Over the last few months I have enjoyed a lot of interesting radio and TV programmes about the battle of Britain. As the 70th anniversary passed, and we as a nation remembered ‘The Few’ who fought for our freedom, it’s made me think in particular about the Spitfire and Hurricane pilots, many of whom were considerably younger than me.
There is one story in particular which grabbed my imagination; and that’s of Geoffrey Wellum who began his battle of Britain flying career a month before his 19th birthday. I find it hard to imagine what it must have been like for him and the many other young men in the same situation. I know how scared I would be if I was asked, aged 22, to fly a plane solo even in peace time. I can hardly guess what it must have been like to be sent up to face hundreds of German fighters in 1940 when those concerned had only just left school.
Fortunately I think it’s fairly safe to assume that even the inevitable government cuts won’t result in me being required to leave my job and go to war. If I chose to join up voluntarily, I would undoubtedly be given months and months, if not years of training before I would be allowed anywhere near a real aircraft, let alone the battle field. As I learned from these programmes, many of the battle of Britain pilots were scrambled to fly against enemy aircraft after just a few hours of flying practice in a Spitfire or Hurricane. I also learned that hurricane pilots only had 14.7 of continuous fire power before they would run out of ammunition. It must have been hard enough trying to control the plane, let alone make a successful attack and avoid being shot down as well.
Three of my great uncles were pilots in the Second World War. Mum and my younger brother, Hamish, were doing some family research recently and managed to find the original flight logs which were kept by my great uncle Mick’s squadron. They make for some very interesting reading as these documents reveal many details such as the length of his flights; many of which lasted eight hours or more, the targets they bombed, and later the areas over which they dropped supplies to the Resistance in parts of Scandinavia. They also show that the air crews were subjected to a pretty relentless schedule of missions. Mick’s last flight took off shortly before midnight on the 4th of March, 1945, just two months before the end of the war. Their orders were to fly to Denmark to deliver supplies to the Danish resistance but their Stirling aircraft was shot down. All the crew subsequently died in Denmark as the Germans would not allow anyone to go to the injured crew’s aid.
I’m sure that many families in Orkney have connections with those who flew in the battle of Britain and I was very interested to read about the various discoveries of crashed wartime aircraft in the November edition of Living Orkney. I would imagine that a downed aeroplane would be quite something for an Orcadian farmer to find in one of his fields, both at the time and now all these years later. In fact, one of the things I remember researching when I was being home schooled was the crash landing on Auskerry made by the Canadian pilot, Donald Franko.
Don was on his final solo training flight before he was due to join his battle squadron. It was a night time navigation exercise, and after taking off from Fraserburgh he got lost in thick cloud. Strong winds blew him North and as his fuel tanks emptied it became apparent that an emergency landing was inevitable. Dropping through the cloud he spotted the sea breaking white around Auskerry and decided he had no choice but to attempt an emergency landing.
It turned out that unwittingly Don had put down on the largest flat piece of unobstructed land on the island, saving his own life and leaving the plane almost undamaged. Unfortunately the RAF decided that getting the plane off the island would be impossible, so the engine was removed and the rest of the aircraft was burned where it had come to rest. Don went on to fly over 40 missions over Germany in Halifax bombers. Thanks to many hours of research by mum and a historian in Canada, we learned that Don had survived the war, and lived only a few miles from the Canadian who had eventually tracked him down.
Don and his wife and daughter came to visit us on the island. With the aid of a photograph taken by the lighthouse keeper who found Don and his plane the morning after the crash, we found the place where he had landed and Don told us what happened that night in 1943. He had joined up at 17, lying about his age to do so, and had found himself shortly afterwards flying solo flights in a small Oxford trainer in a foreign country. Don survived the war, living until January this year when he died of ‘old age’. Even though he survived he would have regular nightmares about his war experiences. The mental and emotional scars remained.
This year, most of us will be able to celebrate Christmas with our families, safe and warm in our own homes, without the fear of attack from foreign dictatorships. Maybe we could all take a moment to raise a glass to the men and women who gave up that pleasure to fight for our right to enjoy ours in peace. I would also like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very happy Christmas and best wishes for 2011.
