24 - CFI Coastal Command Pool

The RAF station at Silloth had been built as an aircraft storage unit, commanded by an RAF Equipment officer and staffed mainly by civilians. The only buildings on it were the storage hangars and a tiny HQ block. When it was taken over by Coastal Command, a Group Captain Coleman, a veteran of the Great War, was posted in as station commander and a building programme was quickly started to provide all the technical and office accommodation which would be needed. A cottage at one corner of the aerodrome was commandeered as my headquarters and I began organising the flying side of things. Some flying on Ansons began almost at once, and on Hudsons on 30^th November. As soon as they became available, we would also be training on Beauforts, Blenheims and Bothas. We would eventually be organised in five flights, one for each type of aircraft.

By mid December, the aerodrome had cut up so badly as to be almost unserviceable, but a freeze then developed and it got no worse. However, it would become unusable almost at once if a thaw occurred, so it was necessary to find a new airfield at which the vitally important Hudson training could be continued. During January, arrangements were made for the Hudson flight to move to the Manchester civil airport at Ringway, with myself in charge, until such time as Silloth dried out enough to become fit for use by the Hudsons again. We moved to Ringway on 30^th January, 1940, and did not return to Silloth until late May.

Dorrie came up to me at Silloth early in December and we found a suitable furnished house to rent, facing the sea. It would become available early in March. I was able to get home for ten happy days with the family at Christmas and Dorrie came to stay with me again for a few days in February, when I was living in a rather grotty hotel in Sale. She soon found lodgings for me with a very nice family named Robinson, who made me feel at home, at once. She then organised the move of the family to Silloth without any help from me, and got them all safely up there on 7^th March.

We began including night flying in our training at Ringway, as all squadrons were now fully engaged in their war tasks and had no time for in-squadron training. This was a risky business as Ringway was in the Manchester gun-defended zone. If ever there was a red alert for an air raid, airport lighting would be switched off and balloons begin rising at once. Anti-aircraft guns would then open fire on any aircraft flying in the zone. We had no radio in the Hudsons at that time, so had no means of warning aircraft in the air of any impending raid. The only indication they would get would be when they saw the lights go out, after which they would be in immediate danger. I arranged with the local defence HQ to give us as much advance warning as possible. I also instructed all pilots to head for the general area of the Cheshire plain and get above balloon height as quickly as possible if they saw the airport lights go out while they were in the air. They were then to reduce power as much as possible and try to stay in the air until daylight if they could not find their way back to Ringway when the raid was over. Thankfully, we never had an air raid while we where there.

While at Ringway, I received a copy of the official handling and operating instructions for the Hudson, which had been prepared by the Central Flying School and published by the Air Ministry for the guidance of all Hudson pilots. I was horrified when I read them. Many of the procedures prescribed were positively dangerous and others would have the effect of greatly reducing the range and endurance of the machine, and hence its operational usefulness. the whole publication had obviously been prepared by someone who had no understanding of the Hudson and its engines, and who certainly had never bothered to read the beautifully instructive pilots manual which was supplied with every machine. I at once told Coastal Command of the danger of issuing this publication to Hudson squadrons. I recommended that its use be banned within the command and this was done.

The banning of this official publication created something of a sensation, for CFS was the recognised authority in the RAF on all such matters. The two squadron leaders who had done all the flying on the Hudsons at CFS and prepared the handling instructions came up to Ringway to discuss the matter with me. I already knew from the Lockheed pilots who had delivered the two Hudsons to CFS that these two officers had not bothered to meet them, nor had they ever bothered to visit the assembly plant to find out anything about the machines. They admitted to me that they had never read the pilots manuals or any of the other publications supplied with the aeroplanes. Consequently, they knew nothing about the power settings needed to get the best performance out of them, and they were equally ignorant on just about every other technical aspect of the aircraft. The discussion was quite amicable and I hope they learned something from it. I never heard any more about the matter and the publication remained banned in Coastal Command, at least up to the time when I left it.

Sometime in the spring, the first Bothas came to Silloth and I was instructed to evaluate its suitability for maritime reconnaissance work. This was the machine which had been specially designed for that role. To give pilot and navigator good all round views of the sea surface a high wing monoplane had been specified and, because it would be flying long distances over the sea, it had to have two engines. There were, of course, other specifications, but these were the main ones. The Botha had these features and it was a very nice aeroplane to fly. However, the two engines had been mounted under the wings and close to the fuselage, just outside the windows of the navigator's work station. As a result of this, his view of the surface was restricted to a narrow strip almost vertically below the machine, and no provision had been made for the installation of a drift sight, an indispensable navigation instrument.

There was plenty of power in each engine to maintain level flight should one fail. However, the single tail fin and rudder were so small that they were completely overpowered by the good engine in single-engined flight. The only way that straight flight could be maintained was by applying 30 degrees of bank towards the good engine, and this so reduced lift that height could no longer be held. Thus, instead of halving the risk of loss through failure of one engine, having the two engines actually doubled it. Because of this, the Botha was never used in the role for which it had been specifically designed, but other work was quickly found for it.

Compare this performance with that of the Hudson, which could be trimmed for hands and feet off level flight, with full load, at 60% power from one engine.

Soon after returning to Silloth from Ringway, training on Beauforts, Blenheims and Bothas began and we had to take over the aerodrome at neighbouring Kirkbride, another aircraft storage unit, to accommodate the additional flying. I then had day and night flying programmes on two airfields to organise and superintend almost every day.

We kept in close touch with the Hudson squadrons to ensure that our training met their needs. From time to time we learnt of the need to give more emphasis to some aspect of the training and the amount of dual given to each pilot gradually increased. By the late summer of 1940 the average amount of day dual being given to Hudson pilots had reached ten hours, the exact figure which Holdway and I had estimated at Heston, and which I had told the Director of training might be necessary.

On 2^nd March 1940, I completed my medium service commission. Under war time regulations, I was transferred to the reserve but retained on the active list. I was then supposed to receive a gratuity of œ925. About three weeks later, I received payment of œ825. When I asked about the missing œ100 I was reminded that, under my contract with the Australian Air Board, I was supposed to return to Australia within six months or repay the œ92.50 cost of my passage to England. As I had been compulsorily retained in the RAF for the duration of the war, the Air Ministry agreed that I should not be penalised for failing to return to Australia. They were corresponding with the Air Board to find out whether the Air Ministry should pay the œ92.50 or the Air Board waive claim to it. Whatever the decision, I was not under any liability; but until the decision was reached, the Air Ministry was going to hold on to œ100 of my money! An acid request from me to ensure that it was invested for me at not less than 5% interest went unanswered.

Our old car had recently broken down beyond economical repair. No new cars were available by that time, but I was able to buy, for œ180, a little used latest model Morris Ten from a reputable firm in Manchester.

Fairly early in 1940, I was informed that I could expect to be posted overseas during the year. At that time, there was no limit on the duration of overseas postings. Once posted, it would be several years before I could expect to see my family again, and I would be due for discharge as soon as the war ended. Faced with this prospect, Dorrie and I decided that she should take the children to Australia where she could have the comfort of living somewhere near her people, and the children would be safe from the war and any risk of food shortage. We set about the necessary preparations and a passage was arranged in the SS Largs Bay, leaving Liverpool about mid September. This was the same ship in which Dorrie had come to England in 1927.

Before leaving this chapter, I must tell you of an event which left me rather red faced. Early in 1940, road blocks were set up around Silloth and manned by soldiers whose commanding officer, a major, lived with the RAF officers in the Queens Hotel, in Silloth. One day, when I was stopped at one of these barriers, the soldier manning it came over to the car to check my pass, leaving his rifle in the sentry box. No other soldier was in sight. When he reached my window, he found himself looking down the barrel of my pistol as I asked "Soldier, where is your rifle",? and then made a little speech about carelessness and the need to carry his rifle at all times when on this kind of duty. He replied, in an aggrieved tone of voice, "Well, fookin' thing isn't loaded, anyway"! He also produced a clip of five rounds from a pocket and told me he was forbidden to load his rifle except on orders from an officer. At that, I expressed sympathy and said I would talk to his commanding officer about the matter.

I told the major about the event that evening, and apologised for my rough treatment of one of his soldiers. He accepted by apology and then said, in a rather meaningful voice, "But you won't do that again, will you"?

"Of course not", I replied, "but is there any special reason"?

"Yes", he said. "You remember that pill box behind you where you were stopped?

Well, all the time you were talking to that soldier, there was another one in the pill box looking down the back of your neck through the sights of twin Lewis guns, and they were loaded"!

In the middle of July, I was suddenly ordered to hand over my duties as CFI and report to a certain group captain at Air Ministry, Whitehall, next day. When I got there, I was told I was being posted to form and command No 417 Flight at St Athan, near Barry. The flight was to be the air component of a small military force being formed to occupy the Cape Verde Islands if the Germans decided to march into the Iberian Peninsula, which seemed very likely at that time. The flight would not be taking part in the invasion, but would be required to provide the commander of the occupying force with twice daily reconnaissances of the islands after the occupation had been completed. Air Ministry was arranging for the packing and shipping of our aeroplanes (six Ansons) and all necessary equipment and supplies. All I had to do was get all the personnel (about 120) documented, inoculated, vaccinated, kitted for tropical service and ready to embark, in 48 hours. Could I do it? I said I could if everyone arrived at St Athan that day, which we both knew would not happen.

I was strongly warned of the need for strict secrecy about the intended operation, since it amounted to the invasion of the territory of a friendly, neutral country. I was told I must not talk about it to anyone but the officer who was briefing me and one other group captain, to whom I was introduced, but I was given a cover story which I could leak in strict confidence to my adjutant, if asked.

As I was leaving the Whitehall building, whom should I meet but my old 12 Squadron CO, now an air commodore. I was greeted with an effusive, "Hello, old Rankin! What are you doing up here"? to which I replied, "I'm sorry, Sir, it is secret and I'm not allowed to talk about it".

"Nonsense, old boy! I'm a director; you can talk to me about anything".

I told him I had been instructed not to talk about the matter to anyone except the two officers who had briefed me, but he again pressed me to tell him, implying that such instructions did not really apply to him. I then became angry at his repeated attempts to coerce me into disobedience and a breach of security. I said sharply, "Sir, if you want to know why I am up here, ask Group Captain......... (naming my contact). He might tell you. I won't, and walked away from him.

Of course, the Germans never invaded Spain and Portugal and the islands were never taken over by Britain, but the force had to remain in existence for many months. Once our preparations were complete, I was faced with the problem of keeping the members of the flight occupied. Our aeroplanes were packed for shipping, so we could not do any flying and that meant there was no work for the tradesmen. With Air Ministry permission, I sent everybody, including myself, on 28 days embarkation leave, which I spent happily with the family at Silloth. After that, I arranged with the Records Office to distribute the tradesmen to wherever they were most needed, on the strict understanding that they would be returned to St Athan at once, if required. I sent the pilots back to their old squadrons on the same understanding, left the adjutant and one clerk at St Athan, and then asked Coastal Command to find useful temporary employment for me. I was sent to Carew Cheriton, near Tenby, in Wales, to help 321 (Dutch) Squadron with its training on Ansons, but almost immediately went on a previously arranged week's leave to help Dorrie pack for the voyage to Australia.

In this period we discussed what we should do about sexual relationships during what we knew would be a long and indefinite separation. Knowing each other's needs as we did, we knew there could be no question of celibacy for either of us, nor did either of us wish it for the other. We agreed that each was to be free to find the comfort of a lover whenever possible, but we did not want there to be any secrets between us. We felt we must be able to continue sharing our lives as fully as possible; that secrecy, especially about anything so important, would harm our relationship. There were times when that decision brought great happiness to both of us and to other people. It was undoubtedly a big factor in holding us together and enabling our marriage to survive the eight long years of separation which followed.

I took the family to Liverpool and saw them onto their ship. It was a sad and emotional parting, for we had no idea when, or if ever, we would see one another again. After putting Davida onto a London train, I drove back to Carew Cheriton, only to find that it had been decided to amalgamate 321 Squadron with 320 (Dutch) Squadron at Leuchars and convert them all on to Hudsons. I was to go there and help with that.

On arrival at Leuchars, I found that I would have Lt. Commander Jan Moll as co-instructor. He was famous as one of the two KLM pilots who, flying a DC2, won the commercial section of the air race from Mildenhall to Melbourne in 1934. He was a very experienced pilot whose flying time on Lockheed 14s alone almost equalled my total flying experience. After comparing notes, we found we had no differences of opinion about training doctrine. We took an instant liking to one another and struck up a very warm friendship. The squadron officers were all members of the Royal Dutch Naval Air Service. All were tremendously keen to get back into the war with their Hudsons. All had a great sense of fun and the gift of being able to laugh at themselves. It was a real pleasure working with them.

The 5^th of December is St Nicholas' Day for the Dutch. It is a time for the giving of presents and is one of their most important feast days. St Nicholas arrives from Spain accompanied by his servant, Black Pete, carrying a sack of presents. He has a book in which is recorded the doings of each person for the past year and he rewards each according to his or her merit, reading from the record and making a little speech to each recipient as he does so. Naturally, some good cracks are sometimes made at the expense of the recipient.

The St Nicholas party at Leuchars was held in the evening. St Nicholas and Black Pete arrived late. After being welcomed by the commanding officer of 320 Squadron, St Nicholas apologised for his late arrival, explaining that U boats and the blockade made things difficult for travellers from Spain. He then proceeded to distribute his gifts, amidst much laughter, and some red faces, as he read from his record book. Moll was reprimanded for driving his car across the aerodrome, too fast and without flaps, and for too many visits to Edinburgh. When I was called up to receive my gift, a very neat little combination tool set, St Nicholas said, "Mr Rankin, my angels do not often do three point landings, but I have noted your prowess in this respect and will recommend my angels to follow your example".

Moll and I completed the conversion of 320 Squadron near the end of January, 1941, and I then went to HQ Coastal Command to appeal for an operational appointment. The war had been going on for 17 months and, so far, I had been engaged entirely on non-combatant duties. Also, I was fed up with instructing. I was told that an order had just been issued posting me to 220 Squadron at Thornaby, as second in command. The posting was intended to give me a chance to get some operational experience in preparation for taking over a squadron. I was to get in as much as possible as quickly as possible, because I was going to command the very next Hudson squadron to require a new commanding officer. This news delighted me. I had taught many of the Hudson squadron pilots their navigation, and most of them how to fly their Hudsons. Command of one of the squadrons was the logical next step in my career.

I was in 220 Squadron for only six weeks, in February and March, 1941. It was the deadest, quietest period of the whole war, mainly because of bad weather. I did what I could to get the required experience, but it was pitifully little. Because it was so quiet, my CO took a week's leave in early March, and I became acting CO. A few days later, I heard that the CO of 206 Squadron at Bircham Newton had been posted away and no replacement provided. Later that day, I received a phone call from the personnel staff officer at Group HQ. When he announced himself, I was quite sure he was about to tell me I had been posted to 206 Squadron. Instead, he said, "Old boy, you have been posted to Khartoum. You were due at Air Ministry yesterday, for briefing, so I think you had better hurry"!

I was flabbergasted at this abrupt change of direction in my career, and bitterly disappointed at missing the command of a Hudson squadron; but then I began remembering that, ten years previously, I had asked to be posted to Khartoum. I had been greatly interested in H M Stanley's accounts of his journeys in darkest Africa, and I wanted to see something of that continent, myself.

In 1940 a unit had been established at Takoradi in the Gold Coast (now Ghana), to assemble British and American fighters and fighter-bombers shipped in by sea. When assembled, they were flown to Cairo for use by the air forces operating in the Middle East. The route for these flights was via Lagos, Kano, Maiduguri, El Geneina, El Obeid, Khartoum and Wadi Halfa. Long range tanks were fitted for the flight to Khartoum, where they were removed. The ferry pilots and the long range tanks all had to be returned to Takoradi, and this was creating a problem. B.O.A.C. was operating a service between Khartoum and Lagos, but with insufficient capacity to meet this RAF requirement. As a result, ferry pilots and long range tanks were piling up at Khartoum and the supply of fighters to the Middle East, through Takoradi was being seriously retarded. A flight of Bombays from 216 Squadron at Cairo had been sent to Khartoum to deal with this problem, but it had now been decided to form a new transport squadron there to meet this and other transport requirements in the area. I was to form and command this squadron, but would have to go first to HQ Middle East (HQME) for briefing. I would travel by sea to Takoradi, where air transport to Cairo would be arranged for me.

All this I learnt on my visit to Air Ministry. I was still a squadron leader and the new post would carry the rank of wing commander. It would make my job as commanding officer easier if I could arrive already wearing wing commanders' stripes than if I had to put them on after arrival; my "juniority" in the rank would be less obvious. I therefore asked Air Ministry if I could be given acting rank before I left England, but was told that HQME would do that after I arrived there, if they liked my face.

I went to Glasgow on 16^th March, to embark next day. In the hotel that evening, I met an ex-269 Squadron pilot who greeted me with congratulations. When I asked what for, he said it was on my promotion to wing commander. A hasty phone call next morning elicited confirmation: I had been promoted on 1^st March, but no one had bothered to tell me!

I embarked in the troopship Highland Monarch next day and found several small independent drafts of airmen being conducted by some inexperienced young officers. With their very willing agreement, I took over responsibility for the whole lot, appointed one of the officers as adjutant, borrowed a typewriter from the ship's orderly room, found a clerk, and we became a RAF unit for the duration of the voyage, to the relief of everyone concerned. I then discovered that nearly all the airmen were absolutely broke. A month previously, they had all been given a month's pay in advance and then sent on a month's leave, during which all their meagre pay had been spent. There was no provision for issuing pay in a troopship and it would be at least another month before they reached their destinations and most of them would not have even a penny to spend until after they arrived in their new units. It was an intolerable state of affairs.

In war time, it was forbidden to go ashore again after embarking in a troopship. However, when it became known that we would not be sailing for several days, OC Troops allowed me to do so when I told him of the plight of "my" airmen. Without asking for any authority, I went to Abbots Inch, now a naval air station, and drew an imprest of several hundred pounds from the Paymaster. From this, I was able to pay the airmen ten shillings a week each during the voyage, and also help out one or two officers who found themselves short. There was no provision in the regulations for any of this, but I kept proper records of what was paid to whom and got receipts from all recipients. I handed in the balance of the imprest at Takoradi, with all records and a report on what I had done, and heard no more about the matter.

We landed at Takoradi on Easter Sunday, April 13^th, after calling at Gibraltar and Freetown. I was asked if I would ferry a Blenheim to Cairo, taking with me a trainee navigator who, if I reported favourably on his performance, would thereafter become a qualified navigator on the route. I readily agreed.

In the few days I was at Takoradi, I made the acquaintance of a Major Brower, an officer of the USAAF. He was attached to the US embassy in Cairo, but was stationed at Takoradi as an observer of what the RAF was doing with the American aircraft being supplied under lend lease arrangements. America was still a neutral at that time, and its observers were not supposed to do anything to help the allies. However, Major Brower was very pro-British and, knowing that we were short of ferry pilots, it was remarkable how often he found it necessary to go to Cairo and report to his embassy. Of course, the only way to get there was by air, flying one of the American fighters which had just been assembled at Takoradi. After reporting to his embassy, he always managed to find his way back to Takoradi by some other means, leaving his fighter in Cairo. He left on one of these "reporting" missions a few days after we met, flying in company with a small convoy of single engined fighters led by a pilot and navigator in a twin engined light bomber.

I left Takoradi two days later, also with a convoy which was going only as far as Lagos that day. After topping up with fuel at Lagos, I carried on to Maiduguri for the night. Navigation was mainly by map reading, using maps which often bore little resemblance to the country below us, but we coped. A dust storm blew up just after we landed at Maiduguri, causing the sun to appear electric blue in colour. I had intended making Khartoum next day; but when I landed at El Obeid to refuel, the governor of the Kordofan Province of the Sudan asked me to stay and represent the RAF at the funeral of Major Brower, who had crashed, killing himself, just after taking off that morning, and was to be buried later that afternoon.

After spending three days in Khartoum, where I reported to the Air Officer Commanding (AOC) in the Sudan, I flew on up to Cairo to report to HQME. The order to form 117 Squadron was quickly issued and the Bombay flight at Khartoum was transferred to it. I was then told that there were no more transport aeroplanes in the command to equip the second and third flights, and none could be expected from Britain. However, at Heliopolis, there was a gaggle of miscellaneous Jugo Slav air force machines which had been flown to Egypt when Jugo Slavia was overrun by the Germans, only weeks before. I was invited to go and see if I could find anything suitable amongst them. I found four three-engined Savoia Marchetti 79K bombers which had roomy cabins. They would be able to carry useful cargo or passenger loads and I was told I could have them. I then had to learn to fly them and get them to Khartoum, after which I would have to teach a few squadron pilots to fly them.

A Captain Miloyevitch was detailed to teach me to fly the machines. We did not have a word of any common language between us, but he had a warrant officer who spoke Italian in addition to his own language and I had a Maltese Clerk who spoke Italian and English. All communications between us were passed via these two, who stood behind us in the aeroplane. My first lesson was given during a 30 minutes flight from Heliopolis to Abu Sueir, where filters were fitted to the air intakes of the three engines. The second lesson, which was also the last, was given in the course of a 40 minutes air test after the filters had been fitted. Three days later, I flew that aeroplane back to Cairo, myself, and next day led the four machines on a flight to Khartoum, the other three being flown by Jugo Slav pilots. They returned to Cairo after the delivery flight, but two of their senior NCOs volunteered to stay with the squadron and help with the maintenance of the machines.

The Savoias became the second flight of the squadron - sort of. I was then ordered to take over the Khartoum Station Flight and make it the third flight. It consisted of two Wellesleys and two Proctors, which were used for general communication work, and two Gladiators, used for carrying out daily met. flights. Thus, I now had three flights, but a very mixed bag of aircraft types. I flew them all, and also an old captured Caproni 133, which was sitting on the aerodrome with irreparably damaged brakes. The Savoias quickly became my favourites, as they were fast, easy to fly, and carried quite good loads. They were used mainly on special missions, which kept on cropping up. Later in the year, we were given four Lodestars, but these were taken from us again and given to B.O.A.C., before I had time to train any pilots to fly them. Still later in the year, we were given five DC2s, on one of which I was given 90 minutes' dual by one of Pan American Airlines most experienced pilots. These were lend lease aircraft which had been completely reconditioned before delivery to us, and they served us well.

The Bombay flight took care of most of the work on the regular Khartoum - Takoradi route, helped out only occasionally by me in a Savoia and once in a Lodestar. My own flying took me as far afield as Aden at the southern end of the Red Sea and Bathurst (now Banjul) in Gambia, on the far west coast of Africa.

On one of my visits to Takoradi, I was intercepted by a signal concerning the œ100 which had been withheld from my gratuity, well over a year earlier. It said that Air Ministry and the Australian Air Board had decided that I was to be offered the choice of transferring to the RAAF under stated conditions or of remaining in the RAF. As soon as I announced my decision, no matter what it was, the balance of my gratuity would be paid to me. As before, there was tacit admission that the money was mine by absolute right and was going to be paid to me whether I transferred or remained in the RAF; but, until I announced that decision, it would be withheld. As before, the logic of this escaped me and still does. I elected to remain in the RAF.

One of the squadron's many special missions was to bring the Duke of Aosta from an airfield near Asmara to Khartoum. He had been the Governor General of Ethiopia and commander in chief of the Italian forces in East Africa, and was going on to Kenya, where he was to be interned for the duration of the war or, as it turned out, until his death. I sent our best aeroplane, flown by Squadron Leader Taylor, my 2 i/c, to collect him. On arrival at Khartoum, the duke was met by a representative of the Governor General of the Sudan, the commander of the British forces in the Sudan and myself, and was treated with the respect due to an honourable foe. Very tall and slim and speaking perfect English (he was educated in England), he was a very likeable man. As he got out of the aircraft and saw the Savoias, he assumed they were Italian air force machines which we had captured. I knew what he was thinking and quickly put his mind at rest by telling him where we had got them.

A South African Air Force crew took him on to Kenya where he died, I think, of consumption only a few months later.

Another famous man to pass through Khartoum while I was there was Field Marshal Smuts. He stayed the night with the Governor General and I was one of a small party invited to dine with him and his lady wife, affectionately known to all as Ouma (Grandma). After dinner, the field marshal talked to us of his dream and hope for the eventual development of the African continent. He wanted to see it a community of friendly nations, linked by good roads and other forms of communication, a great area of peace and order throughout which all could travel freely and safely. He was a man of great breadth of vision and good will. How sadly different from his dream is that continent today!

On 7^th June, 1941, I was attacked by an Italian fighter while flying over Abyssinia. In itself, it was an unimportant event as no one was hurt and I eventually got the aeroplane safely back to Khartoum; but I have included an account of it here because of several rather unusual happenings in connection with it. In reading what follows, it should be realised that the Savoia had a fabric-covered, tubular metal fuselage, a wooden wing, and that we were flying without parachutes. We were doing so because none of the chest type, the only kind which could be used in the Savoia, were then available at Khartoum. I have told the tale just as it happened, or seemed to happen, to our sometimes very confused minds.

By the end of May, the war in East Africa was almost over. Addis Ababa had been captured and only a small force of Italians were still holding out at Gondar, near Lake Tana. On 6^th June, I flew a Savoia 79 to Addis Ababa to collect a load of Savoia spares from the Italian air force stores there. As co-pilot, I took with me Flight Lieutenant Lewis-Jones, the Group Intelligence Officer, who was not an RAF pilot, but who held a Kenyan private pilot's licence. The day before we left Khartoum, he issued an intelligence bulletin stating that the last Italian fighter at Gondar (and hence in East Africa) had been destroyed. As flight engineer, I took Corporal Lamplugh, a squadron member. Our trip to Addis Ababa was uneventful. We loaded the aeroplane with spares, mainly tyres, and let flying control know that we would be leaving at 0630 next morning.

We got off at 0635 on the 7^th and set a north westerly course which would take us over the Blue Nile Gorge and some heavily forested, very mountainous country before emerging onto the Sudan plain and rejoining the Blue Nile well to the North of Roseires.

About an hour out from Addis Ababa, when we were flying over the very worst part of the route, a rapid hammering noise suddenly started, seemingly on the metal cockpit roof directly over our heads. We were very puzzled about this but could do nothing about it. After perhaps ten or fifteen seconds, during which the noise continued, and just as I was about to make some dismissive remark concerning it, a dense grey cloud of petrol vapour came rushing through the cockpit from the cabin and out through the co-pilot's window. Corporal Lamplugh ran back to investigate and returned a few seconds later, saying that the petrol gravity feed tank in the cabin roof had burst, and all the petrol in it (about 20 gallons) had spilled down over the tyres, which caught and held a good deal of it.

All this time, the hammering over our heads had continued steadily. Just then, I saw some red sparks flying forward past the aeroplane and, for a moment, thought of fire. Then came the almost instant realisation that sparks would not be flying forward, and the penny dropped. Christ! TRACER!! I dived down and to the left, out of the stream of tracer, banged the throttles wide open, and ran. I knew our attacker could only be a CR 42 fighter, and the Savoia was faster.

We ran at full speed for a few minutes before slowing to cruising speed again. I could now see bullet holes in the wings and knew that some of the petrol tanks must have been hit. I wanted to know how fast we were losing petrol so told Cpl Lamplugh to run the Televel gauges down and give me a reading every five minutes. I wanted to try to work out whether we would travel furthest by running at maximum speed or at most economical cruising. It would depend on how fast we were losing petrol by leakage. While this was going on, the fighter caught up with us again and got in another very short burst, causing me to duck and run again for a few more minutes, after which we heard no more of it. We never did see it.

In the cockpit we had, by now, been sitting in a strong concentration of petrol vapour for perhaps ten minutes and peculiar things began to happen. Cpl Lamplugh started to write down the quantities of petrol in each of the eight tanks which had gauges. After writing down a few of them correctly, his pencil just wandered off across the page as he sank unconscious to the floor. I had felt nothing, but blood from a small cut behind my right ear was dripping down the front of my shirt and making a nasty looking mess which rather alarmed Lewis-Jones. Presently, without saying a word, he suddenly seized the controls, pushed the nose of the aeroplane hard down, then leaned right out of his window and seemed to be trying to look at something under the middle engine. Below us was nothing but dense forest, rugged mountains and the Blue Nile raging in flood through its deep and narrow gorge. I had no idea what the trouble might be, but felt sure I was better qualified to deal with it than he was. Above all, I did not wish to lose any more height over such bad country so I took the wheel again, touched his arm to attract his attention so I could ask what he had apparently seen, and started to pull the nose up. At that, Lewis-Jones hastily pulled his head in, leaned over and punched me hard on the jaw, took the wheel again and then tried to punch out a small panel of the windscreen, cutting his knuckles badly in the process.

Flight lieutenant assaulting wing commander, co-pilot assaulting captain and seizing control of an aeroplane about which he knew next to nothing: I wanted to know what could possibly be the cause of such extraordinary behaviour. Telling myself not to panic, I wrote on a scribble pad, "What is the matter"? and handed pad and pencil to the co-pilot, who obligingly took it and started to write a reply while I resumed control of the aeroplane. He just managed to write, "Am feeling asphyxiated", then put his head on the window sill and passed out completely.

I was in a bad way, by now. While I continued to look straight ahead, or to the left, I was more or less all right. Whenever I looked to the right, or down at the map or the cockpit instruments, I would at once go completely blind and almost lose consciousness for a brief period. No such effects occurred when I looked out to the left or straight ahead. In this state, I continued for over an hour, watching all the time for possible landing places, until we reached the Blue Nile again on the Sudan plain. I then turned down stream, hoping that I might be able to reach Sennar, where I knew there was an airfield and a dump of petrol. However, after only a few more minutes, the centre engine ran out of petrol and stopped, followed within a few seconds by the other two. Directly below was a big area of cleared ground and I saw that, by making a 360 degree gliding turn, I would be able to land on it. I started the turn, released the undercarriage to automatic lowering and the slots and interconnected flaps to automatic operation. At that moment, Cpl Lamplugh recovered consciousness, got up, placed an arm affectionately around my shoulders and said, in a very drunken voice, " 'S all right, sir, there's bags of petrol; 's nothing to worry about".

I completed the turn, saw that we were in exactly the right position for the landing, then said, "God help us now" and passed out almost completely. I was just aware of existence, but totally unable to make any conscious movement, and unable to see anything at all. This state can only have lasted for a very few seconds before vision began returning and I saw in front of us the top half of a native 14 feet tall. I could not see his lower half, or the ground on which he stood; but I knew he was 14 feet tall because I could see we were going to cut him in half if he did not get out of our way. (Don't look for any logic in this line of thinking: it was just what went through my confused mind). He disappeared as I began realising that no one was that tall and that we must be very near the ground, although I could not see it. At that moment, the aeroplane touched down very gently in a perfect landing. It rolled a long way before coming to a stop because I was not conscious enough to make the simple thumb movement required to apply the brakes.

We had landed about half a mile from the village of Karkoj. By the time Lewis-Jones and I returned to full consciousness, a crowd of wonderfully kind and friendly people had gathered around us. We were quickly escorted to the village where there was a Sudan Medical Service dispensary and a well trained native dispenser. Lots of hot, sweet tea was produced while the dispenser expertly cleaned up and dressed the co-pilot's hand and my small wound.

The nearest telephone was at Singa, about twenty miles down stream, where there was also a District Commissioner. The village storekeeper, who owned the only motor vehicle in the village, drove me there in his truck and I was able to ring Khartoum and arrange for a repair party to be flown out that afternoon, bringing 360 gallons of petrol in four gallon tins. After giving me lunch, the District Commissioner drove me back to Karkoj, where he helped to organise assistance by the inhabitants, before returning to Singa. The old storekeeper gave me a bolt of white cloth with which to mark out a runway and landing direction arrow on the black soil plain for the relief plane. He would not accept any payment for it, even though I had to cut it into several long pieces.

When the relief plane arrived, we first had to take all the cargo out of mine. In doing this, I found a crumpled bullet on the floor just inside the back door, about three feet aft of a point directly below the petrol header tank which had been destroyed in the first minute of the fighter's attack. I put it in my pocket and, as we were required to do, handed it to the Group Armament Officer for identification, after we got back to Khartoum.

Repairs took the rest of that afternoon and most of next morning, during which the villagers helped in every possible way. The children literally fought for the privilege of carrying the tins of petrol between the two machines. Village women kept up a supply of tea and cool lemon drinks, and a mechanic from the village was able to give some real help with work on the aeroplane.

The petrol system was in a mess. Only five of the eleven tanks were usable and the pipe lines had been damaged and were leaking in many places. The damaged tanks were isolated and the pipe lines temporarily repaired by wrapping the damaged places in sheet rubber secured by twisted wire. When the undamaged tanks were filled and the taps turned on, petrol was still found to be leaking from several places, but I decided to fly the machine back to Khartoum in that state, it was either do that or abandon it. Squadron Leader Lovemore, who had flown out the relief plane offered to fly the damaged one back, but I would not hear of that. Flt. Lt Lewis-Jones and Cpl Lamplugh also volunteered to stay with me.

I naturally wanted to do something to show my appreciation for all that the village people had done for us. While repairs were still going on on the morning of the 8^th, I spoke with a small group of village elders and asked if there was anything special which I might be able to do or get for them by way of thanks for all their kindness and help. The old storekeeper replied for himself, saying touchingly, "All I want from you is your name and your address, and when I see you again I hope you will be very well, you and all your family also". Receiving no more helpful answers, I asked if any of them had ever been up in an aeroplane. None had. Would any of them like to go up? Yes, they would. So I took four of them up in the relief machine, the village head man, the school teacher, the storekeeper, and one other whose status I never did discover. We had to take off towards the village and there was some apprehension as they saw it rushing towards them at tremendous speed, but this was quickly followed by excited interest as we rose safely over it and, for the first time, they got a bird's eye view of their town and the surrounding country. There was also great excitement in the village after we landed, and it was obvious that I could never have thought of anything else which would have given them nearly so much pleasure.

When Lewis-Jones, Lamplugh and I boarded our Savoia for the flight to Khartoum, petrol was dripping from it in several places and there was a strong smell of petrol in cabin and cockpit. Getting the engines started was a real ordeal for us. They had to be started by compressed air from a compressor which was driven by a small petrol engine located in the forward part of the cabin and operated by Cpl Lamplugh. We all felt there was a real danger that a spark from this could trigger an explosion in the vapour-laden atmosphere. However, we got all three engines started safely, but then had to keep the compressor running until the pressure in an air bottle behind my seat reached a figure of ten on a gauge on the instrument panel. This, according to our Jugo Slav instructors, was to provide power for the wheel brakes. The gauge reached eight, then seemed reluctant to move any further. I was about to tell Cpl Lamplugh to stop the compressor, when there was a shattering explosion behind my seat. The safety diaphragm on the air bottle had blown out. No damage was done, but the explosion was a horrible shock to all three of us.

The loss of air pressure only meant that we would have no brakes when landing at Khartoum and I could easily deal with that by landing on a runway which just ended in bare desert. We took off, flew to Khartoum and landed safely on the chosen runway; then, without thinking, I pressed the brake lever, the brakes worked nicely, and we taxied in under full braking control. I never did discover the source of power for that.

Bad as this whole experience had been, the worst shock was still to come. I had given the crumpled bullet to the Group Armament Officer when we got back. Two days later, we met in the mess and he told me that it was an incendiary, which had a burning time of about ten minutes, and that it had been burnt out completely. If true, that meant that, for about nine minutes, it had lain burning on the floor of the cabin in which twenty gallons of petrol was sloshing about and producing fumes strong enough to render two of the crew unconscious - and we had not been wearing parachutes. I was so shocked by the realisation of what we had escaped that I just collapsed into the nearest chair and could neither move nor speak for some seconds. To this day, I do not understand why we did not go down in a ball of fire over the Blue Nile Gorge, nor how the aeroplane made such a perfect landing when I was so nearly blind and unconscious. I can only think that Someone was looking after all three of us that day.

While on the ground at Karkoj, I questioned Lewis-Jones about his attack on me in the air. As I have related, he was very near the point of collapse at the time. He told me that he had been worried about my head wound and feared that it might be affecting my flying. As his own dizziness increased, he thought he saw my head nodding and believed I was passing out, so took the controls and put his head out of the window to get some fresh air. He did not know why he had pushed the nose down. When he felt me take the wheel again, he thought I might be freezing on the controls and felt he had to knock me unconscious to get me to loosen my grip. He was very embarrassed and apologetic but I assured him that I fully understood and accepted his explanation.

A few days after our return to Khartoum, Lewis-Jones received information that a big Italian cargo plane, carrying two CR 42 fighters from Libya, had had a forced landing in the desert east of Khartoum some days before our trip to Addis Ababa. It had sat there, undetected, for almost two days while repairs were effected, and then flown on to Gondar, where the fighters were quickly assembled and one of them used to shoot us down.

On examination at Khartoum, our Savoia was found to be damaged beyond repair and was cannibalised to provide spare parts for the other three.

The squadron moved up to Egypt at the end of October, 1941, leaving the Savoias and the Khartoum Station Flight behind. We were located at Bilbeis, a desert landing ground on the edge of the delta green belt, about midway between Cairo and Ismailia. Immediately on arrival, the Bombays were returned to 216 Squadron, but not the pilots. 117 Squadron was then left with only the five DC2s and a considerable surplus of pilots and airmen servicing personnel. I offered the surplus to HQME for disposal wherever needed and they were gratefully accepted. Several of the pilots were lent to 31 (Transport) Squadron in India for some months. Our sadly depleted squadron was then employed on routine transport work, mainly in support of the air and land forces in the Western Desert.

For a time, we really had very little to do, so I took the opportunity to make our camp as comfortable as possible. We were camped on bare desert sand and sleeping in tents in which the only standing room was immediately under the ridgepole. Some of my men discovered a large supply of discarded packing cases at Suez, so I sent transport and collected enough to provide flooring for all our tents. I then had all the floors dug out to a depth of about three feet before the floor boards were laid, leaving the tents still pitched at ground level, with the side flaps held down by sand bags to keep out blowing sand. This provided comfortable standing room in each tent. I managed to obtain cots for the airmen (the officers had their camp kits) and encouraged everyone to make whatever furniture they wanted out of this surplus timber.

In the first few weeks at Bilbeis, before any protective fencing could be built, we lost a lot of tents, stolen by thieves from nearby villages, where it was cut up and used to make clothing and bedding. Acting on a tip-off, I got a Sudanese officer of the Egyptian police to search the village nearest to our camp. I provided a party of 30 armed aircrew members to surround the village and to support him if he should meet any resistance. The police officer did all the searching and I accompanied him to identify any stolen property found.

We found plenty. In that village nearly all clothing and bedding was made from material identifiable as having been cut from British WD (for War Department) tents. In one house, occupied by a woman and young baby, every piece of clothing and bedding, including the baby's, was made of this cloth. Information obtained by the police officer during this search led us to two other villages where we found more of the same, and also a good deal of British army equipment. In the last village we searched, we found a workshop in which one of my own squadron's tents was in the process of being cut up and turned into garments by three busy machinists. The identifiable articles found were eventually handed over to me after the culprits had been dealt with by Egyptian courts.

While searching these villages, I saw something of the extreme poverty in which most of the inhabitants were forced to live. From the police officer, I learnt of the incredibly low wages paid by employers, usually less than five piastres (a shilling) a day. Share farmers had to give 90% of their crops to their landlords, and so on. In short, there was no possible way that most of those villagers could earn enough, by honest means, to stay alive.

I also learnt that rain in rural Egypt was often a curse, not a blessing. No crops depended on it; they were all irrigated by water from the Nile. Most of the houses had no proper roofs. To keep the sun out, crossbeams were set into the walls near the top, and wire netting laid over them. A fairly deep layer of cornstalks was then laid flat over the netting, without any attempt to make a waterproof thatch. Whenever rain fell, it quickly found its way through the cornstalks and dripped over everything below.

Although the squadron had very little to do for some months, I was soon ordered personally to carry out the first of several interesting flights. On 26^th November, I picked up a party of oil well experts dressed as army officers at Heliopolis and flew them to Habbaniya, in Iraq. Next day, I picked up some more of the same at Baghdad and flew the lot to Tehran. At that time, it looked as if the Germans were likely to capture the Russian oil fields in the Caucasus and these men told me they were on their way to Baku to show the Russians how to destroy their oil wells in such a way that the Germans would never be able to get any oil from them. They never said why they thought the Russians needed to be taught how to do that. They had no visas to enter Russia, but were quite confident that the British legation in Tehran would be able to get them without any delay. In other words, their expedition had been planned, assembled and started on its way without any prior consultation with the Russians. The Russians never had any intention of letting the party into Russia, but would not say so; they just kept on delaying the issue of visas on various pretexts until that became obvious.

I was supposed to return to Egypt on the 28^th but, when doing the pre-flight inspection, a cylinder on one engine was found to be loose, with the heads broken off three of the twelve studs securing it to the crank case. I sought the help of the Royal Iranian Aircraft Factory, which had been established to build the Hawker Harts with which the RIAF was equipped. It was run by Hawker engineers who willingly undertook the repair of my engine, but had terrible difficulty extracting the broken studs, which had been shrunk into the crank case. Repairs were not completed until 5^th December. While they were going on, my crew and I were accommodated in a hotel at Darband, a village about 2,000 feet above Tehran in the Alborz Mountains. I remained in touch with the officers I had brought up and learned of the difficulties they were having with the Russians.

It was bitterly cold on the morning of the 6^th when we went to the aerodrome to take off for the return to Egypt. The aircraft battery was flat. We borrowed another from the aircraft factory but then ran into cold starting trouble. The engines would fire at the first attempt but were so cold that the water vapour in the combustion gases condensed immediately inside the cylinder heads, depositing water drops across the spark plug gaps and stopping the engines again. The plugs then had to be taken out, dried, heated and re-installed, only to have the same thing happen again, and again, and again. There was no kind of hot air blower or other heating device available to overcome this problem.

We eventually got the engines running just in time for me to make a short air test before it got dark. We could not take off then as no night flying facilities were available. I did not dare shut down the engines for the night, as we would have had the same trouble starting them again, next day. I therefore left the co-pilot and flight engineer in the machine with instructions to run the engines alternately throughout the night. Each engine had its own generator, which would keep charging the battery. One engine was to be running at all times. The idle engine was never to remain stopped long enough to get gold and was always to be started up before the other was switched off so that there would be no chance of running the battery flat again.

We got off next morning, in a temporary break in a snow storm, when I could see that we would be able to climb above dangerous icing level before having to enter cloud. We spent the next night in the airport hotel at Lydda. When I came down to breakfast next morning, the front pages of the newspapers were screaming the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

On returning to Bilbeis that morning, I was summoned to HQME and told that I would be required to fly a party to Kuybyshev in Russia, in a Lodestar, starting next day. It had been decided to offer Russia several squadrons of bomber to assist in the defence of the Caucasus and I was to take the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the RAF in the Middle East and a small staff to Kuybyshev to co-ordinate the assistance. We were to pick up the British ambassador to Turkey at Habbaniya on the way. The party had no visas to enter Russia, nor had I or my crew, of course. I told the Deputy C-in-C of the delays experienced by the party of oil well experts and strongly urged him not to leave Cairo until he and all his party had their visas or some other form of entry permit. However, he insisted that these would be immediately available to us at Tehran, where we would be stopping overnight, and we would be able to go straight on, next morning.

Well, we got to Tehran on schedule, on 9^th December. My passengers were accommodated by the Ambassador while I and my crew went on up to the hotel at Darband again. I was told to have the Lodestar ready for take off at first light next morning.

My crew and I got down to the airport in good time next morning, warmed up the engines, then just sat and waited. Late in the afternoon word was sent to us that we would not be taking off that day, but to be ready at the same time next morning. This routine was repeated on each of the following nine days. The Russians were up to their old stalling tactics, never saying that we could not enter Russia, but always finding some excuse for not being able to issue the necessary permits, and blaming the delays on their government in Kuybyshev. On the 19^th, the Deputy C-in-C gave up and we returned to Egypt next day.

One morning during this fiasco, while sitting in the Lodestar waiting for our passengers, we saw an inverted mirage. It was a cold, still morning. Not far away from us was a small conical hill. Quite suddenly, just as the sun rose, there was an inverted image of the hill in the sky above it, with tips of the two cones just seeming to touch. This mirage vanished again, just as suddenly, only a minute or so later.

My next interesting trip started on the last day of February 1942, when I was detailed to fly General Alexander from Cairo to Burma, where he was to take command of the British and Indian forces retreating towards India in the face of the Japanese invasion. We were to call at Habbaniya, where he would confer briefly with the army and air force commanders in Iraq. I was then to fly him non-stop to Delhi, a distance of about 2,600 miles, which would necessitate the use of long range tanks.

I was given only about 24 hours in which to prepare for this flight. I chose the best of our five DC2s and re-installed the long range tanks with which it had been ferried across the Atlantic. The engines of all these machines were now suffering from the lack of air intake filters and were using about two gallons of oil per hour, giving them a maximum oil endurance of only about seven hours. As the flight from Habbaniya to Delhi would take at least twice that time, we had to devise a means of replenishing the engines' oil supplies in the air. We did this by mounting a five gallon oil drum in the cabin with an ordinary tyre valve soldered into its screw cap. A pipe from the bottom of the drum led to a T junction, from which pipes were led off to the suction sides of the engine oil pumps, with a cock in each line so that each engine could be supplied separately. The drum was pressurised by a car foot pump and a marked dip stick enabled the flight engineer to meter the oil supply with reasonable accuracy. Forty gallons of oil was to be carried in the cabin and emptied into the pressurised drum as required.

That was the best we could do in the very short time available, and that was the best aeroplane the RAF Middle East Command could provide for this very important flight. We did not have time to run any accurate oil consumption test before starting the flight, so used the consumption found during the five hours flight to Habbaniya to calculate this. We found it to be two gallons per hour for each engine.

It was a perfect night as we winged our way down the Persian Gulf and out over the Arabian sea. Starting two hours after take-off, we pumped oil to the engines at the rate of two gallons per hour. All went well until about an hour before daylight, when the oil temperature in the port engine suddenly began to rise and the pressure drop alarmingly. Thinking the engine must be running out of oil, I ordered more pumped to it, but this made only a small and short-lived improvement. Both temperature and pressure were soon at dangerous levels. We were still too heavily laden to fly safely on one engine, so I set the propeller on the left engine to coarsest pitch (slowest engine speed) and gave it enough throttle to do little more than overcome its own drag. Oil pressure and temperature then stabilised just within acceptable limits. I told General Alexander what had happened and we headed for the next aerodrome ahead, which was Jiwani, on the coast of Baluchistan, about 330 miles west of Karachi. It was a staging post for BOAC flying boats and land planes.

We landed there soon after sunrise. As we came to the end of our landing run, the aeroplane swung sharply around to the left, pivoting on the left wheel and scooping a shallow saucer in the sand. When I opened up the throttle on the left engine, it could not produce enough power to pull the wheel out of this saucer, so I stopped both engines and we stayed where we had finished our run. We then got out of the aeroplane, the flight engineer went and stood some yards away in front of it, stared at the left engine for a while, and then announced that the cause of our trouble was broken piston rings in number five cylinder! When I asked, with some astonishment, how he could possibly know that without making any kind of test, he just assured me that he knew!

Fortunately, the resident B.O.A.C. engineer, Mr R. Sol (yes, that really was his name!) arrived just then and took charge. He first cut a wooden plug which he fitted tightly into the front spark plug hole in each cylinder turn, turned the engine by hand and popped the plug like a champagne cork as each piston came up on its compression stroke, thus proving there was nothing wrong with any piston rings.

He then drained a gallon of oil from the engine's sump into a jug, looking for traces of metal which might have indicated bearing failure. Finding none in the first gallon, he drained a second gallon from the sump, and then a third. At that, I suddenly remembered that there should be only half a gallon of oil in the sump and began to guess what might have happened. Climbing onto the wing, I unscrewed the filler cap of the left oil tank and oil gushed out of it. During the night, the oil consumption of that engine had not been nearly as great as the short test had indicated. We had gradually overfilled the oil tank, the overflow from which was vented into the engine's crankcase, not to atmosphere, and we had then gradually filled up almost all available space inside the engine. Why this should have caused loss of oil pressure and overheating, I do not know, but it did.

It took hours for the two engineers to clear the oil out of all the places where it should not have been and to get the engine working properly again. During all this time, General Alexander was very patient. He was a keen bird watcher and, in the late morning, invited me to accompany him on a stroll through the desert bush around the small airport mess, during which he chatted knowledgeably about the local bird life.

We got off again late in the afternoon and flew to Karachi, where we spent the night and I was asked to take on a load of equipment for delivery to a RAF unit at Akyab in Burma. We flew on to Delhi next day, and to Calcutta three days later, where I made an inexcusably bad approach and landing, at the end of which I had to swing the aeroplane over a small ditch and damaged the tail wheel supporting struts inside the rear of the fuselage. Another machine and pilot was quickly found to take General Alexander on to Burma. My DC2 was swiftly repaired by some mechanics of China National Airlines, who had a servicing base at Calcutta. It was ready for use again by the end of the day.

While repairs were going on, I was able to have a look at a DC3 which had recently been flown out of China by a CNA pilot. It had been shot up by a Japanese aircraft while on the ground and one wing destroyed. No replacement wing was available, but the Chinese managed to attach a considerably smaller DC2 wing and flew the lopsided machine out to Calcutta.

The following morning I flew on to Akyab (now Sittwe) where I was asked to take a load of railway engine drivers and firemen in to Magwe, on the Irrawaddy River. I did that that afternoon and returned to Akyab for the night. Next day, I set out on the return journey to Egypt. After having to stop a day at Calcutta for servicing, and making a night stop at Jodhpur, we reached Karachi on 8^th March. There, the engines were checked over thoroughly as both had been showing signs of wear on the flight from Jodhpur. We took off again on the 10^th, but had to turn back a little over an hour later with smoke pouring from one engine. A further examination on the ground disclosed that both engines would have to be replaced.

The few available replacement engines were under the direct control of Air Headquarters in Delhi and I had to go there to get authority for the release of two for my aircraft. I left that night and spent two nights and a day in trains to get there; then, after only one day of about twelve hours in the city, another two nights and a day in trains on the way back to Karachi. It sounds as if it should have been very tiring. However, I paid the extra fare for a berth in the one air conditioned car on each train and found I had a four berth cabin, with its own bathroom, all to myself on each train. I just relaxed, read, wrote and slept in complete comfort for the four nights and two days and arrived back at Karachi feeling thoroughly rested.

I felt it was now time to get back to the squadron. Leaving the co-pilot and the rest of the crew to bring the DC2 home when it was ready, I booked a seat on the next B.O.A.C. flying boat and got back to Egypt on the 17^th.

A month later, after receiving half an hour's dual on the type, I flew a DC3 to Karachi with a good load of stores. I went on to Delhi and Lahore, where I handed the machine over to 31 Squadron, after giving the senior flight commander an hour's dual instruction on it. I then returned to Egypt by train to Karachi and flying boat to Cairo.

On the way to Lahore on this trip, we left Delhi in a hot northwesterly wind, with much turbulence and flying dust. I climbed out above these unpleasant conditions at about 10,000 feet, finding only clean blue sky above and, far to the north, what I at first thought was a line of clouds. It was some time before I realised I was looking at the snow-covered Himalayas, serene, cool and beautiful.

About the middle of May, the squadron was re-equipped with Lodestars and I spent most of the next six weeks training the squadron pilots on them. I started the ground lessons by telling the pilots that, before the course ended, one of them would make a really determined attempt to kill me by some method which no one had ever tried before. I had no idea who it would be or what he would do, but I hoped, for both our sakes, that I would be able to defeat him. I told them that this had happened to at least one instructor on every Hudson course and I was sure it would happen again now, as the Hudsons and Lodestars were so similar. There were sceptical smiles all around as every pilot, no doubt, felt sure that he would not be the one to do it.

It was a Warrant Officer James, one of my most experienced pilots, who eventually made the attempt. I was doing a series of final tests, which included the failure of one engine while taking off with full load. The load, for this purpose, included bags of sand and about half a dozen pilots, each of whom was to be tested in turn.

We rehearsed the drill before taking off. I would close one throttle as soon as the undercarriage completed retraction, at which time we would be about ten feet off the ground and would have just reached safe single engine flying speed. The pilot then had to feather the propeller on the "dead" engine and go through a series of other actions and checks, culminating in going through the motions of dumping the petrol load without actually doing so.

When we took off, I duly cut one engine and watched James go quickly and correctly through all the prescribed drill. I then looked up and ahead to make sure we were going to clear safely a line of trees not very far ahead. In doing so, I failed to see him make one more movement, which was not in the prescribed drill. He intended to shut off the petrol to the now stopped engine, but turned the selector cock the wrong way! The first I knew of this was when the good engine suddenly cut out when we were about fifty feet up and heading directly for the trees. I made the fastest cockpit check I had ever done, discovered what had happened, turned the cock back on and, thanks to the well designed petrol system, had that engine running again before we had even begun to lose height.

The real hero of that incident was Flying Officer Anderson, one of the pilots sitting in the cabin waiting to do their own tests. As he told me afterwards he saw what James had done and knew that I had not. He knew what was about to happen and thought of rushing forward to warn me, then decided that this might only distract me at a critical moment, so sat still and did nothing. He said he had complete faith in my ability to cope with the situation, a statement which I found rather touching.

While the Lodestar training was going on, great battles were being fought and lost in the Western Desert, resulting in the retreat of the British Army to El Alamein. When things were looking at their worst, I was ordered to keep six Lodestars and crews at stand-by, ready to evacuate key members of the army and air force headquarters staffs from Cairo, if Rommel succeeded in breaking through the Alamein line.

Prior to these battles, another squadron, equipped with Lodestars, had been operating a regular service between Egypt and Malta, refuelling at El Adem on both outward and return journeys. The retreat to El Alamein put an end to that service. Early in July, 117 Squadron was given two commercial DC3s and told to re-open the service, flying non-stop between Bilbeis and Malta, a distance of about 1,150 miles. The DC3 carried enough petrol in its own tanks to do this distance quite safely. However, to reduce the uplift of petrol in Malta, we fitted a 200 gallon tank in the cabin and always took off from Bilbeis with it full, but did not refill it at Malta. The route was to be NNW from Bilbeis, over the most northerly point of the Nile delta to the middle of the Mediterranean and thence to Malta, keeping as nearly as possible midway between the African and European coasts. This necessitated the use of trained navigators. We had none in the squadron, but quickly borrowed two. I flew the first trip, taking with me as co-pilot the officer who would be flying the second.

Many strange and confusing things happened on this and two other such trips which I made during July. They were caused, I think, mainly by inexperienced navigators, some weird radio anomalies, and gross fatigue of pilots and navigators on the return journeys. To give you some idea of the fatigue factor, let me tell you of my own routine, which was much the same for the other crews flying on this service.

My day started about sunrise and work continued until lunch time. I would then rest for two or three hours and sometimes get some sleep. Take-off was at dusk and arrival at Malta was usually about 0300 hours next morning. It was usually possible for each pilot to get an hour or so of uneasy sleep, without leaving his seat, while the other flew. We would get into the transit camp and bed towards 0400, but air raids and the noise made by early-rising transients always prevented any sleep. After breakfast, I always had business to do at Air Headquarters, delivering and collecting despatches and making arrangements for the evening's outward load. In the afternoons, the aircraft had to be checked and made ready for the return journey, and this work was sometimes interrupted by air raids. Take-off was at dusk again and it was usually about daylight by the time we got back to Bilbeis. On one of my trips, fog over the whole delta region kept us in the air until 0800.

On my first trip to Malta, we had just got out of the aeroplane after landing and being led to our parking place, when the air raid sirens started to wail. I looked around to ask our guide to lead us to an air raid shelter, but he had already vanished. I and my crew then sat under the wing of our DC3 and watched a bombing attack on the Grand Harbour at Valetta, and the fierce defence by searchlights and guns. It was a really beautiful sight. The start of one of our return trips was delayed by a dusk attack on a neighbouring fighter airfield by five German aircraft. We had a grandstand view of this attack and saw two of the Germans shot down. One caught fire and exploded in the air; the other crashed into the sea with heavy smoke pouring from it.

Despite these conditions, all trips were completed safely. We were able to take a lot of much needed supplies to Malta and take out a lot of shipwrecked sailors, families and other people who were not wanted or needed on the island. On one of my trips, I carried back to Egypt 25 packing cases of bank notes destined for Palestine, where they were required to stem a run on the local banks. I have often wondered what the face value of that cargo was.

The DC3s were magnificent aircraft, with great load and range capacity, and beautifully easy to fly and maintain. They soon superseded the Hudsons/Lodestars as my favourite aeroplane. On my last flight from Malta, by weighing everything aboard, I was able to fly out a total of 47 passengers and crew, plus a fair amount of mail and other cargo, all without overloading, though not without overcrowding. Not long after I left the squadron, no less than 59 passengers were lifted out of Malta on one of these flights.

My last trip from Malta, on 26^th July, was also my last flight in 117 Squadron.

About the middle of 1942, I heard that a squadron of Marauders was about to be formed in Egypt. I asked if I might be given the command of it as Marauders were American aircraft and, because of my training and experience on Hudsons and other American types, I was probably the best qualified officer in the Middle East command to train the crews who would fly them. Failing that, I asked to be posted to any combatant squadron, pointing out that the war had been going on for nearly three years and I had not yet had any combatant part in it. I did not get the Marauder squadron but, on 28^th July, I was posted, supernumerary, to HQ 205 Group. There, I was told that I would be posted to command 37 Squadron in a few days time. It was equipped with Wellingtons and was then stationed at Abu Sueir. On the same day, I was sent to another Wellington squadron for a few days, to learn what I could about the working of such a squadron and about bombing operations.

This was valuable experience. In the four days I spent with the squadron, I learnt to fly Wellingtons and got in about three hours as pilot on them. I went on one bombing raid on Tobruk with the senior flight commander, acting as his co-pilot. Several other squadrons took part in this raid and I saw that no arrangement had been made to co-ordinate and concentrate their attack. Each crew just made its attack independently as it arrived at the target. This enabled the defenders to concentrate their entire effort on each machine in turn, thus exposing it to the maximum risk of being hit. Almost as soon as we started our bombing run, all the defending guns and searchlights were turned on us and the skipper promptly began to take violent evasive action. In the middle of one diving steep turn, I heard the bomb aimer report, "Bombs gone, Skipper". That meant, of course, that our bombs had simply been thrown away without any attempt at aiming them, and our entire trip, involving the expenditure of about 700 gallons of petrol and 3,000 pounds of bombs had been utterly wasted.

I learnt a bit about myself, too, on that flight. The air defences of Tobruk consisted of two batteries of 88 millimetre guns, about 60 automatic 75 millimetre guns firing tracer shells, and a dozen searchlights. I felt quite apprehensive when I saw a machine ahead of us getting the full force of those guns and lights. However, as we were about to start our own run, the skipper told me to keep a sharp lookout to the right for night fighters and report if I saw any. This I did, and found that I was too busy to be frightened.

Talking over the trip with the skipper next day, I asked him if what he had done was the normal procedure for crews when caught by the defences. He assured me that it was, and added that there was no future in flying straight and level (which was necessary to allow the proper aiming of the bombs) once that happened. Subsequent quiet questioning of crews in that squadron, and later in 37 Squadron, disclosed that this was apparently standard practice. Every sortie on which this occurred was absolutely wasted. Under the prevailing system of unsynchronised attacks, it happened to a large percentage of the aircraft on any raid, resulting in a great waste of petrol, bombs and aircraft flying times.

One of my first actions following my short experience with this squadron was to suggest to Group HQ that they organise simultaneous attacks by the whole force on future raids, as the defences would then only have time to concentrate fire on one or two aircraft. This was done soon afterwards, though whether as a result of my suggestion, I do not know.

In the few days before taking over 37 Squadron, I did a lot of thinking about how I should conduct myself in my new role as commander of a fighting unit. I had formed 117 Squadron from scratch and was its natural leader by reason of my greater flying experience and the fact that I had to instruct all my pilots on the different types of aircraft which the squadron received from time to time. Now, I was about to take over the best bomber squadron in the group, from a commander who was ending his third tour of operations, who flew with his squadron on nearly every operation, and who was rightly admired and respected by the whole unit. I, on the other hand, had no experience of operations, at all, nor had I even flown a Wellington until a few days previously. Every single member of the squadron was more experienced that I on its aircraft and in its work. I was very much the learner, not the teacher. On orders from Group, I would have to do a lot less flying, and spend a lot more time in the office, than my predecessor had done. Obviously, I must fly with the squadron often enough to earn the respect of its members, especially the air crews. Equally obviously, to me at any rate, I must allow myself enough time on the ground and in the office to deal adequately with its administration, which had been badly neglected. I had been ordered by group to bring it up to date and keep it that way. I was going to have to tread softly before trying to introduce my own ideas about the conduct of operations. It was going to test my powers of leadership to earn the respect and confidence of the squadron. It was the kind of challenge I liked.

I took over the squadron on 8^th August, 1942. I had decided I would try to fly with the squadron on its operations about once a week, and on any new type of operation which might crop up. I would also wait until I had flown with them on my first raid on Tobruk before raising the matter of conduct under fire.

I went on my first Tobruk raid on 14^th August and, as it happened, another aircraft started its unsynchronised attack just before I did mine. He caught all the flak and I and my crew had a completely free run over the target, with not a shot fired at us. This, of course, was disclosed at the subsequent de-briefing and became known to the rest of the squadron.

At the next briefing session, for another Tobruk raid on which I was not going, I laid down the law about conduct on the bombing run. I reminded all pilots of what they already knew: that the bomb aimer required a straight and level run, at a constant speed, in order to aim his bombs. If he released his bombs unaimed, the whole sortie would be wasted and it would have been better for the war effort if the aircraft and crew had never left the ground. We had all been trained for war and we must expect to have to stick our necks out occasionally and risk getting our heads knocked off. If captains felt at any time that conditions compelled them to take evasive action on the bombing run, they must tell the bomb aimer so and go around again. Before leaving the target area, they must fly straight and level, at a steady speed, for long enough to enable the bomb aimer to do his job properly. The bomb aimers were not to release their bombs until they were properly aimed.

All crews at that briefing knew that I had only done one raid on Tobruk, and that I had not been shot at on it. My little speech was greeted with dead silence and I could almost hear them mentally screaming, "You wait until you have been shot at a few times, you old so and so, and see if you still feel that way!". One flight commander eventually rose and said that what I was demanding was unreasonable, but I insisted that anything else was an intolerable waste of bombs and petrol and I expected my orders to be obeyed. I imagine most of those crews went off that night with very few kind feelings towards their new C.O.

It was not long before I got an opportunity to practice what I had preached. I was making a practice of flying with a different crew each time, taking the place of its captain, whom I left on the ground for the night. The bomb aimer on this occasion was a dour Scot, who was never known to say an unnecessary word. After reaching the target area, we found wind speed and direction and I told him the height, speed and approximate course on which I would fly over the target. He set those on his bomb sight and we waited around for the time set by Group for the synchronised attack to begin. When that came up, we turned towards the target and started our run. Quite by chance, I had turned onto exactly the right heading and no subsequent course corrections were needed. Also, I was much further away from the target than I had thought, and so had a much longer run to make than I expected, although this only became apparent as we ran in.

Soon after we began our run, one searchlight found us. All the others converged on us and all the guns gave us their undivided attention. The shells from the 75s never came very close to us, but were bursting in the sky all around us. The salvos from the two batteries of 88s were quite accurately aimed but wrongly fused, and kept bursting not far below us, jolting us every time, but never hitting, and we were held steadily coned by about a dozen searchlights. All I could do was huddle down in the cockpit to avoid dazzle and concentrate on maintaining the course, height and speed which I had given the bomb aimer, who said not a word. After what seemed like an hour or two, but was probably not more than two or three minutes, a quiet voice said, "Bombs gone, Skipper, Steady for the photo flash". Thirty long seconds later, a rather more emotional voice exclaimed, "Photo flash gone, Skipper. Close the bomb doors and let's get the hell out of here", which I did, as fast and as evasively as I could! Subsequent inspection showed that neither aeroplane nor crew had been touched.

While all this was going on, we were, of course, clearly visible to all the other crews taking part in the raid. There was no way any of them could know who was flying the aeroplane, or even the squadron to which it belonged. However, as I learned next morning, some of my crews assumed that it must have been their C.O. and, when this was confirmed, it began to have the effect I wanted.

Only a couple of raids later, I quite inadvertently gave a similar demonstration. I accidentally turned on our landing light, without realising it, when opening the bomb doors for our bombing run. The light was retracted into the under side of the wing where I could not see it, and shone straight downwards. Miles away, and making its run from a quite different direction, another aircraft had been picked out by the searchlights and guns just before we started our run. Ordinarily, the guns and lights would have continued concentrating on it until it passed out of range, and we should have had a free run. I was consequently surprised and dismayed when they all suddenly left it and turned on us. Once again our machine was clearly visible to all other crews as we continued steadily to the target and dropped our bombs, again without coming to any harm. At debriefing, it transpired that it was a 37 Squadron aircraft which had been under attack as we began our run. As several other squadrons were taking part in the raid, there was no possible way I could have known this, but somebody started a story that I had done so and had switched on my light to draw the enemy fire away from it.

Coming home from my second raid on Tobruk, on a moonlight night, I came down low and let the gunners shoot up targets along the coast road, which was Rommel's principal supply route. We found plenty to shoot at, started a fire or two and were untouched by the occasional return fire from the ground. The gunners enjoyed it immensely. Clearly, if all crews would do this when returning from raids on moonlight nights, it would increase Rommel's difficulties; it would certainly be good for the morale of the gunners, and it could be done at very little risk.

When I put this to the crews at the next briefing, I was again opposed by the same flight commander who had objected to my orders about conduct on bombing runs. He argued that our primary role was bombing and we should not risk losing or damaging aircraft by indulging in sideshows of little importance. My reply was that we should be hitting the enemy with every weapon we had whenever we went into action. The risk was very small and I wanted it done. The upshot was that some crews followed my precept and example and others did not. Crews were coming to realise that anti-aircraft gunfire, at high level or low, was not nearly as dangerous as had been thought. The squadron was gradually becoming a more effective fighting machine.

Very soon after taking over the squadron, I was ordered by Group to re-open the inquiries into several flying accidents which had occurred during my predecessor's command and had been dealt with by him, inadequately, according to Group. I had to re-examine the members of the crews concerned and any other witnesses. I sometimes uncovered new information which led me to different findings about causes and culpability, and I had to take mild disciplinary action against a few people who had previously been held blameless.

This was a nasty, sticky job and was much resented by the squadron members, who did not know that it had been forced on me. They thought I was just muck raking and trying to discredit their previous and much loved commander. However, the job did have one good effect: it enabled me to make clear to the aircrew members the standard of behaviour and professional skill I expected of them. It later had another good effect which delighted all the aircrews and offset some of their earlier resentment.

When I first flew a fully loaded Wellington, I was dismayed by its very long take-off run and its agonisingly slow initial rate of climb. For some minutes after take-off, the slightest inaccuracy in flying could result in touching the ground again, with undercarriage retracted, and there had been several such accidents in those which I had had to investigate. In the course of my inquiries, I found that, before they left England, all our engines had been 'derated'. That is to say, they had been adjusted to give less boost and engine speed at full throttle, and hence considerably less than their rated power for take-off. This had been standard practice for many years in the RAF, whose engineers believed it was necessary because of the higher air temperatures in which the engines would be working at overseas locations. They had never understood that those higher temperatures would themselves reduce the power output of the engines. On top of this, the permissible all up weight of the Wellington had been increased by 1,000 pounds.

When I discovered these things, I did a rough calculation which indicated that each engine was now putting out about 115 horsepower less than it should, at full throttle. I took this information to the Group Engineer Officer, who had never considered the matter until then. He made his own calculation of the power loss and got an answer of 118 horsepower. We both agreed that full rated boost and engine speed could be restored without any likelihood of harm, and that this should be done at once. We took our findings and recommendation to the Senior Air Staff Officer (SASO). He did not really understand our technical argument, but felt he could not ignore our advice and cautiously authorised the restoration of rated revs and boost in 37 Squadron only, for a month's trial. The change made such a wonderful difference to the take-off run and initial climb, and so delighted the crews, that the modification was extended to all Wellington squadrons after only a fortnight.

When Group first started organising simultaneous or synchronised attacks on Tobruk, no flares were available to illuminate the target. A time was set for each attack and watches synchronised at briefing. All aircraft taking part were expected to get to the target area early and all start their attacks simultaneously at the set time. When a supply of flares eventually became available, a 'pathfinder' was sent ahead of the bomber force to drop a string of flares over the target at the set time and the appearance of the flares then became the signal for all the bombers to start their runs.

One very dark night, I was detailed as pathfinder, carrying nothing but flares on the bomb racks and with many more inside the fuselage for launching by hand through the flare chute. Another machine, similarly armed, was detailed as back-up. I left nearly an hour early to be sure of finding the target in good time. Usually it was quite easy to see the coastline from bombing height, but on this night it was almost invisible. Eventually, I thought I could just see something that looked like the mouth of Tobruk harbour and told the navigator to launch a flare for a look see. At that moment, the two 88mm batteries on opposite sides of the harbour mouth opened fire on us and searchlights sprang up groping the sky for us, removing any doubts about where we were. I turned sharply to seaward the moment I saw the gun flashes and watched the salvos burst far away on our left. Guns and searchlights shut down again at once, leaving only our solitary flare hanging in the sky to mark the location of the target.

As the night was so dark and we had no navigation aids, I felt sure that at least some of the oncoming crews would fail to find the target unless they had a visual beacon to guide them to it. As the enemy seemed willing, I decided to get him to provide one. Turning back after a minute or two, and using our flare as a guide, we ran in towards Tobruk until the 88mm batteries again opened fire on us with brilliant saffron flashes, the searchlights again sprang to life and searched the sky for us, the whole lot making a display which could be seen by the bombers from 100 miles away. The moment the guns flashed, we again turned sharply away, leaving another flare hanging in the sky.

We repeated this manoeuvre again and again, at no risk to ourselves, until zero hour arrived. We than ran right across the target and dropped all our flares, brilliantly illuminating the whole target area. This was the signal for all the bombers to begin their attacks. Each one launched additional flares as it passed over the target, sustaining and enhancing the illumination. In the middle of all this, while my string of flares was still burning, the back-up pathfinder ran in and dropped all his flares, greatly adding to the brilliance. The apparent effect on the defences was astonishing: the searchlights went out and all guns simply stopped firing, allowing the attacks to continue unopposed. We never did find out why this happened.

Despite the concentration of so many guns in such a small area, the anti-aircraft defences of Tobruk were never very effective. In the three months during which Tobruk was our principal target, I think only two or three of 37 squadron's aircraft failed to return from raids on it, and I do not remember that anyone was killed on any of them. Aircraft in which I was flying were only hit twice, each time by a single small piece of shrapnel which hurt nobody and did no damage except tear a hole in the fabric.

The squadron took a very active part in the night attacks on the Afrika Korps back areas in the lead-up to the Battle of Alamein. We left Abu Sueir shortly after the battle and followed up behind the 8^th Army in a series of long jumps, as fast as the supply situation permitted, which was not very fast.

Just before we left Abu Sueir I learnt that the Queen of the Netherlands had appointed me a Commander of the Order of Orange Nassau.

I don't think we ever saw a German night fighter in our Western Desert operations, but we did get a nasty surprise from an enterprising day bomber, one day, some time after Tobruk had been recaptured by the 8^th Army. We had moved up into Cyrenaica and were operating from a landing ground near El Adem. Our widely dispersed aircraft had been bombed up for the coming night's operations and we were all in our mess tents having lunch, when we heard a single aircraft flying only about 1,000 feet overhead. We took no notice of it until one officer suddenly exclaimed, "That's a Ju 88!" We all ran out to look and, sure enough, it was. We had no anti-aircraft defences at all. While we just stood there and gaped, he dropped ten bombs at leisure, setting fire to three of our bombed up aircraft and badly damaging two others. It was not until he dropped a canister of wicked little butterfly bombs that we even thought of taking shelter. Fortunately, they fell clear of our camp and did no damage, but when we saw them falling, we all dived for any cover we could find. I dived under one side of my car and met another officer coming in from the other side. Those who could find no cover just threw themselves as flat as possible on the open ground. When we eventually picked ourselves up, there was a good deal of laughter as we saw how many of us had dust on our chins, noses and foreheads, showing how flat we had tried to make ourselves. We could do nothing about the burning aeroplanes and they duly went up with enormous bangs as their bomb loads exploded harmlessly.

Still in lighter vein, one night not long before we moved up to this landing ground, I took part in a raid on aerodromes near Heraklion, in Crete. My rear gunner on this raid was the Squadron Air Gunnery Officer. He came from Somerset, but normally spoke without any trace of that county's accent. We dropped our bombs, starting three good fires, and headed for home. As we were crossing the south coast of the island, somebody started shooting at us from the ground. In his usual calm voice, the rear gunner reported, "Flak coming up astern, Skipper", to which I replied, "Ok, George. Which way shall I turn?" Swiftly, in broadest Somerset, came his exhortation, "Don't 'ee turn at all, Skipper. It be comin' up both sides as well!"

We moved up to Benina, near Benghazi, at the beginning of January, 1943. On the night of the 17^th, we were about to take off for a raid on Castel Benito aerodrome, near Tripoli, when I was told to unload the bombs from my aircraft and go on a very different mission. The army had asked for help in locating and dropping supplied to a party of soldiers who had escaped from a POW camp near Tripoli and were trying to get back to the 8^th Army's lines.

I flew down to Berka, south of Benghazi, to pick up the supplies and for briefing by an army intelligence officer. The briefing disclosed that nothing had been heard from the party in the past five days and their position at last report had been very vague. In other words, no one knew where they were and it had, therefore, been impossible to arrange any rendezvous or recognition signals, or even to let them know we were looking for them; but would I please go and try to find them and drop supplies to them - at night!

The whole idea was utterly ridiculous, and I said so. They could be anywhere within several thousand square miles. Even if, by chance, we happened to fly over them, there was no way they could know that we were looking for them, or even whether we were friend or foe. Equally, if we happened to see any kind of signal from the ground, we would have no way of knowing who was making it.

Despite the absurdity of it, I was sent off on the mission. For about three hours, we searched a large area centred on the last reported position of the party but, of course, found nothing. Determined that the sortie should not be wasted entirely, I flew low along the coast road on the way, looking for anything to shoot up. At two thirty in the morning, we found very little, but somebody found us! We were flying at less than three hundred feet when suddenly a group of three what looked like 20mm light AA machine guns opened fire on us at point blank range, from directly astern. Instantly, we found ourselves right in the centre of their triple stream of fire, with tracer flashing past above, below, and on both sides of us. It was such a horrid sight that my co-pilot, who was standing beside me, dived to the cockpit floor and crouched there with his arms wrapped over his head. Our rear gunner started to return the fire, but his guns jammed almost at once. We were held quite steadily in this stream of fire until we passed out of range, about ten or fifteen very long seconds later. Although I had not heard any strikes, I felt sure the aeroplane must have been riddled, and that we must have had casualties. However, when I called them on the intercom, each member of the crew reported no injury and no visible damage. Incredibly, inspection after landing showed that the rear gun turret had been struck a glancing blow by one bullet, which damaged a perspex panel, and the aircraft was otherwise completely untouched.

By late January, we were operating from a place called Magrun, about 40 miles south of Benghazi, camped in the midst of a vast expanse of wild flowers. These included large areas of stocks, which drenched the air with their perfume by day and night.

My first operation from Magrun was to have been a raid on the airfield at Catania, in Sicily. Two hours after setting out, a stub exhaust pipe blew off one cylinder on the starboard engine. The whole front of that engine was then continuously bathed in the flame from that exhaust port. I had visions of the ignition leads to the front set of plugs being fried in the flame and I reluctantly turned back, landing after just over four hours in the air. A quick inspection after landing showed no sign of flame damage; the ignition leads were quite cool and obviously had never been in any danger. I went off to bed feeling very bad about having turned back unnecessarily.

I had not been long in the office next morning, when a worried flight sergeant came in and asked if I knew how much oil we had pumped to the engines during our flight. I did not know how much, but was able to assure him that we had pumped exactly the hourly quantities specified on the oil chit which had been handed to us just before take-off. He then told me that when his men went to service the machine that morning, they had found both oil tanks almost empty, with only about half a gallon in one, and less in the other. A quick calculation showed that, had we continued on the raid, we would have run out of oil completely, and come down in the sea, about 100 miles after passing Malta on the way back. Once again, I had a strong feeling that Someone had been looking after me.

Two days later, I flew as pathfinder on another raid on Catania airfield, in the course of which I flew low over the top of Mount Etna, but saw no volcanic activity.

That was my last flight with 37 Squadron. I had had my six months of operation command. It had been a greatly challenging and extremely busy half year, with plenty of excitement and adventure. I had taken over the squadron at the very nadir of the Allies' fortunes in the Middle East and had taken part in the battles which were the turning point of the whole war. The squadron had been the best in the group when I took it over, and Group were good enough to tell me it was still the best when I left it. I was very sorry to leave, but the time had come to move on.

So far, I have said nothing about one very important part of my work as commander of an operational squadron: the treatment of aircrew members who, for whatever reasons, came to feel they could no longer carry on their aircrew duties. They were always referred to as suspected LMF cases. I think the subject deserves a chapter to itself.

Early in the war, all unit and formation commanders received from Air Ministry what came to be known as the LMF (for Lack of Moral Fibre) instruction setting out how aircrew members should be dealt with if they cracked up under the stress of operations. It was a very humane document. It clearly recognised that every man had a limit to the amount of operational stress which he could endure, and he was not to be blamed if he cracked up on being taken beyond that limit. However, a certain degree of toughness was expected of all aircrew and if a member did not measure up to that standard, he must be held to be lacking in moral fibre. (That was the term used in the instruction). The problem to be decided when dealing with such cases was whether the stress experienced before the crack up was sufficient to justify the condition, or whether the man concerned really was lacking in moral fibre. Flight and squadron commanders were held to be the people best qualified to determine this, and also to have the best chance of rehabilitating the man concerned, if that were at all possible.

There were detailed instructions about how all such cases were to be treated. The ideal outcome was for the man to be rehabilitated within his squadron and restored to normal flying duties. Failing that, a medical board would decide whether he had suffered justifiable stress. If so, the man would be removed permanently from aircrew duties, but allowed to retain his rank and aircrew brevet. If not, if he were an NCO he would be stripped of rank and brevet and remustered to the unskilled trade of aircraft hand, general duties, in the lowest rank of AC2. I do not now remember what was to be done with officers in such cases.

Whatever the verdict of the medical board, it would almost certainly be psychologically disastrous for the man. Even if the board found there had been justifiable stress, he would know that nearly all other aircrew were enduring at least equal stress without cracking up, and he would begin to feel that he was less of a man than they, and less than he had thought himself. If the board found there had been no justifiable stress, he would feel that he had been branded as a coward, and he would be faced with the necessity of telling his presumably proud and loving family, and perhaps a sweetheart, or a proud and loving wife, to address their letters to him as AC2 instead of his previous rank, and explaining why. On humane as well as service grounds, this was something to be avoided if it were humanly possible to do so. Unfortunately, very few squadron commanders had any idea how to achieve this.

The first case of this kind came my way soon after taking over 37 Squadron. An unsympathetic flight commander came into my office one morning and roughly demanded that I remove a certain sergeant pilot from his flight. He described the man as a yellow rat, who had never been any good, and who had spent the whole of the previous night's raid on Tobruk grovelling on the floor of the cockpit in abject terror. He wanted him out of the flight before he contaminated any of the other aircrew members. In the flight commander's opinion, the man was just a worthless coward.

A quick phone call to the Group personnel staff elicited no helpful guidance on how to deal with this situation, so it was up to me. I remembered how I had been questioned at successive medical boards in efforts to discover why I had cracked up as a flying instructor. I had understood the drift of that probing and decided to attempt the same kind of thing. I sent for the young man, who was only about twenty years old, and terribly distressed. He was also frightened about what might be going to happen to him. I sat him down with a cup of tea and a cigarette and began to question him gently. As well as trying to find the root cause of his trouble, I wanted him to feel I was trying to help him. A quick run through his record since joining 37, his first squadron, disclosed one rather nasty incident which, however, by itself, could not possibly justify his present state of mind. Apart from that, he had just been subjected to the same kind of stresses as the rest of the squadron's aircrews, none of whom had cracked under them. In the course of that and two or three subsequent sessions, I probed right back to his earliest childhood and this is what I discovered.

He was the son of ordinary, decent working class people, and had had a normal, decent upbringing, with no particular emphasis on anything, good or bad. He had had sufficient education at council schools to qualify him for aircrew selection. Twice in his childhood he had been nearly drowned, as a result of which he had never learned to swim and was still terrified of deep water.

He was not old enough to enlist when war started, but did so as soon as he turned 18, without waiting to be called up. He volunteered and was accepted for pilot training. He had an irrational, but very real fear of night flying and big aeroplanes. At every stage of his training, he had said so and asked to be sent to single engined day fighters. He could not explain these fears but told me that every time he went up in a Wellington at night, he never expected to get back. All his flying reports showed average ability and no special aptitude for any one kind of flying. There was no special requirement for bomber pilots at that time, so there was no reason why his request should not have been granted; but he was sent to a Wellington bomber operational training unit. He got through his training in that satisfactorily and was then posted to 37 Squadron where he was employed as a second pilot on night operations. He carried on uncomplainingly, doing his best, but suffering acute fear of he knew not what, every time he flew. I satisfied myself that it was not fear of being shot at.

Some time later, when those fears were already beginning to get him down, his aircraft caught fire soon after taking off at night. The whole crew bailed out and several of them, including himself, fell into the Nile River. Somehow or other, he managed to scramble ashore, but saw two of his crew mates drown. His deterioration after that was rapid and culminated in the episode of which his flight commander had told me.

After learning all this, I concluded that, far from being a coward, he really had a lot of guts. I told him so and promised I would get him posted to a day fighter squadron. He was immensely relieved and comforted by my decision and promise.

After sending my report and recommendation on to higher authority, I could have left it at that, but felt it would be bad for him to leave the squadron with a last memory of his collapse in the air. I therefore sent for him again and told him I now wanted him to do something for me. I wanted him to fly with me as my co-pilot on my next trip to Tobruk. I said I would not hold it against him if he refused, but it would really please me if he would come with me. Showing great distress, he reluctantly agreed and we made the flight a day or two later.

I explained to him before taking off that I liked my co-pilots to take the controls and fly hour and hour about with me. At the end of the first hour, I put him into the pilot's seat and told him he could ask me to take over again at any time, but I would like him to complete an hour, if he could. For the next twenty minutes or so, the aeroplane wallowed all over the sky, and the other crew members, bless them, said never a word. Standing beside him, I could see that he was doing his utmost to control himself and the aeroplane, so I said nothing about his bad flying. Instead, I just talked quietly to him about the things which made me love night flying: the glimpse of a cherry red exhaust pipe under a cowling, the quietly glowing instruments and indicator lights and the beautiful stars. Gradually, he brought himself and the aeroplane under control and completed his hour at the wheel. His panic had lasted about twenty minutes.

We had a peaceful bombing run over Tobruk and headed for home before I handed over to him again. This time it took him only about five minutes to settle down and he again completed his hour without difficulty. Later still, when I handed over to him for a third hour, I don't think any of the other crew members even knew when the change over occurred. He had conquered his fears to the extent that he was able to fly the Wellington, at night, as well as any pilot and I felt that was a very good memory to take with him when he left the squadron.

His posting to a day fighter squadron came through in about three weeks. I enquired about him at HQME a few months later. I was told that nothing more was heard of him after his posting, and that could only mean that he was performing satisfactorily in his new squadron.

In the next six months, I dealt with about a dozen cases of aircrew members who thought they had reached breaking point. Not all were from my squadron. I questioned each one sympathetically to find the basic cause of his condition. Having found what I believed that to be, I was usually able to devise some way of helping and rehabilitating him. Not all were pilots. I managed to restore all but two to normal flying duties and self respect. Some were easy and required no more than a little morale boosting by taking them with me on a bit of excitingly successful ground strafing. In two quite unrelated cases, the men were just being bloody-minded. Both had been denied some request by the service and had decided they would not play until they got what they wanted. Their resistance took the form of always managing to find some excuse, usually medical, such as a pain in the chest or a sore back, whenever they were detailed for operations. One of them had actually been thrown out of two squadrons for this, without any effort having been made to discipline him. They also were easy to deal with. Once I was sure about the cause of their behaviour, and after having them medically checked, I told them bluntly I would put them in the battle order for the next night's operations and they could obey the order, or not, as they liked; I did not care a damn which. If they were not in their places when their aircraft taxied out, they would at once be arrested and charged with refusing to carry out a warlike operation while on active service. The maximum penalty for that was death and I personally would prosecute them. That jolted them out of their bloody-mindedness. Both resumed normal aircrew duties and gave no more trouble. One even had the grace to come to me later and apologise for his previous bad behaviour.

One of my two failures was a borderline case. I did not think there had been sufficient stress to justify his break down, but the final medical board found in his favour. The other one had no history of stress, at all. He had never even flown on operations, but had just decided he could not face the prospect of doing so. He would rather face any kind of shame and disgrace than enemy gunfire, and nothing would change his mind. He really was lacking in moral fibre.

I found that dealing with these cases, and being able to help most of the men concerned, was a deeply satisfying part of my job as a commanding officer.

1943 proved to be a year of many changes for me. On 5^th February I was posted to HQ 205 Group as Senior Air Staff Officer. My new boss was Air Commodore 'Uncle' Gayford who, until two or three months previously had commanded 231 Wing, of which 37 Squadron had been a part. It was a happy association, for we had worked well together then, and did so again now. As SASO, I was his chief of staff and directly responsible to him for the operational performance of the whole bomber group. It was my job to organise the group's bombing programme, deciding on the force, timing and tactics to be used against whatever targets we were required to attack and to issue the necessary orders to the wings. It was a group captain's post and I received the acting rank two or three weeks later. The posting was temporary, and to last only until another officer, already earmarked for the post, completed a staff college course at Haifa. When he arrived to take up the post, I was to go to staff college myself, and this duly came to pass.

Very shortly after taking up this new post, the whole group moved forward about 500 miles to a new location south of the coast road, between Misurata and Homs (now Khums). During a temporary lull in operations, the AOC sent me down to Cairo to sort out several matters with the staff at HQME, which I was able to do satisfactorily. I set out to fly down in a Blenheim and very stupidly decided to go without a flying helmet or any other kind of ear protection. Less than an hour on the way one of the Blenheim's engines failed and the other showed signs of serious trouble. I put down at an abandoned landing ground, but luckily found a salvage party there, which had just completed repairing a Hurricane. They took over the Blenheim and asked me to fly the Hurricane to Cairo. I had to land and refuel it at Marble Arch, where its brake system failed and I got a lift in a Beaufighter for the rest of the way. After completing my business in Cairo I ferried a recently overhauled Wellington back to group, still without any ear protection, and that bit of stupidity cost me the hearing of my left ear.

About the middle of March, I was sent up to Castel Benito, near Tripoli, in charge of a refuelling and rearming party designed to give a quick turn around to twelve Wellingtons on any one night, including providing a meal for the crews while their aircraft were being serviced. I would, of course, be warned early in the day preceding any night on which such services were to be required, so that we could make all necessary preparations in good time.

Nothing happened for several days. Then, one night when we had not been warned to expect any aircraft, I received a signal shortly after midnight telling me that all of the group's airfields had been flooded that evening, after their aircraft had taken off for operations, and all 36 of them had been instructed to land at Castel Benito for the night, after completing their bombing missions. I was to provide meals for the crews and find sleeping accommodation for them if I possibly could. It was expected that their airfields would become serviceable again during the morning, permitting the aeroplanes to return to their bases to be serviced and armed for the next night's operation, so I need not do anything about refuelling or re-arming them.

The first aeroplanes arrived as I was reading the signal. Actually only 21 aircraft landed at Castel Benito, the others returning to their own bases where they landed safely. Despite the very short notice, we managed to feed all the crews and find some sort of sleeping places for them, but it took all of the rest of the night.

We did nothing about servicing these aircraft as they were all expected to return to their own bases during the morning. About noon, however, I received another signal saying that all the group's airfields were still waterlogged and I was to service and re-arm all 21 of the aircraft which had landed at Castel Benito. In addition, another 14 were being flown off light from the base airfields and I was to refuel and re-arm them, too, for the night's operations. I was also to commandeer any Wellingtons and crews which might be at Castel Benito in course of delivery from Britain, bomb them up, and use them on the night's operations. I found five of those, all bound for the Far East, and commandeered the lot. Two of the 205 Group aeroplanes which had arrived the night before had to return to their bases for good reasons, leaving me with 38 machines to be serviced, and bombed up, and their crews to be fed. We succeeded in getting 34 ready, but six of these went unserviceable and we eventually got 28 away on operations, fully expecting that all would return to their own bases after completing their missions. It was not to be. More rain during the night kept the base airfields unserviceable and the whole force had to land back at Castel Benito. By enlisting the somewhat unwilling help of the staging post located there, which had considerable catering facilities and sleeping accommodation, I managed to get every one fed and bedded down for the remainder of the night. Fortunately, they were all able to go home after that. All of this operational flurry had been triggered by Rommel's devastating surprise attack on the American army at Kesserine Gap.

SASO designate arrived at the end of March and I went to Cairo for a few days, where I needed to buy some new clothes, including a new uniform cap necessitated by my new rank. I had became a brass hat! I then went on to Haifa and went to live in at the staff college, although the course was not due to begin for another week or so. I had a lovely room with two big picture windows looking out over Mount Carmel to the east, and over the coastal plain and the Mediterranean to the south. There, I just rested, read a lot and wrote letters until the course began.

I had not been there for long when a friend at HQME rang to congratulate me on having been awarded the DSO for my work in command of 37 Squadron. I was so stunned by the news that I could not speak for quite a few seconds. I knew I had done my best while in that post, but it had never occurred to me that that would merit any special recognition. Of course I was enormously pleased with the news, but felt that the award was also a tribute to the whole squadron.

I found the staff college course very interesting and enjoyable. It was also quite the most valuable bit of service education which I had received up to that time. It lasted for 13 weeks, but I was not allowed to complete it. One morning, with about 3 weeks still to go, and just as we were beginning its most interesting phase, I was told to get myself cleared at once, catch the night train to Cairo, and report to HQ 216 (Transport) Group next morning.

It was quite unprecedented for an officer to be withdrawn from such an important course, and I wondered what had happened. It was explained to me that AOC 216 Group had asked for my immediate posting to his group as I was urgently needed to fill a certain (unspecified) post in connection with some forthcoming operations. Air Ministry had at first refused to sanction my withdrawal from the course but had eventually agreed to it, provided the commandant of the staff college was prepared to recommend grant of symbol (the letters 'ws' after my name, denoting that I had completed a staff college course satisfactorily) on the basis of the work which I had already done. The commandant had agreed to do this and I was withdrawn.

When I reported to the group HQ next morning, after greeting me, the AOC said he had not expected me to arrive so soon. There was nothing for me to do, for the time being, so I might as well take a couple of weeks' leave! I was very angry and returned to Haifa that night, hoping to be allowed to rejoin the staff college course, but was refused.

On returning to HQ 216 Group about a fortnight later, I learnt I was to command 249 Transport Wing. It was to have a part in the forthcoming invasion of Sicily and, for this purpose, it would have the control of two transport squadrons, plus two flights of a third.

The wing was located at Castel Benito. I flew up there on 24^th June and began preparing it for its pending task. Two days later, a staff officer arrived from Group and announced that it had been decided to form an advanced group HQ at Tunis to do the very job for which I had been briefed. My wing would have virtually nothing to do with the invasion and would be left controlling only one flight (six aeroplanes) of one squadron, which was utterly absurd and an intolerable waste of man power. In my first letter to Group HQ, I recommended the immediate disbandment of the wing. This annoyed the AOC, who did not want to surrender any part of his little empire, and I was made aware of his displeasure. When I realised that he intended to keep the wing in existence, I quietly made sure that HQME learnt of the situation and the wing was eventually disbanded at the end of August.

While the wing remained in existence, I did quite a lot of personal flying on Hudsons and Dakotas, carrying passengers, mail and freight to many places between Cairo and Fez on the African mainland, and to the islands of Sicily, Malta, Lampedusa and Pantellaria. I was fascinated by the old city of Fez, where houses were sometimes built right over streets, converting them into tunnels. Water reticulation was by conduits built inside the walls of the houses. There were no taps in the houses. Instead, each household drew its water supply from a tiled 'well', perhaps two feet deep, usually set in the tiled floor of a living room. Each well was automatically kept filled to just below floor level by a branch from the conduit in the wall of the house.

At the beginning and end of July, we had heat waves in each of which the shade temperature reached 123 degrees F.(50.5 degrees C.) on three successive days at Castel Benito. One effect of this was that water stored in jerricans under my trailer during the day, in complete shade, was still hot enough at 2100 hours to provide me with a bath as hot as I could bear. Castel Benito, by the way, was only a very few miles from the village of Azzizia (now Al Aziziyah), where the highest shade temperature ever measured under standard conditions had been recorded twice. That temperature was 136.4 degrees F., or 58 degrees C.

After closing down 249 Wing, I looked for transport to get myself and my kit back to Cairo, to look for a new job. The staging post at Castel Benito asked me if I would deliver a Halifax on which they had just completed some repairs. I had never flown one before, so read up the appropriate manual to learn about critical air speeds, engine operating data, management of the petrol system and the operation of the normal and emergency hydraulic systems, after which I took the machine up for an air test.

Nearing the end of the take-off run, I saw that the air speed indicator was still reading zero and guiltily remembered that I had not personally seen the cover taken off the pilot head. In the air, I discovered the flight engineer knew nothing about the petrol system, nor would he do what I told him. Every time he attempted to set the system's cocks for cruising flight, one or other of the engines would cut out. Eventually I made him restore the take-off settings and we continued with an hour's oil consumption test. While doing this, the speed indicator began registering again. The pilot head cover had been removed, after all, but a mud hornet's nest inside the pilot head had been blocking it completely. It was now showing about 40 mph less than we should be doing, according to the engine power we were using. After completing the air test, I made my approach with some anxiety, but managed to land safely, if rather fast. The servicing crew then found the remains of the hornet's next, and a hole further back in the pressure line to the ASI. This was soon repaired and I flew the machine to Cairo next day, with a more knowledgeable flight engineer to manage the petrol system.

HQME had nothing for me to do immediately, so I asked 216 Group if they could use a good pilot for a few days. I was at once asked to fly a Dakota load of ferry pilots to Fez, then go on to Casablanca to pick up a load of timber and take it to Tripoli, where I was to deliver Dakota and timber to a squadron located there. While I was preparing for this flight, a wing commander came and asked if I could carry his very pregnant wife to Fez, where he had been promised that a seat would be found for her on a homeward bound aircraft, in time to beat the stork. We were not supposed to carry civilians in service aircraft, except on official duties. However, my friends in Movements at HQME, who knew me very well, suggested he ask me if I would take her. If so, they would raise no objections. He asked, I willingly agreed, and she got safely back to England in good time.

After handing over the Dakota on returning to Tripoli, the staging post there asked me to deliver a Beaufort Cairo, where HQME informed me that I had been posted to command 334 Special Operations Wing, then languishing in a transit camp near Algiers, awaiting the arrival of a commanding officer. That was not by any means the end of the many changes mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, but the story of 334 Wing certainly deserves a chapter to itself.

Special Operations in the Mediterranean theatre consisted mainly of supplying partisans and their associated military missions all over south and east Europe, from the Rhone Valley to the Russian border, and as far north as Warsaw and Czechoslovakia. In these activities, the RAF was simply the carrier for the Army, who handled all contacts with the clandestine units, except the Polish ones, provided and packed all the supplies required, and told the RAF where to deliver them. Men were often parachuted in with the supplies, as well as at other times and places, and there were also occasional requirements for aircraft to land in enemy territory to put in or lift out people, or both.

In the third quarter of 1943, there were several small units in the Mediterranean area engaged in these clandestine operations. There was no co-operation between them and no co-ordination of their activities. Each had been formed for a specific task, sometimes at the request of a particular government in exile. When its aircraft, for any reason, were not engaged on that task, they could not be used to help with any other. It was a very wasteful set-up and was achieving very little, mainly because of this fragmentation.

Under pressure from Mr Churchill and Mr Roosevelt, it was decided to form an RAF wing to bring all of these units under one command and combine all their aircraft into a single force which would be used to best advantage, wherever required, at any time. Originally intended to be part of the North African Command, No. 334 Wing was formed in Britain, minus a commanding officer, and shipped to Algiers under its administrative officer, Squadron Leader 'Tim' Stammers. By the time it arrived, about mid-September, it had already been decided to transfer it to the Middle East Command and that command was called upon to provide a group captain to command it. I happened to be lying around spare at the time and got the job. It was to be the best and most challenging of the war for me.

I learnt of this posting on 18^th September, when I got back from the trip to Casablanca. I got myself to Algiers by delivering another Dakota to Tripoli and a Boston from there to Algiers airport. There I ran into an incredible muddle of order, counter order and disorder. At first, we were to be located in the North African Command, but nobody would say where. Then we were to transfer to the Middle East Command, but there were several changes of heart before that was finally settled. Then a stupid quarrel erupted between the Air Officers in charge of Administration (AOA) in the two commands, about which one should provide us with our establishment of transport vehicles and tentage. Again, no one was willing to airlift the wing personnel from Algiers to its destination at Tocra, about 40 miles northeast of Benghazi, where one of the squadrons which the wing was to control was already located. About the only good thing that happened in this period was that I was allotted a brand new Hurricane for communications. I spent almost six weeks shuttling about in that between Algiers, Tunis, the heel of Italy and Cairo, trying to get these muddles sorted out. As I wrote in a letter to Dorrie at the time, for a formation in which Churchill and Roosevelt were alleged to be greatly interested, the way we were b......d about beat everything.

I got the wing assembled in a tented camp amongst the ruins of the old city of Tocra at the very end of October. There were still many problems to be solved, all of which necessitated several more visits to Cairo. Much was achieved during these visits, but there was much which we only learnt later, by experience. There were also hampering political factors which were beyond military control and were only resolved months later, in Italy.

I think it was about the middle of November before the wing started functioning and brought under its control the one squadron already operating at Tocra. This was not a good organisation as the existence of the wing could only be justified if it controlled two or more subordinate units. However, it was already known that the whole special operations organisation would soon be moving up to Italy and it was decided not to disturb any of the other units until that happened. Meanwhile, it gave the wing time to set up its operations room and get its control system working smoothly.

One of the very first operations in which the wing was involved is worth describing. We received orders for the Tocra squadron to drop a man into Roumania, at a place on the left bank of the Danube River, not too far from Bucharest. Although wearing the uniform of a major in the British Army, he was a civilian who had lived in Bucharest for some years and had established connections with the Royal family there. His mission was to try to contact King Michael with offers from the British Government which, it was hoped, might lead him to try to get Roumania out of the war. All arrangements had been made for his reception at the DZ (dropping zone), including the visual identification signals which were to be flashed from the ground to the aircraft to confirm that it was safe for him to jump.

In an effort to disguise this important operation, his aircraft was to be accompanied by several others which were to drop mines in the Danube and interrupt traffic on that very important waterway. To make it look as if that were the real operation, still other aircraft were detailed to lay on an apparently covering operation by dropping leaflets over Bucharest. Unfortunately, no mines were available for this operation, so we improvised by dropping unarmed 250 pound bombs into the water without their tails, so that they could not be grappled or exploded by mine sweepers and the ruse discovered.

Almost everything went well on the night. The weather was good and the moon was almost full. The DZ was found without difficulty, although there was a thin haze on the ground which reflected back some of the moonlight. The mine layers laid their 'mines' and stopped all traffic on the Danube for 48 hours. The 'covering' force dropped its leaflets and all aircraft returned safely to base - except the one carrying the passenger. As we learnt later, it flew back and forth over the DZ several times, with everyone aboard keeping a sharp lookout for the recognition signals. It actually passed over the heads of the reception party who were flashing the required signals with an electric torch, but its light was outshone by the reflected moonlight and was not seen by the crew.

By the time the pilot gave up looking for the required signals, he had not enough petrol left to return to base, so he headed for the heel of Italy, which he found covered in low cloud. Unable to establish radio contact with any ground station which could guide them down safely, he flew around looking for a break in the clouds until petrol ran out, then ordered everyone to bail out. Some of them fell on land. Others fell into the sea not far from shore and got ashore safely. The Halifax went on and made a perfect belly landing, almost undamaged, in a remote mountain valley from which it was never recovered.

At Tocra, we were all very relieved when we received word that crew and passenger were safe. I flew up to Brindisi next day, in a Wellington, and brought them all home.

Three weeks later, a different kind of operation was laid on to put this passenger into Roumania. This time, a single aeroplane was to make one pass over Bucharest, apparently for the sole purpose of dropping leaflets. The passenger was to jump as the aircraft passed over a particular point, without making any deviation or waiting for any recognition signals from the ground. The operation had been blown and he fell straight into the arms of a waiting party of enemy soldiers. He was clapped into a jail in Bucharest where, from his cell, he proceeded to do exactly what he had been sent to do, although not with the hoped-for results. Courageous man!

We moved up to Brindisi on 23^rd December and I began to bring all the wing units under my control. I soon had one British Halifax squadron and part of another, a Polish flight of three Halifaxes and three Liberators, an American Mitchell flight, an Anglo-French Lysander flight, a complete Italian wing of mixed aircraft, and call on the services of one flight of a British Dakota squadron. Only the Poles, the Lysander flight and the complete Halifax squadron were located at Brindisi.

The supply of two Italian divisions trapped in northern Greece became part of my operational responsibilities. I disposed of that by assigning the task to the Italian wing and seeing that they received the necessary supplies, and had very little to do with them after that.

Almost as soon as we moved to Brindisi, I discovered that I was not going to be allowed to do the very thing for which the wing had been formed. That was to use all of the aircraft of the various units as a single force. All the old restrictions were still in force and I could still only use each unit of the wing on the task for which it had been created originally. The Polish flight was only allowed to operate over Poland, and bad weather made that impossible almost throughout the winter. The Mitchell flight was only allowed to operate over Italy north of the battle line, and I had to keep four Halifaxes at Blida, near Algiers, which could only be used over the south of France.

Another serious restriction was that our Balkan operations were still being directed and controlled by the Army from Cairo. Each morning, we had to send a signal to Cairo saying how many aircraft of our Balkan force would be available for the coming night's operations. Cairo would then decide how and where each one was to be used and signal the wing accordingly. These decisions were made without adequate information about the weather to be expected in the target areas. Inevitably, bad weather often forced cancellation of some of these operations.

As a result of all these restrictions, every night saw a large proportion of our available aeroplanes sitting on the ground doing nothing when they could have been dropping much needed supplies somewhere in the vast area we were supposed to cover.

On 14^th January, I flew down to Cairo to try to get these restrictions removed. I saw the RAF Deputy C-in-C and asked for his help in unifying my little air force. He was sympathetic, but unable to help because, as he said, high politics were involved, which could only be resolved in London. The Army was about to move its special operations staff to Monopoli, not far from Brindisi and much closer co-operation with 334 Wing would then be possible. I got back to Brindisi on 19^th January, very disappointed with the outcome of the visit to Cairo, but help was closer than I knew.

About this time, 334 Wing was transferred to the control of HQ Mediterranean Allied Air Forces (MAAF). Early in February, I was summoned to MAAF HQ at Caserta for a conference on the conduct of special operations. The conference was presided over by the C-in-C, Air Marshal Sir John Slessor and attended by, amongst others, the USAAF C-in-C in Italy, and by one of his subordinate generals who controlled all the USAAF transport aircraft in the area.

Sir John opened proceedings by reading messages from the Prime Minister and President criticising the very poor results being achieved by the special operations forces in the Mediterranean theatre and demanding improvements. Both said that they attached a great importance to supplying the partisans, whose activities were tying down very considerable enemy forces. Not only were the operations by existing special operations forces to be greatly improved, but consideration was to be given to increasing those forces. The last communication from Churchill commanded Sir John to inform him without delay, and in detail, what he intended to do about the matter.

After that opening review, Sir John turned to me and asked why 334 Wing was achieving so little. When I explained that I was not allowed to use my units as a single force, but was compelled to restrict the use of each to the specific task for which it had been created, he exlaimed, "I never heard of such nonsense. Well, we'll soon fix that"! Then followed a wonderful exchange, just as I have written it, here. Turning to the American general concerned, he asked, "Will you be able to allot any force to special operations, General"?

"Yes, sir. One group of two and a half squadrons of C47s (Dakotas) now, to be replaced by a full group of four squadrons later".

"Have you any objections to them operating from Brindisi under Rankin's command"?

"No, sir, provided that their colonel has the right to veto any operation if he thinks it is beyond the capabilities of his crews".

"Any objection to that, Rankin"?

"No, sir. Certainly not".

"How soon could you move the group to Brindisi, general"?

"In five days' time, sir".

"How soon could you be ready to receive them, Rankin"?

"In three days' time, sir".

"Right, Rankin. From now on, you will operate all aircraft under your control exactly as you think best. You will be given a directive setting out the deliveries to be made to individual countries between now and the end of March and the position will be reviewed again then. You will be responsible for achieving that target".

With a huge grin, I replied, "Sir, that is all I have ever asked for".

Thus it was ordered and thus it was done.

The directive, when it arrived, gave absolute priority to Poland, which meant that, whenever the weather was fit, I was to use every available Halifax and Liberator on that country. I was to deliver set numbers of loads to northern Italy and to named Balkan countries other than Jugoslavia. A minimum number of loads was set for that country, but no maximum. It was to receive everything we could possibly send it after our other tasks had been fulfilled.

After that lovely conference, I set about eliminating the wasteful system under which the Army allotted our nightly targets in the Balkans. I visited their new HQ at Monopoli and, after some discussion, an entirely new arrangement was agreed upon. In future, before 0900 every morning, the Army would supply 334 Wing with a complete list of every opeation it wanted done, arranged in its own order of priority. I would do my best to meet those priority requirements, but I, not the Army, would decide just which operations were to be attempted each night. There was some reluctance by the Army to accept this change and I had to remind them that, in our joint organisation, I was the expert in the use of air transport and I was quite sure I could give them much better service than had been possible under the old arrangements.

From then on, I personally decided on what operations were to be undertaken each night. At 0900 each morning I presided over a conference attended by the wing met. officer, the colonel commanding the USAAF group, all unit commanders, my senior operations officer and the Army liaison officer attached to the wing, who produced the list of the Army's requirements. I would then start at the top of the list and consider each in turn. Each one was pinpointed on a big wall map and the met. officer would say what kind of weather could be expected there in the coming night. If I decided there was a fifty fifty or better chance of success, I would accept it and allot it to whichever unit I thought could best handle it. I refused to accept any operation which I considered had less than a fifty fifty chance of success. Once I had selected the operations, I left it to my various experts to do the rest.

Under those arrangements, we beat the end of March target by a very handsome margin, despite appallingly bad weather which grounded all our aircraft for many nights. A new target, of tonnages instead of loads, was set us for the month of April. It was based on our unexpectedly good results in February and March, plus a big increase based on the expectation of improving spring weather. By 15^th April, we had already beaten that target by over 50%. Weather then slowed us down again for a while but, by the end of the month, we had beaten our target by 88%. For May, we were set a new target based on our April performance plus another good allowance for improving weather, and we beat that by 85%. In June, the wing strength was reduced by almost one squadron, our target for the month was more than doubled, and we still beat it by a small margin. We were demonstrating what an air force could really do when properly used, and the Army was delighted.

In mid-April, we were able to give HQ MAAF a pleasant little surprise. They had assumed that we would be unable to continue operations to Poland during the summer months and set a signal asking me to give a definite date 'after April 15' by which I would have to stop operating over that country. I replied that we intended to continue operating over the south of the country throughout the summer.

I had magnificent teams working with me in both the wing and the squadrons, and they were keen to tackle anything. Once I decided that an operation was feasible, I knew it would be carried out. Morale throughout the organisation was terrific. Apart from what we were doing for the war effort, we felt we were also carrying help to people who needed it desperately. Perhaps our feelings were best exemplified by a badge which someone designed for the wing. It was a picture of a mailed fist handing down a naked sword from the sky, hilt first, to an upraised, emaciated hand.

As our operations increased in the spring time, so did the wing organisation. We got our own meteorological office and our own set of German code books from which we were able to plot German weather observations just as quickly as the Germans themselves. We got greatly improved intelligence and signals sections, improved airfield lighting and navigational aids and the wing staff gradually grew to no less than 40 officers, from an original 14. Our aircraft strength was increased by doubling the size of the Polish flight and the addition of a Russian Dakota squadron. Tito was given a communications flight of two Austers manned and maintained by 334 Wing pilots and ground crews, and stationed in Jugoslavia.

The Russian squadron was almost completely useless. Almost its entire flying effort was used up in flying back and forth between Bari and south Russia, via Tripoli, Cairo and Tehran, bringing up luxuries such as caviar and vodka for its own officers. Occasionally, the squadron manged to find a single aircraft to take part in the wing's operations. Despite the Russians' uselessness, by early summer, we were putting up as many as 100 aircraft per night, exclusive of the operations of the Italian wing. This was a bigger force than that of 205 Group, the strategic bomber group in the theatre, and engaged on much more complex operations; but it was all handled easily by a smaller and more streamlined operations room and staff.

The great majority of these operations were simply dropping supplies, and occasionally men, but landings in enemy held territory started, I think, in April and steadily increased in volume. They started with a landing near Lublin, in Poland, to lift out the deputy chief of the Polish underground movement, who was urgently needed in London to brief the allied governments on the organisation, needs and strength of the underground army. We sent in an RAF Dakota and crew, with a Polish officer as co-pilot to cope with any language problems which might arise, and to answer any questions the VIP passenger might ask. I met the machine on its return to Brindisi about sunrise and was astonished when our VIP passenger climbed out, looked around and asked, "Where am I"? Apparently, the Polish co-pilot had not spoken a word to him throughout the flight.

A little later in the year, I was asked if we could lift out a fairly large party from the top of a 5,000 feet high mountain in Jugoslavia. Stereo photos showed that the mountain had a narrow, flat top about 600 yards long. I decided that it was possible to land Dakotas there and accepted the job. Over three nights, we sent in seven or eight Dakotas, all but one being American, and lifted out about 180 passengers. These included the staff and some supporters of General Mihailovich, American aircrews from planes which had been shot down in the daylight raids on the Ploesti oilfields in Roumania in the previous August, and miscellaneous other refugees. Although begged to come out with the others, Mihailovich himself refused to leave the country and was later executed by the communists.

In May, Tito's headquarters was bombed and almost captured by the Germans. Tito and everyone at his HQ, including Randolf Churchill, took to the hills, led by a squadron leader from 334 wing. After five days of marching, during which they suffered greatly from thirst, they settled in a valley long and wide enough for Dakotas to land in. The floor of the valley, however, was a meadow crossed by several dry irrigation channels. The squadron leader organised a working party which, using only a few boards as tools, levelled the ditches and made the meadow fit for Dakota landings. When all was ready, we sent in six Dakotas in daylight, under two squadrons of Spitfires supplied by the RAF Balkan Air Force, and lifted out the entire party, including Tito.

Late in May, we did two night landings with Halifaxes in a forest clearing near Cracow, in southern Poland. In the first, we lifted out a small party of Poles who were carrying with them the vital parts of the German rocket which later became known as the V2 weapon. The story of how they obtained those parts has been told by others.

The second of those landings was to put that party back into Poland. While on the ground, the crew twice had to abandon their aeroplane and take to the woods when German patrols approached. Each time, they set demolition devices to destroy their aeroplanes, but each time the threat passed in time for the devices to be rendered safe again and the machine and crew returned safely to Brindisi.

By early spring, the German forces in Jugoslavia controlled little more than the roads and main towns, and the partisans began seizing abandoned airfields which we then used to fly in supplies. This was much more economical than dropping them by parachute. It saved parachutes, which were becoming a bit scarce, thanks to the scale of our operations. Because no heavy protective packing was required, we could carry a greater nett weight of supplies on each sortie. It also enabled us to retrieve large numbers of used parachutes and to lift out refugees, sick and wounded, and anyone else who needed to be brought out for any reason.

This led to the formation of several small RAF airfield control parties, each headed by a squadron leader, as part of 334 Wing. They were flown in with goose necked kerosine flares for runway lighting and signal equipment for local air traffic control. The landing in of supplies became a big part of 334 Wing's operations. On the night of 4^th July, 1944, we landed no less than 41 Dakotas in enemy held territory, putting in over 80 tons of supplies and lifting out over 700 assorted passengers.

The aircraft making these landings were almost all American, and the supplies they carried were British. Working parties of the communist partisans carried the supplies away from the aircraft and stencilled the Russian hammer and sickle emblem on every bundle and container, in red paint, before passing them on for distribution. They also told all the local people that the aircraft bringing them in were Russian.

My personal participation in 334 Wing's operations was very small. Because of my fairly intimate knowledge of the very secret special operations organisation, I was eventually forbidden to fly over enemy occupied territory. Before that, I flew as co-pilot on one Halifax supply dropping mission, skippered another and flew two or three leaflet dropping missions in the wing's Baltimore communications machine. I started out on one other Halifax mission, carrying mainly explosives and men to be dropped in Jugoslavia, but crashed immediately after take off because of a simultaneous partial failure of all four engines, for which no explanation was ever found. The aircraft was destroyed by fire, but all passengers and crew escaped with nothing worse than one broken leg (not mine) and minor cuts and bruises.

We had to stop going to Warsaw in May, because of the shortening nights, and did not intend going that far north again until the end of August. However, at the very end of July, the Russians reached the outskirts of Warsaw at the end of a 300 mile pursuit of a defeated German army and called on the partisans in Warsaw to rise and join the fight for the city. They did so, but the Russians did not enter the city. The partisans then soon found themselves in desperate plight and called for our help. Using every serviceable Halifax and Liberator, we began dropping supplies to them, at night, at the beginning of August.

All went well for a night or two, then on one night a third of the aeroplanes on that mission failed to return, for no known reason. The same thing happened again next night, but returning aircraft reported seeing others being shot down by night fighters. We tried varying the routes to and from Warsaw and had no casualties for one night. On the following night, night fighters again destroyed about one third of our rapidly dwindling force and I called off any further attempt to supply the Warsaw partisans. Later that morning, I received a signal from HQ MAAF ordering me to do just that. Only a day or so later, orders were received from London to resume these operations, regardless of loss, and a heavy bomber wing from 205 Group at Foggia was transferred temporarily to 334 Wing's command to join in the supply dropping. This wing consisted of one South African Air Force Liberator squadron and one RAF Halifax squadron. Operations were resumed and losses continued to be heavy. The order to resume was based on perfectly sound political considerations and we all felt that it was right.

I became tour expired at this time, and due for return to Britain. My relief arrived on 14^th August, right in the thick of these operations. I completed handing over the wing on the 17^th. As no orders had been received about my return to Britain, I borrowed the wing's Baltimore and flew down to Cairo for what was intended to be only a two or three days' visit to HQME. On the way, both engines began to show signs of serious trouble and both had to be replaced in Cairo. I eventually arrived back at Brindisi about midnight on 27^th August. My relief came to meet me when I landed and I asked him what the wing was doing for the night. He told me the last three heavy aircraft were on Warsaw. I rang the operations room as soon as I woke in the morning and learnt that only one had returned, and it had had to make a crash landing. The heavy bomber wing and the two heavy squadrons of 334 Wing had been completely wiped out although, happily, not all of the crews had been lost.

The conduct of all the crews which took part in this Warsaw operation was beyond all praise. They had to drop their loads to points indicated by pre-arranged patterns of fires in a city that was burning extensively, and which was still with hundreds of light anti-aircraft weapons. To drop their loads successfully, they had to come down to only a thousand feet and reduce speed to not more than 130 miles per hour. All crews were given alternative dropping zones in the country where they could drop their loads if they were unable, for any reason, to do so in Warsaw. In the circumstances which I have described it might have been understandable if some crews had dropped to those without trying too hard to find their Warsaw targets, but none ever did. My Polish flight at Brindisi had radio links to every partisan group in Warsaw and we always got full reports of the night's drops, often before the aircraft got back to Brindisi. Those reports of loads received always tallied exactly with the crews' reports of loads dropped.

While the Warsaw operations were going on, American forces in western Europe were standing ready to drop huge quantities of supplies to the city in daylight, but could only do so if the Russians would allow them to land and refuel in Russian territory after each drop, as their aircraft could not carry enough fuel for the round trip. The Russians resolutely refused them the necessary permission.

I flew back to England, via Gibraltar, arriving at Hendon early on 1^st September. When I reported to Air Ministry I was asked what I would like to do next. I asked for a posting to Australia, but was told that that was impossible. I then asked to be posted overseas again, to any warm climate, as soon as possible, and was asked, "How would you like Takoradi"? I had visited it several times in 1941 and had liked it very much. Now, I was posted to command the RAF station there. The Air Officer Commanding (AOC) West Africa was the officer who had ensured my return to 12 Squadron after my refresher course in 1931, againt the recommendation of the Squadron Commander. I had been very grateful to him then and was pleased at the prospect of serving under his command now. I left England by sea on 1^st October, disembarked at Freetown on the 9^th, flew to Takoradi next day and completed taking over the station on Friday the 13^th. Ominous date!

At that time, Takoradi housed an aircraft repair unit, a storage unit, a hospital and a South African Air Force maritime reconnaissance squadron equipped with Wellingtons. The station was also responsible for an advanced flying boat base at Abidjan in the Ivory Coast and a staging post at Maiduguri, in far north-eastern Nigeria. The controlling formation was Air Headquarters, West Africa (AHQ WA), at Freetown, Sierra Leone. For all practical purposes, the war was over in West Africa and my job as station commander was entirely administrative. The station was not very busy and no one's life or safety was likely to depend on any decisions I made. The climate and surroundings were delightful as were most of the service and civilian people with whom I came in contact and I had beautifully comfortable accommodation. I settled back to enjoy myself, and did so, despite some of the events which followed.

The station consisted of four fairly widely separated main areas, spread over several square miles. These were the hospital, the airmen's living area, the officers' living area and the technical area around the airfield. This widely dispersed layout presented some hefty administrative problems, mainly connected with security and the use of transport. Nothing was said about them when I was taking over the station, but it was not long before I began to discover them and had to start dealing with them. With differences of detail, the problems were common to all stations in West Africa. They were all quite manageable but there was an astonishing defeatist attitude towards them throughout the command. This was West Africa, and nothing could be done about them, was the prevailing view.

My first battle was with the MT Section, triggered by the appalling state of the station commander's car after the acting warrant officer in charge of the section had specially asked for and been given it for a whole day, to prepare it for me to drive to Accra to make my official call on the governor of the colony. On that trip I had hold-ups caused by ignition and carburetion failures; I had to tear the horn ring out of the centre of the steering wheel to stop the horn blaring; the generator ceased charging, causing the battery to run flat; the bolts securing the gear box and rear end of the engine to the chassis were rusted out, an exhaust gasket blew out and the nuts holding down both cylinder heads were found to be only finger tight, causing one cylinder head gasket to blow out. If that was the state of the commanding officer's car, what must the rest of the transport fleet be like?

My next discovery was that the transport section was using twice as many vehicles as its establishment allowed, and was using them extremely wastefully. Many vehicles were out on personal loan to officers who were not entitled to them and who never put them in for servicing. Despite the enormous surplus of vehicles in use, there were endless delays whenever anyone did not have a vehicle on loan needed to travel between one part of the station and another. On top of all this, I soon discovered that there was no control over the refuelling of vehicles, as a result of which we were losing thousands of gallons of petrol each month through theft.

After reducing the acting warrant officer to his substantive rank, I recalled all vehicles on personal loan and introduced twin bus service running opposite ways around the camp at frequent intervals during working hours. These two measures greatly reduced the vehicle mileage being run and virtually eliminated delays for those needing to move about the station. I also introduced effective measures to eliminate theft of petrol and returned all surplus vehicles to command reserve, where they belonged. There was some tendency on the part of MT section personnel, and others, to believe that all the changes I had introduced were just the actions of an enthusiastic newcome to West Africa, and that they could be ignored in true West African fashion. A very few short, sharp and painful disciplinary actions soon dispelled that idea. We had almost halved our monthly mileage, much more than halved petrol consumption, and now had a really efficient transport service. Visitors to the station used to remark that it was the only station in West Africa where they could arrive by air and be on their way to any part of the station within minutes of arrival.

Just before Christmas the Resident Minister in West Africa, Mr Balfour, came to stay with me for a day or two. He was the direct representative of the British Government in West Africa. Part of his job was to supervise the British war effort in the four West African colonies. During his visit he told me of grave manpower shortages in Britain, which were seriously hampering the war effort in Europe and the Far East. He also told me that he would be calling a conference of service chiefs at Accra in a few days time, to discuss the possibility of making manpower economies in West Africa. I was very interested and said I would at once review our requirements at Takoradi and brief the AOC on his way to the conference.

I discussed the matter with all my heads of departments and we quickly decided that, if our present role remained unchanged, Takoradi could give up three officers and 48 men of specified ranks and trades at once, without impairing our efficiency or capability in any way. If it could be agreed by higher authority that there was no longer any real threat of enemy submarine activity along the West African coast (and it really was most unlikely by that time), we could safely give up another 43 men.

I put all this into a carefully worded letter, with appendices showing exactly what we could surrender, by numbers of ranks and trades, in each of the two conditions. I did not know what the AOC's policy on this matter might be, and I did not make any recommendations. I only knew that he was being called to a conference with the Resident Minister to discuss the matter, and I felt it my duty to brief him on what he could safely take from my station if he wanted to.

I signalled AHQ and asked the AOC to drop in at Takoradi on his way to the conference, which he did. It was our first meeting since Andover days and I was looking forward to it with pleasure.

On arrival, accompanied by his Senior Officer in charge of Administration (SOA), a group captain, we went to my office where I explained briefly what had happened and handed him the brief which I had prepared for him. To my astonishment, he angrily told me that it was not his policy to give up anything from his command and I had no business preparing such a document without first consulting him. I pointed out that it was only a brief to him, which he could ignore or use, as he wished; but he would not be appeased. He read the covering letter without looking at the appendices, which he handed to the SOA. The SOA read the figures without looking at the explanatory notes attached to them, then told me, in effect, that I did not know what I was talking about and upbraided me for having produced them without first consulting his staff in Freetown.

This reception of what had only been intended as a bit of helpful information was so contrary to all my service training and experience that I simply did not know what to say. Sadly, I soon learnt from others who had been longer in the command that the AOC always reacted angrily and negatively whenever he was caught by surprise, and seemed rigidly opposed to change of any kind.

While I was dealing with the transport problems, I learnt that we had a very serious problem of theft, almost everywhere on the station. Perusal of the station's police occurrences book disclosed that there had been 30 incidents of major theft in the past 60 days. Examples: an explosives store had been broken into and a ton of shotgun ammunition stolen; the station tailor's workshop broken into and all sewing machines stolen; airmen's barrack blocks being robbed while the men were at work; kitchens being robbed of cooking equipment, and so on.

I was alarmed by this and felt I might well be relieved of my command if I did not quickly put a stop to these thefts, as the security of his station is one of the main responsibilities of any commander. The DAPM (Deputy Assistant Provost Marshal) visited Takoradi just at this time. I told him what I had discovered and asked if, from his wider experience in West Africa, he had any ideas about how I might best deal with the situation. His reply was a real eye-opener. He said, "It is the same on every station in the command, but I'm afraid there is nothing anyone can do about it; this is West Africa"!

Well, I was just not prepared to accept that. My only security force at that time was a small number (I think 26) of local natives recruited for the RAF by the local government authority. They were armed only with staves, were unsupported by any white men, and had no means of summoning help. When questioned about any theft from any area or building they were supposed to be guarding, their replies were always to the effect that bad men had come and threatened them with knives (or bows and arrows, or spears, or whatever) and they had simply run away. I had dozens of British and South African officers, and about 1,100 British and white South African NCOs and airmen under my command, none of whom were being used for guard duties. I reckoned there was plenty I could do, and I set about doing it.

I made no attempt to guard the station as a whole; that would have been impossible and was quite unnecessary. Only a comparatively small number of stores and other buildings were attractive to potential thieves and I mounted guards on those. Sentry beats were organised in such a way that each sentry could pass every point on his beat about once a minute, even at a slow stroll. I placed each native guard between two white sentries who were never more than 50 yards away, and provided each with a torch and whistle so that he could summon help quickly if threatened. Guard rooms and sleeping quarters for those off duty were securely mosquito proofed and sentries on duty were compelled to wear mosquito net veils and hand covers.

These arrangements stopped all stealing at Takoradi from the moment they were introduced, but they also landed me in more trouble with my AOC. When they were being introduced, a number of RAF and SAAF NCOs and airmen came to station HQ in a body to protest at what they thought were shortcomings in the arrangements for their protection against malaria. Technically, this was an act of mutiny. I told them so in no uncertain terms, and what would happen if they ever did it again. I knew they had not intended mutiny and proceeded to allay their fears about the medical arrangements of the guard scheme. News of this 'mutiny' reached AHQ at Freetown and an officer of the DAPM's staff was sent down to investigate. His report to the AOC was highly complimentary. He praised the care with which the guard scheme had been planned, its effectiveness, and its economy of manpower; and he strongly recommended that similar schemes be introduced on all other stations in West Africa. However, the AOC had again been taken by surprise and reacted in his usual way. He remained suspicious of me and everything I did from then on, with results which I shall relate presently.

All my visits to West Africa in 1941 had been by air. Now that I was living in the Gold Coast, I was determined to do as much travelling as possible by road and to learn something of the people and their way of life. The first opportunity to do this came soon after I arrived. A one ton truck had to be delivered to the advanced base at Abidjan. It was supposed to go by sea, but there was a shipping hold-up, so I decided to drive it to Abidjan on my next visit to inspect the base. The distance by air was only about 150 miles, but it was 600 miles by the shortest road route. The senior medical officer at Takoradi wished to visit Abidjan so I took him along as companion and we made the journey in two days. It was every bit as interesting as I had expected.

Soon after that, I received orders from AHQ at Freetown to visit and report upon every airfield that had ever been built in the Gold Coast, or even started to be built, whether it was in use or not. This necessitated three extended road journeys which took me all over the Gold Coast, except the north-eastern corner, and involved calling on the chief commissioners in Ashanti and the Norther Territory, as well as all the officers in charge of the many districts we visited. I drove myself on each of these trips, taking another officer as a companion and an African named Patrick from the mess staff as cook and interpreter. In addition to English and his own tribal language, he spoke fluent Hausa, the lingua franca of all West Africa. I could write much about the delightful and fascinating things we saw and experienced, but will mention only a few of the highlights here.

Our first night stop in the Northern Territory was at a rest house close to a native town of about 4,000 people. I noticed that Patrick took into the rest house only what we needed for that night, leaving the rest of our gear in the car or on the ground beside it, just in the African bush. I asked if he thought it would be safe there and he replied, "Yes, Massa; I arx de caretaker boy and he say dere be no tief in dis town". And we found it so all over the Northern Territory, except in Tamale, the capital, where there was a large foreign population.

In many of the Northern Territory tribes, the men dressed from shoulder to ankle in heavy cotton garments consisting of a bodice with long triple skirts attached. In the same tribes, the women wore nothing but a narrow belt from which something resembling a fly whisk, or a bunch of leaves, dangled down behind. We asked one old chief why the women went almost naked when the men were so completely covered. With a knowing look, he explained that whenever women wore clothes, some man always wanted to find out what they had under them, and that always caused trouble.

A further question about why the ladies always wore their one little piece of concealment behind instead of in front elicited the answer that it was to prevent unseemly display as they bent over their gardening tasks.

On my second visit to the Northern Territory, two meetings were arranged with groups of tribes which had supplied most of the soldiers in one of the two West African divisions then fighting in Burma. I had been asked by the Chief Commissioner to tell the tribes something about how well their men were doing. After saying my piece, each group laid on a splendid variety show in my honour. At the second of these, I was tested to find out whether I was a brave man according to tribal standards. In the middle of the entertainment programme, a tall, skinny old woman, wearing nothing at all, was set to make lewd advances to me, which she did with great vigour, causing much laughter. While my attention was fixed on her antics, a tribesman sneaked up behind me and fired an old muzzle-loading gun just behind my head. After five years of war, I was so used to bangs that I did not react at all, and this established my reputation as a very brave man!

After lunch at the rest house that same day, my travelling companion and I had just settled down for a nap when Patrick came in and announced that some local people had arrived at the back door and wished to speak to me. A party from the first tribal group which we had visited that morning had arrived carrying a whole cow, skinned and lying in her own hide, and would I please come and indicate what bits I would like cut off her for my own consumption, before they took her away to become the main ingredient in a feast of their own. I thanked them and delegated the selection to Patrick. We had some pretty good steaks for dinner that night.

At the town of Lawra, on the Volta River, we heard that a small herd of hippopotamuses was living in the river not far above the town. We hired two fishing dugouts and crews to take all three of us up to see them. Patrick came with me and, on the way up, bombarded me with a string of excited questions about the animals, which I answered as well as I could. Presently, I asked why he was so interested in them. He said they were good friends of his tribe, but he had never seen one. Later, he told me how this friendship came about. Before repeating his story, I should explain that Patrick came from the Ijaw (pronounced Eejaw) tribe near the town of Warri, in the Niger delta. There had once been many hippos in that area, but they had long since disappeared. This was his story.

In olden times, some of his people were in a boat on the lake alongside which they lived, when a hippopotamus accidentally surfaced under their boat and tipped them all into the water. They were far from shore and all would have drowned, but the hippopotamus took them all on his broad back and swam them safely to land. Good manners then required them to 'make thanksgiving custom', by cutting the throat of a chicken and sprinkling its blood on the water, accompanied by the contents of a bottle of gin. However, they forgot to do this and the hippopotamus was greatly offended.

Some time later, the people decided to move to a new village site on the far side of the lake. They loaded all their possessions into their boats and set off across the water. The hippopotamus, who had been brooding over their bad manners ever since the first incident, decided to teach them a lesson. This time, he deliberately upset one of their boats and fully intended to leave all the occupants to drown. However, his kind old heart soon got the better of him and once again he took them all on his broad back and swam them safely ashore.

The people, of course, understood exactly what had happened, and why. This time, they made proper thanksgiving custom, and the hippopotamus and the Ijaw people have been friends ever since.

I had begun having trouble with the commanding officer of the SAAF squadron very soon after I arrived at Takoradi. When I took over the station, he was president (PMC) of No 2 Officers Mess, which was inhabited mainly by SAAF officers, but also by a few RAF officers for whom there was not room in No 1 Mess. Contrary to the then existing RAF regulations, he allowed the mess to run an open bar and drunken brawls were frequent. When I first learnt of these things, I sent for him, and expressed my concern. I also said I did not wish to have to interfere directly in the affairs of the mess and asked him to exercise more control over it. He did nothing whatever and, on Christmas Day, there was a really serious brawl in which much crockery and furniture was smashed and one RAF officer was knocked out and had to spend some time in hospital. Following that episode, I relieved him of his PMC duties, installed a RAF officer in his place, closed the bar and introduced the then standard RAF mess rules for the ordering of drinks.

In the early months of 1945, there were several flying accidents in the squadron, involving loss of life as well as aeroplanes. The routine investigations of these disclosed a serious lack of attention by the commanding officer to training and flying discipline in the squadron, and low morale amongst the pilots. I spoke to the commanding officer about this and urged him to exercise more control over his squadron. When he again ignored my advice and did nothing, I reluctantly decided to render an adverse report on him and recommend that he be relieved of his command on the grounds of incompetence. This was a very serious step because, if the report were accepted and acted upon by higher authority, it would virtually destroy the further career prospects for the officer concerned. He had to be shown the report, allowed to reply to it, and his reply had to be attached to the original report. All of this was done in time for the next visit of the AOC to Takoradi, when I told him what I had done, and handed him the papers.

Once more the AOC was taken by surprise and was unwilling to accept my report. He did not dispute its validity, but did not want to have to forward it to SAAF HQ in South Africa, fearing that it might create an international incident. In vain, I told him that some of the better officers in the squadron had begun to let me know that they felt their CO was bringing shame on the SAAF. In vain, I argued that the SAAF was no more likely to tolerate a poor commander than would the RAF in similar circumstances. By the time he left, it was clear to me that the AOC was unlikely to act on my report. Failure to do so would create an impossible situation between me and the squadron commander, so I had to consider what my next moves should be.

For some time past, there had been growing interference by the AOC and the AHQ staff in the day to day running of the station and the officers of my staff were becoming thoroughly confused and demoralised. They strongly supported me in all the measures I had taken to improve conditions on the station. Between us, we had reduced a lot of chaos to order and smooth efficiency. We had stopped all theft and generally made the station a better place on which to live and work, and we had achieved this entirely by the application of normal RAF procedures, without harming or offending anyone (except AOC and SOA, apparently!) in the process. The DAPM openly praised our security measures and advocated their introduction on all stations in the command, but this was never done. We had demonstrated that all the problems about which so much defeatism prevailed were capable of solution by perfectly normal service means, but the only response from AHQ was continued suspicion from the AOC and increasing interference from his staff.

The position had become intolerable, so I asked for an interview with the AOC at which I put my view of the situation which had developed. I said that he, as AOC, was clearly entitled to have his stations run according to his own ideas. However, those were so contrary to all my service training and instincts that I could not accept them. (They amounted to never doing anything to disturb the status quo, even when it involved chaos, waste and widespread theft; but, of course, I did not say that). To that extent, therefore, I was unsuitable for my appointment as one of his station commanders. The proper procedure in such circumstances was for him to report this to the Air Ministry and ask that I be replaced by someone more amenable to his wishes, and I asked him to do so. This was a recognised service procedure and would only be harmful to the officer concerned if the reasons for unsuitability were themselves discreditable.

The AOC agreed to do this and I flew up to Freetown some time later to read and initial his report to Air Ministry before it was sent off. I received a very friendly welcome from the AOC and we had another long and really amicable talk about the matter. I may have been wrong, but I got the impression that he was regretting the whole matter as much as I was, and was hoping to find a way out of it. We talked a lot about Takoradi and he expressed himself pleasantly surprised at much that he learnt, particularly at our foresighted planning to cope with problems which would arise immediately the war in Europe ended.

He told me about the troubles he was having with other stations in the command. It really seemed that West Africa was not only breeding the defeatism which I have already mentioned, but was addling the wits of some station commanders, who were doing extraordinary and illegal things which they would never have dreamed of doing anywhere else: things like leading armed parties to raid neighbouring villages, searching houses and persons without any warrant, and occasionally even shooting and killing Africans who were not in any way threatening lives or security. These actions were greatly embarrassing the AOC in his relations with the civil authorities in all four of the British colonies. It was a relief to him to know that there were two stations in the command, one of which was Takoradi, about which he had no such worries and where he knew that things were firmly under control.

He then offered two different suggestions for keeping me in the command. I thanked him but rejected both, as neither would have overcome the basic difficulty in our relationship, which was our diametrically opposed ideas on the proper exercise of command and initiative. So, reluctantly, the already prepared unsuitability report was produced, signed by him and initialled by me, and we parted with better feelings towards one another than had existed since our first meeting.

The report was in no way an adverse one. In it, although he was reporting me as unsuitable for my appointment as one of his station commanders, the AOC specifically stated that he considered me a good commanding officer, and he recommended me for the command of an operational unit! The whole sorry episode made absolutely no sense.

I do not know whether my return to England some weeks later was the result of that report or of the contraction of the West African Command, which began about that time. All I know for certain is that Ikeja, the RAF station at Lagos, started closing down at the end of April; its commander was posted to Takoradi and I was posted back to the UK. I flew back to England, arriving on the day the war in Europe ended, VE Day. For all practical purposes, that was also the end of the war for me, although I did not know it them.

When I reported to Air Ministry after returning from Takoradi, I was, as usual, asked what I would like to do next, and again asked if a posting to Australia were possible. I was told there was no RAF vacancy there, so I asked to be posted overseas again as soon as possible. I was offered, and accepted a posting to the South East Asia Command (SEAC), the HQ of which was in Kandy, Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. I then asked if there was any possibility of getting transportation to Australia for the leave which was due to me on return from West Africa. That also was impossible, but I was told of an Air Ministry Order (AMO) about to be published, under which non-British members of the RAF, who had been away from their homelands for three years or more, would be entitled to 60 days leave at home, with free transportation there and back, and travelling time not to count as leave. I asked if I could be granted leave under this AMO before my next posting. I was told that that would not be possible, but that it could be granted by SEAC as soon as I arrived there.

With that, I set about getting myself out to Kandy as soon as possible. I arranged with Transport Command to ferry a Hellcat fighter out to India. I was told I would have to fly in a convoy, but did not mind that as I assumed that it would travel reasonably fast. All single-engined aircraft delivery flights were made in small convoys led by a twin or multi-engined aircraft carrying a flight lieutenant convoy commander and a navigator. This was a safety precaution to avoid the risk of inexperienced pilots in the following aircraft getting lost.

After spending a few days leave at Ilfracombe, I went to Melton Mowbray for a week's training on Hellcats, after which I flew one to Portreath, in Cornwall to join a convoy which was to leave next day, the 25^th of May. I was dismayed to learn that the convoy was going only as far as Cairo and was going to take several days to get there. Once there, I would have to wait indefinitely for another convoy before I could go any further.

I was so anxious to get to Kandy and apply for leave to Australia that I unwisely decided to leave the convoy and proceed independently. No safety or navigational risk was involved, as I was thoroughly familiar with the whole route; but, of course, I was disobeying orders. At the end of the first day the convoy commander reported my departure from the convoy, as his orders required him to do. I was intercepted and grounded two days later at Shaiba, near Basra, in Iraq, on orders from HQ Transport Command. I went on to Kandy in a passing passenger aircraft a few days later, arriving on my 37^th birthday. Next day, a signal arrived from Air Ministry ordering my immediate return to England, where I was to be attached to HQ Transport Command for disciplinary action, and I was back in England a week later.

Before that signal arrived, I had raised the question of leave to Australia, only to learn that the AMO, which had now been published, prescribed that people serving in overseas commands could only be granted such leave at the end of their current tours of duty. For me, that would have meant waiting for another three years unless the war with Japan ended sooner.

Back in England, I was ordered to be tried by court martial on a charge of 'Conduct to the prejudice of good order and Air Force discipline' when I might quite well have been charged with the much more serious offence of disobedience. I did not attempt to defend the charge, but submitted a written explanation of my behaviour without trying to excuse it. At the actual trial, I pleaded guilty and was sentenced to be severely reprimanded and to lose six months seniority. The sentence was subject to review by the Commander-in-Chief, Transport Command. He, bless him, remitted the loss of seniority, confirmed the severe reprimand, and added a rider which, in effect, 'condemned' me to transportation to Australia for 60 days leave, as soon as possible. Shades of our convict days!

All the above proceedings took several weeks during which I had to cool my heels in London. I was there when the 1945 general election occurred and was stunned to learn that Churchill's government had been defeated and the Labour Party, under Atlee, returned by a big majority. In those weeks, I went to a Hammersmith theatre and saw half a dozen of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. I also spent a lot of time ice skating at Richmond, and visiting a dear friend from Middle East days, who was dying of cancer in a London hospital, barely a year after her marriage.

As soon as I was free to do so, I applied for and was granted leave to Australia under the terms of the AMO. The Movements Branch quickly found a berth for me in the troopship Orion which was due to sail from Liverpool in a few days time. We were still at war with Japan, so all the war time secrecy regulations were still in force. I had no idea what route we would follow or when the ship would reach Sydney. I could only cable Dorrie that I was coming, give her the name of the ship and tell her to contact the Orient Line's offices in Sydney for the date and time of arrival.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima was the big news in the morning papers on the day I left London for the voyage to Australia. The voyage was not a pleasant one. The ship was carrying RN replacements for the British Pacific Fleet, returning ex-POW RAAF aircrews and returning ex-POW New Zealand soldiers in roughly equal numbers. With a troop carrying capacity of over 5,000, the ship was carrying only about 3,000, so there was no overcrowding. Accommodation and good were both good. One would have expected that the returning ex-POWs at least would have been happy, but they were not. Everyone seemed to be on edge and quarrels were frequent, even at the captain's table in the dining saloon.

The news of the Japanese surrender reached the ship on the day before we were due to enter the Caribbean. On the evening of the following day, the ship laid on a celebration dinner for everyone and that was followed by sing songs by the troops gathered on both well decks. The officers joined in from the after end of the boat deck. It was a beautiful night, with a full moon and perfect weather. Everything went well and happily for a time, until the RN contingent suddenly started up a song which no one else knew. It was full of sneering references to their own service and Mr Churchill, and each verse ended with a shouted 'Churchill, you bastard'! From then on it all degenerated swiftly. With a group of naval nurses clearly visible to them in the moonlight, the singers on the after well deck swung into filthy versions of 'Coming round the Mountain' and other songs, and ended up by shouting abuse at officers in general, and then at individual officers by name. I went to bed that night more depressed than I had ever been during the war.

At Wellington, New Zealand, the ship's staff confiscated a huge banner renaming the ship 'Altmark' (a notorious German prison ship captured in 1940) just as it was about to be hung over the ship's side, and a group of men went to the Truth newspaper and pitched a totally false story about the horrors of life aboard, which Truth published without making any attempt at verification.

We arrived in Sydney on a morning in the first week of September and berthed at Woolloomooloo. It was only a few days short of five years since I had last seen Dorrie and the children.

Dorrie was not at the dock to meet me. I had cabled from Wellington and asked her to leave a message at the reception desk of the Hotel Australia if she should be unable to meet the ship, so I went ashore and walked up there. There was no message for me, so I rang her home in Lismore for news. Her sister Billie answered and told me that Dorrie was in Sydney to meet me and certainly had intended to meet the ship. Baffled and anxious, I walked back to the ship, where I found Dorrie in my cabin, talking to my cabin mate of the voyage. She had simply been misinformed about the time of the ship's arrival. We quickly got ourselves and my baggage ashore and into a taxi, and drove away to the City Hotel where Dorrie had booked accommodation for us, to begin my leave.