At the outbreak of World War II, number 3 squadron RAAF would be sent to the Middle East tasked with supporting the 6th Division of the Australian Army and would spend the entire war in the Mediterranean theatre, and became part of the Allies’ Desert Air Force (later the First Tactical Air Force), supporting the 8th Army. It would go on to be the highest-scoring RAAF fighter squadron during the war
PART 1
JULY 1940 – DECEMBER 1941
On the 24th of July, 1940, 3 Squadron’s 21 officers and 271 airmen of other ranks departed from Fremantle on board the “Orontes”, heading toward the Middle East. It would be the first RAAF Squadron to leave for the front.
The Squadron arrived at Tewfik in the Middle East on the 23rd of August, 1940 under the command of Squadron Leader Ian McLachlan.
They moved first to Ismailia, then later to Helwan near Cairo. The squadron was attached to the RAF headquarters in the Middle East, and by mid-September, stationed near Cairo, they were equipped with two flights of Gloster Gladiators and one flight of Lysanders. These outdated aircraft would have to serve the squadron until Hurricanes were made available. Gladiators were the last, and the best, of the British biplane fighters; they were descendants of Sopwith Pups, Camels, and SE-5As, all of which performed effectively during the closing years of the Great War. The Gladiators were robust and highly manoeuvrable, to which 3 squadron took full advantage.
On the 19th of November, 1940, 18 Italian Fiat CR-42s, attacked four 3 Squadron Gladiators carrying out a tactical reconnaissance mission. The squadron lost its first pilot (Squadron Leader Peter Heath) during the ensuing dog-fight, and claimed three enemy aircraft destroyed and another three probably downed. The Italians, however, claimed they suffered no loss, and six Gladiators “shot down” and two “probables”. A curious statistic given there were only four Gladiators in the fight!
During the early days of December, the Squadron carried out strafing and dive-bombing attacks in the Sofafi area and continuous offensive patrols over Sidi Barrani and Halfaya, before moving to a location near Sollum, on the Egyptian border.
Between the 3rd and the 5th of January, 1941, the battle for Bardia raged and 3 Squadron helped the 13th Corps win this first big victory of British General Archibald Wavell’s Libyan campaign, by spotting for the Artillery and efficiently conducting its Army co-operation functions. Over 40,000 prisoners, 400 guns, 130 tanks and 700 motor trucks were captured during this campaign.
The now-disorganised Italian Army was on the run, chased by the Allies, including 3 Squadron, who moved to Gambut, about 32 miles from Tobruk, on the 8th of that month. From there, many artillery reconnaissances of the Tobruk defences were made, during the build-up and the actual taking of Tobruk by the Allied forces on the 21st of January, 1941 – a milestone in the Western Desert war because of its strategic shipping value.
On this same day, the first of the Squadron’s Hawker Hurricanes was released from a base maintenance depot to the Squadron’s new advanced landing ground at Bir Hacheim. Flying Officer Gordon Steege was one of the first to fly the Squadron’s Hurricanes.
The Squadron would cover Tmimi to Martuba while forward troops were fighting in the Derna-Mechili areas of Cyrenaica.
The Australian 6th Division captured Derna on the 30th of January 1941 and that same day Wing Commander McLachlan received the Distinguished Flying Cross.
By early February, a few of the long-awaited Hurricanes were operating in the squadron. The Italians were in full retreat and were pushed back to Benghazi where they surrendered on the 7th of February.
The Squadron relocated forward to Benina about 12 miles from Benghazi.
Squadron Leader Peter Jeffrey was appointed the new C.O. on the 13th of February 1941. The Squadron operated from Benina for a little over six weeks and during this time met the strength of the Luftwaffe for the first time. On the 15th of February, Flying Officer J. H. Saunders was the first in the Squadron to shoot down a German aircraft, a Junkers JU-88, in his new Hurricane.
In North Africa, 3 Squadron were up against a variety of enemy aircraft at this time. The main Italian fighter was the Fiat CR42 – the best of a family of agile fighters that could fly at almost 300 miles per hour at 30,000 feet for over 450 miles. The Luftwaffe had the JU-88, a fast light bomber with superior armament. And the famous JU87 Stuka dive bombers were also active in the theatre. The Stuka was a precise bomber but relatively slow with a maximum air speed of 232 miles per hour. It was this slow speed that helped 3 Squadron bring down eight of the 12 Stukas they surprised on the 18th of February 1941, near Agedabia.
The Luftwaffe also had the Messerschmitt Bf 110 fighter-bomber operating in the Western Desert. With its twin 1,270 horsepower Daimler Benz liquid-cooled and inverted V12 engines, it was capable of flying at a maximum 349 miles per hour, which was almost as fast as Britain’s fastest fighter, the Spitfire and certainly faster than the 310 mph of the Hurricane. As a long-range fighter, with its two 20mm cannon and four 7.9mm machine guns built into the nose, and a single 7.9mm machine gun operated by the observer, it was a formidable opponent.
Nevertheless, the metal-framed Hurricane was a robust fighter that could out-climb even the Spitfire, reaching 1,500 feet in under a minute. It had a service ceiling of 34,000 feet and a 460 mile range. Armed with eight .303 Browning machine guns, which could lay out 200 bullets a second onto a target.
On the 31st of March 1941, within two weeks of arriving in Africa with his specially trained desert armoured division known as the Afrika Korps, Rommel launched a surprise attack on the Allied positions at El Agheila, ignoring advice from the German General Staff to refrain from making any attack.
The Allied troops could not hold against Rommel’s fresh new forces, and withdrew to Got El Sultan, and then further back to Martuba. Aerial combat was hectic over the following weeks as 3 Squadron protected the retreating Allied army from heavy German air attack. Almost every day in early April, as the ground crew was retreating by road, the Squadron’s pilots were busy shooting down Stukas, which were continuously striking the retreating British ground forces. On a single day, the Squadron brought down no less than ten Stukas without loss to the Squadron.
Thomas Canning (Eric)
The day before we evacuated Ajdabiya we were subjected to an air raid, we had got a message from base to expect an attack at eleven o’clock, the bombers were escorted by fighters. We had got this message early in the morning and 3rd Squadron was to fly up and give cover, fighter cover. We hardly believed the accuracy of this sort of intelligence, but it was found out to be accurate because 3rd Squadron had flown from Benghazi, one hundred miles north and took up position in the sun a bit before eleven o’clock. Flew around in the sun invisibly and at about quarter to eleven over came two Messerschmitt 110s, and 3rd Squadron descended on those and shot down one and it went into the earth and exploded about a mile away from us. The other was hotly pursued. It pushed its throttle through the gate and took off at great speed and out distanced the pursuing Hurricane. 3rd Squadron had virtually been flying for an hour and a half and still had one hundred miles to return and had limited fuel supply, so it formed up and flew on back. A few of us took a vehicle and went over to where this plane had hit the earth, and before we got there overcame fighter bombers and we turned to go back but they out distanced us to go back on our guns. And they laid their bombs right across the anti-tank defenders’ position, the Royal Horse Artillery were defending us with ack-ack [anti-aircraft] guns and took off unmolested. 3rd Squadron in the meantime was heading its way back to its base. I remember Squadron Leader Jackson looked at his fuel in the Hurricane and discovered that his needle was on empty and he turned to come back just in time to see the bombs drop. By the time he landed back on the airstrip we got back to our gun, three bombs had gone off within a nine yards radius of us, and our ears would have sung if we had been on it and we would have been uncomfortable. The gun next to ours, the gun layer was dead, his clothes were burning, and his ammunition was alight. The officer in charge was wounded, two others were wounded on the gun. Just as Jackson landed and taxied by us. Jackson fueled up and went off and the other two pilots that made these claims, one was dead within a week and the other one in six months, and Jackson was ultimately killed weeks later over Port Moresby. The three active participants of that squadron were dead in no time, in just a few months.
These constant air cover sorties were done while airfields were continually moving back from the enemy advance. Some missions during dust storms, others at night. During the retreat, anything that couldn’t be packed and moved, or unserviceable, had to be destroyed. At one stage 48,000 rounds of .303 ammunition had to be sacrificed. To save an aircraft from being abandoned, Pete Turnbull took off in a Hurricane with a bullet-holed tyre, stuffed with blankets and grass to harden it. These were old Hurricanes that 3 Squadron had inherited – Thomas Trimble explains:
Sometimes we didn’t have much interception work, usually what we tried to intercept were German reconnaissance airplanes, but it was just too high, the Hurricanes couldn’t go that high. These were the early Hurricanes, the Battle of Britain ones. We got airplanes that had been in the Battle of Britain that had flown for about one hundred hours. They’d been sent out to Africa, and they’d flown right across Africa and up the Nile and the RAF used. The Hurricane that was allotted to me had something like one hundred and twenty hours out of it.
We reckoned that if they flew for one hundred and eighty hours they had it. The service airplanes are not designed to last a long time in war because you might get a brand new one and lose it on its first flight. You don’t want to waste your money or your effort. Then Rommel came in and we kept going back as hard as we could.
We were moving every day from landing ground to landing ground. You’d start off in the morning at one landing ground, the troops would get you airborne and you’d finish your patrol further back and you’d might get another patrol in and you might go a bit further back. We were running out of parts for the airplanes, and we were losing them, we were losing the odd pilot.
During those first weeks of April 1941, Rommel’s Afrika Korps had driven most of the Allied forces right out of Cyrenaica back into Egypt, except for the English and Australian forces left isolated in Tobruk. The Australian 9th Division and the remnants of a British armoured division formed a 23,000-strong garrison at Tobruk, completely cut off from the rest of the Allied forces. They needed all the air support they could get, so on the 16th, four of 3 Squadron’s Hurricanes landed inside the Tobruk perimeter and remained there to assist the besieged Australian troops defending the garrison.
About that time, I Gruppe of the German Jagdgeschwader 27, consisting of 3 Staffels of ex-Battle of Britain pilots, arrived at Am el Gazala with their single-seater Messerschmitt Bf 109E fighters. One of those pilots was Oberfahnrich Hans-Joachim Marseille, a young man destined to become one of Germany’s top fighter pilots. Many 3 Squadron pilots were to fight against him and his Gruppe during the next 17 months.
The Bf109E’s, arriving in steady numbers, were considered superior to the Hurricanes in speed, rate of climb and armament. Their Daimler-Benz inverted V12 engines gave them a 360-mph speed at 20,000 feet – at least 50 mph faster than the Hurricane. This was one of many reasons that influenced the Allied Command to recall 3 Squadron to Aqir, in Palestine on the 3rd of May for re-training and re-equipping with the relatively new American Curtiss P-40B Tomahawk. Powered by a 1,150-horsepower Allison engine, the Tomahawk’s speed and performance was closer to that of the 109. It was a fairly manoeuverable machine which performed well at low altitudes and suited the Desert conditions quite well.
Flying Officer Bobby Gibbes, a 5-foot 4-inch, 25-year-old ex-salesman, had joined the Squadron on the 14th of May 1941, and would go on to lead the squadron, and become one of the top-scoring Australian pilots during the two years he would serve with 3 Squadron.
Bobby Gibbes
When we got the Tomahawks, the boys had been flying Hurricanes mainly and the Hurricane’s a very forgiving aeroplane, you could be fairly rude to a Hurricane and it wouldn’t bite you. But the Tomahawk, it was a different kettle of fish and it would turn around and bite very smartly. And the boys damaged something like twenty-four Tomahawks learning to fly them at Lierdam and I was one of the new boys so I wasn’t given the chance of going on a Tomahawk for quite a while, they let me fly an old Gauntlet for a while but when I, the time came for me to go on, I had only ever quite critical of these pilots for ruining these beautiful aeroplanes. And when the time came for me to go up they all, they all watched and I heard later some of them said, “We hope that little bastard prangs.” but fortunately I didn’t.
By the 8th of June 1941, 3 Squadron were ready to fly again, and operations re-commenced in Syria against the Vichy French Armee de l ‘Air who flew older Morane fighters, some Glenn Martin bombers and the more popular Dewoitine D520 fighters. No.3 Squadron’s Tomahawks, flying from their temporary airfield at Jenin, brought down many of these nimble little French fighters during their patrols and during escort missions for Blenheim light bombers attacking enemy convoys on the Damascus-Beirut road.
Bobby Gibbes
In Syria we were up against the Vichy French, they were normal French Air Force, but they had to come on the Vichy side and they were quite brave people, we got quite a few of them of course. I think we shot down twenty-three aeroplanes in Syria, before the show fell. I think I got one Dewoitine I shot at a couple and shot at some JU88’s which were over the fleet one day out of Haifa. We could have got the whole of the, all the 88s, except the navy put up such a barrage that we had to go around and some of them got away. But we got about three or four of them.
After the Blenheims dropped their bombs, the Tomahawk pilots guided them out of the area before returning to strafe the road, which the French called “Nightmare Road” because of the intense, heavy low-flying strikes the Squadron made. By the 12th of July, the Vichy forces fighting in Syria had quit and their signing of a truce marked the end of the Squadron’s Syrian campaign, almost one year to the day since leaving Australia. The campaign had given the Squadron’s pilots the opportunity of strengthening their teamwork while they were collectively destroying or damaging 31 enemy aircraft in that five-week period.
From the 13th of September until early November 1941, the Squadron’s twelve Tomahawks patrolled the Sidi Barrani – Mersa Matruh area and along the coast line as far as Tobruk where Allied forces had been hemmed in.
Bobby Gibbes
We were doing patrols over the wire, we couldn’t get as far as Tobruk because we didn’t have the range to do that if we copped a fight, we wouldn’t be able to get back so we couldn’t, we weren’t of much help to Tobruk boys for quite long time until the army advanced and then we were able to help them a bit, but basically, by escorting bombers, bombing around the perimeter of Tobruk and so on stopping enemy forces.
When we could get over Tobruk, it looked like a huge rabbit warren with all the burrowing that’s gone on around it. I think that the Tobruk boys were always pleased when they saw our aeroplanes instead of the enemy aeroplanes and one day we had a bit of a combat and I was flashed a Macchi 200. Oh I forget now it might have been G.50 and he went in just near Tobruk and the Tobruk boys confirmed him for me, which I was very pleased about, because I didn’t see him go in but they did.
On one occasion, during a heavy dust-storm, one Tomahawk exploded when Flying Officer Stratten slammed into an unmanned aircraft that an RAF pilot had stupidly left on the edge of the strip. Stratten’s life was saved by Corporal Whittington who soaked himself in fire-fighting foam and dragged the unconscious pilot from the flames. For this heroic act, Whittington was awarded the British Empire Medal.
In early November 1941, 3 Squadron and 112 Squadron, RAF, were paired up to form No.2 Wing, with Peter Jeffrey appointed as Acting Wing Commander and newly-promoted Acting Squadron Leader, Alan Rawlinson the replacement C.O. for 3 Squadron.
Their first move westward was to Madelena and air combat in this new campaign commenced in mid-November, 1941. The fighting was intense, and November 22nd became a “black day” in the Squadron’s history, when five pilots were killed and two taken prisoner after their Tomahawks had been shot down over the Bir Gobi and Bir Hacheim regions.
There had been several combats that day against the new Messerschmitt Bf109Fs, and, in some of these dog-fights, there were up to four 109F’s to a single Tomahawk, with one particular combat lasting for a record one hour and five minutes. Only dusk forced the enemy to withdraw, leaving the weary 3 Squadron pilots to limp home with landing lights on, some force-landing short of the strip and others running out of petrol while taxiing in.
At the end of November, the Squadron had claimed 39 enemy aircraft destroyed or damaged in just a few flying days, bringing the Squadron’s tally of enemy aircraft destroyed to 106. The first of the Desert squadrons to destroy 100 enemy aircraft and the third or fourth Empire Squadron to reach their 100 in the entire war.
Thomas Trimble
When 3 and 1 and 2 Squadron had gone out as a wing and we’d been attacked by 109s [German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes] several times on the way out to the area that we were suppose to patrol. I’d seen one or two 109s shot down and then as we got close to Tobruk we were attacked by maybe about twenty-odd 109s and because we were following 112 Squadron we weren’t leading the wing that day. We unfortunately went into a turn with 112 Squadron and we thought that they were just going to turn but instead of that they continued to turn and went into what is sometimes called a “defensive circle”, and naturally we were part of the wing and we went in with them. We got stuck there and we stayed in it for sixty-three minutes. In that sixty-three minutes I saw one fellow just a bit up from here he was hit by a 109 and he got out into his parachute, and I saw his parachute and by the time I had gone around the circle I wasn’t looking for him. Another chap who was just up in front of me and slightly lower, at about my height was rammed by a 109. The tactics of the 109s was to sit above us and then dive through us in pairs and they’d shoot on their way down. We were going around in circles. The bloke that was hit by the 109 and as he was hit half of one wing was sheared off and the 109 just disintegrated into a shower of sparks, like a cone that was gradually expanding and so in that time I saw this one fellow shot down here and the one up there.
PART 2
December 1941
During the time that the Squadron had been fighting in the Syrian campaign, the Afrika Korps had maintained a continuous siege against isolated Tobruk. 3 Squadron were involved in air cover for resupply missions going into Tobruk.
Walter Mailey
What we used to do, we would cover them in and then we’d circle around until they got out again. Actually, one day we took in the commanding officer of the Middle East into Tobruk. He went in a…I think it was…I’m not too sure of the plane he went in now. But we were close cover. I was within a 100 yards of him and he gave me the thumbs up sign. He was in there for about…he couldn’t have been more than an hour because we only had three hours fuel. And then we escorted him out again, without incident. Nothing happened. We didn’t have to do anything but take him in and bring him out. The supplies most of the time came by ship, and we’d go out in the Gulf and sit over the top of the ships as they were approaching Tobruk.
They were very susceptible to being dive bombed. We would sit out for as long as could and then we’d have to go home. I think half the time the Jerries were watching and would send the planes in as soon as we would leave. Then they put long range tanks on.
We had to go out and help escort the navy into Malta, and that was a very long trip. We put these belly tanks on, and when they were empty you would just drop them. Use those up first. And we could do about an hour over the top of the ships. That seemed to be pretty effective. Once again, as soon as we left they would come in from the mainland. While they were there they stayed away. That was when Malta was being very badly bombed.
Thomas Trimble
Tobruk was being replenished with ammunition and what not by the Royal Navy which was towing barges into Tobruk every night and taking them out by night. It about reached Sollum, which was the border if you like going into Tobruk by nightfall, they towed in and then the ones that were emptied would be brought out and then would about reach Sollum again at dawn. We did a lot of escort of cover of these barges from the city of Sidi Haneish and for that purpose we developed the formation again which was called the “weaving pairs formation”, which was a little bit copied from the Germans in that the aircraft were in pairs but at different heights like this, and everyone was weaving, except the leader – he flew straight, someone had to know where they were going. We had the swingers one down there and one up there and we did a lot of this work. Sometimes the 109s would come out but if we stayed out over the things that we were suppose to protect they would attack us, sometimes they did but generally they didn’t. Sometimes there would be naval ships that we had to protect but you couldn’t fly over them because the navy would shoot at anything that came over it. Sometimes we’d do a patrol just a defensive patrol out past Tobruk and sometimes we’d escort bombers out on the bombing raid near Tobruk.
In the Allied operation “Crusader”, to relieve Tobruk, air supremacy was contested between 19 Allied Squadrons, against a combined force of 19 Italian Squadriglie, and nine German Staffeln. In all, 228 Allied aircraft were fighting 258 Axis aircraft on the last day of November 1941.
On that same day, a 109 flown by Oberfeldwebel Otto Schulz, attached to Staffel 2, JG27, crippled Sergeant “Tiny” Cameron’s Tomahawk and this forced him to land behind enemy lines. Within minutes, Pete Jeffrey had followed him down, picked him up and had taken off for home. This heroic act helped the Wing Commander win yet another decoration, the Distinguished Service Order.
By early December 1941, 3 Squadron was the first in the Desert Air Force to be re-equipped with the new Curtis P-40E Kittyhawk. These aircraft had superior firepower than the Tomahawks, six wing-mounted 0.5-inch Browning machine guns, and were equally robust – ideal aeroplanes for Desert warfare.
Ken McRae
It was the warhorse of the ruddy air force, amongst Fighter Bombers. Like the Dakota was with transport. It was a fantastic aircraft back then, it’s still flying around the place. But the Kitty, as a Fighter Bomber it was good. But as a fighter, the 109 was much better and the Macchi was the same thing. But I think our pilots were better pilots than the other people. To survive.
In the air, the Kittyhawk Mark 1s coped well with most of the enemy aircraft they met, they could turn tightly but their weight slowed them down, especially in the climb – a distinct disadvantage against the Bf 109F-2s which were then appearing in the desert skies in increasing numbers.
Walter Mailey
I was still a sergeant. I hadn’t got flight sergeant. But it didn’t matter. In the air force rank didn’t mean anything, and by this time I was getting reasonably experienced. So, they put me in charge of the wing.
I learnt later that I was the only sergeant ever put in charge of a wing. Anyway, we went to an advanced airstrip or aerodrome, and I had eight planes from my squadron, and the other squadron had twelve. So there were twenty of us all together.
So when we were sitting on the ground waiting for the take-off time. Waiting for the scramble. The call came, and I had spoken to this CO, the leader of the others. I said, “I’ll let you take off first.” The wind was coming in one direction. I said, “I will take off cross wind, you go off first and your gust will go away. Circle once and I’ll be underneath you. Then I’ll go above you.” Anyway, he took off. He didn’t wait. We then took off and we climbed up. There was cloud cover of about 11,000 feet.
It was light wispy cloud, but you couldn’t see through it. I was climbing up and I thought I could see a shadow and we had always been taught that where ever there were…if there were Stukas [German bombers] coming in to dive bomb us…and if they were around then there were usually fighters sitting above them to protect them. And once again it was experience. I was going up towards the clouds, I could nearly smell them there, and one of my crowd came on the RT [radio transmitter], which wasn’t awfully good. He said something about “The fighters down below.” I just ignored him. I had hardly heard that and out of the clouds came six 109s.
We were heading up towards them luckily. If we had been going down towards the Stukas they would have got all of us. It seems a strange thing to say, but a plane going up is a very steady platform for firing. A plane coming down at you is turning, and it’s not as steady. So I was able to lift my sights and get a good shot at the leader. Then I had a go at a second one. That day we shot down, between the two squadrons, I think it was either eighteen or nineteen, and we had one bullet hole in one aircraft. I got two 109s and damaged a couple. When we got back to the squadron and we were being debriefed, I said that I thought I got one and damaged a couple. But my number two said, “No you got two. The very first one that came in and you shot at, he kept going. He went straight in.”
Of the new arrivals to 3 Squadron was the Australian national Rugby Union player, Flying Officer Nicky Barr, destined to eventually destroy more enemy aircraft than any other pilot in the Squadron. Just a few days after joining the Squadron he brought down a Messerschmitt 110, and the very next day a second 110 and a Ju88.
On the 13th of December, Tommy Trimble would become yet another victim of German ace, Hans-Joachim Marseille, on a mission out to Martuba just north-west of Tobruk.
Tommy Trimble
The weather was moving westward so that it just about reached to Gulf of Bomba moving west. We were told that we were going out as less than squadron strength and we’d do just one sweep over that area and we’d come home because we were going as less than a squadron. On the way out I could see streams of bombers coming back, streams of bombers escorted by fighters and every now and again you’d see 109s attacking them, but we were coming and we stayed well to one side. They wouldn’t attack us because we were just fighters and we weren’t going to do any damage. We came in over the Gulf of Bomba and there we ran into wispy cloud, it was sort of darkish, the cloud wasn’t darkish but because of all the cloud that was about. It was beautiful I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen wispy cloud but it’s a bit of cloud and a bit of wisp there and it’s glorious. We came over this El Martuba and we were told that there would be no fighters, the German air force would have gone right back to Benghazi. I had never seen so many aircraft on the ground in all my life. Have you ever looked down on top of an ants nest, not these little black ants but the big ones, we that’s what it looked like and I thought, “God, we lost a couple of blokes from the flight just getting in there”, getting in that far because of the cloud and various other reasons. By this time I’d been leading the left hand section which normally four but it was down to one and we were down to myself at this stage.
Flying around a bit, eventually I nearly collided with a Tomahawk and a 109, I don’t know which one was following which but I followed both of them anyway, and then eventually I saw another Tomahawk being chased by a 109 up there and I thought, “I’ve got to knock that 109 down”, so I flew up towards him, and I looked at him and he fired and he had one of the new 109s, which had a canon firing through the centre of the airscrew spinner and I saw the beautiful rounds going out like that, but back here you see. I told you that gravity is working at thirty three feet per second per second, and everything that you fire takes a path like that and I saw this beautiful stream and it was way underneath me and it wasn’t going to hit me I thought, “He won’t hit me”, and I was aiming at these blokes and then he put another burst out and it still was a fair bit away from me but as it got closer I could see that it was going to hit. I turned my head away and still trying to shoot at this bloke up here and all of a sudden I felt “thump, thump”, two close rounds had hit me, my feet were knocked off the pedals and I will tell you more about it. I felt one round hit just under the tail plane and it hit me and it caused me to slightly bunt and then the fourth round hit now I’ve got a model of an airplane there to show you. I had the canopy half way back and I didn’t have my goggles on because it was hard to see in the conditions. The canopy is half way back because I’d been flying partly in rain and I wanted to be able to see out to the sides. The fourth round just hit the front bow and it put a little dent in it like that, and I will tell you why I know all this later. That round was a twenty millimetre that exploded on my head it was only about that far away from it and the hole there is gradually closed up, but various things happened all at once.
My head was filled with fragments, these two rounds burst the fuel lines of the engine and ignited the fuel which came up through the cockpit, so the cockpit is burning and my windscreen was blown out, blown away from the top bow and fortunately it curled forward like this because it was held at the bottom. The other plate of glass in the front of the Tomahawk was separate from the windscreen, it was behind it because it was an afterthought from the Americans when they sold them to England.
I immediately knew that I’d have to get out because the airplane was burning so I went to undo my strap and pulled the pin out and at that instant I became unconscious, just before I became unconscious, I thought, “Oh, thank goodness, I’ll be dead before I hit, I won’t feel it”, this was what I’d thought. I’m lying there and burning, and my face was just burning, cooking.
I’ve got helmet down to there and a oxygen mask here with the microphone so my eyes and everything was cooking up here and the flames were burning my gloves and I always wore leather gloves, so all that was happening was the gloves were shrinking a bit. Then all of a sudden I woke up, sorry, as this happened the stick had come back and the airplane had flicked and I was spinning, when I came to I became scared. I thought, “Geez, I’m not going to be dead, I’m going to feel all of this”, and so I got out of the spin.
The flame was starting to die down because all that happened was that the fuel lines were cut and the explosion of the explosive rounds had ignited the petrol but once that was finished the flame had gone out. I get the thing out of the spin, but my eyes, this eye was closed completely and this eye was closed but I managed to squeeze it open and I saw the Gulf of Bomba was out on my left so therefore I was heading south which was better than flying into the sea.
Then I realised I was going straight down, having come out of the spin I was still going down. I was only a couple thousand feet when I was hit so if I pulled it out, if I pulled the aircraft out of the dive I might not fly into the ground. I pulled it out of the dive and I still hadn’t hit the ground and my eye had closed up, so I’m blind now but I can feel things and so I pulled the airplane up until it just started to reach it’s stalling speed, because you can feel all these things and then I put the nose down a little bit until it built up speed and then like that and eventually I felt the air scoop hit the ground and I just flattened it out and skidded to a stop.
As injured as he was, Tommy managed to avoid the enemy and was found by Arabs who facilitated his return to the Allies.
Hitler’s “Operation Barbarossa“, the offensive against the Russians, since the 22nd of June, was diverting Germany’s supplies away from the Middle East. Consequently, this was giving the Allied forces time to regroup and re-equip, particularly now that the Americans were manufacturing more and more aircraft, a lot of which were gradually finding their way to North Africa.
A welcome innovation for 3 squadron, when it was available, was the Marston mat – rather than an airstrip of cleared sandy desert floor, the Marston mat was a hard metal surface that made take off and landing much more efficient and safer.
Stanley Brown
It’s pressed out metal. It’s got about three inch diameter holes, and it’s nearly a quarter of an inch thick. I tell you, it would take you all your time to lift one. Two blokes, or three blokes used to have to put it together. And I think it was about six or eight feet long, about fifteen inches wide. And it was perforated with these holes, to keep it light, you know. You just couldn’t have a flat piece of metal. That’s no good. And on the edges, it had like a sort of a key, a finger like that, and it would lock into the next one. And you just needed to push them together like that, and they’d stay there, because to pull them to pieces you had to pull them out this way. One end, one after the other. But it was fantastic stuff.
1942
Early January 1942, the squadron shot down 12 enemy aircraft, another seven probably destroyed and six more damaged. On the 11th, Nicky Barr shot down a G50 and two 109F’s before his Kittyhawk was hit and crash-landed behind enemy lines. Disregarding a wounded leg, he spent the next three days disguised as a desert nomad, riding a camel past German motorised units, and gathering vital information about the enemy on his way back to base. After his intelligence report, he was immediately awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions.
Rommel had commenced a strong counter-attack by January 23rd and the Squadron’s advance party at Belandah, was almost caught when they awoke to find a semi-circle of Panzer tanks firing at them from only 300 yards away. Corporal Lee, the NCO in charge, ran to a truck 50 yards away, and raced south, collecting his men on the way, as the Panzer’s blew up a nearby petrol tanker. Ground fog hid the escaping truck, and by jettisoning everything not screwed down to gain speed, they survived.
3 Squadron, along with number 450 (another Kittyhawk Squadron), retreated eastwards to Gambut and continued to fly patrols, in conjunction with No.112 “Shark” Squadron, RAF, against the enemy. Hans-Joachim Marseille brought down two of 3 Squadron’s Kittyhawks on the 15th of February, killing Sergeant Reid and injuring Pilot Officer P. J. “Tommy” Briggs, who bailed out at an altitude of just 100 meters.
Bobby Gibbes, promoted to Squadron Leader, became the Commanding Officer of the Squadron on the 26th of February 1942 and arranged the Squadron’s first escort assignment for some recently-arrived Douglas Boston light bombers, which commenced bombing the enemy at Martuba on March the 14th. By the time No.3 Squadron was given 14 days’ stand-down, on the 25th of March, they’d claimed 68½ enemy aircraft destroyed, 59 damaged and been credited with 16 probables in a little over six months.
On the 7th of April, the Squadron began three weeks of intensive training to prepare for a new campaign in which the Kittyhawks would play the role of fighter-bombers. At this time Marshal Herman Göring withdrew much-needed airpower from the Russian front to double his force in the Mediterranean. While Rommel commenced his ‘Battle of Gazala’ on the night of the 25th of May 1942, with intensive night bombing and strafing of the Allied forward landing grounds. His land-assault started the next morning, with four Italian Divisions, the German 15th and 21st Panzers, and 90th Light Divisions, attacking the Allied line from Gazala south to Bir Hacheim.
Felix Sainsbury
And then all of a sudden there’s 250 German tanks had broken through the line. So we sent our aircraft bombing, dive bombing and machine gunning them. In one particular day we did 68 sorties or attacks. We were very successful, gee whiz back behind them further they had another 400 tanks coming through with 1200 transport. So we had a big front coming through. So there was no alternative. We had to start thinking about retreating or getting to another advance landing ground. These advance landing grounds are only a strip of flat desert and they put some 44 gallon drums along and that’s your landing strip. The sandy desert there was a gravelly sort of stuff so it wasn’t bad to land aircraft on. So any way we retreated out of there. We just got out of there in time. We stayed back and threw…some of the enemy bombs that were there, we just laid them all over the strip, and we thought that might hold them up a bit from landing an aircraft. It wouldn’t make much difference to the tanks. And then we scattered a few bombs around which we couldn’t carry. We had some bombs in the bomb truck and the ammo truck was ok. And we had a personnel truck. We only had 3 trucks in the armament section. I drove the personnel truck.
They say the retreat would be on so we’d get the aircraft serviced straight away. The pilots would say, “We’re going to fly back to El Gazala” or Gambut or one of the other landing grounds we had been at on the way up. So they’d say we’re going to make for that. And our other flight would be there. We had two flights. When we advanced we’d leapfrog over like that. So C Flight were probably back there. We didn’t know where they were. We didn’t know where the base was or anything like that half the time because communications were very poor. So the pilots…we’d get them off the ground, and then any aircraft which was unserviceable and couldn’t be shifted, we’d just destroy. Although one of our fitters at one stage, he got an aircraft going and he flew it back to the next advance ground. He was an engine fitter.
A very experienced guy and he said, “Blow it, I’m not leaving my bloody plane here”, so he took off and he took back to the next drome. He just had to follow the coast along. So that was that retreat. Now that wasn’t….although we came back a fair way. We came back past Tobruk, Sidi Barrani, Salum Pass…and that’s another story, coming down these passes. There were 3 passes along that coastline.
On one particular occasion we had to come down the pass. Now these passes were a death trap really because the Germans…especially when there was a retreat on, they were flying and observing everything.
Now observing in the desert is dead easy because one truck just ploughing through the desert, the dust trail that it leaves can be identified from the air from thousands of feet up. And you’ve got no cover. You haven’t got anything. They can just come down and strafe you or bomb you. There’s nothing you can do. You can keep driving or you can pull up and just run away from your vehicle and lie on the ground.
Anyway, we came down this pass, and you’ve only got to go down the pass once to see all the vehicles that have been strafed and pushed over the side of the road. It’s about an 1100 foot drop in 2 miles. You’d come down these passes and they were built by the Italians and they came around like this and it’s just a single road and you’ve got to take a correct lock on your truck or you’ve got to stop and back them. They were fairly well built originally but they had been bombed and strafed and bombed that much that they were pretty rough and rugged when we came down them.
You’d have to stay in a very low gear because the steepest of the decline and you had to stay on it. And if you went off the edges you were likely to hit a mine. You either hit an S mine or a ratchet mine. That’s another story, I’ll tell you about mines later. So you had to stick to the middle of the road and if you transgressed off the side of the road you could hit a mine. They were aware of this when they set their mines. Places where you were likely to go off the edge of the road.
That’s why whenever we passed anybody we’d pass them that close. Sometimes we might even knock them with the trucks. So, you didn’t like getting off the road at any time. So, coming down this pass with the German aircraft in the vicinity, it was a pretty scary operation because you know they were shot halfway down there. It was no good jumping out because it was a drop off each side. You were up against the cliff on this side, but on the other side it just dropped away, and you’d see trucks that had been shot up and shoved off the road by the tanks and they just rolled down the bottom. So we never ever liked the coast road or these passes. Hellfire Pass, Salum Pass and Duna Pass. There were 3 big ones and gee whiz they took a heavy toll on transport at times. The Germans knew them well and they were always waiting to strafe or bomb them, particularly when there’s a retreat on because when there’s a retreat on there’s nothing organised. All your trucks are nose to tail going down that coast road. We used to stay in the desert whenever we could.
We reckoned we were a lot safer up in the desert, away from that coast road. Even though you left dust trails, at least you could scatter, and we used to scatter our trucks right out, never follow each other unless we were absolutely positive we were safe.
PART 3
3 Squadron pilots flew at least two, and sometimes up to six, sorties per day from their Gambut airfield, mostly bombing and strafing the advancing enemy tanks, troops and every close Luftwaffe airfield.
During all of this, Nicky Barr was appointed CO, on the 28th of May, replacing a hospitalised Bobby Gibbes who’d broken his leg and ankle after he’d bailed out from his Kittyhawk.
Bobby Gibbes
I got shot down the first time by a rear gunner from JU88, the German bombers. They were flying in diamond, what we called diamond formation, just a triangle, and I was shooting at the gentleman in the rear of the diamond. And some nasty gunner in one of the other 88s set my engines on fire and it wasn’t very good. I had long thought of how I’d get out, so I in this case because some of the boys had tried to get out but their parachutes had caught over the back of the canopy and they were spreadeagled and couldn’t get free, and one of them survived at the last minute by getting his foot under the joystick and pulling it back and he went in flat. He survived it. I was frightened that might happen to me so I rolled on my back thinking this was the way to get out and I had wound the trim forward so when I released the joystick I was shot out like a bullet. Of course I hadn’t allowed for the aerial, I got tangled up in the aerial, I hit the tail plane or it hit me, I still have a mark on my knee when I hit the tail plane, tail fin, and I got wrapped up in this blasted aerial. And on my way down, I eventually got the aerial away from me, pulled my ripcord, and the parachute opened. And then I heard, I watched my aeroplane going down, burning fiercely on the way and I saw it hit and then I suddenly heard the roar of an aeroplane. Now one of my pilots, Dudley Park, had been shot out of his parachute in a previous dogfight shortly before this and I thought, ‘My God, they’re coming after me.’ And so I was climbing up on the shrouds trying to make myself a difficult target and then suddenly the noise built up to a crescendo and suddenly there was an almighty woof, I had actually watched this, it took the noise probably a second or two to get to me and that was a second or two of real terror.
I had been taught how to fold parachutes when I was at Richmond, I think I could still fold a parachute. But no-one ever told us how to jump, how to land. I knew we should land facing downwind, that’s about all I knew, but no-one said you should land with your knees together and legs relaxed and no-one had told me that, so I landed with legs apart, landed crosswind and broke my ankle.
And I was there writhing in agony, I didn’t know whether I was in enemy territory or not and eventually, you know sort of there in great in pain and suddenly a weapons carrier came up with a lot of nondescript looking people and I thought they were Germans. And ‘cause as I say I didn’t know where I was which was north, east or west so I put my hands up and surrendered. And one of them said, “Get up chum.” And so a Pommy [English] bastard, so I said, “And don’t call me chum!” just so my dignity’s placated, they didn’t know I was a squadron leader. However they were good fellows, they accepted it, took me into the first aid post they put on a temporary splint on my left ankle which had badly broken and fibula broken and eventually I got to hospital and that was the first one.
By June the 17th, Rommel’s forces had knocked out 230 Allied tanks and caused the Allied forces to retreat, including the entire 239 Wing (which was No.3 and 450 RAAF Squadrons and RAF No.112, 250 and 260 Squadrons).
The entire Wing had to leap-frog through five landing grounds eastward to Amiriya from their Gambut base, returning almost to the Squadron’s starting point eighteen months earlier.
The Australian 9th Division and their British comrades had successfully held Tobruk in 1941, but a hastily organised garrison of South African Army troops were now rapidly compelled to surrender when Rommel stormed Tobruk with his superior Panzer Divisions, on the 21st of June, 1942. By this time, the Afrika Korps had driven the Desert Air Force further east, to airfields that were out of flying range of Tobruk, so air cover for the last desperate days of the Tobruk battle became impossible.
Once Tobruk had fallen, Rommel immediately pressed eastward, however, by the 26th of June 1942, the Allies had rallied and pressed Rommel back, enabling both 450 and 3 Squadrons to advance to Sidi Haneish and allowing the Army to shore up the defence line at El Alamein. On the same day Commanding Officer Nicky Barr, parachuting from 4,000 feet from his burning Kittyhawk, landed in enemy hands, and become a Prisoner of War. When he went down, he was flying his 84th sortie, with 119 operational hours since he had joined the Squadron as a junior Flying Officer six months earlier. During this time he’d claimed a record 12 enemy aircraft destroyed, making him 3 Squadron’s top ace.
In September 1943, after three unsuccessful escape attempts (including one that got him all the way to the Swiss border wire), Nicky eventually escaped from a POW train and linked up with Special Forces and Partisans in Northern Italy. He was subsequently awarded a Military Cross for his assistance to Allied escapees behind the German lines and participation in partisan attacks.
After Nicky Barr was shot down, Squadron Leader Bobby Gibbes, with his broken leg still encased in plaster, immediately resumed command of 3 Squadron.
Bobby Gibbes
The worst time I had was after being shot down, breaking my ankle, I was put in hospital out in Gaza at 6th AGH [Australian General Hospital] and they gave me a walking iron and I found I was immobile. Now I had taken my staff car up with me, I had a driver who drove me up the road to Palestine. And so I went and I complained to the commanding officer, Colonel Money, he was the chief doctor there, I said, “I’d like a posting Sir.” And he said, “Why, aren’t you happy here?” I said “No, I want to go the 1st AGH, a British hospital in Jerusalem.” Oh, he was very offended. He said, “Well I’ll send an ambulance.”
I said, “There’s no need Sir, I have my staff car here, my driver will take me up.” Of course the moment I got in the car, I went into Gaza. I sent a signal to the 1st AGH in Jerusalem where I was supposed to be going, ‘Please delete posting Squadron Leader Gibbes, now proceeding Hiriopolos for medical board, that’s Hiriopolosat Cairo.’ Of course I had no intention. Got back to Cairo.
I had a friend who was the boss of Anglo-Egyptian motors, I don’t know I think he was probably could have been partly English anyway, but he was a nice guy and I got him to make a walking iron for me. I had an iron on the bottom of my plaster and I had another fitting made that I could then sit on the floor of an aeroplane and work the rudder, the brakes, the rudders wouldn’t worry me but my toes. I couldn’t wave my left foot because of the ankles in plaster but by moving my backside backwards and forwards I was able to put on brakes so I got one of my pilots, Gordon White, to give me a check out in a Harvard [training aircraft] to make sure I could handle the brakes as I thought I could and that was successful so got a Kitty Hawk and flew it back to the desert. And when I got there the squadron had been taken over by a one of our pilots, a flight lieutenant, Nicky Barr, who had been made an acting squadron leader and he was, you know, a fantastic fighter pilot. And I went to wing and saw a chap, Marshal Tommy Elmhirst [RAF Air Marshal Sir Thomas Elmhirst] and I said, “Well Sir, I want to be in it but I obviously can’t fly, can I have a job with wing somewhere?” And he said, “Yes.” he would fix that up for me.
That day, Nicky had led a squadron the squadron out, because I obviously wasn’t able to and when I got back to the mess, Nicky was missing, he’d been shot down and captured. Clive Mayus, who was an Australian, a wing commander at that stage tried to put, he said, “Well okay, you’ve got to take over the squadron again.” And I said, “Not on your nelly, I can’t take over the squadron, I’d like to be with the squadron in some capacity but not as commanding officer because I can’t fly.” He said, “Alright.” They call me Gibby. “Alright Gibby, I’ll put a Pommy [Englishman] in.” I said, “Goodness you can’t do that, it’s an all Australian squadron!” He said, “Well what are you going to do?” I said, “Well I’ll take over.” And it was the unhappiest time I’ve ever had because sending people out to fly and operate, dangerous operations and not being able to be in it myself I found that as completely devastating and it’s the unhappiest time I had in the whole time of 3 Squadron. Ultimately of course I cheated and when I got the plaster off, I was supposed to go to Cairo for a medical board so I put it over our doctor Tim Stone. I disappeared for two or three days and went into Alex [Alexandria] and had a few grogs [drinks] and I came back and I said, “Look I’ve been,” and I. And he said, “Where’s your clearance?” I said, “They’re posting it to you Tim.” Of course I hadn’t been near.
So I couldn’t fly because I had a fairly stiff ankle and the squadron doctor Tim Stone had not cleared me to fly so I used to park, get one of the boys to park an aircraft near my tent and he’d be on the trip flight, but he’d come and sit in the tent and I’d sneak into the aeroplane and fly it. So I was flying illegally for a while but no one woke up to it, and you know, that way I was happier.
Kenneth McRae
That was at Amariya. And he had it in plaster. He came back after three weeks, and he said, ‘I’m ready to fly’. And I looked at his leg, I said, ‘When?’ He said, ‘Tomorrow”. So we had to fix up the, build the pedals up so he could fly.
The same night Gibbes had resumed command the Squadron retreated, yet again, from an advancing enemy, to reach the safety of behind the El Alamein Line, two days later.
Rommel, now a Field Marshal, faced the Allies with his 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions under the air cover of Bf 109s from II and III Gruppe, JG 27 and Italian MC-202s from 4 Stormo. While 3 Squadron assisted in supporting the Eighth Army, including Australia’s 9th Division, who had arrived from Syria.
For the next few critical weeks, the defence of El Alamein was a touch-and-go situation, particularly for 3 Squadron. They flew continuous operations escorting Boston light bombers from the South African Air Force’s No.12 and 24 Squadrons and Baltimores from No.223 and 55 RAF Squadrons. After a successful escort to target, the Kittyhawks would dive-bomb and strafe the targets as well before escorting the bombers home.
On the 22nd July, 1942, No.3 squadron’s 1,000th bomb was dropped by Sergeant Keith Kildey, at the crescendo of the “First Battle of Alamein”, which effectively stopped Rommel’s advance.
The build-up of forces at Alamein continued with Rommel lamenting his long and vulnerable supply-chain, stretching all the way through Tobruk and across the Mediterranean. Despite General Claude Auchinleck’s recent success in the First Battle of Alamein, his earlier Western Desert retreat had suffered some disorganisation and his counter-attack against Rommel had run out of momentum. Consequently, he fell from favour and was replaced as Commander-in-Chief Middle East Forces by Sir Harold Alexander. Around the same time Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery became the new 8th Army Commander – a turning point for the Middle East, due to Montgomery’s outstanding and energetic leadership in the months that followed.
3 Squadron resumed the fight on the 20th of August, with Bobby Gibbes’ leading the Squadron back into action, performing armed reconnaissance and bombing sorties within the El Alamein area. Ten days later the enemy attacked the El Alamein line at dusk, outnumbering the Allied forces, the strong divisions of Panzers were eager to capture supplies of petrol and other vital equipment and stores.
Rommel’s objective was to secure the Alam-el-Halfa Ridge before advancing north to the sea and capturing El Alamein. However Rommel became seriously ill and was hospitalised back in Germany, and the Allied defence was well prepared with the Desert Air Force holding air superiority. New aircraft had arrived, as well as the US 57th Fighter Group with their own Curtiss P-40s.
Mitchell B25 medium bombers had also arrived with the US Air Force, and this increased air-power released 3 Squadron from bombing. On the 8th of September Sergeant Garth Neill earned his Distinguished Flying Medal for shooting down firstly a Stuka, then a Bf l09, probably destroying another and finally chasing a third 109 over the tents of a German camp at ground level before it crash-landed near the camp.
On the 15th, the Desert Air Force lost eleven aircraft during some intensive aerial combats, two of them from 3 Squadron. The German ace, Marseille claimed seven of these in the eleven minutes between 1751 and 1802 hours. One of the pilots who went down was Flying Officer Jackie Donald who became a Prisoner-of-War (parachuting onto the top of an Italian mess-tent!) and another was Sergeant Scribner who was killed in action. The fighting continued for five weeks and among the losses was Marseille himself – on the 30th of September his cockpit filled with smoke due to mechanical failure, and the aircraft had lost power when he decided to bail out. His chest had struck the vertical stabiliser which either killed him or knocked him unconscious – his parachute did not deploy.
Alan Righetti:
It was 22nd of October 1942. Battles on the frontline were really solid but the big offensive hadn’t started. When I arrived at the squadron, I met one chap in particular that I knew and Johnny Hooke was there, which was great because he’d been a great mate right through. He’d already got 20 or 30 hours up while we’d been doing our cruising on the Blue Nile. So I had an awful lot to learn and I was chatting to him, and a fairly solidly built but only five feet four airman came in with his jacket on, and said, “Who are you?” I said, “Righetti sir!” “Oh! I’m Bob Gibbes, how do you do? Now, you’ll be on the next flight.” “Right sir!” “Have you ever dropped a bomb?” “No sir!” “OK well you’re off it but you’ll be on tomorrow morning.” That was my introduction to 3 Squad.
The next morning I took off on my first op [operation] and Bob Gibbes said, “Now Alan! You just hang on to my tail wheel. You fly behind me.” We flew what they call “fluid sixes”. The leader, “Shabby” was our squadron call-sign. “Shabby Red Leader”, which was Bob, Bob Gibbes or the “Boss” as he was always called. Nobody else was called “Sir” but he was always the “Boss” or “Sir”. So he flew in the middle of the six and his number two right behind him, and then he had another aircraft on his left, and one on his right slightly higher, about 200 yards out from him, and a little bit ahead. They each had a number two behind them, so that meant that all the aircraft in that six could weave to look for enemy aircraft. So they weaved and your head went right around the full circle as you were searching the skies whilst he could navigate. So he kept straight and level virtually and did the navigating. So for a new boy the thing was to hang on to his tail wheel and he’d get you through. The first flight we took was quite a hairy one, as they called it. We ran into 109s [Messerschmitt] and we had quite a dogfight, and a lot of chaps there had been there 20 or 30 hours, and never seen enemy aircraft, and not fired their guns but I got into a dogfight the very first time, and followed the Boss down in a big spiralling turn. Six of us were escorting bombers, so we were a bit tied to that. Anyway, it was a very hectic flight for my very first operational flight and I was flying an old ‘Kitty 1’ with an Allison engine in, and the Boss was flying a ‘Kitty 3’, which was quite a bit faster. So I had to over-boost a lot to try and keep with him but after we got through the dogfight and chased this 109 down, we turned for home, got the bombers home all safely, and I landed right behind the Boss, taxied in and he said, “Bloody good show Righetti!” So, I’d made it! Then that night 800 guns opened up on the line and the Battle of El Alamein was underway.
El Alamein – A Major Turning-Point of the Second World War
At 9.40 p.m. on the 23rd of October, 1942, Montgomery’s offensive at Alamein commenced with more than 1,000 British guns releasing the greatest artillery barrage since World War I. However, despite all his materiel and command advantages, Montgomery’s Alamein offensive failed to break through.
Alan Righetti:
For the first time, that’s October 24th on, we started to gain the offensive. In the desert of course, we had been going up and back under Wavell. All the troops had advanced right up to Benghazi. We were holding Tobruk and then Churchill took away half the troops to try to defend Greece and Wavell couldn’t hold on with that, so they were seesawing backwards, and forwards in the desert all prior to this but we had not really inflicted a defeat on the Germans until El Alamein. Life became very exciting and I found that an experience you would never really want to have missed. It was so exciting. Everybody was concentrating so hard on getting the job done. We were in a theatre of war where we weren’t hurting anybody except each other, two armies. We weren’t destroying villages and the sorts of things that were happening in Europe. It was a good war. We escorted bombers a great deal. We ground-staffed. We dive-bombed on armed reconnaissance flights. We did a multitude of different jobs. The biggest disadvantage we had was the Kittyhawk was a fighter bomber and a fighter bomber is equipped to do all these different sorts of jobs. It is quite a heavy aeroplane, big heavy aeroplane. Our opposition, the ‘Messerschmitt 109’ particularly, is just a specialised fighter.
3 Squadron’s Kittyhawks continued to provide bomber escort and ground-strike missions over the following week. On the 28th of October, 1942, Bobby Gibbes, flying the Squadron’s only Kittyhawk Mark III, shot down an Me 109, bringing the Squadron’s tally to 200 aircraft destroyed, or so they thought, (It would be later found that it was only the 175th claim).
Part 4
Montgomery’s tactics were finally working and by November the 4th, the German front had been pierced, forcing Rommel’s armies into retreat with Monty’s 8th Army in hot pursuit.
Further west, in French North Africa (Morocco and Algeria), large Anglo-American invasion forces under the command of General Dwight D Eisenhower, were landing as part of the co-ordinated and highly secret “Operation Torch” which called for this force to advance eastwards along the coast to Tunis and eventually link up with Monty’s westward-advancing 8th Army, in the hope of trapping Rommel’s force.
3 Squadron advanced to Landing Ground 106 at Daba, only hours after the Luftwaffe had fled, leaving behind aircraft, equipment, and personal effects.
Over the next few weeks, however, heavy rains restricted air support, but the Eighth Army continued to rout the retreating German forces, pushing them back to Tobruk by the 13th. Rommel had little more than 60 tanks, 43 serviceable Bf 109s and an estimated combined army of 25,000 Italian and 10,000 Germans left to fight almost 600 British tanks, 1,000 heavy guns and seven divisions of infantry (over 100,000 men).
The 8th Army continued to chased Rommel’s troops westward along the coast of North Africa and 3 Squadron relocating behind the advance, capturing some 109s along the way, including a new Bf 109-G2.
Felix Sainsbury
When I say we captured it… the Germans who had just left this particular aerodrome couldn’t take it with them. Either they didn’t have a pilot to fly it or anything else. Because that’s the last thing they wanted because this particular 109 Messerschmitt 109G was the latest of their aircraft. It was a really good aircraft. Anyway our Engineering Officer, Ken McRae, he sighted it first and he raced over in the truck with some of the guys in and they were looking at it and they said, “Right, we’re keeping this. This is 3 Squadron’s plane, this one. No one’s having this.” Then a couple of army officers turned up and they said, “we’re intelligence officers,” and they said “we’re commandeering this aircraft”. We said, “No bloody fear. This is our aircraft, and we’re keeping it.”
Ken McRae
…and they said, ‘What are you doing with that aircraft?’ And I said, ‘Taking it back to my squadron to fly it’. ‘You can’t have it, we want it’. I said, ‘You ruddy can’t have it, I’ve got it’, so they argued the toss for a while, and they said, ‘oh, we’ll get it anyway. And then they said ‘Do you mind if we have a look at the tags on it?’ I said, ‘Take what you want from it, and don’t damage the aircraft’. So, they worked around for half an hour and suddenly one bloke sang out, ‘It’s a G2!’ I didn’t know there were any G2s there, so I said, ‘All the more reason for me to take it, so the pilots, see who could fly it and evaluate it’. ‘All right’. So they took off and the last words they said, ‘We’ll get it’. And I said to them, ‘Not before we fly it, you won’t’. So, I thought these barmaids might come back with a lot of troops, so when Rex came back we parked the thing right against the fuselage so if they tried to take it when we were asleep, they wouldn’t be able to move it.
And we slept under the main plane. He was under one, and I was under the other on the ground. Morning came, the boys came early, and we towed it back and Bobby was thrilled to see a brand new aircraft, but it didn’t have a canopy so I had to go back to Marsa Matruh and pick up a brand new canopy on, and the boys were checking it over and run it up. Bobby flew it. No different to him, Zoom, down he goes, and up, and does all sorts of things with it. Came back and landed and he said, ‘Well, we should get some good flying out of this.
I’d like to take it home for the RAAF’. Anyway after flying for a week, various bods, but mostly him, a signal came, ‘This aircraft had to go back to the Delta for evaluation’. He said, ‘We take no notice of that’. A week after, ‘We do not request, we direct’. So he said, ‘I’ve got to prang the ruddy thing on the way back’. And he nearly did.
He got half way down there, he was escorted by a couple of Kittys so the ack ack didn’t shoot him down, and he landed on the Yankee place to refuel and have a feed, and the Yanks had never seen one. They were all over the aircraft. They thought it was fantastic. He said, ‘Wait till you see me take off and do a role on the climb’. So when he takes off, zoom down the hill, and up she went like a ruddy rocket, zoomed on the climb and the canopy came off.
He said, ‘I nearly pranged it. The ruddy dust came up into my face. But I got straightened out OK.’ And I thought, ‘What did I do wrong that the ruddy canopy came off?’ Anyway, he got it down there, and we heard that three months after, they pranged it when they lost a canopy. So that was a 109G2.
By the 19th of November, Benghazi was in Allied hands but heavy rain started on the 20th forcing a lull in air operations. The squadron then occupied the airfield at Marble Arch, which was covered with mines and booby-traps, one killing five of the Squadron’s Leading Air Craftsmen and seriously injuring three others.
Alan Righetti
All these airstrips, after being vacated by the enemy, were mined. And the most dangerous mine was a little 3-pointer mine just below the surface. Which, if you trod on it, or if you ran over it with a vehicle, a small explosion would occur, and a container about the size of a jam tin would bounce out to about truck height and then would explode, and the shrapnel would then mow down personnel. At Marble Arch we had a most unfortunate experience in that way. A truck with a lot of our ground crew in ran over one and the bomb just came up to the level of the back of the truck, and exploded right into the back, and I think we lost five or six people. You expect to lose the pilots but you don’t expect to lose the ground crew.
Fleix Sainsbury
We were in convoy on this coast road, one of the rare times we were on it because we’d stay off it as much as we could. And we were in a convoy and we couldn’t do anything about it, there were trucks behind us and in front of us. We were just going along and all of a sudden there were three or four trucks up in front – this truck hit a mine and killed five of them, in the truck. Mines are very intangible things, you don’t know where they are, and early in the piece they didn’t have mine detectors to pick them up.
Seeing we are on mines I’ll tell you about the, another mine, which was called an S mine: Detectors couldn’t pick them up or they hadn’t made a detector that could identify them. They used to bury them in the ground and they’d have 3 prods that came out just level with the ground. If you tread on it, you would put 30 pounds pressure on it and it would go down – nothing would happen. It was only when you lifted your foot off it would then, the primary charge would go off and bring it up about that high, about two foot off the ground and then the main charge would go. And in the main charge were 370 little cast iron balls, in that, and they would just, once it got to two foot high they would just spray out like that and they would kill at 80 yards, 100 yards.
Our armament truck, one particular aerodrome we were at, called Marble Arch. There were 1000 mines they dug out of just the runways. It was so bad with these S mines that you weren’t game to walk on soil…if there was a truck wheel mark you’d walk along that until it crossed another one and then you’d go along that, just to be sure that you’re not going to tread on a jolly mine. This armament truck, C-flight armament, truck pulled up and one chap jumped over the side and killed five of them. Blinkin S-mine. One chap jumped on the mine and the others were just getting over the side of the truck and killed the lot of them. So these S-mines were cows of things. I’ve only known of one chap that did tread on one and got away with it. He was an AIF army lieutenant. I don’t think he was AIF, I think he was a British Army lieutenant. He trod on one but he was an engineer so he knew all about these. He realised he had pushed one down, so he put his foot away and put his hand down and kept the pressure there and lay flat on his back knowing that it had to jump up that high before it goes off. And he finished up with just….he had a few wounds on his back but it didn’t kill him. He had the presence of mind to do that. The only way they could get them out was to get a row of engineers with bayonets and they’d push them in at an angle like that.
To dodge the top of them they’d push in at an angle. The mine itself is about that big and about that thick. They would just hit it on the side. That was alright. Then they would just dig it up and stand it on top of the ground and they’d have rows of chaps pushing the bayonets into the ground. Putting them on top, putting them on top and then a truck would come along and pick them up and destroy them.
So they were dangerous for everybody.
Many were killed or injured by these mines left by retreating enemy forces. Felix recalls other dangers on the ground as well…
Fleix Sainsbury
I’ve seen several pilots burnt in their cockpits, chaps I know. They’ve landed and couldn’t get out of their aircraft and often their legs have been broken at the ankles and they can’t push up to get out. You can’t get to them because it’s just all fire and they just burned to death. Those sorts of things stay with you for the rest of your life. But certain things hit you more than others. Especially if it’s a mate. One of my mates was shot in front of my tent, accidentally. We were fixing up point five cannons which we had taken out of an aircraft. We used to put them on a little box which we had outside the tent. We had nothing to work with. We had no workshops or anything like that. We had to work out in the open. It was just sitting on a box and his mate just pushed the recoiling back with the barrel. He fired off five shots and Don Riley, a mate of mine, it was just at that exact time that he was walking a fair distance away in front of the guns and the shots went through his arm, through his shoulder and up through his head. Five of them. Every shot hit him. They used to fire very rapidly. So he was killed on the spot.
His mate who was working on the gun, he wasn’t any good after that. So those sorts of things…and we buried him there and then. We got an old prop and put his name and that on it and when we left he was just a mound of sand in the desert. So those sorts of things you remember.
The Squadron were soon hitting the Germans in the Sirte area, scoring a valuable direct hit on four 88-millimetre guns, regarded by the Germans as their main defence weapon.
On the 21st of December, Squadron Leader Bobby Gibbes led a six Kittyhawk reconnaissance patrol over a German held airfield called Hun located 188 miles from Marble Arch. Parked around the airstrip was a mixture of twelve German and Italian aircraft and gliders.
Kenneth McRae
On one particularly day, this job on Hun cropped up. Bobby was CO and the long range desert patrol had found a secret aerodrome, which they knew nothing about, with 109s on, well into the desert, not near the coast.
So the four aircraft were to go, 3 Squadron were doing the job, and Bobby flew and another CO who was replacing him was there, and he took charge of the flight, and a Sergeant Pilot and, two Sergeant Pilots, so they choofed off and kept down fellow fifty feet and surprised these ruddy people, did a run cross them and set aircraft on fire and a lot of damage and they formed up a mile or so away and this other bloke said, I won’t mention his name, and he wanted Bobby to do another run. And Bobby said, ‘You never do two runs over the same target’. First time surprise, the next time is still a surprise, for you! ‘Oh, I’ll take them down anyway’, And Bobby said, ‘Well, I’m not going’.
In two low-level passes, the Kittyhawks destroyed or damaged most of the grounded aircraft and on the third pass, hit more of them too but during this last attack, two Kittyhawks were hit by ground-fire. One crashed in flames killing Sergeant “Stuka” Bee.
The other, flown by Pilot Officer Rex Bayly, managed to crash-land about a mile from the target airfield. After sizing up the area and calling on the three remaining pilots to provide air cover, Bobby Gibbes found the closest spot he could land and radioed Bayly to make his way to the spot. After landing, Gibbes threw away his parachute and manually disconnected his half-full petrol drop-tank. He took 300 paces and marked out a possible take-off point by tying his handkerchief to a bush. When Bayly arrived, Gibbes sat him in the cockpit seat and climbed in onto his lap.
Bobby Gibbes
We were operating from an aerodrome called Marble Arch in Tripolitania and the army wanted to know what action, what was happening behind the lines at a certain little aerodrome called Hun, it’s now known as Hon, H-O-N but it was H-U-N in those days. It was a hundred and eighty miles inland from where Marble Arch, where we took off, so I took a little team of six people out to carry out a reconnaissance of this aerodrome. We put a few bombs just in case, we, sorry. We put on our long range tanks because instead of just going a hundred and eighty miles there and back I wanted to get back into the desert to see if there was anything else behind. When we got over in sight of Hon Aerodrome, which was quite a big square aerodrome with trees and things around it.
And there were a lot of aeroplanes parked round the perimeters, and as we were had a complete element of surprise I couldn’t resist it I thought, ‘Well let’s go and have a go, do something about this.’ so I went in and we strafed, we went through and burnt several aeroplanes. One aircraft I shot at was a Savoia 79. It must have been full of ammunition because it blew up.
And as I went through the blast, huge blast, my tail plane lifted up and with the stick hard back I was going straight towards the ground until I came out I thought my tail’d been blasted off, but that, I survived that, that was okay. So then we had the complete element of surprise, not a shot had been fired, so I came back and we did a second run through. Now normally you would only do it the once, because more than that it could be dangerous, but this time I took a chance and went through the second time. This second time we had a few shots fired at us, but nothing much. But I had a new flight commander there, who had been sent over to take over the squadron from me, a permanent officer, he didn’t know the danger, and he turned and to go around again, so I called up, and I said “For goodness sake don’t do that, stay away come and join up.” But he went in and two of my, three of my other pilots followed him and it was inevitable, one of them was shot down and the other one was hit in the ear and he went in flaming. He tried to land it instead of pulling up and bailing out and he rolled the aircraft up, of course he was killed. And one of them went down, a chap called Bayly, fairly near the aerodrome, so I thought, ‘Well you know, we haven’t been very nice to these people, they won’t treat him very well.’ So I called up and asked what the terrain was like so I could probably pick him up, he said, “No, no don’t, don’t.” he said, “It’s impossible down here, there’s no chance of you landing.” But I found another spot about a couple of miles away. Quite a good spot and I landed, I was a bit wary about landing because I had holes through the top of my main plant where I’d gone through this bomb blast, and I thought if one of them had hit a tyre I’d be in great trouble. So I touched down very gingerly if I’d realised I had a tyre flat, I would have taken off straight away without coming to a halt, in other words while I could, however everything was alright and I landed and I taxied in as far as I could to get towards him and from a devious route and then I, when I couldn’t go any further I stopped the motor, got out and I had a long range tank on which was still half full of petrol so I knew I’d have a very hard job getting off because there wasn’t much room. So I dropped the tank and I pulled it aside and in those days I’m much stronger than I am now but even then it was a terrific effort pulling this half full tank of petrol to one side, putting it out of the way.
I waited, I was very, probably the best part of an hour and I was just saying out on my radio to all the people circling overhead to say anything in sight coming out towards me to shoot it up, but I thought they’d come out from the aerodrome, I was also expecting them to probably shoot at me, but evidently the guns were in a position where they could fire ground to air but not along the ground and probably they couldn’t get a line on me, so luckily there was no shots. However I was in a state of terror thinking, ‘What the hell have I done this for?’ And waited and eventually he got to me and he was panting and hot as blazes of course and so I threw my parachute out, he got in and I sat on his lap and I only had a very short area to take off, I’ve forgotten the, I forget the distance now, I think only three or four hundred yards, which wasn’t enough, I knew that.
So I revved my motor up to full blast on standing on brakes, put little bit of flap down which made me get up a bit earlier, and I took off, away we went. We hadn’t reached flying speed when we came to a wadi ahead. We’ve flown into the air, and we hit the other side of the wadi with a hell of a thump and one of my wheels, with all the dust I saw one of the wheels bowling back behind me, my port wheel. And I thought, ‘My God there’s another wadi up ahead!’ and we looked like hitting it, and I thought, ‘If we hit that we’re in, we’re in trouble.’ so I dropped my right wheel, and I didn’t have a left one and thinking, ‘Well that might take the bounce.’ but I was very lucky we cleared by matter of inches I suppose and flew on. Now next thing of course I was worried about was whether, we’d been there for a long while, whether the enemy would have aeroplanes there to greet us on the way home, and I thought, ‘Well, it won’t be much fun if we have to go through a dogfight with this bloke sitting under my backside.’ So when I got to the aerodrome, we hadn’t been picked up luckily, when I got near the aerodrome, I called up the… firstly, I couldn’t talk to this guy because the noise was terrific, with a huge Alison motor in front so I wrote on the map, ‘I would like to try a one wheel landing if this is okay with you.’ and so he read it and nodded agreement and so I called wing and I said “I’m coming in crosswind please have an ambulance standing by in case anything goes wrong.” Well I was very fortunate, I’d probably try this a hundred other times and never get away with it, but I landed on the one wheel, the wind on the port side and as I lost speed, I deliberately kicked on a little bit of rudder to swing it to the port so the weight for the aeroplane was thrown out all the way and I almost came to a complete stop before I came to a rest and we got out. The aeroplane was flying again three weeks later, I had saved the aeroplane and we needed them desperately. They patched up the few holes in the wings and so on, and that was all that was about. Harry Broad, the AOC [officer commanding] Harry Broadhurst put me up for a major gong [medal] at that stage, but they downgraded it to the DSO [Distinguished Service Order].
For this feat and other extraordinary acts, Bobby Gibbes was recommended for the Victoria Cross but was downgraded to the Distinguished Service Order. Rex Bayly went on to win a Distinguished Flying Cross and bar and became Commanding Officer of 3 squadron in 1944.
Alan Righetti
I think December the 30th or the 31st, we went out on an armed reconnaissance with Danny Boardman leading. I was on his left. By this time I’d qualified to a leading aircraft, not to lead the whole squadron but to lead six or at least be in front and have a number two. At one stage I had a flight lieutenant flying behind me as a number two. We were attacked by fifteen 109s. Now this was most unusual, very unhealthy to have them in that number and instead of their usual tactics of circling around, and diving up from underneath, they came straight in and mixed it with us because they had us so outnumbered. We flew into a pattern where we were ready for our turnabout and as they came into us, Danny called, “Turnabout! Turnabout right! Go!” I turned the wrong way and to avoid the others I had to pull up, and I found myself right in amongst the 109s, and turning in a battle with them. After a couple of violent manoeuvres, I found myself in a circle chasing a 109. He wasn’t attempting to dive away. He was trying to turn inside me and I was gaining in the deflection.
I just allowed on the gun sight what I thought was the right deflection when the gun sight went out. The gun sight is a ring of light reflection on a glass little mirror in front of you and if you’ve got your head to one side, too much to one side, the circle is not complete, so it makes you keep your head centred, and it is absolutely essential to have it. But every fourth round in our armament is a tracer and I saw the tracer that I’d fired just go in front of his right main plane just below the engine. I kicked on a little bit of top rudder and fired another burst, and immediately glycol started to pour out behind him. I thought at first it might be their supercharger that they put in and they just zoom up, and away they go, and we’ve got no chance of catching them but he made no attempt to do that, and half rolled out the other way. By this time I was getting up fairly close to him, gave him another good burst and then black smoke started to pour out. I saw a bit of flame in the engine and I knew that I had him. So I did the unforgivable and that is I followed him down instead of keeping my altitude but I did look around to see that I was not being followed by another 109, and I gained on him, and gained on him to about 2000 feet. I gave him one last burst and I saw the canopy fly off, and then some white, obviously maps or something, come out of the cockpit, and then he bailed out. The aircraft crashed. I was a bit tempted to go down and shoot him up because they had been doing that to our chaps but I was very glad I didn’t because he was well inside our lines, and he was picked up shortly afterwards apparently.
Thomas Russell
I think, it was on the last day of December, 1942. It was the last flight by the Kittyhawks. Bobby Gibbs was up with another six, about thirty miles to the south of us, and I was in a six lead by Danny Boardman, and I was number two to one of our better pilots who had to come back with engine trouble, that left five of us. And we were attacked by fifteen 109’s, Danny reported twelve but there were actually fifteen.
Well somebody reported them to Danny and he told us to climb, so we got altitude as quickly as we could. And I was attacked by two of them, they came down right through the middle of us first, split us up. I was attacked by two of them and I managed to avoid them but upon doing so I spun. And I spun down from about ten thousand feet to about fifteen hundred feet and I pulled out and I was very fortunate because the normal thing was that they would have followed you down and picked you off. So I climbed back up and I was attacked by two more, virtually head on attacks, but they must have been new pilots too because they didn’t seem to have very many clues. And I got a quick shot at one and I don’t know that I got any strikes on him but I thought I may have. And anyway, they went, they disappeared and I’m on my own and I noticed up above me, about a thousand feet up above me was a 109 just looking at me, just casing me up and probably trying to get into a position to attack me. And I was watching him and obviously we were both oblivious to anybody else, if a 109 had come behind me, I would have been in trouble. But he didn’t see Randall Watt coming in behind him and Randall Watt just shot him and he just exploded. And then Randall went off west, he’d seen another couple and he got another probable, and I was on my own and I saw another aircraft to the east of me and I thought it was a 109, I made by way over and it was Danny Boardman coming home. So I thought, well if the boss is going home, I’m going with him. And that’s it. But everything had dispersed by that time. That was a bit scary.
1943
On New Year’s Day, 1943, Flight Lieutenant Dave Ritchie had a lucky escape after an encounter with five Bf l09s. He shot one down but was forced to crash-land his Kittyhawk, which hit the ground at an estimated 350 miles per hour. The aircraft was split in two, so the remaining Me l09’s didn’t strafe the wreck as they usually did as they obviously thought the pilot had been killed in the crash. Ritchie not only survived the crash, he hired a donkey from some Arabs and covered the 40 miles back to the Squadron, riding the donkey through the front lines.
In mid-January, the Luftwaffe launched a full-scale effort to protect their forward landing ground at Bi’r Düfän using new and newly-repaired aircraft flown by newly arrived pilots. On the 14th of January, more than twenty Me 109s attacked a formation of Boston light bombers which 3 Squadron were escorting to bomb Bi’r Düfän…
Alan Righetti:
Early in January we had the worst catastrophe that occurred whilst I was flying with 3 Squadron. Fortunately for me I wasn’t on it but Bob Gibbes was leading the six that were escorting the bombers and we had another six up on top cover, and a large number of 109s attacked head on, which they never do, straight into it.
… by the end of the day, six of the Squadron’s aircraft had failed to return, including Squadron Leader Bobby Gibbes. Three of the pilots had been killed, one had been taken prisoner, one was captured but broke away ten days later and Bobby Gibbes made his way back after a few harrowing days in enemy territory.
Kenneth McRae:
There were a lot being shot down in the desert. Some got back. Brian Eaton was shot down, and three days later he came in, riding a camel. They brought him back. Quite a few were brought back by the Bedouins. They would keep them covered up. Bobby Gibbes, he was shot down, not very far from the front, and he buried himself in the sand for a couple days until the enemy moved back. And he came back. When the Arabs brought them back they gave them a piece of paper which said, ‘Be nice or be good to these people. They have brought a pilot back in safety;’. Well, these blokes would be on the road, they’d be picked up, flash that, they’d be treated like bloody lords. It was a great passport for them, I guess they paid them money, too.
Bobby Gibbes:
We’re escorting bombers, American bombers, then we had to form up at low altitude to keep below the radar, as you see under five hundred feet. And we had to go across, we’re going to raid a place called Bi’r Düfän and we formed up with the American squadron at low altitude and they all formed up very nicely and away we all went, sitting down low. Now I was the leader of the whole thing. The fighter leader was in charge of the bombers too, he could turn them back if he wanted, if it became necessary.
And hoping to have the element of surprise, flying over the water at low altitude coming in over the land and then we’d climb so we could bomb the aerodrome, Bi’r Düfän. Two 109s flew over when we were halfway across the bay and there and as there was no, they obviously had seen us, so reconnaissance aircraft I then gave the instructions to climb, so we all climbed like mad. By the time we got over the coast the whole Luftwaffe was there waiting for us, and this is where we had all these aces that we discovered later. Anyway, one we went over the coast with the stack of 109s picking at us. We had some Spitfires as top cover and they were so damned high, they didn’t see a thing. They didn’t come into it at all, but the 109s were coming down like rockets onto us trying to go through the top squadrons who were, we had three squadrons above us other than the Spitfires who were way up and they were coming through at high speeds and trying to get the bombers, we were trying to, we were obviously keeping them off the bombers. One of my pilots was shot down before we got to the aerodrome, and after we were climbing up to perform, to catch up on the way home, the show was all over, I looked down, one of my pilots was down below being shot up by three 109s. So I called up the squadron, the squadron above us was supposed to be the attack squadron, I was supposed to stay right alongside the bombers. I called for them to go down and help him, someone to go down and no-one went, and so I gave it a couple of calls and it was quite serious so I disobeyed all instructions, they were on they’re on their way home anyway, so I dived down to try and help, I got there too late, just as I got there, there were three 109s taking, I hit the lead 109, I think I got him. In the meantime I watched my buddy go in and burn furiously and so I then started climbing up to try to catch the formation with the remaining two 109s chasing me. We had learnt how to avoid 109 attack from astern by skidding slightly, by skinning your aeroplane slightly so it wouldn’t be apparent to the guy shooting at you, but the bullets would go to one side.
And then you wait to see the black coming out his wings because it would show his guns were firing and then you’d take a violent evasive action from that juncture. And I had done this two or three times and I was catching up to the formation above and suddenly someone up above screamed, “Look out down below!” and I had lost sight of one of the 109s. I was watching an attack come in but I’d lost the other one. So I panicked and you shouldn’t do that
And I turned, did a three sixty degree turn, I went right through his cone of fire and got a cannon in the motor which didn’t seem to help much and so I went down. I was fairly high by then so I went, I put in a vertical dive, I knew I’d had it, went straight down, built up a speed of over three hundred miles an hour. The two 109s turned and came after me so when I didn’t want to have my control shot away, I thought, ‘If they hit my elevators I go straight in without controls.’ so I pushed it onto the deck. I was still doing three hundred when I last looked at the air speed and it’s all fairly flat country with just a bit of salt bush around. So I probably bounced for four or five miles before I came to a rest and immediately I came to a rest I clambered out onto the wing and the two 109s came in and I thought, ‘Oh God they’re going to strafe me!’ They didn’t, they waved, they went past at low altitude and one of them either waved or saluted and they were decent people, they probably knew I’d be picked up anyway.
I had a few nasty moments getting back of course. Back through enemy lines. We were one hundred and seventy miles behind the enemy, behind our lines, but I knew the army were going to attack that day and I was praying like blazes they were successful. And they were, so I only walked about, I suppose about seventy about fifty miles in a straight line, but wandering around of course I probably walked a fair bit more. And I was just getting over having had a broken leg, a broken ankle and fracture and I was unconsciously trying to help my left leg. My right leg was the crook one when I got in, which just shows I must have been favouring it.
Alan Righetti:
On January the 22nd I was flying as one of the leaders in bottom cover to attack an aerodrome at a place called Zuara, “Z-u-a-r-a”, which was just up past Tripoli, quite a way past Tripoli. The idea was to knock this aerodrome out if we could and any aircraft on it because we were getting very close to Tripoli. As we flew over Tripoli that day we could see the New Zealand Army Div [Division] moving in and trucks and everything streaming along the west out of Tripoli. Actually I think really that’s the day Tripoli actually fell to the troops. Anyway the top [cover] went across the Zuara airstrip first and then we followed, and I fired a long burst across the aerodrome, and we think we hit a few trucks and things on the road, and then we climbed up, and we were heading south into the desert when I saw three, apparently afterwards there were four but I saw three 109s, at “Angel’s Two”, that’s another 2000 feet above us at two o’clock, circling around to come behind us. So I called up our leader, who was one of the newer squadron commanders and said, “Enemy aircraft two o’clock!” A voice said, “I see them!” So you keep quiet then, you don’t break radio silence.
I watched them come around, around until they got right to six o’clock, the usual thing and then they made their classic attack. They dived down I suppose 500 feet below us and then came up underneath, and still nothing from the leader. So if that happens you can call, turn about yourself and everybody turns at the same, so I said, “Turn about right!
Shabby aircraft go!” “Shabby” was our call sign. As I turned I nearly hit the leader as I went around. Nobody else had got the message. Now in the heat of the moment I didn’t really realise that they were not coming with me. I saw blue flashes on one of our own aeroplanes at the rear of our six and I opened up, and as they came up they flew through the stream of lead that I was firing but I didn’t see any damage, and the next moment I’m alone. At that speed aeroplanes disappear very quickly and I just couldn’t believe that all of a sudden I was left there with three 109s, and a fourth that I didn’t know about but I should then? I think perhaps it was the shock value. You don’t think very well when you get a shock like that and I called out, “Give me a hand back here” and a few adjectives, if I remember rightly!
The next moment I’m twisting and turning amongst these 109s but they did it very professionally. There was one on one side, one on the other and one above me. If I turned into the one on the right I would expose the belly of the aircraft to the one on the left but I diced around for a little while, I think not flying terribly well because I couldn’t quite believe it still, that I was left to it. If I had, I’d have rolled on my back, dived for the deck (because the Kittyhawk used to dive very fast, it was such a big, heavy aeroplane) and got right down to ground level, and tried to stream away from him. But having shot down that 109 a few days before, I was a little bit cocky and I thought I might get one! But Major Muncheberg of the German Air Force who’d already shot down 126, made me his 127th in fairly quick time. In actual fact I wasn’t going too badly when I felt this bang in the base of the aeroplane and I felt my legs go numb below the knees, and some shrapnel had hit the throttle quadrant and opened up my hand a bit, and the aeroplane went into a spin. So I pushed the joystick forward (to keep your airspeed), which you must do to get out of a spin in a Kittyhawk, kicked on the opposite rudder and held it, and she came out of the spin still diving very quickly, and I knew she was flyable. So I began to think, “I’m going to be OK.”
I started pulling back on the stick and looking around to see that I wasn’t being followed down, and I wasn’t. So the aeroplane was pretty full of smoke, the cockpit. I wound the canopy back rather than jettisoning it. I wasn’t in much of a panic and I started to pull it back to where she was almost straight and level, still looking around. I had heard a voice over the radio say, “There’s one of your chaps in trouble back there, Shabby aircraft!” That was 450 Squadron. They’d got my radio message but nobody in my group had and I could feel the blood running down the back of my legs, so I knew what had happened was that the shell had exploded, 20 millimetre canon shot, had exploded in under the seat. Of course the armour plating is very thick that you’re sitting on and your back but there’s no protection down, from the seat down, but “I’m going to be OK.” So as I say, I wound the canopy back, had the aircraft just about straight and level and a tongue of flame started to come in over, from the left main plane, and over the edge of the cockpit. Now my belief always was that those things, if they start to burn, get out. Don’t attempt to crash land them because so many chaps used to get down to perhaps three or four hundred feet and then their aeroplane would blow up or it would burn too much for them, and they lose their lives. So I set about getting out pretty quickly and I first went to pull my helmet off, and the strap? I suppose I was pulling down instead of out but it was tight, and I couldn’t get it off quickly and easily, so I did two things. I made one mistake. I undid the harness and let go of the joystick to grab the helmet with both hands, and the aircraft was still nose heavy with that big heavy engine, and it bunted me forward just like a cork out of a bottle. I went straight out of the top over the windscreen, smacking my knees on the windscreen as I went out. I felt my neck rick as my helmet came off with my oxygen mask and everything on it, and the next moment I’m in the air beside the burning aircraft, and I pulled the ripcord, and as I pulled the ripcord the aircraft blew up.
The aeroplane just moved away immediately. You don’t move when you’re in a parachute. It’s virtually like being suspended. The aeroplane dropped away quickly, just a mass of flame. I just got singed a little bit over the eyebrows and forehead, and a little bit on my arm. The parachute opened beautifully and I always had it pretty tight, and I had no problem with it opening.
Alan was captured and spent the rest of the war as a POW.
By January 23rd Tripoli had been captured by Montgomery’s forces. Winston Churchill travelled there to personally congratulate the victorious Eighth Army and the Desert Air Force on the 3rd of February.
3 Squadron began flying regular missions over the Mediterranean Sea and in particular, off the coast near Ben Gardane and in Zarzis harbour. And so began the Squadron’s score of shipping targets which grew substantially during the months to come. By the end of February, the Squadron was moved forward again, into southern Tunisia, where they conducted low-level airfield blitzes behind the Mareth Line.
Rommel had withdrawn to Tunisia and after a massive loss at the beginning of March against the 8th Army he requested they capitulate in North Africa – but Hitler refused to pull the remaining army out and replaced Rommel with General von Arnim.
3 Squadron had moved to Nefatia where they, with other nearby squadrons in the Wing, assisted the Fighting French force of General Le Clerc strafe German tanks, armoured cars and supply trucks.
The Mareth Line
Then, on the 21st of March, the Squadron moved to Medenine, ten miles from the front, to escort Bostons and Baltimores bombing the still-German-held Mareth Line. The Squadron operated from here, under shellfire from German 88mm guns, for several days.
The air power applied by the combined Desert Air Force during the battle of the Mareth Line was enormous. Montgomery’s original plan was a full frontal assault but failed to make progress and the Eighth Army suffered considerable loss of life and equipment. No. 3 Squadron then provided protection to General “Tiny” Fryberg’s New Zealand Corps which consisted of 27,000 men and 6,000 vehicles and guns, accompanied by British armour, circling around in a 100-mile march across the desert over six days to penetrate the enemy’s south flank of the Mareth Line and attack the Tebaga Gap at El Hamma, near Gabes.
23 days after the start of the Mareth Battles, the New Zealanders stormed this hard-won objective under the cover of well-coordinated air support, suppressing the German anti-tank guns. Of all the exploits and achievements of the Desert Air Force in Africa, the El Hamma breakthrough was probably their “Finest Hour”. It is commemorated with a separate ‘Battle Honour’ on 3 Squadron’s Standard.
Throughout April Allied forces continued to take ground with a massive effort from 3 Squadron, pushing the enemy back to their stronghold in Tunis.
On the 19th of April, after 274 operational sorties comprising almost 472 flying hours, Bobby Gibbes officially handed the Squadron over to the new C.O., Squadron Leader Brian Eaton. Gibbes left several days later, under orders to report to Headquarters in Cairo for new assignment. He’d finished his second tour, becoming the Squadron’s second-highest scorer with 10¼ enemy aircraft destroyed, five probables and nine damaged.
Finally, on the 7th of May 1943, Tunis fell to the original “Desert Rats”, the 11th Hussars of 7th Armoured Division, Eighth Army. By the 12th of May 1943, General Graf von Sponeck had formally surrendered to General Freyberg …and the North African War was officially over.
3 Squadron was the only squadron in the Desert Air Force to have fought through every campaign of the Desert War and they were cheered as the top-scoring fighter Squadron within the Desert Air Force.
To celebrate the end of the desert war, two three-ton trucks were dispatched from the Squadron’s airfield in Kairouan on a 530-mile trip to Algeria to scrounge as much beer, wine, tobacco, chocolate and any other luxuries that could be bought with £400 cash that had been collected from the men.
Sicily Invasion…
The war in Europe had intensified; the Allied air forces began softening-up the island of Sicily, prior to a huge amphibious invasion just after midnight on the night of 9/10 July – to secure a stepping-stone for the eventual landing in Continental Italy.
By the 19th of July 1943, a section of 3 Squadron had travelled by sea in landing-craft directly from Africa to Sicily to join up with the rest of the Squadron, who had arrived at Pachino airstrip via Malta with some of the latest “long-tailed” Kittyhawks.
Tom Russell:
They didn’t take all of our ground crew, they only took half the crew to look after us. But all the aircraft went across to Malta. And then from there we did targets over in Sicily. And then when they’d moved forward, our ground crew went across straight from Africa to Sicily. And we flew across to a place called Pachino, which was the first one.
We were dive bombing shipping in Catania Harbour and we were also attacking other targets up around Mount Etna and various things but without my log book it’s a bit hard to recall. I got trouble with my hydraulic system from one of the flights coming back and I actually ran off the end of the runway. They had five runways down that little island and it was very dicey coming in to land, you had to watch the other circuits and each of them seemed to have a dip at the end of it. And there’s actually a bomber aircraft went off the end of one of them there and I think the gunner was probably killed, the rear gunner. But that was our base to attack it but apparently they moved up more quickly from the bottom of Sicily. The Germans moved more quickly, so we were able to go over much more quickly too.
At this stage, there were seven Australian squadrons in the Mediterranean area, attached to the various R.A.F Wings. They were operating from six widely-spread bases and they flew six different types of aircraft; Kittyhawk and Hurricane fighters; and Wellington, Baltimore, Hudson and Halifax bombers. Another nine Australian squadrons were based at R.A.F. stations in the United Kingdom, making a total of 16 Australian squadrons poised for an intended attack on Continental Italy and German-occupied Europe.
3 Squadron flew their first twelve operational sorties from their new Sicilian base on the 24th of July, bombing enemy gun positions around Catania. Intensive strafing and bombing attacks were continued for weeks against the Axis front-line and communications, then the Squadron moved further north to Agnone, closer to the Germans stronghohld around Mt Etna.
During these sorties, the Kittyhawks constantly ran into heavy anti-aircraft fire. In one notable instance, when Sergeant Howell-Price’s aircraft was hit, he crashed into the sea. Squadron Leader Reg Stevens sighted him swimming a half-mile offshore. Stevens flew above him until an Air-Sea-Rescue Walrus flying boat arrived, but shells from an enemy coastal gun prevented the Walrus from picking up Howell-Price. So, naturally, Stevens attacked and silenced the gun. However, his aircraft was hit, and he was forced to crash-land. Nevertheless, both pilots survived their ordeals and re-joined the Squadron by nightfall.
On the night of the 11th of August, a bombing attack destroyed a lot of the 239 Wing’s aircraft and over 80 airmen were killed or injured during the raid. Fortunately, 3 Squadron’s personnel injuries were slight.
Kenneth McRae:
It was a totally different war in Sicily, I think. We were gradually getting aerial control. And I can’t recall any more than one night of bombing in Sicily. Near the end we had one very good one. They came over one night when we were at Agnone. And it had been built on a swamp, and the Jerry’s had used it, and they knew we’d be using it. And so what happened was they, two planes came over and dropped flares all around the strip, two green ones, and then the bombers came in and of course, all they did was fly up the channel and drop bombs. Fortunately a week before we’d been moved from down there because the malaria rate was too high. Millions of mosquitos, Sicily leads the world in malaria. So they moved all our bods, left our tents down there, and we had other tents up the side of the hill, oh, a mile and a half, two mile away, up high. The Royal Regiment looked after, the Royal Regiment of guards belonging to the air force, they stayed down and guarded the place and everyone else could stay down. We had quite a few sergeants stay down there. They had their tent, they were quite happy. Anyway this night, ruddy hell was let loose down there and when we could we sent a dullard [bloke] down there to see if all our blokes were OK. They were, but quite a few of the RAF regiment had been scheduled and lots of planes. The next morning when you went down, they had dropped these great big, probably thousand pounders and they’d gone into the soft earth, way down underneath, and delayed action, hadn’t gone off. I had my tent down there, so I said you’d better remove the tent. So they removed the tent, I don’t know where it went up, but it went up and there’d be a crater, forty feet across and thirty feet deep, so the ‘drome was speckled with them. The first job was to explode the unexploded ones, which made these big craters, get the bulldozers in and fill them all up. I think only half a day we lost. They had the whole strip finished, operating again.
On the 3rd of September, exactly four years after the war against Germany had commenced, 300 landing craft containing 8,000 Eighth Army troops (British and Canadian) left the eastern harbours of Sicily and crossed the Straits to land, without much resistance, on the Calabrian shore.
3 Squadron Invades Mainland Italy…
3 Squadron continued to operate out of the Agnone landing grounds in Sicily, attacking enemy transports and supporting the landed forces until, on the 14th of September, an advance party from the Squadron moved to an Italian airfield at Grottaglie near Taranto on the heel of Italy.
Kenneth McRae:
And the Anzio people made a landing, but they couldn’t get off the beach. And the trenches were only twenty of thirty yards apart, couldn’t call on bombers, because they’d wipe both of them out. So they wanted Fighter Bombers. Well we were over in Sicily. No way could a Fighter Bomber fly from Sicily, right across the other side of Italy and get back again. So they said right, be ready to go in the morning and you’ll land at Grottaglie in Italy, so they brought the division in, half at night, half in the morning, took the place and secured it. But they only saw a couple of Germans, which they grabbed. Everybody had gone across to fight the landing. So it didn’t take much to secure it at all. We landed no trouble, no one firing at us anywhere. And I think I told you about getting stuck into refuelling, a hell of a job. Took a long time. But it was most successful.
The main force of the Eighth Army and the US 5th Army had landed at Salerno on the Italian Western coast (about 200 miles north-west of Grottaglie) and the Italians had simultaneously announced their surrender. The Allies nonetheless encountered heavy German resistance at Salerno and having failed to secure a beach-side airstrip, desperately called for external air support.
So, from the moment that 3 Squadron landed on Italian soil, the small group of pilots and ground staff joined together to manually refuel and arm the Kittyhawks. Within an hour, they had taken off again to begin the first of many operations against the encircling German forces at Salerno. This flight, led by Brian Eaton, was the first Allied air formation to operate from an Italian Mainland airbase; another “first” for the squadron.
Kenneth McRae:
So Brian Eaton came to me and he said, ‘Pick enough troops to service twelve air craft’. And petrol. (UNCLEAR) Petrol had to go out in 44 gallon drums, cooks and bottle washers, few ambulance people. Others that would be able to operate. In case they got hurt and had to be taken care of. We choofed off about ten o’clock in the morning, flying to Italy.
We got over Italy and looking down at the lovely green fields there, and vineyards, and that morning they’d put a half an airborne division in to secure the area, and they’d sent half the night before, and they had to secure the area outside Taranto, and outside Taranto, five or six miles out, was Grottaglie air field. So we landed on Grottaglie airfield, didn’t see any Germans, but our air force was flying around us the whole way, top and bottom and side cover. We landed and some of the blokes started to refuel the air craft and the others had a feed as soon as it was ready, changed over, and they took a bloody long time to hand pump from 44 gallon drums for all these air craft. We got every bit we could into them. Then came the bombing up, what a ruddy job. Lifting 500 pound without a cradle, you know. God. Anyway we got the job done, and they choofed off fairly late in the afternoon, must have been three o’clock maybe later, and they choofed off and, oh, they must have been gone two and a half or three hours, and they came back. Night time. And we were on a strange strip, there was no lights or anything, no tanker there. So we had to put tins of kerosene out on the strip to mark it, and Brian Eaton came in and he made a perfect landing, no trouble, he was a pre-war bloke, and the next bloke to come in was right, and the third bloke didn’t seem to be moving, he pranged. We had three prangs out of the aircraft. I forget whether we had twelve or fifteen, but we had at least a dozen, we had three prangs, but that was a cheap thing to have to what they did. They didn’t see any German aircraft, and they just bombed and strafed, and used every bit of ammo in this area where they were held up, and I forget the exact words, but next morning we had a signal from the Commander in Chief, it said something like, ‘Thank you 3 Squadron. We’re inland’. They were able to get off the beach and, of course, that started the big push up. Monty soon caught up and there was a big, Germans used to hold us up a lot. Yes, Nails Line and everything like that, everything would stop, they’d have everything stuck there. Yes, you’d have to blast your way through by air. The whole of the air force would get on to some job and they’d just blast five or six mile out of the enemy, bombs, you name it, rockets.
On the 22nd of September, an advance party moved 50 miles north to Bari, which Eighth Army had captured the day before, but no sooner had the rest of the Squadron moved up to Bari than the entire Wing was relocated further north to a badly-damaged aerodrome at Foggia.
Again, the Squadron was on the attack, bombing and strafing enemy transport supply lines, tanks, gun positions and troops around the rail centre of Termoli, flying on occasions at only 500 feet. Although two Kittyhawks were shot down during these missions, their pilots managed to either bail out or crash-land in German-held territory. With great courage and ingenuity, they evaded the German soldiers pursuing them. The fugitives were helped by friendly Italian farmers who held a strong dislike for their ex-allies ever since Italy’s new leader, Marshal Badoglio, had declared war on Germany and Japan on the 13th of October, 1943.
Despite heavy rains during October, armed reconnaissance of the area between Pescara and Termoli continued, involving many attacks on rail and motor transports until, on the 24th of October, orders were changed and the Squadron began the first of a series of anti-shipping operations over the Adriatic Sea using long-range fuel tanks fitted onto the Kittyhawks. Shipping around the Lagosta Islands and German fortifications in Yugoslavia were common targets set by the Desert Air Force controllers.
The next airfield to be occupied by the Squadron, together with the rest of 239 Wing, was at Melini where they had to live under canvas in intensely cold weather with frequent rain. It made living difficult and flying even more difficult. But still a dozen or more sorties a day were made, some against German shipping in Yugoslavian harbours. By mid-November, winter gales had slowed most operational activity.
Towards the end of November, the Eighth Army overcame strong German resistance and crossed the Sangro River to establish a bridgehead. Wet weather rendered airfields unserviceable and generally hindered air activity.
Stopped at Monte Cassino
The Allies’ plan was to liberate Rome as quickly as possible, but the strongly-defended “Winter Line” that the Germans had established right across the Italian peninsula south of Rome, temporarily stopped Eighth Army. Violent weather and another enemy defence line, known as the ‘Gustav Line’, slowed down the US 5th Army trying to get to Rome to join up with Eighth Army.
3 Squadron spent December dive-bombing and strafing enemy fortifications and carrying out raids across the sea on German targets in Yugoslavia.
1944
In January of 1944, 239 Wing Leader, South-African Lieutenant Colonel Wilmot, had test-flown a Kittyhawk carrying two 500-pound bombs under its wings plus a 1,000-pound bomb under the fuselage (equalling the bomb-load of a twin-engined Boston bomber!), 3 Squadron began bombing with 1,000-pounders.
Flight Lieutenant Jack Doyle would drop 3 Squadron’s first thousand-pounder and his direct hit was the first of many scored by the Squadron with these bombs.
Felix Sainsbury:
So the boys would like the idea of being dive bombers. They would go and dive bomb transport and whatever and then they could use themselves as fighters. So they could do two jobs with the one plane. Then later on we said, “Well, if they can carry one perhaps they can carry two”. So we set it up so we could put two 250 pounders side by side. Then after a while American bombs started turning up. It must have been under some system. So these American bombs started to show up. They were a different shape sort of bomb.
So they were carting 500 pounders then. Then they had 3 40 pounders under each wing. So we finished up with 6 cannons, 3 40 pounders under each wing, so that was 6 and a 500 pound bomb underneath.
The same planes when they went across to Whitley, I think they put a better motor in them, a heavier motor, and they were carrying a 500 pounder under each wing, and a thousand pounder in the guts. I never thought they’d lift off the ground but they did. So they were a good solid aircraft the Kittyhawk.
Anzio Landing
As January 1944 ended, the Squadron was bombing targets closer to Rome as part of a new Allied offensive to break through at Cassino.
February saw the Squadron resume long-range bombing runs over the Adriatic to Split Harbour in Yugoslavia and attacking and sinking enemy vessels along the way.
Charles Wannan:
We were briefed as usual down at the operations tent, and we were told that ships had been reported. They didn’t give us a description, but we were told that one might be a Siebel ferry, which was obviously a carrier ship – probably not only for men but for materiel; and the other was not identified. So we were sent off, a formation of twelve – the full squadron this time. I was leading the red section and Barry Finch was leading the top section. And as we were approaching the harbour of Fiume we saw first of all the Siebel l ferry right in the harbour, not tied up; and also what appeared to be a naval vessel. I called it a corvette though I don’t actually know that it was – I reported it as a corvette. So we went down and followed both of them.
That was short and sweet. The damage was quite clear, and there was no question of fudging on this one! So we went back and reported our success and we were pretty pleased about that.
Barry Finch:
Chas and I, Chas was going to lead this formation of twelve across to have a look over a place called Fiume Harbour.
I was going to lead top cover. Top cover is like another six above the other formation up sun, so that if any other aircraft attack us top cover is the one that engages it first and protects the fellows in the bottom section from losing their bombs. We took off with twelve Kittyhawks with Chas leading in the front and finally we got over Fiume. The briefing was quite full we knew exactly what we were going to look for but we didn’t have any definite target as to any specific ship or anything like that; that was up to us. When Chas got over there they started to throw up a hell of a lot of heavy anti-aircraft fire, the heavy ack ack, the eighty-eight, that’s the black stuff, and it was quite exciting for a while. Chas said that he could see a small ship down there that was one of the coastal ships that looked after the coast of Yugoslavia. And the reason we were concerned about it was that the Germans had sent a lot of troops down to southern Yugoslavia in the event of a landing in that part of the world. If there had been they would need some sort of defence down there. But now the landing had taken place in Normandy, he wanted to bring his troops out and there was only about three ways that he could get them out, and one was to bring them through Fiume and try to get to another track inland from there, up into Vienna. Or he could take them by water from Fiume up into northern Adriatic somewhere. So Chas took his six down and they really knocked this thing over with what he could see floating around there. It was just sailing away and just leaving the harbour. It sank and they struggled ashore and got the ship more or less beached but it was all bombed out. It was very successful that part of it. Then he says, “Alright you take your lot in and see what you can find. I think there is something else down there that you might like to look at.” And I found a corvette, a German corvette just heading up the coast. We went after it and we got three bombs, a direct hit, and the rest were all very, very near misses and the thing just disappeared. One minute it was there and the next it was underwater, it was just incredible. Down she went like a packet of crackers. I took all the fellows back and rejoined the formation with Chas, and he said, “Would you like to do a recce and see if the other one is still going or is it all OK… are you quite sure of that?”
And I said, “I’m pretty sure about it, but I’ll go back and have a look if you’d like to hang around.” He said, “Alright.” And so I decided to go back alone over the town, and of course this time all the anti-aircraft is firing at me, not just six aircraft but one, or not twelve but one. And it wasn’t very pleasant at all so I thought I’ll do a quick trip down at low level.
I could see what I wanted to see already really, and I’ll see if I can sharpen a few up with a bit of a strafe as I go down the hill, ‘cause there is a great big hill behind Fiume and so that’s what I did.
So we were credited with the two ships, one corvette and one Seagull, We had another one in the Mustangs, a similar sort of trip only it went right over the other side well past Fiume, out into the sort of central Yugoslavia.
And I was leading on this occasion and we found two locomotives which were chugging away pulling great trains behind them. One was a troop train and we got the lot, really knocked it off the line and blew the locomotive up with the strafing and the other one, we got him too. He was a good strafe full of Germans and we got him.
Multiple attempts had been made to capture Cassino and on the 12th of May 3 Squadron’s Kittyhawks carried 2,000-pound bomb loads and made several attacks on enemy gun emplacements in the area and on long-range gun emplacements in Atina. Eventually, on the 18th of May, the German stronghold monastery at Cassino was captured by the Allies in a tremendous battle against crack German paratroops who had fought tenaciously to hold this strategically important gateway to Rome.
After five months at Cutella, on the 24th of May, the squadron were on their way to a new base at San Angelo. Along the way, bombing the Roccagroga area, Warrant Officer Jennings, went down. Surviving behind enemy lines, Jennings was disguised by some Italian locals and he spent five long days avoiding Germans and walked back to the Allied front line.
Barry Finch:
This was obviously an interesting situation. We were busy watching Rome and it was getting to the point where it was about to be entered by the Americans and the New Zealanders who were pushing like hell up the line. In fact, on my first operational flight they announced that they had taken Montecasino Abbey which had been holding things up for a long time. So, once they lost that the troops were able to push straight through on the old highway all the way through to Rome, with a little bit of restraint of course, from the Germans who stopped them as long as they could. Three of our senior pilots took off in a three tonner, went over to where the troops were so they went in with the troops on the first day, into Rome. Meanwhile, I was back on flying again of course, and busy doing these close [air] support operations with all the Kittyhawk fellows, as often as two and three times a day. I did a lot of flying in those last few weeks, it was a good place to be.
Breakthrough to Rome
On the 25th of May, the enemy began to evacuate Rome under the onslaught of the combined forces of the 5th and Eighth Armies.
3 Squadron flew constant sorties for the next week against the retreating enemy on the roads around Rome and they had a field day on the 30th when they found 200 transports jammed nose-to-tail and three wide on a road south of Subiaco. The result, after other Squadrons from the Wing joined them, was a long-charred column of wrecks.
Charles Wannan:
Now, once that line was broken the Germans retreated to the next defensive line, and that meant movement by road. They had no naval force down there at all. They had virtually no air force by that time, either.
So those narrow mountain roads were just clogged with traffic. And we would sometimes fly three operations a day per pilot. So that left little time for anything else. Two flights a day, two operations a day for each pilot was quite common. It was high summer and the days were long and the targets were plentiful. It wasn’t just a matter of having targets, but it was a matter of the strategy of the army to interdict this movement as much as possible and to inflict as much damage on men and materiel as they could before they took up their next defensive position; and so the roads were clogged, and during the daytime, some of the aerial photographs you can still see, just showed these long lines of vehicles.
Some of them were HDVs – horse drawn vehicles – which we used to claim. That might be more shocking to you than claiming a human target, but they used anything they could to get out and set up this defensive line. And whenever this situation subsisted: cutting narrow mountain roads, cutting bridges, cutting railways, hitting at enemy strong points and armoured points in support of the army – all that occurred mainly in the early and mid summer. If any bad weather intervened, then we might be sent off to Yugoslavia – mainly to the coast to interfere with marine traffic up and down the coast of Yugoslavia. That was a favourite form of transport for the Germans because there were no partisans out there on the water. They were hiding in the woods and valleys and mountains of the mainland … or the hinterland I should say. So the Germans tried to move a lot of things by boat, and we would be sent over to knock those out whenever we could, whenever it was considered to be a target which had priority over these other targets I’ve been describing. And it was only bad weather where we really had such low cloud that we couldn’t get at a target without extreme danger to hitting hills that were not clearly, well, they weren’t visible at all.
During the 4th and 5th of June, the Allies marched into Rome and, a week later, the Squadron moved to Guidonia, which was little more than an hour’s drive north-east of Rome. During the next ten days, many of the men in the Squadron took the opportunity of visiting this famous city but, during the same time, they still flew 48 sorties against enemy transports and gun positions.
Then, on the 23rd of June the Wing again moved, this time to Falerium. Day after day, the Wing provided air support for the ground troops as they advanced northward, chasing a retreating German army. The pace stepped up and on some days the Squadron flew 36 sorties as far north as Florence and Rimini. The squadron continued to move up close behind the line to provide constant bombing and strafing sorties at the retreating enemy.
The Gothic Line
By the 15th of July, the enemy had retreated north past Arezzo, but they didn’t retreat from Florence and it took almost another month before Florence could be liberated. During that month the Squadron continued to provide air-support for the attacking Eighth Army and still managed to carry out many shipping and rail strikes.
Barry Finch:
I hated the time around the Arezzo bit which was very vicious and very dirty bit. The weather was fine and clear.
Arezzo was controlling a major access road to Florence and the flying actions were very bitter. They were bringing in artillery without time to camouflage it or conceal it and we were going down to knock it out as soon as we could. It would be a bit like sitting here and you could see the airplanes over there going down in the bomb dive, and that’s how close we really were. You could do a trip over in ten minutes and back again in another five or ten, or thereabouts. The results were always close support work, heavy ack ack, and at night, in the last run of the day, was the worst.
By that time you’d done three or four and instead of just seeing the puffs of smoke or the explosions of the anti-aircraft fire you were seeing the explosions in colour, technicolour and you were getting the tracers and all the bright lights. It was like Sydney Harbour on Boxing Day or Christmas time or New Years Eve. All the colours made it even worse, and I didn’t like it much. It didn’t matter but we lost two or three blokes around there. It was a very sad time for us.
By this time the Luftwaffe was rarely seen, however, the German anti-aircraft gun crews were dangerously accurate against the attacking Kittyhawks.
3 Squadron was the first RAAF unit to be equipped with North American P-5l Mustang III and between the 13th and the 15th of November, they received five of these new fighter bombers. A few days later, operations were suspended while pilots and ground staff trained on their new aircraft and before long, most were saying that the Mustang was quite an improvement on the faithful old Kittyhawk.
Charles Wannan:
We were told towards the end of my tour – probably in November, that we were going to be converted to Mustangs, and that was a great morale booster. They were very fine aircraft and streets ahead of the Kitty Hawk – steady in the bomb dive, faster, more manoeuvrable, and really nice to fly, well-behaved. And so the day arrived when a few Mustangs turned up at the strip, and in turn we were shown the cockpit and any differences we might not have been familiar with from the Kitty; and told to take her off. They didn’t have two seats, only the one seat. We’d go up and do a few aerobatics and get used to the feel of it and come back so the next chap could have a ride. We did that for a few days.
Barry Finch:
It was just so much faster and it had a supercharger which at fourteen thousand feet or thereabouts, would come in as though a giant hand had come in and grabbed the aircraft and thrown it like a dart. It was just an extraordinary feeling of power. The power was, you’d open the throttle and you’d get fifty-two inches of boost pressure which was enormous compared to what a Kittyhawk would have. This big prop would go round and ‘hooley dooley’ it would just rocket you down the runway. They would come in over the fence to land at a hundred and twenty miles an hour compared to a Kittyhawk which was around about eighty. It was a lot faster coming in to land and that took a bit of getting used to for a little while. But apart from that it was just the most superb aircraft that you could imagine.
The pilots found that Mustang’s steady, smooth diving capability gave them more accurate bombing results and its speed, rate of climb and range were far better than their former Kittyhawks.
It could fly at 430 miles per hour at 30,000 feet and reach that height in about twelve and a half minutes. With a long-range fuel tank attached, it could fly for five to seven hours and cover almost 2,500 miles. It could carry two 1,000-pound bombs or a single bomb plus the long-range fuel tank, which could be dropped before the start of a bombing dive. The Mustang had only four 0.5in calibre machine guns and carried 250 rounds of ammunition less than the Kittyhawk but still provided adequate fire power.
The Squadron’s last Kittyhawk operational flight, comprising 12 aircraft, took off from their new landing ground at Fano on the 20th of November 1944. After completing an attack on gun targets in the Faenza area, they were handed over to the Maintenance Unit for transfer to other squadrons as required.
Then, on the 22nd, the Squadron’s first operational flight of six Mustangs escorted a Lysander on a special mission over northern Italy. Incredibly, during the journey, a 12th US Air Force Mustang mistook the slow-flying Lysander for an enemy and shot it down before the Squadron escort could do anything to prevent it, but subsequently the Squadron’s six pilots were cleared of any blame whatsoever.
Charles Wannan:
I think probably the first operation I went on [in Mustangs] was the one in which those two agents were shot down in the Lysander. Incidentally, it seems hard to conceive these days, but we were not on the same channel – the same radio channel.
We were in Mustangs remember, which were far speedier than the Lysander, just doing this weaving around the Lysander. Because it was so slow. We had to weave in order to keep back with it. And the American formation was over here at say ten o’clock and they just flew around for awhile and then just suddenly, one of them took it into his head to shoot down this aeroplane which he had wrongly identified as a German aeroplane. It had the RAF rondels on it, and was quite different … it was noticeably different from the similar German aircraft, but obviously his aircraft recognition skills were lacking. He thought he’d shot shown an enemy aircraft.
Early in December, it was so cold and wet that the Squadron was stood down from operations for several days.
When flying did resume, the weather was unpredictable. On the 6th, ten-tenths cloud closed in on a flight of 3 Squadron Mustangs returning from a strafing run over Yugoslavia and one, flown by Warrant Officer R. E. R. Fountain, disappeared without trace. Another six of the ten aircraft from 5 Squadron, South African Air Force that were flying on the same mission, also disappeared in heavy cloud that day so perhaps, if the very experienced Flight Lieutenant Ian Roediger hadn’t been leading the 3 Squadron flight, the Squadron’s losses could have been much worse that day.
Since mid-September, three other pilots had been killed, two going down after being hit by anti-aircraft fire and the third never returned from a solo strafing run.
Christmas 1944 was the 5th Christmas that the Squadron had spent overseas. By then the Allied armies had the upper hand, but German resistance was still very strong throughout Europe.
By the end of 1944, four 239 Wing Squadrons had been equipped with Mustangs, but few of the Mustangs had engaged enemy aircraft, as these were now rarely seen in Northern Italy. However, on Boxing Day, Warrant Officer Quinn of 3 Squadron was jumped out of the sun by two Italian fascist Bf 109’s. Quinn was shot down before he could retaliate but he bailed out successfully. Later, having jettisoned their bombs, CO Murray Nash and his Flight of Mustangs stalked and ambushed one of the enemy aircraft, downing it.
1945
3 Squadron received orders to begin dropping Napalm Bombs at the beginning of 1945 and their first target was an enemy pocket near Alfonsine. Six Mustangs went in first and each dropped their two 500-pound bombs into the target area then the other six Mustangs, armed with Napalm bombs, followed in long shallow dives at a height of about 100 feet and dropped their loads. The results were devastating.
The squadron did a few weeks in February of “blind” bombing from 12,000 feet. Bad weather in March made it difficult to target anything. And by the beginning of April the final offensive by the Eighth Army began with 3 Squadron and the rest of the Wing flying almost continuous formations of Mustangs in flights of four, five and six aircraft to bomb and strafe the enemy positions for much of that month.
On the 5th of May, the Squadron completed its last operational flight, carrying out a reconnaissance of the areas around Fiume, Trieste and Udine. Warrant Officer Arthur Pardy was one of the pilots who flew that last sortie.
Two weeks later, 3SQN moved to Lavariano, where they finally began to relax for the first time in years, although many in the Squadron confessed to a strong feeling of anticlimax and even depression with the realisation that the war against Japan still had to be won.
Squadron Leader Murray Nash continued to lead the Squadron during its wind-down period which involved final moves on the 20th of August to Taranto and back to Al Maza, Cairo, on the 13th of September in preparation for its return to Australia.
By the 15th of December, 1945 the Squadron was back at Point Cook and Flight Lieutenant A. J. Hoelter took temporary command, on the 16th, until Flying Officer W. M. Campbell relieved him on the 11th of March, 1946. But, by then the RAAF Command had decided to disband the Squadron so, for the next three months, only a skeleton structure of 3 Squadron existed to carry out the necessary administration work.
On the 30th of July 1946, the Squadron was officially disbanded.
3 Squadron’s record of 25,663 operational flight hours and 192.5 enemy aircraft destroyed, 63 probable, and 141 damaged, made it the highest-scoring RAAF fighter squadron. The squadron had also destroyed a further 29 aircraft on the ground,709 motor vehicles, 12 locomotives, and 325 rail-cars were claimed. The Squadron also scored 73 direct dive-bombing hits on bridges and more than 800 other ground targets, including roads, railways, buildings (such as pinpoint raids on German headquarters) and enemy artillery. One large dam was “busted” to prevent the Germans using its water as a weapon. In strikes over the sea, 54 vessels of varying sizes were sunk, including 10 ships of more than 1,000 tons each.
The Squadron had lost 78 personnel during their deployment.
They will not be forgotten.
