) Dame Trefusis-Forbes led a delegation to India. With a manpower shortage, she investigated how the WAAF could be employed in SEAC. WAAFs aged 20-38 years were invited to volunteer. Roles on offer included transport, maintenance, plotting, wireless telegraphy and clerical duties. The first draft arrived by ship in November 1944. By January 1946, over 1,200 WAAF officers and airwomen were in Singapore, Delhi, Mumbai and Sri Lanka. The total number of WAAFs serving overseas during the Second World War was small: only 9,000 of 182 000 personnel at its peak strength.

SEAC HQ moved to Kandy, Sri Lanka in 1944. WAAFs were employed there in vital communications work, conveying top secret signals between Lord Mountbatten and other commanders.

Aerial reconnaissance was an important tool in the Far East war. Having a base close to operations was vital, enabling intelligence to be generated quickly. A group of WAAFs from RAF Medmenham joined the Command Photographic Interpretation Centre in Delhi early in 1945. The shipping section produced reports on the Japanese navy while another section investigated the use of H2S radar. WAAF Eve Holiday was based at No. 347 Reconnaissance Wing at Bally, near Calcutta. She said:

‘The interpretation was very different from Benson…Most of the cover was over jungles and rivers, and sort of “Guerilla Warfare Interpretation” was needed. You had to watch for elementary signs of human habitation – trees being cleared, track activity, smoke from fires. I remember searching sortie after sortie for smoke. The Japanese knowing that the Allies would avoid upsetting locals by attacking temples, habitually used them as ammunition dumps; so you had to watch the track activity very carefully… On the rivers sampans [wooden boats] were often used as gun positions, and we got to know when they were converted’.

Arriving in India before the WAAF, Princess Mary’s Royal Air Force Nursing Service (PMRAFNS) served in all theatres during the Second World War. In the Far East, they joined medical personnel from the other services as well as civil detachments.

In Burma, wounded troops were staged at RAF Casualty Air Evacuation Units and flown by air ambulances staffed by nursing orderlies to base hospitals in India . Naval sick and wounded from the Battle of Okinawa travelled by hospital ship to forward island bases, from which they were flown to Australia in Transport Command Douglas Dakotas. The first arrivals were accompanied by a Sister from Queen Alexandra’s Royal Naval Nursing Service.

PMRAFNS nurses had to adapt to the language barriers while treating troops of diverse nationalities serving with the Fourteenth Army. The RAF deployed mobile field hospitals closer to the front line. Mobile field hospitals, as one nurse described, were miles from the fighting but ‘close enough to feel the earth rumble’. The forward hospitals treated the diseases prevalent in the sub-tropical jungle climate. Crucially, troops could return to combat much sooner than if they were evacuated to Indian base hospitals. One nurse’s letter from India described the ad hoc nature of this arrangement, working in basic conditions:

‘We have at last started our Mobile Field Hospital. We moved from our original site into one that might have been built for as, as far as basha huts are concerned. Basha huts are built of bamboo with thatched roof, straw walls with mud slapped on either side and holes cut for windows. No glass, of course, but wooden shutters. We find 250 Ib. bomb cases most useful, serving as stools, lockers, stands for bowls and duty dressing containers.’

The units moved frequently, their mobility keeping them effective in the ever-shifting combat environment. In July 1945, PMRAFNS nurse described moving to Rangoon as the front advanced:
‘We arrived and, of course, nobody expected us – everywhere you went, nobody expected you…[We] didn’t know one end of Rangoon from another, but we were told just go out and find a building. We finally settled for a building without a roof, but it had water and electricity’.

Medical workers did not have the same protection as in other theatres as Japan was not a signatory to the 1929 Geneva Convention and massacres of captured medical personnel did occur. PMRAFNS were evacuated with other British women when the Japanese laid siege to Imphal in 1944.

Servicewomen in the Far East war were drawn from all nationalities. Locally recruited volunteers in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps in India included Indians, Europeans, Anglo-Indians, Anglo-Burmese, Burmese and Nepalese women. Over 10,000 women served in its army, naval or air forces branches from March 1942 until it was wound down after Indian Independence in 1947. The Corps was open to British subjects between 17 and 50 with a good knowledge of English. With a HQ in Delhi, the women could be posted across India. Basic training took six months and typical roles included switchboard operators, drivers, aircraft plotters, clerks, mechanics and storewomen. Others were engaged in highly secretive intelligence work in signals and as cypher clerks. Junior Commandant DK Cursetjee described it as ’a very democratic organisation [which] makes no distinction whatever between races, classes or religions’

One woman who served was nineteen-year-old Private Begum Pasha Shah. Her photograph appeared in The Sphere in late 1944 with the caption ‘The first Muhammedan [Muslim] girl to join the Women’s Auxiliary Corps in India’. Speaking seven languages, she served as a clerk in an RAF orderly room in southern India.

Members who completed three years’ service between 1942 and 1945 were entitled to wear the Indian Service Medal. Photographs of them marching proudly at the victory parade in London after the war appeared in British newspapers.

Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945 following the use of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some felt a sense of relief that such a terrible war would be over. WAAF Joan Wilson was a wireless operator based in Sri Lanka. She later reflected:

‘…we had some of the people who were ex-prisoners of war come in. And although they had already been in hospital and supposed to have been well-fed they were still skin and bone… if the atom bomb stopped one person from that I was pleased. It was a horrible thing. Really horrible. But something had to be done.’

After V-J Day, discussions began in Air Command South East Asia about whether to deploy WAAF further east as its HQ with its female clerical personnel prepared to move to Singapore. On 22 August 1945, the Secretary of State for Air approved the employment of WAAF anywhere in South East Asia. The first WAAF arrived in Singapore from Sri Lanka not long after its liberation. In February 1946, the first officers and airwomen arrived in Hong Kong. All WAAF personnel were withdrawn from India by June as the political situation deteriorated.

Two mobile field hospitals treated released prisoners of war including No. 81 Mobile Field Hospital, the first RAF hospital in Singapore. Sisters and medical orderlies joined medical evacuation flights as repatriation of POWs began in earnest. Those too ill to be flown were returned on hospital ships. More PMRAFNS moved into Japan as Commonwealth forces joined to form BC (Air) with Australian, New Zealand, British and Indian personnel overseeing Japan’s surrender.

Servicemen returning to the UK were processed through RAF Cosford, which repatriated men from all theatres. WAAF Marie Goddard was a medical clerk at No. 106 Personnel Reception Centre. Returning POW, Aircraftman Frederick George Freeman was receiving specialist treatment at No. 4 Medical Rehabilitation Unit in June 1946 when he met Marie. They were engaged six months’ later and married in 1947.

This year, 75 years since V-J Day, it is important to remember the women who contributed to that victory. They are perhaps some of the forgotten people of a forgotten war.

I have known of the defeat of Singapore from a young age. This is due to my Father telling me of his Uncle who served in the Army, was captured in Singapore, returned home years later with scars on his back, did not talk about his experiences and died soon after. This sadly was not an uncommon experience amongst those who returned from captivity. The capture of Singapore has been ingrained into my memory as it has been for thousands of other families. For many it marked the beginning of years as a prisoner of war (POW) for others it marks the end of the Empire. It was the worst British military defeat. A defeat that stupefied Churchill in the words of his Doctor.

Singapore is located off the tip of the Malaya (now Malaysia) peninsula and was a British creation of Empire through and through, founded by Stamford Raffles. By the 1930s it was the fourth largest port in the world. As Jan Morris notes in ‘Farewell the Trumpets‘, ‘It was traditionally one of the main pivots of imperial power’.

Between the wars a major building project took place fortifying the island, costing 60 million pounds. This was designed to ensure security of the empire east of Suez. It had batteries of guns guarding the sea, an airbase and some 7,000 men. Singapore was widely assumed to be impregnable, to be able to hold out any attack until a fleet sailed in sent from Britain. Australia and New Zealand looked to Singapore to aid their security against the threat of Japan. It gave them peace of mind to know that, in the event of conflict, having a base where a fleet despatched from Britain could be based and so act as a deterrent.

During his tenure as Chancellor during the interwar period, Winston Churchill had restricted the money being spent to fortify Singapore. On 15 December 1924, Churchill wrote to the then Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin stating that he did not believe that there was ‘the slightest chance’ of a war with Japan ‘in our lifetime’. On the basis of these views he successfully reduced the planned scale of fortifications in Singapore. This view changed on 7 December 1941 when Japan launched a surprise attack against the United States bombing Pearl Harbour and on the same day Singapore.

The men and leadership of the Japanese Army and Navy were highly experienced and efficient veterans, having been at war with China since 1937 and their aircraft, particularly their fighters were much better then was thought at the time, although they had no independent air force. Their Navy was the strongest in the Pacific. Unlike the Allied forces they also embraced the jungle and were not wary of it, their tactics were to close quickly with the enemy, this would keep their opponents off balance and always on the back foot. As an opposition they were dismissed by many in Allied High Command, perhaps due to old-fashioned ‘empire thinking’. It is also to be remembered that threats were nearer Britain’s shores at this time with Germany on the doorstep and that is where the concentration of Allied forces would be, defending Britain. To give some idea of the priority of the defence of the Far East the Admiral in charge of the British Far Eastern fleet, which consisted of three cruisers and five destroyers, was himself based in London.

An RAF officer was in charge of the defence of Singapore. Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham was appointed Commander-in-Chief of British Far East Command and was responsible for overseeing the defence of Malaya, Singapore, Burma and Hong Kong. However, this Command had restrictions, he did not have full control over all the forces or the civilian administration. A veteran of the Royal Flying Corps, he was appointed on 18 November 1940, aged 62, returning from retiring from active service. Brooke-Popham asked for reinforcements continuously as his experience told him that his forces could not fight off a Japanese offensive. His requests were turned down or ignored. He wrote of ‘the feeling of being neglected’. After the Japanese invasion and its rapid success, he was relieved of command on 27 December 1941. He was accused publicly of being responsible for the loss of Singapore and the Government decided to change their minds on offering this highly experienced officer a baronetcy in the New Year’s Honours list. Sir Robert Brooke-Popham continued to serve where he could. He left the active list in May 1942 and from 1942 – 1945 served as inspector-general of the Air Training Corps and also president of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes. As his Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry states, Brooke-Popham was a ‘brilliant professional officer’ who recognised the weakness of the situation in Singapore and the Far East, but as commented by H Probert in ‘The Forgotten Air Force: The Royal Air Force in the War Against Japan, 1941 – 1945‘ for all his endeavours, [Brooke-Popham] had to pay the price of being in the wrong place at the wrong time’.

The Royal Air Force was to play its part in the battle to defend Malaya, the gateway to Singapore. But this air battle was effectively over within two days. The RAF could not match the superior numbers of aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Army and Imperial Japanese Navy and, on the whole, their aircraft were outclassed.

At the outbreak of war with Germany in September 1939 the RAF had at its disposal to defend the Far East 24 Bristol Blenheims, 10 flying boats (a mixture of Supermarine Sunderlands and the older Short Singapores) and 24 torpedo bombers in the form of Vickers Vildebeests. Fleet Air Arm also contributed Fairey Swordfish and Supermarine Walrus aircraft. In 1939, the RAF had no fighter aircraft station in the Far East. It was estimated by High Command that some 336 aircraft would be needed in the defence of Malaya and Singapore in the form of 22 squadrons. When Japan attacked there was 14 squadrons with a total of 215 aircraft. The mainstay Allied fighter aircraft was the American built Brewster Buffalo. Considered unsuitable for war in the West because of its poor comparative performance it also proved to be outmatched in rate of climb and speed by the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M ‘Zero’ fighter. Most RAF pilots were also lacking combat experience, many arriving fresh from flying training schools in Australia and New Zealand.

Although operations were carried out with bravery and professionalism, nothing could stop the losses from occurring. Losses that were not easily replaceable. It would however be wrong to think that the RAF just fought defensively.

On 8 December 1941, the Royal Air Force launched an offensive against the Japanese landing forces, 88 aircraft in total in a series of attacks were involved in the operation, one transport was sunk but this did not hinder the landings. Soon, Japanese aircraft would be based on the Malaya Peninsula, a key component of the Japanese invasion plans. On 9 December 1941, the RAF launched a bombing raid with Blenheim bombers against Signora airfield in Southern Thailand, crowded with Japanese aircraft. Six bombers took part and although without fighter cover pressed home the attack. As soon as they reached their target they were attacked in force by Nakajima Ki-27 ‘Nates’. Three of the six bombers and their crews were lost although the airfield was hit. The RAF losses could not be replaced. By the end of 8 December 1941 only 50 out of 110 operational aircraft based in Northern Malaya were available to the RAF.

Many of these losses took place on the ground. There was a lack of an early warning system, and RAF airfield defences were also found to be wanting. Many aircraft were destroyed on the ground by targeted bombing by the Japanese. The speed of the Japanese advance meant that on 9 December 1941, two days after the attack was launched, all but two squadrons were withdrawn to Singapore. This was the last line of defence, to defend the naval base, to enable reinforcements to come in by sea.

By mid-January, the RAF had only 56 operational fighters left spread across five squadrons. Hawker Hurricanes arrived on 13 January 1942 in crates and were rapidly assembled to aid the defence of Singapore and had an immediate effect. Twenty-seven Japanese bombers flew unescorted over Singapore and the Hurricanes shot down eight of them. On the following day Japanese bombers reappeared, but this time accompanied by Zero fighters.

Five Hurricanes were shot down. The Hurricane was slower and less manoeuvrable then the Zero. These Hurricanes had originally been destined for the Middle East and had a desert air intake filter fitted on their engines which reduced their speed by thirty miles an hour. Spitfires were seen as essential for the defence of Great Britain and would not be sent to Singapore which was last in the list of British priorities behind the defence of GB, Middle East and also aid for Russia. The Hurricane did inflict damage to the Japanese air force but this became progressively harder with the small force operating piece-meal, as soon as airframes were erected and losses worsened by a shortage of spare parts.

The force also lacked warning of raids, this was due to the over running or dismantling of radar stations as the Japanese forces advanced ever closer. This meant the Hurricanes were often caught climbing to intercept Japanese raids and, without the advantage of height, they were vulnerable to the Japanese fighters.

The RAF did all they could to stop the advance of the Japanese. On 26 January 1942, No. 100 and No. 36 Squadron launched an offensive against Japanese forces landing at Endau on the east coast of Malaya who wished to join with forces on the west. Twelve Vildebeests accompanied by Hurricane and Buffalo fighters attacked Japanese transports and landing craft. The Vildebeests stayed on course despite heavy opposition by Zero fighters, five were shot down. The operation was repeated by No. 36 Squadron later the same day, eight more allied aircraft were shot down.

By early February 1942 only a small air force was left operating from Singapore. The rest would be operating from Southern Sumatra. Japanese forces continued pressing home their attack. Some one million people were now trying to find shelter in Singapore, water supply was becoming a problem as was fuel and ammunition shortages. Despite impressions of Singapore being a fortress capable of withstanding a siege it lacked the facilities to sustain resistance in the face of enemy land attacks.

At 5.15pm on 15 February 1942, Lieutenant-General Arthur E Percival, General Officer Commanding in Malaya and architect of the defences of Malaya and Singapore and his chief of staff made their way to a Ford factory in Bukit Tamah to meet Japanese High Command led by Lieutenant-General Yamashita Tomoyuki who had successful led the campaign. The discussions took 55 minutes in which Percival was reluctant to use the word surrender. But the surrender document was signed at 6.10pm. This signalled the greatest military defeat in British history. The British suffered 138,708 casualties compared to 9,824 for the Japanese. Of these British casualties 130,000 would face hardship and atrocities as prisoners of war.

As for the Royal Air Force’s contribution Percival commented in a despatch that the men of the Royal Air Force ‘through the later stages of the Malayan campaign, went unflinchingly to almost certain death in obsolete aircraft which should have been replaced many years before.’

‘Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.’
J Robert Oppenheimer

In July 1944, Group Captain Leonard Cheshire DSO, and two bars, DFC, was retired from flying having logged a record 102 operations as a pilot with RAF Bomber Command. On 8 September, he was awarded the Victoria Cross, not for an individual act of gallantry, but in recognition of his courage and outstanding leadership from the summer of 1940. Although by no means a natural pilot, Cheshire quickly mastered every aspect of his trade and every aircraft type he flew. His coolness under fire was legendary, and this, combined with his shrewd judgement and warm sense of humour, made him an excellent skipper. As a commanding officer, Cheshire was compassionate and approachable to all of his men regardless of rank, and he inspired strong personal loyalty. The squadrons he led were efficient and happy.

In November 1940, Cheshire, while still a pilot officer, was awarded his first Distinguished Service Order for bombing Cologne in a flak-damaged Whitley and bringing the aircraft safely home. In March 1943, aged 25, he became the RAF’s youngest group captain; but chose to forfeit his rank in November to take command of No. 617 Squadron, the celebrated ‘Dambusters’. Cheshire’s unconventional approach to low-level target marking brought the squadron success; and his fourth operational tour ended with him perfecting the technique at the controls of a Mustang fighter.

In July 1945, Group Captain Cheshire was working dejectedly at a desk job in Washington DC when he was told, in the strictest secrecy, about the $2 billion-dollar Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb. He was also informed that he had been selected by Prime Minister Winston Churchill to witness the dropping of the bomb on a target in Japan. Cheshire duly set off for the Marianas in the western Pacific, arriving at the huge American air base on Tinian Island at the end of the month.

In the Far East, Japan was embroiled in a bloody, and ultimately futile, war of attrition against the United States and its British Commonwealth and Chinese allies. America’s military and industrial power was by now overwhelming, and over three million Japanese servicemen and civilians were dead. The US Navy’s submarine blockade ensured that food and medicine were in short supply, and Japan’s highly flammable cities lay within range of USAAF B-29 bombers. On the night of 9/10 March 1945, 16 square miles of Tokyo were razed in an incendiary attack that killed at least 80,000 people.

While Allied victory was assured, the war was expected to go on into 1946, and it was clear that an invasion of the Japanese mainland would be costly. American military planners were unable to agree a figure for projected casualties, but half a million Purple Heart combat decorations were stockpiled. In the spring of 1945, Japanese diplomats had begun to extend unofficial peace feelers to the Soviet Union unaware that Stalin had promised (at the Yalta Conference in February) to join the war against Japan by mid-August.

Throughout the war, Japanese rule in Asia was tyrannical and cruel, and it caused the deaths of an estimated 24 million men, women and children. Japan also refused to recognise the Geneva Convention, and the 140,000 Allied servicemen it captured laboured as slaves in appalling conditions. Some 30,000 of these men were executed or died from malnutrition, disease or ill-treatment; and of the 5,102 RAF prisoners, 1,714 lost their lives. Preparations were made for all prisoners to be massacred in the event of an Allied invasion of the Japanese homeland.

It was against this grim backdrop that US President Harry S Truman, attending the Potsdam Conference in Germany, learned of the successful atomic test on 16 July at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Buoyed by the news, Truman, on 26 July, jointly issued the Potsdam Declaration with Winston Churchill and Chinese Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, calling on Japan to surrender or face ‘prompt and utter destruction.’ Kantaro Suzuki, Imperial Japan’s last prime minister, chose to ignore the ultimatum.

At 02.45 am, on 6 August 1945, a B-29 of the USAAF’s 509th Composite Group took off from Tinian bound for Japan . The pilot on the 1,570-mile flight was the unit’s commanding officer, Colonel Paul Tibbets, and the Superfortress was named ‘Enola Gay’ after his mother. The aircraft had ben specially modified to carry a uranium ‘gun-type’ fission bomb, codenamed ‘Little Boy’, and its destination was the city of Hiroshima. Enola Gay arrived over the target, and at 08.15 am, Major Thomas Ferebee, Tibbet’s bombardier, flipped the release switch dropping the device. Little Boy detonated 1,890 feet above Hiroshima; and in an instant 90 per cent of the city was destroyed, and the first of 140,000 people died. Two days later, the Soviet Union responded to news of the attack by invading Manchuria, dashing Japanese hopes of a negotiated peace. On Tinian, meanwhile, preparations went ahead for a second atomic strike.

In the early hours of 9 August, B-29 ‘Bock’s Car’, flown by Major Charles Sweeney, began the long journey from Tinian to Kokura. The aircraft was armed with a plutonium implosion-type bomb codenamed ‘Fat Man.’ Finding the city obscured by cloud, Sweeney set course for the secondary target, the port of Nagasaki, and dropped the bomb at 11.02am. Cheshire, aboard the camera plane ’Big Stink’, witnessed the explosion from 50 miles away:

‘By the time I saw it, the flash had turned into a vast fire-ball which slowly became dense smoke, 2,000 feet above the ground, half a mile in diameter and rocketing upwards at the rate of something like 20,000 feet a minute. I was overcome, not by its size, nor by its speed of ascent but by what appeared to me its perfect and faultless symmetry…‘Against me’, it seemed to declare, ‘you cannot fight.’ My whole being felt overwhelmed, first by a tidal wave of relief and hope – it’s all over! – then by a revolt against using such a weapon.’

Although dropped well off target, the bomb destroyed half of Nagasaki and claimed 70,000 lives. The death toll in Hiroshima was far greater, and the devastation appeared worse, but it later emerged that ‘Fat Man’ had been the more effective device.

Shizuko Nagae, a young mother, was two miles from the blast:
‘There was a long black line moving slowly downwards…They were burned, wounded people who tried to escape from the fires near the epicentre coming over the mountain. They were almost naked. Their hair stuck together with blood…

…All of the dead bodies were cremated from morning to night every day…The workers collecting bodies on the street just held them by the limbs and threw them into the cart. Their hideously burned hands and feet stuck out of the cart as if they were dolls.’

On 15 August 1945, President Truman announced the surrender of Japan, which had received guarantees that its emperor would remain head of state. The war was finally over, but the ethics and military necessity of the decision to deploy nuclear weapons have been debated by historians, philosophers and spiritual leaders ever since.

On his return to Tinian, Captain Robert A Lewis, co-pilot on the Enola Gay, wrote in his flight log ‘My God, what have we done?’ Cheshire, however, immediately understood what he had witnessed at Nagasaki and the implications for mankind of the advent of weapons of mass destruction. He also saw that this terrifying new power could be used for good or ill and that nuclear proliferation was inevitable. It was for this reason that he remained a firm believer in deterrence for the rest of his life.

At the end of the year, Cheshire was diagnosed with psycho-neurosis, and he retired from the RAF in January 1946. Restless and unable to adjust to civilian life, he busied himself writing newspaper articles and delivering speeches around the country about the ‘biological necessity’ of maintaining world peace. In February, he gave a broadcast on the BBC in which he said:

‘we are faced either with the end of this country or the end of war… to end war each one of us must play our part…it is not a responsibility we can shelve nor one that we can say belongs exclusively to the government.’

Convinced that peace could be attained through the selfless actions of individuals, he established Vade In Pacem – ‘Go In Peace’ – a community designed to help ex-service personnel integrate into civilian life. ‘VIP’ failed, but in 1948, Cheshire began nursing Arthur Dykes, one of its former members, who was homeless and dying of cancer. Dykes was a devout Roman Catholic, and his influence on Cheshire was so profound that he converted to the faith and was received into the church on Christmas Eve. The bomber veteran went on to nurse several more terminally ill or disabled people, and so began the charity known today as Leonard Cheshire. In 1955, a service was established in Mumbai in India, and the organisation was soon operating world-wide.

The tenth anniversary of the atomic attacks saw the opening of memorial spaces in both cities. Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park features the famous ruined Industrial Promotion Hall, or ‘A Bomb Dome’, preserved as it was immediately after the blast on 6 August 1945. The Dome is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and receives over one million visitors every year. The Nagasaki explosion was commemorated by the unveiling of a 32-feet-tall statue of a seated man praying for peace. A black marble vault below the statue holds a nominal roll of the bomb’s victims, and in 2005, Corporal Ronald Shaw’s name was added to it.

Ronald Francis Shaw of Edmonton, in North London, was captured in 1942 while serving with No. 84 Squadron in Jakarta. Forced to work in an iron foundry in a shipyard, he died on 9 August, at the age of 25, and is buried with 1,800 other Commonwealth servicemen at the CWGC Cemetery at Yokohama. Japanese historian Shigeaki Mori, who survived the Hiroshima attack as a boy, managed to trace Ronald’s family to Leigh-on-Sea in Essex. His relatives gave their blessing to his inclusion on the roll and said they hoped to visit Nagasaki one day.

The epicentre of the Nagasaki bomb was very close to Urakami, the home of the city’s long-established Christian community. The blast wrecked the Roman Catholic Cathedral, and the glass eyes of a statue of the Virgin Mary inside it were destroyed. Her wooden face refused to burn, however, and some members of the congregation consider this miraculous. Shigemi Fukahori, who was 14 years old in 1945, is alive to the significance of Nagasaki’s agony 75 years ago and says simply: ‘I believe the war ended because of our sacrifice.’

Leonard Cheshire died, aged 74, on 31 July 1992, and there are now moves for him to be canonised as a saint.

I am indebted to Dr Robert Owen, Official Historian of the No. 617 Squadron Association, for his advice and support.

The RAF Museum Midlands tells the story of the RAF through its collection and the stories of the people who served in the RAF. But the RAF Museum Midlands is more than that. Located in the West Midlands it also tells the story of the RAF in this part of the UK. During the Second World War, several local people served within the RAF and several aircraft were purchased and donated to the RAF by the people of Wolverhampton. Such aircraft were given the name of their donors.

The idea behind the naming of aircraft in exchange for public donation began in the United Kingdom during the First World War, when the government encouraged donations as a public relations exercise. Donations were not raised for any particular aircraft, but a scale was produced to indicate to the public what their money could buy, £1,500 would buy a BE2c, £2,250 a Vickers Gunbus and £3,500 a Short floatplane.

The scheme was revived during the Second World War by the Minister of Aircraft Production William Maxwell Aitken, then Lord later Baron Beaverbrook, and the Spitfire captured the public imagination like no other aircraft. The nominal sum of £5,000 was set as the minimum donation to purchase a Spitfire (despite the actual cost being over £8,000) and communities and individuals around the world responded to raise funds for ‘their’ Spitfire.

One of the first Spitfire funds was set up by the Wolverhampton Express and Star newspaper, which had raised £1,250 by 18 June 1940, just a few days after the commencement of the Fund. A total of £6,746 was raised and Spitfire Mk. Vb AB917 was subsequently allocated and named ‘The Inspirer’, for being one of the first funded aircraft. A Ministry of Aircraft Production plaque was presented to the newspaper in honour of their Fund, and this plaque was later donated to the RAF Museum.

Although purchased in 1940, ‘The Inspirer’ did not begin its operational service until January 1942 when it was assigned to No. 401 (Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF)) Squadron at RAF Gravesend in Kent. As part of the Biggin Hill Wing alongside Nos. 72 and 124 Squadrons, No. 401 Squadron carried out fighter sweep operations over France, providing fighter cover to medium bomber squadrons attacking targets such as railways, factories and military sites.

On the wing of ‘The Inspirer’ is 21-year-old Sergeant Alexander Douglas Blakey also of No. 401 (RCAF) Squadron. Blakey flew AB917 on 8 February 1942 on formation and camera gun practice, and then again on 16 February carrying out practice attacks on tanks. Blakey was killed a few days after this photograph was taken, on 9 March, when the Spitfire he was flying broke up during an air test.
AB917 was principally flown by Pilot Officer Gerald Bickle Whitney, a 21-year-old Canadian born in Ontario but resident the USA. Whitney took AB917 on fighter sweeps to Dunkirk, convoy protection patrols over the English Channel, offensive air patrols seeking out Luftwaffe opposition, and air-sea rescue support sorties.

On 28 April 1942 No. 401 Squadron was top cover in a wing sweep for a formation of Boston medium bombers once more targeting St. Omer in France. They ran into formations of German Me 109s and FW 190s and Blakeslee and Whitney in AB917 dived to intercept but were themselves attacked. Blakeslee made two successful attacks on the FW 190s but AB917 was damaged by enemy fire. Whitney managed to get the aircraft back across the Channel but crashed in the village of Whitfield near Dover. Whitney is buried in Brookwood Military Cemetery, Woking.

Following the success of the first fundraising effort, a second Wolverhampton fighter fund began, this time championed by the Mayor of Wolverhampton. It raised £5,076 and the second aircraft Spitfire Mk. Vb P8715 was named ‘Wulfrun’ after Lady Wulfruna, the Anglo-Saxon noble who founded Wolverhampton.

First delivered in 1941 to No. 19 Squadron, by April 1943 ‘Wulfrun’ was with another Royal Canadian Air Force squadron, No. 411 stationed at RAF Kenley in Surrey. It became the regular aircraft of Flight Lieutenant William Thomas Johnstone, a 25-year-old native of Calgary. Johnstone joined the RCAF in 1940 and had served in Canadian squadrons in the UK since 1941. With No. 416 (RCAF) Squadron he had participated in Operation Jubilee, the attempted capture of the port of Dieppe, on 19 August 1942.

With P8715 Johnstone participated in fighter sweeps, patrols and bomber escort operations. On 28 March 1943 they were part of the escort for over 100 American Liberator and Flying Fortress heavy bombers attacking targets in Northern France and on 4 April they escorted 24 Lockheed Ventura medium bombers on a raid against Caen aerodrome in Normandy.

On 14 April 1943, Johnstone and P8715 set out from RAF West Hampnett at 2.25pm, part of a Wing attack against railway rolling stock in the Normandy area. The successful raid was interrupted by attacking enemy aircraft and P8715 was hit, forcing Johnstone to bale out of the stricken aircraft into the sea off Cherbourg. He was able to get into his emergency dinghy and his location was marked, and six aircraft from No. 411 Squadron returned to the scene 90 minutes later, but no sign of him was seen.

What happened to Johnstone was never ascertained, and he is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial to the RAF’s missing.

The Wolverhampton connection goes much further than the donation by its people. Many Wulfrunians served within the RAF. There are too many to mention, but let’s pick one: Wing Commander Edward Christopher Deanesly DFC.
Wolverhampton born and with a lifetime association to the Birmingham area, Christopher Deanesly was a Battle of Britain pilot whose RAF career included success as a night fighter pilot in the Wolverhampton-built Boulton Paul Defiant aircraft.

Christopher Deanesly was born in Wolverhampton on 27 January 1910, the grandson of the one-time Mayor of Wolverhampton and Director of Sunbeam, John Marston. His family lived at 43 Penn Road. His father Edward was Honorary Surgeon at the Wolverhampton and Staffordshire General Hospital (later the Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton).

He joined the part time Royal Auxiliary Air Force in 1937 and served as a pilot with No. 605 Squadron based at Castle Bromwich aerodrome in Birmingham. He was present at the opening of Elmdon Airport (now Birmingham International Airport) in July 1939 and recalled in a letter to test pilot Alex Henshaw (X002-9256/007/005/063) how Hams Hall power station in Warwickshire (now the site of Hams Hall Distribution Park) was ‘a most useful navigation aid above cloud’.

He was called up to full time RAF service and on 3 October 1939 he arrived at RAF Acklington in Northumberland to take up his posting with No. 152 (Hyderabad) Squadron, flying the biplane Gloster Gladiator. At this time No. 152 patrolled the North Eastern coastline and Humber and Tyne estuaries. Deanesly participated in patrols, attempted interceptions of enemy aircraft, reconnaissance sorties and convoy escort. While with No. 152 Squadron Deanesly gained the nickname ‘Jumbo’ due to his large stature.

The Squadron converted to the Spitfire I in January 1940 and in July of that year were transferred to RAF Warmwell in Dorset to aid in the defence of Portland Naval Base.
On 25 July a No. 152 Squadron patrol spotted a large formation of enemy aircraft approaching Portland from the south east and flew to intercept them.

The formation consisted of approximately 18 Ju 87 dive bombers, 1 Do 17 and 12 Me 109s, and the patrol flew to intercept. Deanesly in Spitfire K9901 and his Section attacked the Dornier, reporting that he fired a 6-7 second burst of ammunition at it, closing to within 40 yards and only breaking away when he had ‘about rammed’ it. (note 1)

The Dornier, from Sturzkampfgeschwader 1 (Dive Bomber Group 1) based in Normandy, France, was attacked by others after this and crashed at East Fleet Farm Dorset with the loss of one crewman. Deanesly however went on to follow other aircraft from the formation. He described how he flew through a ‘swarm of dive bombers (Ju 87) which were attacking a small ship’ and shot at them as they climbed from their dive. (note 2)

He fired the remainder of his ammunition before noting return fire from one aircraft, and then suddenly his cockpit was filled with black smoke as his engine had been hit. He was too low to bale out and coolly put his Spitfire down on the sea five miles off Portland, managing to escape from it before it sank. He spent an hour in the water before being rescued by the SS Empire Henchman, a Ministry of War Transport tug, and was finally landed at Lyme Regis by an RAF launch.

With time off for recuperation, Deanesly was back in action with No. 152 Squadron by 25 August when RAF Warmwell was bombed and the Squadron scrambled to attack the retreating formation, although Deanesly did not engage with any enemy aircraft.

On Thursday 26 September Deanesly was in one of nine No. 152 Squadron aircraft airborne for an afternoon patrol, when they intercepted a formation of Ju 88 aircraft and accompanying Me 109 escorts flying south over the Isle of Wight. Flying as the leader of Green Section he began an attack on the Ju 88 bombers when he was hit by fire from an Me 109. Wounded, Deanesly nevertheless was able to bale out, landing in the sea twelve miles from the Needles rocks. His aircraft, Spitfire K9982, crashed into the Channel and was lost. Pilot Officer Dudley Williams of Black Section saw Deanesly take to his parachute and land in the sea and was able to direct rescue boats to his location. (note 3) Brought to Swanage, Deanesly was taken to hospital to be treated for his injuries.

This ended his operational service in the Battle of Britain but following convalescence Christopher Deanesly’s RAF career followed a new path as a specialist night fighter pilot.

Notes
1 Air-50-64-9 Combat Report The National Archives
2 ibid
3 Air-50-64-60 Combat Report The National Archives

Bibliography
The Battle of Britain Then and Now ed. W. Ramsey 1980 After the Battle
The Blitz Then and Now vols. 1 & 2 ed. W. Ramsey 1987 After the Battle

‘Good God!’

This was the incredulous reaction from the beachhead master when Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) Nurse Iris Bower arrived on Juno Beach early on 11 June 1944. With fellow nurse, Mollie Giles, she travelled on a tank landing craft, becoming one of the first women to set foot on the D Day beaches. She was later awarded an MBE for her work.

Soon after D Day, women like Iris went directly into danger on the beaches while fighting was still taking place. They helped deliver thousands of soldiers to British hospitals, saving countless lives.

Two days after Iris, three nursing orderlies departed from RAF Blakehill on the first casualty evacuation flights to Normandy. It was 13 June, one week since D Day. Corporal Lydia Alford and LACWs Myra Roberts and Edna Birkbeck; each travelling in an RAF Douglas Dakota. The moment of their return was captured by an official RAF photographer. The welcoming party of newspaper correspondents dubbed them the ‘Flying Nightingales’ and the name stuck. They were the first British women on active service to be flown into a war zone.

The Air Council had approved the employment of WAAF nursing orderlies for evacuation from battle areas three months previously, in March 1944. The trade was introduced into the WAAF in 1941 and volunteers were sought for air ambulance duties the following year. Hundreds of WAAFs answered the call and by June 1943, over 200 had been trained. At first, they worked only in the United Kingdom, transferring sick and injured personnel by air to hospitals from locations across the country.

Many of the volunteers had never flown before. Their initial training involved a six-week course at RAF Hendon where they learnt how to treat battlefield injuries such as facial injuries, fractures and burns; how to administer oxygen and give injections and blood transfusions. They received further instruction in the use of emergency safety equipment and in how to handle the large numbers of wounded they would be treating.

A crucial test was their ability to cope with the flying conditions. British journalist Letitia Lumley noted in a 1944 article:

‘I saw some of those young women during their training at an airfield in the south of England. They were climbing in and out of the big transport planes, handling stretchers, familiarising themselves with the equipment. They were waiting with some apprehension for their first flight.
Persistent air-sickness naturally disqualified them.’

WAAF members who passed the examinations were then posted to RAF air ambulance stations. Three main RAF stations in No. 46 Group, Transport Command were tasked to receive casualties from the Continent: Blakehill, Down Ampney and Broadwell; later Brize Norton was used when evacuating after Arnhem. Approaching the invasion of Europe, all personnel were confined to camp and could not enter or leave as preparations got underway.

RAF Douglas Dakotas were adapted for the purpose of casualty evacuation. Each aircraft could carry 24 casualties and 18 could be stretcher cases. There was space for nine stretchers on each side, in rows of three with the lowest on the floor and the others on racks. Eventually, the aircraft were adapted to carry up to 21 stretcher casualties, but the load could never exceed 24. One nursing orderly was present on each aircraft with a crew of four.

Ammunition, rations and other supplies were carried on the outbound flight. Flying in the Douglas Dakotas was a noisy and uncomfortable experience. There were no seats and so the orderlies stood during the return journey or sat on boxes of supplies on the way out. Once they landed, there was little time to offload freight and load stretchers into the aircraft.

Corporal Lydia Alford described her first landing in Normandy:

‘Chiefly I remember the dust which was everywhere, coming up in great clouds. While the freight was being unloaded I tried to make the wounded men as comfortable as possible in all that dust. I had water to give them and panniers of tea. There was a little stray dog which came up from somewhere or other and started to play with the wounded- it cheered them up no end.’

Initially casualties were evacuated from airstrips close to the Normandy beachhead. Later a shuttle service operated, carrying casualties to bases near the coast from forward fighter airfields within 20 miles of the front line. The shuttle service was carried out by Handley Page Harrow aircraft, which had the advantage of only needing a short runway for take-off. Converted to carry a mix of stretcher and sitting casualties, they were renamed Sparrows. Each aircraft carried one nursing orderly. At the rear area bases, the wounded were graded according to the severity of their injuries and distributed either to nearby hospitals by road or flown by air ambulance to England.

On their return to England, the stretchers were carried off the aircraft at the three main airfields in England, which could each hold 300-400 casualties per day. They were situated close to hospitals and to railheads where lower priority casualties could be distributed.

In the first month of casualty evacuation from the Continent, 1097 stretcher cases and 467 sitting cases were evacuated with ‘Flying Nightingales’ by Douglas Dakotas from Nos. 48, 233 and 271 Squadrons. Over 100,000 men were evacuated by air ambulance after D-Day. For the year 1944, the RAF flew 300,000 casualties in all theatres of war.

The most obvious advantage of evacuating casualties by air was that the wounded could be treated at specialist hospitals within hours, where the same journey by rail and sea may have taken up to three days. The process also saved manpower and freed up other lines of communication for military purposes.

Many of the wounded men evacuated were experiencing air travel for the first time; knowing they would get back to Britain within hours boosted their morale. It was felt that the presence of female nursing orderlies on board the flights was especially comforting. LACW Edna Birkbeck remembered, “They’d always know when we were over the coast. I’d tell them that and say, ‘it won’t be long before you get home’ and they’d cheer”.

Nursing orderlies were undeniably affected by some of the injuries they saw. Rosa Powell recalled: ‘For me the ones who had severe burns from flame-throwing tanks were the worst. I can still smell the burned flesh.’ However, they showed fortitude in their duties. As LACW Edna Birkbeck said, ‘you couldn’t let it get to you’.

In addition to the fear of sniper and artillery fire on the ground, the women also faced considerable danger in the air. Their aircraft were not marked with the Red Cross emblem, enabling them to carry supplies to the front line. However, this meant they could be legitimately attacked by enemy aircraft. Aircraft were frequently fired at and on a few occasions were brought down. In the event of an attack, the nursing orderlies could not use parachutes and were instructed to stay with the casualties to treat any crash survivors.

LACW Margaret Walsh was killed in April 1945, when her Douglas Dakota KG406, went down over the Channel while en route to Brussels, killing all on board. Her body was never found. As Margaret Wilson recalled:

‘One day I came back from my flight into the hut and I saw she was upset. She was due to go out and she had obviously seen something on the cards. I said, ‘If you are worried, I’ll take your place on the plane. No problem. I’m all dressed to go.’ But Margaret wouldn’t let me. I think the
middle of the next day, we were told that the plane was lost over the Channel…I can still see her face – I can still remember her.’

LACW Nora Helen Speed completed 95 operational sorties, 59 carrying casualties, from RAF Down Ampney. She was awarded a British Empire Medal in 1946. The citation read:

‘She has distinguished herself by her devotion to duty and solicitude for her patients and has frequently voluntarily performed nursing orderly duties in the wards after returning tired from her flying duties. She has shared the risks and discomfort experienced on these flights, particularly during the early days after the assault on Normandy when aircraft were often subjected to shelling and mortaring.’

After D Day, the work of the ambulances continued as they carried thousands of released Prisoners Of War back to Britain and transported people from liberated concentration and labour camps in need of urgent medical attention.

One of the few ‘Flying Nightingales’ still living is Margaret Wilson. Margaret was inspired to volunteer for air ambulance duties after working as a nurse in London during the Blitz and treating terrible injuries caused by the bombing.

She recalls a particularly memorable flight on VE Day: “The happiest flight for me was flying back to the UK on 8 May 1945 with a group of paratroopers who had been POWs. The captain came to tell us that he had just heard on the radio that the war was over… I have never been kissed by so many men! Everybody was crying and laughing”.

Today very few of the original ‘Flying Nightingales’ are still living. LACW Ruth Jarvis sadly passed away in April at the age of 102. In 2008, their work was officially recognised when the remaining seven ‘Flying Nightingales’ were each presented with a medal, a lifetime achievement award and a statuette of Florence Nightingale by the Duchess of Cornwall. In recognition of their courage, Douglas Dakota ZA947 in the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight was painted to resemble Douglas Dakota FZ692 of No. 233 Squadron. FZ692, known as ‘Kwicherbichen’, took part in casualty evacuation flights with ‘Flying Nightingales’ after D Day.

Since the ‘Flying Nightingales’, aeromedical evacuation has evolved from simply transporting casualties and keeping them alive, to mobile treatment areas using technically advanced equipment. During operations in Afghanistan, Medical Emergency Response Team Chinooks transferred casualties from the firefight to the Role 3 hospital at Camp Bastion; acting as a flying emergency room. From Camp Bastion, RAF C-17s provided aeromedical evacuation of personnel back to the UK for treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.

Servicewomen continue the legacy of the “Flying Nightingales” by flying into combat areas to evacuate casualties. Flt Lt Michelle Goodman was the first woman to be awarded the DFC in June 2007 after flying her Merlin helicopter into Basra under intense enemy fire to rescue a seriously wounded casualty. Without her actions, the casualty would have died within 15 minutes. Wg Cdr Charlotte Thompson-Edgar received the Associate of the Royal Red Cross Award in 2015 for her work leading Medical Emergency Response Teams treating injured troops in Afghanistan. She pioneered new clinical training methods and helped save the life of a triple amputee.

While the evacuation of Dunkirk continued under increasing pressure of the Nazi German forces, it was not only British troops which arrived at the harbour. There were also French, Belgian and Polish troops. Only half a year before, the Poles had fought the Nazi invasion before escaping via neutral Romania. From there, most made their way to France to continue the fight. Once there, their superior training and that most precious commodity – combat experience – stood them in good stead. The Polish Army in France numbered 82,000 men from Poland or émigré families. The Polish Air Force in France had 86 aircraft fully operational, although most were second-rate aircraft disdained by the French. During the Battle of France, Polish pilots destroyed 56 German aircraft.

By this time they had undergone a process of ‘natural selection’. In other words, those that had experienced Blitzkrieg twice – and survived – clearly had a lot going for them. For the Poles, who had been driven from their homeland in 1939, only to be forced to flee again, Britain was now the ‘Island of Last Hope.’

However, the RAF authorities had doubts about the value of the Polish crew. Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, commander of Fighter Command, refused to allow them to serve in RAF squadrons for fear they’d instil a defeatist mentality in the British airmen. Instead, national squadrons would be formed. The first were No. 300 and No. 301 bomber squadrons and No. 302 and No. 303 fighter squadrons.

The Polish veterans knew they were good. Often older than their RAF comrades, nearly all were fully-trained and each had an average of 500 hours flying. They brought to this country valuable ‘corporate knowledge’ of the business of air fighting, and with it, the British thought, a touch of arrogance.

On 30 August 1940, No. 303 Squadron was on a training flight near Northolt, led by Squadron Leader Ronald Kellett, when Pilot Officer Ludwick ‘Paszko’ Paszkiewicz spotted an enemy formation being attacked by Hurricanes. Paszkiewicz called out to Kellet but, receiving no reply, he broke formation and promptly shot down a Messerschmitt 110. On landing, the Pole was reprimanded by Kellett for his indiscipline and then congratulated for his success. That evening Paszkiewicz, deeply religious and a teetotaller, got drunk for the first time in his life. The following day, 303 Squadron was declared operational.

At the end of the 16-week campaign, the top-scoring Fighter Command unit was No. 303 Squadron, which in only 42 days claimed 126 enemy aircraft destroyed. One of the most successful individual pilots – with 17 victories – was Sergeant Josef Frantisek, a Czech who also flew with ‘303’.

Trained to get in close, Polish airmen made the most of their eight .303in machine guns; and all of the Hurricanes on No. 303 Squadron had their guns harmonised to converge at 200 yards rather than the standard RAF spread of 400 yards. However, they were not reckless. This is borne out by the fact that during the Battle No. 302 and No. 303 Squadrons each lost only eight pilots, a figure much lower than that of most RAF units.

Pilot Officer Miroslaw Feric, a pilot on No. 303 Squadron and standing on the left in the image below, described the experience of shooting down a Messerschmitt Bf 109:

‘I caught up with him easily, he grew in my sights… it was time for firing. I did it quite calmly and I was not even excited, rather puzzled and surprised to see that it was so easy, quite different from Poland when you had to scrape and try until you were in a sweat, and then, instead of you getting the bastard he got you.’

The RAF was quick to recognise the calibre of the men serving with them and it should be congratulated for allowing the Polish and Czechoslovakian pilots their head. The Slavs in turn appreciated the RAF, which, according to veterans, was efficient, fair and understanding of their needs. The Air Force was also truly meritocratic and it is enough to say that it encouraged the best and the brightest of two principled, courageous and resourceful nations to participate fully in the successful defence of Britain’s airspace.

The statistics make interesting reading. The 146 Polish pilots, some 5% of Fighter Command’s strength, claimed 203 enemy aircraft for the loss of 29 of their number killed. This represents 7.5% of Fighter Command’s total score or 1.4 enemy aircraft for every Pole engaged. On the 15th of September, now celebrated as ‘Battle of Britain Day’, one in five of the pilots in action was Polish.

Dowding admitted he was wrong about the Poles, and would write:

‘Had it not been for the magnificent material contributed by the Polish squadrons and their unsurpassed gallantry, I hesitate to say that the outcome of the Battle would have been the same’.

It was not only in the air that the Poles excelled, for the ground personnel of ‘302’ and ‘303’ were the pick of the Polish Air Force. Their skill, dedication and capacity for hard work made for high rates of serviceability on the two Squadrons. The ground crews’ finest hour came after the fighting of 15 September, when No. 303 Squadron’s Flying Officer Wiorkiewicz’s team managed overnight to restore nine apparently ‘un-repairable’ Hurricanes for the next day’s operations.

Polish ground crew was not all-male. Many Polish women served with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). The Polish women played an important role within the Polish squadrons. The first recruit was Helena Paszkiewicz who completed her training by October 1941. Polish WAAF’s worked alongside mechanics and armourers. In all some 45 trades including domestic, clerical, medical and technical were covered by the trained Polish personnel. Nicknamed the ‘Waafki’, the Polish WAAFs were allowed to wear Polish Air Force cap badges and insignia to distinguish them from their British counterparts. Approximately 1,426 women served in the Waafki.

In honour of all those who served 80 years ago, we are organising our Hurricane 80K Challenge in which we are challenging you to walk, run, jog, swim or bike 80K in 80 days. More than 4,000 people have already signed up. Lisa shared with us ‘Today as part of my 80K challenge I ran 20K around East Sussex. This beautiful memorial was for “Warrant Officer Stanislaw Jozefiak” who served in the war (1940-1946) in the Polish Air Force. It totally made me reflect on how lucky we all are because of brave service men and women’.

The Hurricane 80K Challenge was created to inspire you all with the Battle of Britain story. But it has taken on a new meaning to many of us during this difficult time.

Operation DYNAMO, the evacuation of Dunkirk, commenced on the evening of 26 May 1940. By the time the evacuation ceased on the morning of 4 June, 338,000 Allied troops had been brought away. Although Britain had lost almost all the heavy equipment and artillery it had despatched to France, the recovery of the troops of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) allowed it to rebuild its armies. If the men of the BEF had been captured at Dunkirk there was little prospect of Britain continuing in the War, their recovery provided the seed corn for the British Army, rebuilt and expanded, to help defeat Nazi Germany. The success of DYNAMO was widely celebrated at the time as a miracle of deliverance and the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ has become the British epitome of stoicism in the face of utter adversity.

The success of DYNAMO was not just celebrated in Britain. The myth of the little ships, collected from British ports and crewed by citizen sailors, crossing the Channel to rescue the nation’s soldiers held an idealism almost ready made to appeal to the American public. Even before the evacuation was complete RL Duffus penned an editorial in The New York Times which helped convey what Dunkirk promised for the future arguing that:

‘So long as the English tongue survives, the word Dunkirk will be spoken with reverence. For in that harbour, in such a hell as never blazed on earth before, at the end of a lost battle, the rags and blemishes that have hidden the soul of democracy fell away. There, beaten but unconquered, in shining splendour, she faced the enemy… It was the common man of the free countries… This shining thing in the souls of free men Hitler cannot command, or attain, or conquer… It is the great tradition of democracy. It is the future. It is victory.’

On 4 June 1940, Churchill caution the House of Commons that ‘wars are not won by evacuations’. Many will be more familiar with the final part of his address on 4 June where he exhorted that in Britain:

‘We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.’

The reference to ‘growing strength in the air’ was not Churchill’s only reference to the Royal Air Force. In the main part of Churchill’s address, he noted that:

‘there was a victory inside this deliverance, which should be noted. It was gained by the Air Force. Many of our soldiers coming back have not seen the Air Force at work; they saw only the bombers which escaped its protective attack. They underrate its achievements.’

If Churchill’s rhetoric didn’t dispel all criticism from the men who, whilst at Dunkirk, asked ‘where was the RAF?’ it has subsequently shaped the histories of DYNAMO. The supposed absence of the RAF at Dunkirk is now recounted as another myth in histories of DYNAMO.

Instead of asking what the RAF accomplished historians have previously satisfied themselves with demonstrating that the RAF was at Dunkirk. Fighter Command’s 2,200 sorties during the nine days of the evacuation demonstrate that the extreme view — that the RAF did nothing — is absurd. The extent that RAF contributed to the result is, however, far less clear.

Comparing the losses of the RAF to those of the Luftwaffe during the DYNAMO is no way to gauge the effectiveness of the two air forces. It is, however, one frequently employed by historians and was used by Churchill at the time to defend the RAF when he claimed it inflicted four times the losses it suffered. During DYNAMO Fighter Command lost 87 airmen and over 100 aircraft to enemy action over Dunkirk whilst the Luftwaffe lost 97 aircraft to the RAF, with others damaged but repairable, these included 28 Messerschmitt Me 109s and 13 Me 110s.

The measure of Fighter Command’s success, however, is not in the destruction of enemy aircraft but the extent to which it defended the evacuation. Initially, the RAF attempted to provide continuous air cover, but faced with large German formations it adapted its tactics and instead looked to provide air cover in strength — with patrols involving four squadrons — but not continuous air cover. The move from stronger patrols at less frequent intervals was not successful.

The four squadron patrols were often unable to cooperate effectively over Dunkirk. The flying conditions over Dunkirk, with low-cloud and thick smoke, would have taxed pilots experienced in combat operations as part of larger formations. During DYNAMO, it was almost impossible for patrols involving more than two squadrons to maintain contact and fight together. By the time the patrol had reached the French coast the squadrons had become separated and the patrols broke up into single, or pairs of squadrons, with part of the patrol below the cloud cover whilst others, having initially been instructed to provide top cover, flew above it. The result was that there was ineffective support between the squadrons at different heights and the force structure of the patrol was wasted.

The larger patrols also quickly became disorganised in combat, as the squadrons fragmented into sections, largely dissipating the effect of the patrol. Norman Hancock, a Pilot Officer in No. 1 Squadron, recalled that:

‘You went as a squadron towards your target. You were in appropriate formation but once you’d engaged the enemy then by and large people tended to split up. You might get the odd pair who stayed together, but by and large the squadron was split up and individually attacked targets. You didn’t stay as a solid machine of 12 aeroplanes pointing in the right direction. It didn’t work that way… everybody disappeared. … [After the first attack] there was no cohesion to the squadron.’

The patrols by four squadrons reduced the combat effectiveness of Fighter Command and it is evident that more frequent patrols, involving only two squadrons, would have been more effective. This was a lesson drawn and learnt from the air cover by the officer in charge, Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, and he applied that lesson during the Battle of Britain despite the vociferous advocation of larger formations from elsewhere in Fighter Command.

Following the move to larger formations there were only two clear days of weather for the Luftwaffe to launch full scale attacks. On the first day, 29 May, the evacuation suffered heavily and the Royal Navy temporarily suspended the use of its modern destroyers — a decision which based on the lift capacity of remaining ships would have left over 100,000 men to be captured. On the second day of clear weather, 1 June, daylight evacuations were suspended. One defence of the RAF’s air cover is that German artillery fire west of Dunkirk was at least as responsible for that decision. A detailed review of the decision behind the suspension indicates this is entirely false.

One consequence of the decision to suspend daylight evacuations was that over 30,000 men of the French rear-guard were abandoned at the end of the evacuation. For the French military, Dunkirk was ‘certainly not a victory’ but rather ‘the least unfortunate resolution of what could have been a catastrophe’.

Losses within the evacuation fleet were also significant. The total loss of named ships and vessels during DYNAMO exceeded 190 of which 45 were definitely the result of air attack. Many ships were lost in situations where air attack could be considered contributory factors. Furthermore, the ships lost or damaged owing to ‘collision or other misadventure’ were largely smaller craft. If smaller crafts and types are excluded, the total loss of named ships was at least 79. Air attack was the cause of 56 percent of these losses, E-Boats, U-Boats and mines caused 18 percent, and artillery fire caused 6 percent. The Royal Navy alone lost six destroyers and six minesweepers, with another 19 destroyers and seven minesweepers damaged. Furthermore, a number of ships quit the evacuation because of the German air attack. This was not isolated to civilian crews. The air attack was so exceptionally severe on 29 May that one of the Royal Navy’s destroyers — HMS Verity — did not sail for Dunkirk again because of the psychological effect of the Luftwaffe’s attacks on the crew, and a member of the ship’s company later attempted to commit suicide on the mess deck.

It is also necessary to remember that the Luftwaffe successfully destroyed the harbour facilities at Dunkirk. This should have made large scale embarkation impossible and left the evacuation dependant on the number of men who could be lifted from the beaches. Instead, the Royal Navy’s extemporised use of the Dunkirk Mole made it possible to rapidly embark large numbers of men on to the ships capable of crossing the Channel at speed.

The RAF’s contribution was not, however, limited to the air cover provided by Fighter Command. Coastal Command flew patrols across shipping routes in the English Channel, patrolled the Belgian and Dutch coasts for enemy naval activity and undertook bombing raids. Patrols were also flown in an attempt to prevent interference from German submarines and Schnellbooten (designated as U- and E-Boats respectively by the British). The threat of U-boats with unrestricted access to the evacuation fleet is an obvious one but the work of Coastal Command against E-Boats and was of particular importance. These craft were fast, manoeuvrable motor boats armed with torpedoes and fast-firing light anti-aircraft guns.

German U-Boats and fast attack E-boats were a significant threat to the evacuation, particularly before the switch from Route Y, the longest naval route to Britain. The SS Abukir was lost on 28 May to the E-boat S-34. The S-34 torpedoed Abukir at point blank range. Only 24 survivors of Abukir were recovered and, according to some estimates she had sailed with 500 souls on board. Amongst those were a number of RAF aircrews almost all of whom were lost.

On the night of 29 May, a British destroyer HMS Wakeful was lost following a torpedo attack by a German E-Boat and sank immediately. A second destroyer, HMS Grafton, stopped to rescue survivors and was torpedoed by a German U-Boat. In the confusion that followed HMS Comfort, a 60-ton drifter, was fired upon and then rammed and sunk by HMS Lydd.

On 31 May the French destroyer Sirocco was sunk by an attack made by the German E-Boat. Earlier, the French Destroyer Cyclone had been damaged by a torpedo fired from the German E-Boat S-24. However, against the continuous sustained period of operations one might expect such losses to be far greater than they were. For instance, on the night of 31 May, four groups of German E-boats were positioned east of Dunkirk.

The disruption caused to the evacuation by German naval vessels could have been far greater had it not been for the patrols of Coastal Command. As well as providing advanced warning of E-Boat movements the operations by both Avro Ansons and Lockheed Hudsons of Coastal Command made the movement of E-Boats on the Dutch Coast difficult during daylight.

Troop concentration points were bombed during this period and Bomber Command in particular, undertook a number of sorties against the German rear areas in an attempt to disrupt the German attempts to resupply their forward units. In the early evening of the 27 May, 24 Bristol Blenheims of Number 2 Group bombed German motor convoys and rail yards which were bringing up supplies. Vickers Wellingtons of Bomber Command undertook sorties by night in an attempt to disrupt German movement to, and supply of, the Dunkirk bridgehead.

On 25 May, No. 2 Group issued instructions to its squadrons as to the nature of the situation they faced:

The primary objective of daylight operations varied at different points of the Dunkirk evacuation; however, the attacks aimed to disorganise, and cause the maximum interference to, the enemy’s lines of communication and logistics network and were maintained throughout DYNAMO.
Many crews of Bomber Command returned with reports of ‘direct hits’, however, all too frequently these reports proved overly optimistic and little physical damage resulted from the attacks. The delays produced by Bomber Command’s attacks may only have been measured in hours, however, during the critical stages of the evacuation this was sufficient to provide a measure of relief to the Allied rear-guard on the perimeter at Dunkirk. The German forces at Dunkirk were at the end of extended supply lines, infantry was being brought up to engage Allied forces on the perimeter and artillery moved further south to the formations preparing for further operation against the remaining French forces. Furthermore, the sluice gates controlling the irrigation around Dunkirk had been opened and, although the flooding was not widespread, it restricted the German lines of approach to the perimeter.

The Royal Air Force Museum highlights the diverse nature of Britain’s flying services over time. We do this because we are entrusted with telling the story of the RAF Family, which has strong and vibrant branches all over the world. We are, moreover, conscious of the need to provide exhibitions and outreach that are inspiring and relevant to all sections of Britain’s cosmopolitan society. What emerges clearly from our work is the success with which the RAF has embraced integration; and how this has enabled it to get the best from its people.

Launched in the spring of 2018, the RAF Museum’s ‘Hidden Heroes’ project has explored and shared inspiring, and little-known, stories with our communities, our business partners and our RAF colleagues. The project has witnessed close co-operation between Museum departments to harness our unique collections; and dynamic partnerships with external organisations and individuals willing to support our fundraising activities.

‘Hidden Heroes’ has been masterminded by Renee Coppinger, the Museum’s Development Manager. Renee hails from New Jersey, and has brought some of her native ingenuity to bear on a project as complex as it is rewarding.

In 2013, the BBC’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ programme brought actress Minnie Driver to the RAF Museum to find out about her late father, Ronnie. As Aircraftman 1st Class Charles Ronald Driver, the front gunner of a No. 9 Squadron Wellington bomber, Ronnie displayed outstanding bravery during the disastrous Battle of Heligoland Bight on 18 December 1939. Although Minnie’s father was immediately awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal, she knew nothing about this chapter of his life. It was then that the phrase ‘Hidden Heroes’ was coined. Minnie now acts as an ambassador for the RAF Museum, promoting our work and raising awareness of people, like her father, whose stories need to be told.

On 22 March 2018, the Harmony Club of New York City, in cordial partnership with the RAF Museum’s American Foundation, provided the venue for the inauguration of the ‘Hidden Heroes’ project. Joshua Levine is an author and broadcaster, and was a historical adviser on Christopher Nolan’s feature film ‘Dunkirk.’ He is also an RAF Museum ambassador. In New York, Joshua gave an inspiring presentation that described how, during the Second World War, 20,000 Jewish men and women – some six percent of Britain’s Jewish population – joined the RAF to fight against tyranny, racism and anti-Semitism. Joshua showed how these people served shoulder to shoulder with comrades of all faiths in every Branch of the Service, and how they earned a reputation for exceptional courage and devotion to duty.

He also stressed that throughout the war, Jewish airmen and airwomen volunteered for the front line fully aware that they risked torture and execution if captured. Over 900 of their number sacrificed their lives in defence of their families, faith and tradition and for what they believed was right.

Here are some of the ‘Hidden Heroes’ Joshua was pleased to introduce that evening:

Sam and Doris Miara, were a Cardiff couple who responded to Kristallnacht (the pogrom on Germany’s Jewish communities in November 1938) by selling their clothing business and joining the Air Force. In April 1941, Sam, a No. 38 Squadron wireless operator, was killed on board a Wellington in the Middle East. The loving, and sometimes heart-rending, letters the Miara’s exchanged while apart are held in the RAF Museum’s Archive.

Bernard Kreger, was a young Londoner who volunteered for the RAF as soon as he came of age. An Air Ministry clerk misspelled his surname “Kregor”, but so strong was Bernard’s desire to take the fight to the enemy, he cheerfully accepted the new name and used it for the rest of his life. Kregor became a mechanic, but later applied to train as a bomber navigator. When asked by a Wing Commander why he wanted such a dangerous job, he replied ‘Sir, I am a Jew, and my war with the enemy began long before September 1939.’ In 2003, Bernard gave the Museum the Forces Jewish Prayer Book he had carried with him for comfort and guidance throughout the war.

Andrew Mamedoff, a United States citizen of Russian parentage, flew Spitfires with No. 609 Squadron. One of 34 Jewish pilots to serve in the Battle of Britain, he later became a founding member of No. 71 (Eagle) Squadron: the first of three RAF units composed of American volunteers. Lively, witty and brave, Andy Mamedoff was killed on 8 October 1941 when his aircraft crashed on the Isle of Man in poor weather.

After proving to be a skilful pilot in training, Lawrence ‘Benny’ Goodman was retained as an instructor for much of the war. Benny eventually persuaded his commanding officer to release him to a front-line unit; and in August 1944, he was selected to join No. 617 Squadron, the celebrated “Dambusters.” In the last months of the war, he flew Lancasters on daylight missions delivering 12,000lb Tallboy and 22,000lb Grand Slam earthquake bombs. He participated in the raid that finally sank the Tirpitz on 12 November 1944, and attacked Hitler’s mountain residence at Berchtesgaden on 25 April 1945. Benny is a Londoner by birth and is in his centenary year.

Alfred Huberman, who lives close to the RAF Museum, flew as a Lancaster rear gunner with Nos. 576 and 83 Squadrons. Although Alfred completed 38 bombing operations against targets in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe, he told his family he was serving with a training unit so they wouldn’t worry. Advised to change the religion stamped on his identity tags before flying over the Reich, Alfred politely refused, saying ‘I’ve lived my life as a Jew and I’ll die as a Jew.’

Joshua’s thought-provoking paper went over exceptionally well with his American audience, who were surprised and delighted by these new stories. On 16 April, he successfully reprised his presentation at the Beverley Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard; again, embracing the heroism, comradeship and success enjoyed by Jewish people in RAF blue. He was joined in Los Angeles by Minnie, who spoke movingly about her father’s battle with PTSD after experiencing the death of his close friend, Walter Lilley, the rear gunner on the ill-fated mission in 1939.

At the start of 2018, the Governor of Gibraltar, His Excellency Ed Davis, and the CO of RAF Gibraltar, Wing Commander John Kane, invited the Museum to mount a ‘Hidden Heroes’ event there to commemorate the Service’s centenary. On 8 May 2018, Wing Commander Sophy Gardner MBE, a retired RAF officer, researching a PhD with the Museum’s support, gave a presentation about the RAF and Gibraltar attended by 90 people. Sophy writes:

‘Anyone who has flown to Gibraltar airport for the first time will have been impressed by the dramatic views of the Rock from the air. I remember the boss of the RAF detachment had obtained an enormous RAF100 banner which he hung close to the border crossing so that it would greet every person who arrived in Gibraltar, on foot, by plane or by car that year! I discovered during my research at the Garrison Library that a Short Type 184 Seaplane made the RAF’s first flight from Gibraltar on 9 May 1918. I gave my talk on the eve of this one-hundred-year anniversary and it felt very special to be able to share that news with our lovely audience.’

Another, perhaps strange, coincidence is that General George Augustus Eliott, who successfully defended Gibraltar during The Great Siege of 1779 to 1783, has a connection with the RAF Museum. It transpires that one of ‘The Cock of the Rock’s’ direct descendants was Air Chief Marshal Sir William Elliot, the head of RAF Fighter Command from 1947-1949. Sir William’s personal Spitfire Mk. XVI, RW393, is currently on display in Hangar 3 at the RAF Museum in London.

Word of ‘Hidden Heroes’ travelled far and wide, and there was a buzz of anticipation when the project at last came home to the RAF Museum on the evening of 15 November 2018. In an enjoyable and well-attended event at our London site, Joshua again gave his inspiring presentation, and again, it was well-received. Five proud Jewish veterans were guests of honour: Lawrence ‘Benny’ Goodman; Alfred Huberman; Bernard Carton, a former Bomber Command flight engineer; Jack Toper, a Bomber Command wireless operator who survived being badly burned and became a plastic surgery ‘Guinea Pig’; and Ralph Levy, who served as a ground engineer during the Berlin Airlift of 1948-1949. These Jewish airmen were warmly applauded by a grateful audience.

Gibraltar has been described as a ‘beacon of tolerance’ and it has a large and long-established Jewish population. A partnership between GIBRAEL, the Gibraltar-Israel Chamber of Commerce, and the RAF Museum, brought ‘Hidden Heroes’ to the territory for a second time on 20 February 2019. Joshua addressed an enthusiastic audience of 75 people which again included His Excellency Ed Davis and Wing Commander John Kane, representatives of Gibraltar’s Jewish community, and several British military personnel. All responded warmly to Joshua’s presentation, which had been refreshed by the inclusion of new stories generated by the Museum’s pro-active PR work and collecting policy. The ‘Hidden Heroes’ project was by now well established and growing in popularity, and in autumn came more exciting news.

On 13 November 2019, it was announced that the Royal Air Force Museum and the Chelsea Foundation would work together in a partnership sponsored by the owner of Chelsea FC, Roman Abramovich. This partnership would support the RAF Museum’s development of the Jewish ‘Hidden Heroes’ project, and would be timed to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain in 2020. Maggie Appleton MBE, CEO of the Museum said:

‘We are tremendously grateful to Roman Abramovich and Chelsea FC for supporting the RAF Museum’s Jewish ‘Hidden Heroes’ project. The Battle of Britain was the RAF’s defining moment, when they stood firm against Hitler and fascism. With many Jewish RAF personnel playing crucial roles, the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain in 2020 provides the perfect opportunity to remember these incredible people. By highlighting their stories, we want to play our part in calling out the rise in anti-Semitism – and wider racism – in our society.’

Bruce Buck, Chelsea FC’s Chairman said in turn:

‘We are delighted to be able to support the RAF Museum with this project. Chelsea FC is committed to tackling anti-Semitism through education and the Jewish ‘Hidden Heroes’ [project] tells important stories about the bravery of Jewish RAF personnel during the conflict.’

The partnership was formally launched on 4 December 2019 at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea FC’s ground in West London. Before the game that afternoon, Benny Goodman and Bernard Carton were introduced to the appreciative crowd. The Jewish ‘Hidden Heroes’ project has generated much positive media coverage, with features appearing in the Times, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Times of Israel and RAFA’s ‘Air Mail’ magazine.

The RAF Museum and Chelsea Foundation are now inviting people from all over the world to submit their own stories – as well as those of families and friends of Jewish personnel in the Second World War – so that they can be preserved and shared online at the Museum’s public sites. Stage One of the Jewish ‘Hidden Heroes’ project involves the collation of stories from Jewish personnel within the Museum’s RAF Stories digital site. The project will eventually include: video interviews with Jewish veterans and family members; animated videos of Jewish stories drawn from the Museum’s archives; and screenings of these videos in its galleries.

Let the last words be those of Joshua Levine who has explored and shared what it meant to be Jewish in wartime in New York, Los Angeles, Gibraltar and in London. Joshua concludes:

‘The received wisdom that Jewish people were the victims of the Second World War has eclipsed any evidence that they fought back. But Jews did fight back. Jews, men and women, desperate to hit back at the Nazis, joined the Royal Air Force. This project is hugely important, and as the nephew of a wartime Wellington pilot, I’m exceptionally proud to be involved.’

The RAF’s specialist bomb disposal unit, No. 5131 Squadron, disbanded last month, with its responsibilities passing to the British Army. Here, we look back on the history of RAF bomb disposal.

In every bombing campaign since the First World War a proportion of the bombs dropped have failed to go off; even in peacetime there is an ongoing need to deal with weapons that have failed to detonate during training on dedicated ranges, terrorist bombs or munitions left over from previous wars. Over many years an increasingly sophisticated organisation has developed to deal with these weapons, to which all three services have contributed, together with government and civilian agencies. RAF bomb disposal teams have, from the Second World War onwards and alongside their British Army, Royal Navy and civilian colleagues, made a significant contribution to this work. As Dave Lowe, an RAF bomb disposal operator, explained, RAF bomb disposal teams provide ‘specialist knowledge for things like ejection seats and missiles … it gives a subject-matter expert view on air-delivered weapons, on how they operate, how they work and what needs to be done to them’.

In recent years, bomb disposal within the UK has been divided between the Royal Navy, British Army and RAF on largely geographical lines, with the Metropolitan Police providing their own capability in London. Mike Stocks, a former commanding officer of No. 5131 Squadron, explained how ‘We had a call-out responsibility for improvised explosive devices and conventional devices, so we had an area, a patch based around Wittering that we had to respond to, in 10 minutes and 30 minutes respectively for the teams.’

Bomb disposal within the RAF has a long history, however. During the First World War the bombs used were, for the most part, relatively small and simple in design. In many cases they could be exploded where they fell or made safe by members of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC). Although the RAOC had expertise in handling munitions, skilled personnel were not always called on in such situations. Norman Macmillan, a pilot serving with No. 45 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps in France, recalled how a suspected unexploded bomb on the Squadron’s airfield was dug up for inspection by a team with no training or experience in bomb disposal work – and discovered to be an unexploded British anti-aircraft shell.

By the start of the Second World War, the RAF had developed the armourer’s trade to a much higher level of sophistication, and it naturally fell to these servicemen, with their training and expertise in air weapons, to deal with the RAF’s share of unexploded bombs during the conflict and, more specifically, bombs that fell on RAF airfields or those found in crashed aircraft. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy’s bomb disposal experts specialised, naturally enough, in naval weapons such as torpedoes and sea mines, and the Army’s Royal Engineers took on a great deal of the bomb disposal work that did not fall into the remits of the other two services.

Courses in bomb disposal were run at various locations during the Second World War, including the RAF Armament School at RAF Manby in Lincolnshire. Christopher Draper, a naval officer who attended an early course, recalls how much of the teaching was on British bombs due to lack of knowledge of German weapons at that time:

‘A few weeks previously I had been sent to the R.A.F. Armament School at Manby, in Lincolnshire, for a one week course on “Unexploded Bombs”. This was more amusing than instructive because, at the first lecture, the instructor began by saying: “Of course we know nothing about German bombs yet, so we will give you this brief course on our own bombs and pyrotechnics”. Nevertheless, when, a few days after the blitz on Ford, two holes in the ground were discovered, obviously containing unexploded bombs, “Fish” sent for me and said: “You’ve just done the unexploded bomb course at Manby, so go and dig ‘em up”.’

Mervyn Base, an RAF armourer who trained in bomb disposal at RAF Melksham in 1940, similarly remembered how ‘This course was largely based on the practical knowledge gained by Army personnel in the field, and as a result was somewhat limited’ and that at the end of the course the officer in charge said ‘Well chaps, that’s all we know to date, the rest I’m afraid you will have to find out for yourselves’.

Experience, however, developed rapidly with the rising tempo of German air raids on the UK. One of the best-known RAF bomb disposal experts from this time, Wilson Charlton, was awarded the George Cross early in 1941; the citation published in the London Gazette gives some indication of the intensity of operations through the second half of 1940:

‘Flight Lieutenant Charlton is responsible for all work in connection with enemy bombs in an area comprising the greater part of two counties. Both by day and night, during recent months, he has dealt with some 200 unexploded bombs. He has successfully undertaken many dangerous missions with undaunted and unfailing courage.’

Charlton was later sent to the Far East where, under slightly mysterious circumstances, he recovered a number of Japanese bombs and fuzes from China, providing valuable intelligence on a previously unknown area (a fuze was the component of a bomb that causes it to explode.It can work in various different ways, including detonation on hitting the ground, detonation a given time after impact or detonation if the bomb was moved after hitting the ground).

The impact on training of the experience gained in a short time is perhaps illustrated by Alec Haarer, who trained in bomb disposal at RAF Melksham towards the end of 1940.He recalled how:

‘For the most part the course at Melksham gave us a good grounding on bombs and fuzes, on how they acted, on safety precautions, and on some of the methods of bomb disposal such as the use of special machines to cut out discs of metal by remote control. It was intensive training, and being new to the service and somewhat awed by the mass of information we were expected to absorb, we worked hard and soberly. We knew that safety for ourselves and our men depended on our ability to recognize one fuze from another and how it operated.’

By September 1940, 188 RAF armourer NCOs had qualified in bomb disposal. They were distributed around eighty RAF stations in the UK, known as ‘X’ stations, and were supported by mobile teams, able to move to wherever they were most needed at any given time. The organisation of RAF bomb disposal developed further in April 1943, with the formation of a wing headquarters overseeing the work of six bomb disposal squadrons. These squadrons would continue to serve through the rest of the war, several of them landing in Normandy in 1944 and one – No. 5131 Squadron – would provide the RAF’s bomb disposal capability into the 21st Century before disbandment in 2020.

The UK’s first unexploded bombs of the Second World War were dealt with by Arthur Merriman, a civilian specialist who had served in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps during the First World War, and Flight Lieutenant (later Squadron Leader) Eric Moxey at Sullom Voe in the Shetland Islands late in 1939. Moxey would later go on to develop an automatic fuze extractor, allowing bomb disposal operators to take cover at a distance during this potentially very dangerous procedure. This did not, however, remove all risk, as the device had to be fitted to the bomb, someone had to approach the bomb to confirm that the fuze had been extracted and it would not, in any case, always work as intended.

The first action of the war leading to the award of a George Cross (although not the first medals to be awarded) was that of Flight Lieutenant (later Squadron Leader) John Dowland and Mr Len Harrison (an ex-RAF civilian armaments instructor) for their actions in dealing with an unexploded bomb in a steamship at Immingham Docks near Grimsby in February 1940.According to the citation ‘The bomb was extremely difficult to inspect and handle as it was wedged with its nose penetrating through the main deck’ and a similar situation was dealt with onboard a trawler in June 1940.These bombs featured a simple impact fuze, designed to detonate the bomb when it hit the ground. If it did not explode on impact it was likely to be due to a fault of some description; it was not designed to catch out anyone attempting to make it safe, but such weapons would not be long in coming.

In the summer of 1940 disposal experts were called on to deal with unexploded German bombs fitted with the Type 17 clockwork time fuze. The clockwork mechanism could be set to detonate a bomb after an interval of anything up to more than eighty hours after being dropped, and there was no way of knowing how any particular bomb had been set; from the point of view of the bomb disposal teams, they could potentially go off at any moment. Methods were, however, developed by which Type 17 fuzes could be made safe, including the use of powerful magnets or the injection of viscous liquids to stop the clockwork mechanism.One significant contributor to this work was Wing Commander Cornelius Stevens, who developed a method of creating a vacuum within a fuze, which would then efficiently suck in the liquid and jam the mechanism. Even so, weapons such as this could cause a great deal of disruption simply by their presence, and introduced a greater degree of danger and uncertainty to the bomb disposal operator’s work; this was even more the case when used in conjunction with other types of fuze, such as those designed to detonate the bomb if it was moved or tampered with.

One example of this was the Zussatzünder (auxiliary fuze) 40, an anti-withdrawal device fitted below a Type 17 fuze. Put simply, if the Type 17 fuze was removed from a bomb, the ZUS 40 would cause it to explode. Squadron Leader Eric Moxey, who had participated in the disposal of the unexploded bombs at Sullom Voe in the Shetlands and made a significant contribution to the development of the automatic fuze extractor, was called to RAF Biggin Hill on 27 August 1940 to deal with unexploded bombs that appeared to have new features, possibly including the ZUS 40.If the fuzes could be recovered intact they would provide valuable information, essential for operators dealing with similar bombs in future. Although he was able to defuse one bomb successfully, the second exploded, killing Squadron Leader Moxey instantly; Moxey was awarded a posthumous George Cross for his actions at Biggin Hill. An example of the ZUS 40 was retrieved for examination only days later in south Wales by Lt Archer of the Royal Engineers.

A further, even more dangerous, development was the German No 50 fuze, first identified by the British in September 1940 and an example of this was also obtained by Lt Archer. This featured highly sensitive switches that would detonate the bomb at the slightest movement after impact. When combined with the ZUS 40 anti-withdrawal device and the clockwork timer of the Type 17 fuze, all of which could be fitted to the same bomb, this created a complex problem for a bomb disposal operator to deal with. The Y fuze, first dropped on London in 1943, was another development, specifically designed to kill bomb disposal operators, and it was only due to luck, in that the first bomb encountered was faulty, that officers of the British Army’s Royal Engineers were able to retrieve an example and develop a procedure for dealing with it. Experiments showed that, if the temperature of the fuze could be lowered sufficiently through the use of liquid oxygen, the batteries would cease to provide power and the fuze could be safely removed.

Alec Haarer, an RAF bomb disposal officer, recalled the danger posed by German ‘Butterfly bombs’, small anti-personnel weapons which – once dropped – could be so sensitive that even the slightest movement would set them off. Examples were urgently wanted for examination and for use in training British bomb disposal personnel, and this was greatly facilitated when Flight Sergeant Handford discovered several bombs that had failed to arm after being dropped on RAF Harlaxton in Lincolnshire in August 1941.

Bomb disposal specialists also had to be fully aware of traps built into British bombs. Eric Chadwick recalled how the “No 37 pistol” – a fuse fitted to some British bombs – had been designed to catch out an unwary German who might try to dismantle it. According to Chadwick it was ‘easy to identify but not to deal with’ and a number of British Army bomb disposal specialists were lost to it, in addition to its intended German victims.

Second World War bombs have, however, continued to appear up until the present day and there has, since 1945, been an ongoing need to deal with these weapons as they are found. Probably the largest of these was a 12,000lb ‘Tallboy’ bomb, discovered when the water behind the Sorpe Dam in Germany was drained for repairs. It had been dropped during an attack on the dam in October 1944, and was made safe by a German specialist, Walter Mitzke, working with Flt Lt J M Waters, officer commanding the RAF’s No. 6209 Bomb Disposal Flight.

Alongside their ongoing work on ‘legacy’ munitions left over from previous wars, and the disposal of unexploded weapons dropped during training, the smaller conflicts of the Cold War period also provided work for bomb disposal teams. Two RAF bomb disposal specialists, Ted Costick and Alan Swan, each awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal, highlight some of this work.

In 1974 Flt Lt Ted Costick was serving at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus as Officer in Charge of the Explosives Servicing Flight of the Weapons Engineering Squadron. Turkish air attacks during the conflict of 1974 provided a considerable amount of work for Costick and his bomb disposal teams, including a bomb buried in mud, a 750lb bomb in a 6th-floor hotel room in Famagusta and the clearance of a number of unexploded weapons from Nicosia International Airport.

In 1982 an RAF bomb disposal team was sent to the Falkland Islands as part of the task force following the Argentinean invasion. Flt Lt Alan Swan, commander of the team, was called on to deal with two unexploded bombs lodged in the hospital at Ajax Bay. As Alan Swan remembered:

‘It was a bomb in the roof, a bomb in the fridge; the bomb in the fridge had a fuze that I think, they made it up, just welded this on, welded that on, and we had no kit that we could [use] to get at it, and I spoke to the colonel and he said ‘well, we’re going to Stanley shortly, so is it going to go off? I said “well, I would say no”, but, I said, just to put my money where my mouth is, I’ll sleep in that room and a) it was the only empty room, because it had an unexploded bomb in it and b) I was convinced it wasn’t going to go off. And the one in the roof, we couldn’t get at really, we’d have [had] to drop it to get at it, so again I was convinced it wasn’t going to go off so we left it and the army follow-up teams took it out.’

Alan Swan and his team then moved on to Goose Green:

‘My prime directive was to go to Goose Green and clear a Harrier landing strip, which we did, and when we got there we found napalm by the ton on these steel-runnered sledges in the establishment, where the people lived and so that was a major effort trying to get that out without striking sparks and then when we blew it up, Christ, I didn’t know that napalm would blow up like that but it was a massive explosion, massive, and we looked up and we could see one of these things had flattened out, it was the size, like two of those doors, we could see it spinning, coming down to earth, like that, we were running this way, that way, wow, it would have taken you to pieces.’

RAF bomb disposal teams would continue to deal with a variety of situations, involving conventional and terrorist weapons, through the years after the Falklands War, but it was not until the Kosovo conflict in the late 1990s that an RAF bomb disposal team would again deploy overseas. In Kosovo, RAF personnel worked closely with the Royal Engineers to clear a large number of unexploded bombs, shells and other weapons left by the conflict. Michael Haygarth, an RAF officer serving with No. 5131 (Bomb Disposal) Squadron, recalled how, in conjunction with the Royal Engineers, they ‘carried out hundreds of tasks in Kosovo, the guys were doing between eight and thirteen tasks a day, the teams, they were going out at first light, back at last light, we worked with loads of different nations out there, we worked with loads of the non-government organisations, Mine Action Clearance and all those sort of people.’The value of deploying both RAF and Royal Engineers to Kosovo was also highlighted; as Haygarth explained: ‘They were really good with land-service ammunition, mines and mortars and things, we were really good with air-dropped bombs.’

Dave Lowe, an RAF NCO with No. 5131 (BD) Squadron in Kosovo, recalled how, in contrast to what was to come later in Iraq and Afghanistan: ‘the operations in Kosovo were more routine and it was a peaceful environment; while there was still hostility between people there wasn’t a threat to us, we would routinely not wear body armour in our Land Rover and I wouldn’t carry a weapon if I didn’t need to.’

The use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by a variety of terrorist organisations has been one of the major challenges faced by bomb disposal specialists for many decades. While the weapons used by the armed forces of nation states are likely to have been produced by a known manufacturer and to conform to identifiable patterns, the unpredictable nature and highly variable quality and complexity of IEDs have made them particularly difficult to deal with. Although the devices produced by some groups, or by an individual acting alone, might have been relatively crude, the devices produced by the IRA in Northern Ireland during the Troubles often reached a high level of sophistication, and were dealt with by the very highly-trained Ammunition Technical Officers (ATOs) of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) and then of the Royal Logistics Corps (RLC) after the RAOC was absorbed into the newly-formed RLC in 1993.

The IEDs (or ‘roadside bombs’) used in Iraq and Afghanistan during the early years of the 21st Century posed a further significant threat and these, as with the bombs found in Northern Ireland, would normally be dealt with by the ATOs of the RLC. However, during the conflict in Afghanistan the RLC’s High-Threat IED course – the training course through which a bomb disposal operator became qualified to deal with the devices found in Iraq and Afghanistan – was opened to personnel from other branches of the armed forces and Dave Lowe, an armourer by trade, was the first member of the RAF to pass this highly demanding course. As Lowe explained it:

‘The definition of high-threat then is complex weapons, it can be a complex weapon including RC [Radio Control], so sophisticated in its design. It can be the sheer amount of IEDs, so it could be that there’s so many of them that it was dangerous by that virtue, it could involve suicide bombers, so they’ve got a suicide bomb threat and multiple devices linked together.’

In Afghanistan, the IEDs found were not necessarily very complex in their design, but the sheer number of devices planted by the Taliban caused a significant problem for western forces in the country. In addition, considerations such as climate, terrain and the threat of Taliban attack made the use of robots and protective ‘bomb suits’ impractical on many occasions. From his own experience, Lowe recalled how:

‘There was a big clearance of a road and there was basically an IED belt along this highway, if you want to call it that, it wasn’t tarmacked or anything but we needed to clear that road to link up forces and it was a huge operation and in two kilometres of road in about 48 hours I think I probably did nineteen tasks. I think twelve of those were IEDs or something, I can’t remember but it was just the sheer work, I was finishing one, doing the next, doing the next, doing the next, doing the next so it was just continual, catch a bit of sleep and as soon as I could, do some more.’

Bomb disposal has developed a great deal since 1939, when Arthur Merriman and Eric Moxey approached the UK’s first unexploded bombs of the Second World War. They, and their counterparts in the Royal Navy and British Army, were just beginning to develop the experience and professionalism to be seen in their successors of the 21st Century.The technology involved has clearly developed a great deal, and the situation in Iraq or Afghanistan in the early 21st Century was a long way removed from that of the UK in the 1940s.

Some things, on the other hand, have changed little. There is still the same pendulum between the development of bombs, with new features intended to make them increasingly dangerous to their intended victims, and the development of new techniques by which these devices can be made safe. Some of the techniques have themselves endured for a long time, perhaps in some cases by virtue of their simplicity – the use of a cord to pull a component out of a bomb from a safe distance is one example.

And finally, there is the courage of the bomb disposal operator, making the ‘long walk’ to a bomb with the intention of making it safe. Whether dropped by the Luftwaffe or planted by the Taliban, this, more than anything, has stayed the same.

Even before the first aircraft took to the skies, theorists had envisaged their role in war. The very first bombers were nothing more than the standard little biplanes of the day, flying at 50 to 60 mph. Almost naturally, pilots took it to themselves to carry a few grenades with them and throw them out of a totally open and exposed cockpit. Another popular weapon of the earliest days was bundles of ‘flechettes’. These were nothing more than metal darts without explosives. The idea was that a bunch of these would pierce through the helmets of soldiers below. They caused quite a bit of panic, but it was quickly realised that the chance of being hit by these projectiles was very unlikely.

Gradually the first bombs were designed, such as the 20 lb Cooper bomb, and bomb sights were developed, very rudimentary at first but still a great improvement. As engines became more powerful, more bombs could be carried over longer distance. This culminated with the Handley Page bombers, especially the massive V/1500 which was designed to fly missions to Berlin and back. This shows the revolutionary advances in aviation; only 9 years earlier Louis Blériot struggled to get across the English Channel.

The Interwar period saw the RAF focus on ‘policing the Empire’, a terrible euphemism for suppressing local revolts. Aircraft turned out to be the perfect weapon to control large territories and bomb tribes into submission. It was a sign of things to come, though we shouldn’t fall into the trap of moral equivalence; the times were different back then …

In the 1930s clouds appeared over Europe as the menace from Nazi Germany grew. The prevailing thought was ‘The bomber will always get through’. At the time, bombers had a slight performance advantage over fighters due to having multiple engines. This was the time before radar and a timely interception was deemed unlikely.

It was believed that bomber aircraft would dominate and even decide future wars. When the Second World War broke out, many people and military theorists such as Basil Liddell Hart speculated that much of Europe would be destroyed by fleets of bomber aircraft. Not only bombs, but also poison gas was most feared. In London, this led to a mass evacuation of children. Not only their lives were at stake, but the future of Britain.

Yet, reality turned out to be different for both sides. Bomber Command which was formed in 1936 to group all the RAF bomber squadrons was mainly equipped with light bomber aircraft, such as the Fairey Battle and Bristol Blenheim, carrying only a small payload, with insufficient protection. Very vulnerable against ground fire and fighter interceptions, they were soon forced to fly under the cover of darkness. Basic navigation technology meant targets were difficult to find at night, let alone bomb accurately.

While Bomber Command expanded and introduced heavier bombers such as the Short Stirling and Avro Lancaster, limitations on targets were gradually broken down. A now controversial decision was taken to target civilian centres and break German morale. City after city was bombed by releasing a deadly combination of huge blast bombs and incendiary devices. This ‘area bombing’ strategy was partially driven as a retaliation of similar German actions, but also because accurate bombing of factories, bridges or military installations was impossible. Early reports, compiled in the 1941 Butt report, showed only one in eight bombs fell within a 5-mile radius. Large city centres were the only thing Bomber Command had a chance of hitting at night.

Technology came to the rescue by the introduction of GEE and Oboe radio waves and H2S radar navigation. The first to be equipped with such devices were the so-called ‘pathfinders’, selected from the best crews. Their job was to find and mark the targets with colourful flares before the arrival of the main bomber force. This combination greatly improved the accuracy and proved decisive in the bombing campaign against the German chemical industry, which destroyed most of the synthetic oil facilities, depriving Nazi Germany of fuel, explosives, and other chemicals.

Of all the armed services, Bomber Command suffered the highest number of casualties. More than 55,500 perished which statistically meant that these young men had a higher chance of dying than finishing their tour of 25 (later 30) sorties.

Then, on 6 August 1945 a single bomb changed everything. The Americans dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan, instantly wiping out 90 percent of the city. The ensuing Cold War was dominated by nuclear weapons and mutual assured destruction. Both the West and the Soviet Union had hundreds of large bombers ready to drop enough nuclear weapons to annihilate each other. The RAF deployed its famous V bombers: the Valiant, Vulcan and Victor. A number of these would be on Quick Reaction Alert, ready to take off within minutes.

The current RAF is playing a different game. It now fields stealth jet aircraft packed with laser- and GPS-guided missiles, capable of hitting targets with great precision. The latter is a result of military requirements, but maybe more importantly, the reduction of collateral damage is an important factor in the eyes of the public. On the other hand, the morality of autonomous attack drones, the future of military aviation, will soon be coming to the fore.

On VE day, more than a million men and women of many nationalities and ethnicities were wearing the RAF blue. And the final victory on 8 May 1945 was very much theirs.

Although the Battle of Britain is well known, it was not a decisive victory. The German Luftwaffe quickly replaced its losses and remained a powerful opponent. After the Battle, Fighter Command was tasked with going from the defensive to the offensive but struggled with this change. The first raids on occupied Europe proved to be both ineffective and costly, while Bomber Command, forced to fly over Germany under cover of night, was unable to find its targets, let alone bomb them accurately.

With a bomber force unable to destroy German armaments factories, the decision was taken to defeat Germany by attacking its civilian work force through an area bombing strategy. City after city was bombed and reduced to rubble with half a million German civilians, including women, children, and elderly perishing. Beside questionable from a modern-day moral perspective, the terror attacks totally failed in their objective as they did not lead to a collapse in morale and did not bring Germany to its knees. Conversely, the brave crews of Bomber Command suffered heavy losses. Of the 120,000 who served with Bomber Command during the war, 55,573 paid the ultimate price.

Although the bombing offensive inflicted enormous damage and forced the Germans to divert huge resources from the Soviet Union to the home front, Nazi war production continued to rise. It was only in the spring of 1944 that the war strategy shifted to attacks on the Nazi’s chemical industry, which produced most of Germany’s oil and explosives.

Such specific targets had become achievable as navigation technology had taken great strides forward. The best bomber crews were selected to serve in ‘pathfinder’ units, which would find and mark the target with coloured flares, prior to the arrival of the main bomber force. The Pathfinder Force’s most important aircraft was the fantastic de Havilland Mosquito, equipped with the ‘Oboe’ blind-bombing system and the ‘H2S’ navigation and bombing radar.

 

Aiding the bombers was an elaborate system of deception. Bombers of No. 100 Group carried various jamming equipment, capable of disrupting German radar and radio communications. The best-known device was called Window, which was nothing more than thousands of thin aluminium strips. When dropped, they would overload the German radar readings. A less-know tactic was Operation Corona. This has nothing with the virus but involved German-speaking RAF personnel impersonating German ground control officers. They would tune to the German radio frequency and countermand Luftwaffe instructions, confusing the German night fighter crews. It even happened that German and RAF operators would argue on air who were the real Luftwaffe operators.

The attacks on the German chemical industry were, unlike the area bombing, tremendously successful. German production of fuel and explosives plummeted and never recovered. German tanks were abandoned with empty fuel tanks, and artillery batteries fired shells filled with inert rock salt. The Luftwaffe, starved of aviation fuel, could neither train new pilots, nor conduct large-scale operations.

The fuel paralysis prevented the Luftwaffe’s new wonder weapon reaching its lethal potential. The Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter was faster than any Allied aircraft. It instantly showed to all sides the jet was the future of aviation. But without fuel to fly them, most Me 262s never took to the skies. Those that did were swamped by superior numbers of Allied fighter aircraft such as the venerable Supermarine Spitfire, which was still the main British fighter at the end of the war. The RAF also had its own jet fighter, the Gloster Meteor. Compared to the Me 262, it was a more conventional design, but as a result, also more reliable. Improved versions of the Meteor served worldwide until the late 1950s.

 

As the Luftwaffe had by then become a shadow of its former self, such unmanned missiles were all Nazi Germany had to attack Britain. The RAF and other Allied air forces had conquered complete air superiority. Short Sunderland flying boats and Consolidated Liberator long-range bombers had driven the German submarines out of the seas. Without fear of interception, Douglas Dakotas dropped thousands of paratroopers behind enemy lines. Tactical bombers like the Hawker Typhoon patrolled the battlefields waiting to unleash their weaponry on anything daring to move. North American Mitchells played havoc on German infrastructure by bombing railway yards, bridges, and other tactical targets. German Messerschmitt Bf 110 and Junkers Ju 88 night fighters, built to shoot down RAF bombers at night, had become the prey to the versatile Mosquito night fighters.

Increasingly unopposed, Bomber Command had grown to an impressive and unprecedented force of 1,600 operational Avro Lancaster, Handley Page Halifax and other strategic bombers. Although the attacks on German industry and infrastructure had proven to be very effective, the British government and Arthur ‘Butcher’ Harris, head of Bomber Command, continued to push for terror attacks with Dresden in February 1945 as an eternally controversial coda. It is for this reason that Bomber Command crews had been tragically overlooked for far too long in post-war celebrations.

These young men did, as did every other man or woman in the RAF, their duty to the best of their abilities. Above all, VE Day should commemorate the almost 80,000 RAF casualties who gave their lives for their comrades, their family, their country, and our freedom.

As today is Mother’s Day we would like to feature several RAF stories about mothers. In this blog, we combine the stories of people whose mothers served in the RAF and stories about mothers of RAF personnel.

Our first story is from Katherine Du Plat-Taylor, who joined the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War instead of learning Domestic Science in College like her mother wanted. Katherine served as an Operations Clerk deep underground in the tunnels below Dover. She worked with Air Sea Rescue, plotting the location of aircraft on a table map in an operations room, saving the lives of hundreds of pilots.

Her service required a lot of courage and self-sacrifice, but can you even imagine how terrifying it was for her mother? The story that Katherine reveals in this video can be told about many other mothers, whose children were serving in the military during the war. Every day they lived in fear of receiving some terrible news from the front line.

The heroine of our second story was serving in the RAF herself during the Second World War. Candida Adkins’ mother, Dolores Therese Moggridge, also known as Jackie, served as an ATA pilot, flying more than 1,500 aircraft including Spitfires and received the King’s Commendation for Service in the Air.

In this video Candida tells the story about her mother’s parachute jump. Jackie was the first woman who made a parachute jump in South Africa. This story reveals in detail what a fearless and daring lady Candida’s mother was.

Lynn Martin came to the RAF Museum London to see the portrait of her mother, Violet Sharples, in our recent art exhibition War Brides by Bev Tosh, a Canadian artist. The exhibition portraits showed young women who fell in love and got married to the airmen from different countries during the Second World War.

Violet served as a Leading Airwoman in the RAF and plotted the dreaded V-1 Flying Bombs (“buzz bombs”) detected by early Radar entering British airspace during the Second World War.

At the end of the war Violet fell in love with a Canadian pilot and became his war bride. In 1946, following her husband, she immigrated from England to Canada. Violet’s story reflects the stories of thousands of other young and brave women who made an amazing leap of faith for the love of an airman and moved to the other countries away from their friends and families to start a new life there.

Our next video shows two incredible ladies, a mother and a daughter, who are believed to be the first mother and daughter in the RAF to both become chartered engineers. Group Captain Emily Flynn who is currently serving as an engineer in the RAF, followed the footsteps of her mother, Suzanne Flynn.

However, in Suzanne’s time Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) was much more male-dominated. It was very challenging for her to push the boundaries and choose the career of an RAF engineer. In this video Suzanne tells the story of how she discovered this opportunity and became the inspiration her daughter needed to follow in her footsteps.

Flight Lieutenant Joan Ochuodho joined the RAF in the age of 24 after a succession of jobs in marketing and accounting and serving in the Navy. As she decided to join the RAF in 2003 right at the heat of Afghanistan conflict, all her family disapproved of her idea. Her mother, who was living in Kenya, was the only one who supported Joan and encouraged her to change her career.

In this video, Joan explains how vital it was to have her mother’s support and how it has changed her life.

Our last story is from Emma Marianne, an RAF mother whose son serves in the RAF. When her son joined the RAF Regiment as a Gunner in October 2017, Emma decided to undertake an epic walk to raise money and awareness for the RAF Association. During her ‘Walk for Wings’ she walked more than 2,000 miles visiting all active RAF Stations on the U.K’s mainland finishing in RAF Lossiemouth, where her son was serving at the time.

In this video Emma reveals how she felt handing her son over to the RAF. Her experience can be relevant for many other mothers of RAF cadets. Their instinct is to be with their children and to protect them, but they have to ‘take a back seat’ and let their sons and daughters take care of themselves.

We hope you have enjoyed the stories we selected for the Mother’s Day. All these mothers had different experiences but they all had to show bravery, stamina and support for their children and in my opinion I believe that they all succeeded.

These videos are part of our RAF Stories Project which brings together as many people’s experiences with the RAF as possible. You can download our RAF Stories App to discover more stories and share your own.

The app is specifically designed to make the recording of the new story as easy as possible. If you have your own story of an amazing RAF mother or any other RAF story that you would like to share we would love to hear from you.

Recently we had the privilege of welcoming retired Colonel Gail ‘Hal’ Halvorsen, better known as the ‘Berlin Candy Bomber’ or ‘Uncle Wiggly Wings’ to our London site. This 99-year old veteran had been a transport pilot with the United States Army Air Force (USAAF) during the Second World War, but he is best remembered from his actions during the Berlin Airlift.

After Nazi Germany surrendered from the Second World War in 1945, the four main Allies (United Kingdom, United States, Soviet Union and France) divided the country into four military zones. Its capital city, Berlin, was also divided into four zones despite it being in the Soviet Union zone. On 24 June 1948, the Soviet Union blocked all road, rail and canal routes to Berlin from the Western zones. This was to force the Western Allies to yield West Berlin to the Soviet Union. However, a combined effort from the RAF and the United States Air Force managed to sustain the city from the air until 12 May 1949 when these routes opened again.

Hal was just an ordinary USAAF pilot, but surprisingly, he also wore RAF wings. His flight training had been with the RAF No. 3 British Flying Training School in Oklahoma, where both American and RAF recruits were being trained. The RAF had several flying schools around the world during the Second World War. The United Kingdom could not create the large number of trained personnel required for the war by itself. Non-European countries also offered skies empty of enemy aircraft and considerably better weather. As such, several American civilian flying schools were contracted to train cadets and turn them into pilots. Hal received both wings on 17 June 1944.

He started his operational career in late 1944 and flew twin-engined Douglas Dakota transport aircraft in Brazil. However, it was the bigger four-engined Douglas Skymaster which was his favourite. Hal loved the extra power and the comfort of the Skymaster. It was to be his workhorse during the Berlin Airlift. After the conclusion of the Second World War, Hal was transferred back to the United States, flying the biggest transport aircraft at that time, the Douglas Globemaster. This aircraft could carry up to 50,000 lb (22,700 kg) of cargo across the Atlantic Ocean, an extraordinary feat for its day. Only around a dozen were built, but Hal was piloting one of them.

When on 24 June 1948 the crisis started in Berlin, the Skymasters were ordered to Europe to contribute in the nascent Berlin Airlift, code named Operation Vittles. The Globemaster was too heavy to operate from the small German airfields. Hal’s friend Peter Sowa was a Skymaster pilot, but could not join his squadron because of personal reasons. Hal volunteered to take his place and was promptly transferred to the Skymaster squadron, led by Colonel James Haun. Via Newfoundland and the Azores islands the aircraft flew to Rhein-Main airport near Frankfurt in West Germany.

The next day, Hal was flying to Berlin with a Skymaster packed with 138 sacks of flour. He was told that there were no navigational aids and that if he drifted away from the corridor, there would be Soviet fighter aircraft waiting for him. When approaching Berlin, nothing Hal had read, or seen, prepared him for the desolate, ravaged sight below. The gaunt, broken outlines of once-majestic buildings, supported by piles of rubble at their base, stretched from one end of the city to the other. It was unbelievable that two million people lived there.

Hal was shocked to see the conditions they had to work in. At first there were inadequate maintenance service, sleeping facilities and a broken infrastructure. This was mirrored and magnified by Germany still in ruins, lacking basic facilities and with a civilian population dressed in rags and scrounging for food, coal and other vital necessities.

One afternoon in July 1948, after landing at Berlin-Tempelhof airfield, he saw about thirty children lined up behind one of the barbed-wire fences, watching the aircraft coming in overhead to land. He went to meet them and noticed that the children had nothing. He remembers ‘a little girl of about twelve years with wistful blue eyes. She wore a pair of trousers that looked as though they belonged to an older brother and a pair of shoes that had seen better days on someone half again her size’. She told him how the Allied bombers had killed some of their parents, brothers and sisters, but that they now realise that the worst is to lose their freedom. ‘We can get by on a little food, but if we lose our freedom, we may never get it back.’

Hal said goodbye to them and walked toward the Jeep which was going to take him back to his aircraft. He paused. He reached in his pocket and took out two sticks of Wrigley’s Doublemint chewing gum. He turned around abruptly and walked back toward the fence. It would be a moment which changed his life. He broke the two sticks in half and gave it to four children. Others took the wrapper, strips were torn off and passed around with the children smelling the mint flavour. Their eyes lit up with sheer surprise and joy. Hal quickly thought ‘What I could do with thirty full sticks of gum!’.

Hal decided then and there to drop some gum and even chocolate to these kids next time he flew overhead. He knew it was against regulations, but he told himself ‘it’ll be just a one-time thing!’. He told the children of his plan. The little girl asked how they would know which is his plane?’ Hal thought about it for a second when the thought passed through his mind like a lightning bolt ‘Why not wiggle the wings?’. Hal became ‘Uncle Wiggly Wings’.

When Hal got back, he realised the amount of gum and sweets was limited by his ration card. He would need the help of his crew members. He informed them of his decision. They too were worried about the possible consequences if they got caught, but agreed it was worth it. They bought all the chocolate bars and packages of gum they could buy. They came up with the idea to split it up in three packages, each attached to a handkerchief parachute to slow the fall.

By this time, flights were happening on an almost daily basis, often more than one flight to Berlin a day. Aircraft would fuel and load up in West Germany, fly to Berlin, off load their cargo and without refuelling fly back. This turnover went ever more smooth and fast. At the height of the Berlin Airlift aircraft would land at an interval of three minutes. If an aircraft was running late, it was taken out of the ‘conveyor belt’ in order not to disrupt the three-minute schedule. Lessons learned during the Berlin Airlift were later applied to civilian transport and can still be seen today in places like Heathrow airport.

Hal and his two crew members were approaching Berlin-Tempelhof when they noticed the children in the middle of the grassy strip between the end of the runway and an apartment block. Hal rolled the left aileron and fed in a little left rudder, causing the wing to go down, followed by a right aileron and right rudder, making the aircraft wiggle in the opposite direction. The children instantly recognised the aircraft and started waving and jumping. Dropping the sweets too soon would result in them landing on the roof of the apartment block, too late would mean they would be behind the fence and on the runway. Either way, difficult questions would be asked as to where they came from. Hal and his colleagues were not sure if they had dropped them in the right spot…

It was only when the Skymaster was unloaded and started to taxi to the take-off position, that Hal saw the children waving the little parachutes. He even noticed the little girl with the long trousers and blue eyes. She was radiant!

Things went back to normal after that. Except that the group of children kept growing after that. After one week Hal and his two friends received their new week’s rations. On the spot, they again pooled their resources, came over Tempelhof, wiggled their wings, caused a celebration and delivered the goods on target. And this became a weekly routine.

By this time in August 1948, and after two months, the Airlift was succeeding. More than 1,500 flights a day were carried out, delivering more than 4,500 tons of cargo, enough to keep West Berlin supplied. From January 1949 onwards, 225 American Skymasters were devoted to the lift. The RAF contributed around one hundred aircraft to the operation, mainly Douglas Dakotas, Avro Yorks and even Short Sunderland flying boats. Together these RAF aircraft delivered almost a quarter of the total Allied freight to Berlin.

After a few weeks Hal walked into the Base Operations building to have a look at the weather map. To his surprise, the table was not holding its usual maps and charts, but full of mail addressed to ‘Onkel Wackelflugel’ (‘Uncle Wiggly Wings’) and the ‘Schokoladen Flieger’ (‘Chocolate Pilot’). As much as Hal tried to stop it, the cat was out of the bag. Or, rather, the sweets were. And sure enough, Hal was called into the office of Colonel Haun, his Squadron commander. Haun had received a call from Brigadier General William H Tunner, deputy commander of operations during the airlift, who wanted to know who was dropping parachutes over Berlin.

‘Halverson, what in the world have you been doing?’ Haun asked. ‘Flying like mad, sir.’ was Hal’s reply. In one motion, Haun reached under the desk and showed him the newspaper with the picture of little parachutes flying out of his C-54. Hal knew he was in serious trouble now. To his surprise, Haun said ‘The General called me with congratulations and I didn’t know anything about it. [He] wants to see you, and there is an International Press conference set up for you in Frankfurt. Fit them into your schedule. And Lieutenant, keep flying, keep dropping, and keep me informed.’ Operation Little Vittles was born.

When Hal returned to his base he found his cot covered with cases of candy bars and chewing gum, donated by his colleagues. Handkerchiefs for parachutes would often be stacked alongside the goodies. More mail arrived and two German secretaries were employed to reply to the letters of the children. One of them, a 7-year-old girl named Mercedes, wrote in a letter that she loved ‘Der Schokoladen Flieger’ but was concerned for her chickens, who thought the airlift planes were chicken hawks and stopped laying eggs. Mercedes asked him to drop candy near the white chickens because she didn’t care if he scared them. Hal tried, but never could find Mercedes’ white chickens, so he wrote her a letter and sent her candy through the Berlin mail. The two would finally meet face-to-face 24 years later met when Halvorsen returned to Berlin as Tempelhof commander in the early 1970s. They maintain a close friendship to this day.

After a while, the crowds became so large on the end of the runway they feared someone might get injured. The method of operation changed to drops to playgrounds, parks, school areas and church yards all over West Berlin. Supplies were coming in from armed forces all over West Germany. 22 schools in the States were packaging sweets. Businesses furnished thousands of ribbons, cartons, handkerchiefs and 18 tons of sweets and chewing gum. Contributions arrived from Great Britain and as far away as Australia. Packages would be dropped by all crews flying into Berlin. Even East Berlin, controlled by the Soviets, soon saw little parachutes floating down, until the Soviets demanded these drops were halted.

Hal left Berlin in January 1949 but the airlift and the dropping of sweets and chewing gum continued. By the end of the Berlin Airlift in May 1949, 23 tons of sweets had been dropped. But it all started with Hal, sharing his two sticks of gum. Hal returned to the United States and married Alta, a girl he had fallen in love with before becoming a pilot. Reading Hal’s autobiography has been an emotional read, evoking such great sympathy and admiration for this humble and loving pilot, but the photo of his marriage proposal was probably the most touching moment. He had attached the ring to a parachute!

Hal has returned to Berlin nearly 40 times since the airlift. In 1974, he received one of Germany’s highest medals, the Grosses Bundesverdienstkreuz, and carried the German team’s national placard into Rice-Eccles Stadium during the opening march for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. He participated in a re-enactment of “Operation Little Vittles” (the codename for the candy dropping) during the 40th and 50th anniversaries of the Berlin Airlift.

Halvorsen’s dedication to helping those in need didn’t end after he retired with 31 years of service in the Air Force. In 1994, his request to assist in another humanitarian airlift was approved. He would fly with the Air Force again, this time in a Lockheed Hercules delivering food to 70,000 refugees fleeing from the conflict in Bosnia.

Last year, Hal, now at the young age of 99, was a guest of honour at a banquet in Washington DC held by the RAF Museum American Foundation ‘Spirit of the Battle of Britain’ to honour the 70th anniversary of the RAF and USAF operations during the Berlin Airlift. For the occasion, Mars Wrigley had reproduced the original chewing gum package and wrapper, the latter made from paper instead of the current tin foil. Also present was Mercedes Wild, the girl who wrote to Hal she was concerned about the aircraft frightening her chickens whose eggs she would trade on the black market for meat or shoes. In fact, she too had been afraid when the first transport aircraft landed in Berlin: ‘The noise of the airplanes during the airlift in the beginning I feared, because it was the same noise while bombing Berlin,’ she said.

Following this banquet, we invited Hal to the RAF Museum London, together with two of his daughters. On arrival, he was greeted by the Museum staff, including our CEO Maggie Appleton and Chair of Trustees Sir Andy Pulford. We gave him a little tour around the Museum and displayed a selection of documents from our Archives, related to the Berlin Airlift. Hal told us many great stories from his time in Berlin and warmed us all with his modesty and charm. It was a great privilege to welcome this great man.

Hal still travels the world, especially to Germany where his story is well known. He also supports the organisation which bears his name, the Gail S. Halvorsen Aviation Education Foundation which advances aviation education, promotes youth leadership development, enhances community capacity for emergency response, and encourages humanitarian service. The Foundation’s next project is to build the Gail Halvorsen Museum and Aviation Education Center. During the opening event, Hal went into a helicopter and in four passes dropped 500 chocolate bars dangling under small white parachutes for the kids in the crowd. ‘The thing I enjoy the most about being the ‘Candy Bomber’ is seeing the children’s reaction even now to the idea of a chocolate bar coming out of the sky,’ he said. ‘The most fun I have is doing air drops because even here in the States, there’s something magical about a parachute flying out of the sky with a candy bar on it.’

Click here to watch an interview with Hal from our RAF Stories Online project.