On this day - 18th August 1940

Sunday August 18th 1940 dawned a typical late summer's day - fine and hazy with the haze burning off as the morning went on. The Battle of Britain was at it's height with the Luftwaffe attempting to destroy the RAF as a prelude to a land invasion of Great Britain that was tentatively planned for the middle of September. The RAF's airfields had been the main targets, along with the radar stations along the south coast and attacks on convoys in the English Channel. There were also raids on the oil refineries in the Thames Estuary and on Bristol, Portsmouth, Liverpool and South Wales but these were not the main focus of the Luftwaffe's attentions - the RAFs airfields and the disablement of Fighter Command was the main prize.

On this beautiful Sunday morning as the haze cleared, the radar plots picked up massed formations of German aircraft heading for England. Sixty Heinkels attacked RAF Biggin Hill and a further 48 Dorniers and Ju88s attacked Kenley. This was just the beginning - the fighter stations at Croydon, Hawkinge and West Malling were also attacked. All of these airfields were defended stoutly - 64, 111 and 615 Squadrons from Kenley defended their own airfield as well as Hawkinge. Whilst they were engaging the enemy, over 100 bombs fell on Kenley, temporarily putting it out of action so that some of the defenders were diverted to land at Croydon whilst repairs were carried out, although 64 Squadron managed to get down at their home airfield due to an improvised landing strip being marked out between the bomb craters. Croydon Airport had itself received some attention, with 19 bombs damaging hangars and outbuildings.

The attack on Biggin Hill was also stubbornly defended but here 32 and 610 Squadrons were scrambled on the initiative of the Station Commander, Group Captain Grice. This was due to the radar plots being overwhelmed with the sheer numbers of attackers but although the defending squadrons were ordered into the air at relatively short notice, they destroyed ten of the attacking German bombers which on this occasion merely added further craters to the airfield without destroying any aircraft on the ground.

The next assault on this day came in the early afternoon when the RAF airfields at Thorney Island and Gosport were attacked by Stuka dive bombers as was the Fleet Air Arm station at Ford, in Sussex and the radar installation at Poling, near Arundel in Sussex. This time the cumbersome Ju87 Stukas were routed by the defending RAF fighters of 43, 152 and 234 Squadrons, which destroyed seventeen out of the twenty five attacking aircraft. This was the final time that the Stukas took any meaningful part in the Battle of Britain - they had been suffering alarming levels of losses and had become a liability for the Luftwaffe, as well as a death trap for their crews.

The final attacks of the day came in the late afternoon when Croydon was attacked once again and twelve Me1o9s attacked RAF Manston from beneath the radar and destroyed two Spitfires on the ground as well as killing an airman and injuring fifteen others. The night saw bombing raids on Bristol and minelaying operations in the Thames Estuary and Bristol Channel.

So ended Sunday 18th August 1940; the Luftwaffe had lost a total of sixty nine aircraft against the RAF's thirty four plus another twenty nine on the ground. Whilst this meant the losses were about equal, when it came to air combat the losses were about 2:1 in the RAF's favour. Destroyed aircraft could be replaced quickly but pilots and aircrew could not and this was where the advantage remained with the British - the RAF's pilots who were not killed could bale out and be rescued over home territory whilst those from the Luftwaffe were either killed outright or taken prisoner.

This was a battle of attrition which the RAF was winning but the sheer numbers of the attackers meant that it would be a near run thing and it would take a blunder by Hitler when he ordered the switching of attacks from the RAF's airfields to London, to make the outcome certain.

On the 18th August 1940, this was all still in the future but this date will be remembered as the day when both sides in the Battle of Britain suffered the most material damage. As Alfred Price called his excellent book on the subject, this was The Hardest Day.

Published Sources:

The Most Dangerous Enemy, Stephen Bungay - Aurum Press, 2000
The Hardest Day, Alfred Price - Arms & Armour Press, 1979
The Narrow Margin, Derek Wood with Derek Dempster - Hutchinson 1961

The worst attack was the last

So said Winston Churchill of the Luftwaffe's raid on London on the night of 10th/11th May 1941. Of course, this was not the last raid on London but it did prove to be the final raid of the 'First Blitz' as Hitler was turning his attention towards the east, towards his attack on the Soviet Union and he would need all of his resources for that ultimately self-destructive campaign.

The Luftwaffe never completely left London alone either, for although there was a welcome respite from the mass raids, there was always the threat of the 'lone raider' sent over to keep people's heads down and to test the air defences. The massed raids didn't start again until early 1944 and then were nowhere near the intensity of the great raids of 1940 and 1941, so much so that Londoners soon nicknamed these raids the 'Little Blitz' or 'Baby Blitz' hardened as they were by that time to air attack and all that came with it.

However, to return to May 10th/11th, this was the heaviest raid on London both in terms of the amount of bombs dropped and the intensity of the attack. The sirens sounded the alert at 11 p.m. and the final bomb was logged as falling at 5.37 a.m. and in that period of about 6 1/2 hours, something in the region of 700 tons of high explosive bombs and parachute mines plus 86 tons of incendiaries were dropped on London.

By the time the 'All Clear' sounded 1,436 Londoners were dead and 1,800 were seriously injured; nearly 2,200 fires were started, some 5,500 homes were destroyed with a similar number damaged beyond immediate repair and 12,000 people had been rendered homeless. From the attackers, 14 aircraft were shot down, a seemingly modest figure given the number of bombers involved but a foretaste of things to come for the Germans when they tangled with the always improving British defences on future raids.

However, mere statistics cannot convey the sheer terror and destruction this raid brought to London, neither can the words of a writer nearly 70 years down the line but perhaps the words of someone who was there at the time can; Reg Matthews was a General Post Office telecoms engineer who was there at the time and had been through all of the big raids - "There never was a raid like it. Another one like that and they'd have had us on our backs."

These words were echoed by countless Londoners who had been through what they hoped had been the worst of it - 'Black Saturday' September 7th 1940, December 29th 1940 when the City of London had burned and the two big raids in the Spring of 1941 to mark Hitler's birthday - 16th/17th and 19th/20th April. All of these raids had been bad enough and almost every other night there had been other attacks - 57 consecutive nights from 'Black Saturday' and precious few nights off subsequently.

Apart from the civilian deaths, many famous old buildings that had hitherto survived the Blitz were destroyed that night - The Queen's Hall in Langham Place famous for being the venue of the first Promenade Concerts in 1895 was lost forever. Cannon Street Station lost it's ornately glazed roof and station hotel. The House of Commons Chamber was burned and destroyed (today's version is a careful reconstruction) and Westminster Abbey badly damaged. The Royal College of Surgeons building in Lincolns Inn was hit and presented the rescuers with the strange task of rescuing parts of bodies preserved in alcohol. For every famous building hit, there were many other less well known but no less important buildings destroyed - the homes of scores of Londoners, resulting in the homeless figures mentioned previously. Another well known building to be bombed that night was St Clement Danes Church, one of Wren's masterpieces which was burned to a shell, although later restored as the Central Church of the RAF.

Today, outside St Clement Danes alongside the statue of Air Chief Marshal Dowding, Head of Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, stands another likeness. This is of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris, who in May 1941 was soon to become head of Bomber Command and charged with taking the war to the Germans. On the night of 29th December 1940, the night of the 'Second Great Fire of London,' Harris had stood on the roof of the Air Ministry with the Chief of the Air Staff, Sir Charles Portal and had said quietly to him "They are sowing the wind, now they shall reap the whirlwind." This was the only occasion, Harris wrote afterwards, that he felt vengeful but whether it was the only time or not, Harris was true to his word. When he took over at Bomber Command in February 1942, he was soon to build a force capable of making the events of May 10th/11th look minor in comparison to the whirlwind unleashed on Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden and so many other German cities.

Published Sources:

The City That Wouldn't Die - Richard Collier, Collins 1959
Westminster in War - William Sansom, Faber & Faber 1957
Backs to the Wall - Leonard Mosley, Weidenfeld & Nicholson 1971
Bomber Harris, His Life and Times - Henry Probert, Greenhill Books 2003

Enemy Aliens, Internees and the Arandora Star

One aspect of the Home Front of the Second World War that today is often forgotten is the internment of all so called 'Enemy Aliens' at the commencement of the War. At the outbreak of war, there were in the region of 80,000 potential enemy aliens in Britain, who it was feared could be potential spies or be willing to assist our enemies in the event of an invasion.

Therefore, all Germans and Austrians over the age of 16 were interviewed by special tribunals and afterwards placed into three categories - Category 'A' high security risks, numbering about 600 who were immediately interned. Category 'B' numbering about 6,500 were 'Doubtful Cases' who were supervised and subjected to restrictions. Category 'C' numbered about 64,000 who were deemed to be no security risk and of whom about 55,000 were Jewish refugees from Nazi oppression who had escaped from Europe.

The situation was further compounded in the Spring of 1940 with the combination of Italy's entry into the war and the failure of the Allied campaign in Norway, which led to agitation amongst certain elements of the press for more alien internment. Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered that all of the 19,000 Italians in this country be interned even though many of these people had lived in this country for ages. Many of the additional Germans and Austrians rounded up were the very same Jewish refugees who had months earlier been deemed to have been no threat. Many of these internees were held on the Isle of Man as they had been during the Great War and in one camp on the island, over 80 per cent of those held were Jewish refugees. An outcry in Parliament led to the first releases of internees in August 1940 and by the summer of 1941, only 5,000 of those deemed genuine security risks were left in internment camps.

Apart from those detained in this country and the Isle of Man, over 7,000 internees were deported. Some of these were sent to Australia, where those sent on the s.s. Dunera suffered from appalling conditions and also the humiliation of having their personal possessions either stolen or thrown overboard by the British military guards. The vast majority of those deported were sent to Canada and it was on board one of the vessels destined for that country, the s.s. Arandora Star that tragedy struck.

The Arandora Star was a passenger ship owned by the Blue Star Line which had been built by Cammell Laird of Birkenhead in 1927. Before the war, she had operated mainly in the luxury cruise market to such destinations as South America, Norway, Florida and the West Indies.

Requisitioned as a troopship on the outbreak of War, she had sailed from Liverpool on 1st July 1940 carrying a total of 1,673 people of whom 1,299 were male German and Italian Prisoners of War and internees broken down as follows - 174 Officers and crew of the Arandora Star, 200 British Military Guards, 565 Germans, of whom 86 were military POWs of 'bad character' and 734 Italian civilian internees. The vessel was not marked with a Red Cross, nor had the Admiralty requested 'free passage' for her and to compound the error, she was sailing without an escort.

At 06.15 on the 2nd July, barely one day out of Liverpool, she was torpedoed by the German U Boat U-47, commanded by Gunther Prien, one of the 'Ace' U Boat commanders. Prien supposedly mistook the vessel for an Armed Merchant Cruiser but in all probability thought that he was sinking a loaded troopship, which he was, but not loaded with the cargo he had thought. The Arandora Star sank after less than an hour but in that time, did manage to transmit a distress signal, which guided a Sunderland flying boat to the scene, which in turn guided HMCS St Laurent, a Canadian destroyer which had been escorting the battleship HMS Nelson, to the scene of the sinking.

The St Laurent reached the site of the sinking in the early afternoon and found that the doomed vessel had managed to launch 10 lifeboats and scores of rafts. There were also many survivors in the water, clinging to pieces of wreckage, many of whom were coated in oil and unable to help themselves. In a remarkable rescue, the St Laurent managed to pick up all of the survivors in the boats and rafts, together with all those that could be found in the sea. The numbers saved included 322 Germans, 243 Italians, 163 Military Guards and 119 of the Officers and Crew of the Arandora Star. This left a total of 826 who perished, including the vessel's master, Captain Edgar Moulton and over 470 of the Italians, who bore the brunt of the casualties

Memorial to Captain Edgar Moulton at his home village of Broadhembury, Devon (author's photo)

Once the survivors were picked up, many tales of heroism emerged - Captain Edgar Moulton was posthumously awarded Lloyds War Medal for Bravery at Sea and a German Merchant Navy prisoner, Captain Otto Burfiend was posthumously cited for his heroism in the rescue attempt for staying aboard the sinking ship supervising the evacuation. Commander Harry De Wolf of HMCS St Laurent received a Mention in Dispatches for his supervision of the rescue operation.

When U-47 returned home to Wilhelmshaven, Prien discovered the truth about what he had unwittingly done. Needless to say, the fact the he had been responsible for the death of 713 Germans and their Italian allies on the Arandora Star was kept from the Axis public. Prien himself was lost along with U-47 and the rest of his crew on March 7th 1941, depth charged by HMS Wolverine in the North Atlantic.

The memorial pictured is located at St Peter's Italian Church in Clerkenwell Road, London.

Published Sources:

Engage the Enemy More Closely, Correlli Barnett - Hodder & Stoughton 1991

Hitler's U-Boat War; The Hunters 1939-42, Clay Blair - Weidenfield & Nicholson 1996

The Battle of The Atlantic, John Costello & Terry Hughes - Collins 1977

The Navy was here too.....

Bomb Disposal Officers were and are a special breed. It takes a special kind of courage to work calmly and quietly on an unexploded bomb knowing that one false move could mean disaster. It was during the Second World War that these men really came into the public consciousness with some acts of outstanding bravery coming to light.

It is perhaps not widely known that during the War bomb disposal in Britain was undertaken by both the Army and the Royal Navy. Apart from the usual mix of High Explosive (HE) and Incendiary (IB) bombs, the Luftwaffe also had in their armoury another lethal weapon - the Parachute Mine. As with all bombs, a fair number of those dropped were 'duds' to use the terminology of the time and these 'UXBs' had to be dealt with by the Bomb Disposal Squads. The conventional bombs were dealt with by the Army's Corps of Royal Engineers but the Parachute Mines, being identical to naval mines dropped at sea were dealt with by the Royal Navy.

These mines were truly terrifying weapons which being dropped by parachute, often descended quietly and then, being entangled in trees, overhead cables or street lamps exploded with a tremendous airburst effect, causing a huge amount of blast damage over a very wide area. Unlike conventional UXBs which were usually to be found at the bottom of a crater, unexploded parachute mines were often to be found draped in the most inaccessible places, hanging from trees, chimney pots, telephone wires and on one occasion, welded to the live conductor rail of a railway line. This particular mine, located on Hungerford Bridge just outside Charing Cross Station and over the River Thames, was successfully defused on 17th April 1941 after a six hour struggle by Lieutenant Ernest Giddens RNVR, who deservedly won a George Cross for his efforts, some of which entailed hitting the mine with a hammer and chisel in order to remove it from the live rail to which it had welded itself, so as to access the fuse.

Another two George Crosses were awarded to Sub Lieutenant Jack Easton RNVR and his assistant, Ordinary Seaman Bennett Southwell for their efforts in attempting to defuse a mine in Clifton Street, Hoxton on 17th October 1940. The outcome here was very different to that of the mine on Hungerford Bridge although the award of the medals was no less deserving.

Easton and Southwell were called to the scene and found the mine suspended through a hole in the ceiling of a house, with one end of it within about six inches of the floor. Easton looked up and saw that the parachute was partially wrapped around a chimney pot and also partially around an iron bedstead in the bedroom above. The two men set to work, having first plotted an escape route should the mechanism of the mine start to tick again, for if this were to happen, they knew that they had a mere twelve seconds to try and escape.

To make matters worse, when Easton started to work on the mine, he found that the fuse housing had been damaged as it crashed through the house and try as he might, he could not unscrew the the 'keep ring' beneath which was located the fuse. Suddenly, as he was trying to detach this ring, the mine slipped as the chimney above collapsed and above the sound of the falling brickwork, Easton heard the whirring of the mine's mechanism - it had come back to life.

He bellowed at OS Southwell to run and then ran himself. As he left the house, Easton briefly saw Southwell running up the street as he threw himself behind the structure of a brick and concrete surface air raid shelter. Easton heard no explosion but was briefly blinded by the flash of the detonation but that was all he experienced. The next thing he knew was that he was buried deeply beneath bricks and mortar; his head was between his legs and he thought that his back was broken but he could not move an inch as he was totally embedded beneath the rubble.

Easton later said; "To this day, I do not know how long I spent in my grave. Most of the time I was unconscious. The conscious moments were of horror and utter helplessness."

He was eventually dug out by the Rescue Squad and spent the next twelve months in hospital whilst his two broken legs, fractured pelvis and skull slowly healed. His assistant, Bennett Southwell was not so lucky - his decapitated body was eventually discovered and dug out six weeks later. The blast had destroyed Clifton Street and six adjoining streets and left a scene of utter devastation.

In January 1941, as he lay in his hospital bed, Easton was surprised to receive three cases of champagne sent to him by the Admiralty and was advised to listen to the radio at 9 p.m. that evening. It was then that he learned of his award of the George Cross. Bennett Southwell was also given the same award posthumously. Jack Easton eventually received his decoration from King George VI and Bennett Southwell's widow received her late husband's medal at the same investiture.

Jack Easton later returned to mine clearance - this time at Dartmouth, where he was appointed to motor minesweepers, eventually taking command of MMSs 6 and 22. He led a minesweeping flotilla on D-Day, when he was again injured by a German mine exploding beneath his ship.

After the war, Easton returned to his peacetime occupation as a solicitor with the family firm, William Easton's in London and died in 1994, aged 88.

Published Sources:

Navy News - October 2007
The War at Sea - John Winton, Hutchinson 1967
The London Gazette - 23rd January 1941

Is Your Journey Really Necessary?

This was the question asked of all potential travellers during wartime before they set out on their journey. During the Second World War, the British public transport network was hard pressed as never before or since. Whilst the railway network was far larger than that of today, the companies were under manned having lost many men to the fighting services and as the 'Phoney War' period progressed into the Blitz, the network was frequently disrupted by enemy action with railway and tram lines blocked, stations bombed and bus routes diverted or suspended. But our railway and bus companies rose magnificently to the challenge time and time again and in this article, we shall examine one or two examples as to how they coped.

The 'Big Four' railway companies, the Southern Railway, Great Western (GWR), London & North Eastern (LNER) and the London, Midland & Scottish (LMS) together with the London Passenger Transport Board were all effectively nationalised on 1st September 1939 when they were placed under the control of the Railway Executive Committee. In practice, the day to day management of these companies remained under their own control with the Committee basically forming a co-ordination role ensuring that the companies made the greatest possible contribution to the war effort.

The first contribution came on the same day as the formation of the Railway Executive Committee, when the mass evacuation of schoolchildren was put in place. In the space of four days, over half a million people, mainly children but also expectant mothers, the blind, the mentally ill and the disabled were moved out of London. Many of them by double decker buses and Green Line coaches but many more by train. Some were moved only relatively short distances. For example, many Bermondsey schoolchildren were evacuated to Worthing in Sussex, with those from Greenwich and Woolwich being sent to Reigate in Surrey. Some went much further afield to places such as Torquay and Newton Abbot in Devon where life to the children must have seemed strange indeed in comparison to the crowded and noisy streets of London. There was even a scheme to evacuate children to Canada by sea but this was stopped abruptly when one of the evacuation vessels, the 'City of Benares' was torpedoed and sunk with heavy loss of life. This particular method of evacuation falls outside the scope of this article but perhaps we shall return to it at a later opportunity.

The next logistical challenge came in May 1940 with the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force and their French allies to the Channel ports. The German advance had occurred so rapidly that the Allies had fallen back, at times in some disorder to Calais, Boulogne and once these ports had fallen, to Dunkirk. There were also later evacuations from ports further south such as St Nazaire, Brest and Le Havre but it is the evacuation from Dunkirk that has become etched in history.

On 21st May 1940, the Southern Railway's Operations Superintendent had attended a meeting at which he was asked to make provision for the movement of 300,000 troops to be disembarked at various South Coast ports. As a result of this meeting, all four of the railway companies were asked to provide 186 ten coach trains for the purpose of moving these troops. The Southern provided 55 of these trains and all of them were carefully marshalled onto the down lines to the south and southeast of London. The movement of troops began on the 21st May on a modest scale when 24,000 soldiers were moved using the initial 55 special trains but it was on the 27th May that 'Operation Dynamo' as the evacuation was called began in earnest. It was to continue for another nine days and the troop movements involved make truly staggering reading. Instead of day trippers, the station at Margate handled 38,000 soldiers with Ramsgate dealing with 43,000 and Folkestone taking 35,000 troops and 9,000 civilian and other evacuees. However, it was Dover which bore the brunt, despatching an amazing 181,000 soldiers in 327 special trains. All of these trains were stopped alternately at either Headcorn or Paddock Wood where the soldiers were fed, watered and provided with additional clothing. This was a remarkable effort; the Southern Railway had helped to rescue an army.

The fall of France brought London within range of the Luftwaffe's bombers and once the Blitz started, the railway companies and London Transport faced new problems and new dangers in keeping their services running. The use of London Transport's Underground stations as public shelters is now well known but perhaps less well known is the fact that the Government had originally intended that the Tube should not be used for public air raid sheltering purposes at all. In the event, it was sheer common sense on the part of the general public that dictated that they should seek to use the system and faced with overwhelming numbers of Londoners seeking refuge, the authorities could do nothing to stop them. Faced with this situation, the Tubes were quickly adapted as shelters, with 79 stations being used for this purpose as well as disused parts of the system and also extensions that had not yet opened for use. These shelters were equipped with chemical toilets, bunks, medical facilities and canteens and proved very popular with the locals. An early problem and one which showed human low life at its very worst was the appearance of ticket touts, who purchased tickets for the shelters and then tried to sell them on to the genuine shelterers at vastly inflated prices. These people were dealt with harshly when caught but the problem was never fully suppressed. The Tube was not completely immune from bombing - Bounds Green, Trafalgar Square and Balham Stations were all hit with some loss of life - but for the most part the Tubes were safe and secure refuges for Londoners.

Above ground, there were many tales of heroism from railwaymen and women. The night of 10th/11th May 1941 saw the last big raid on London and also the heaviest. At Bricklayers Arms Depot in southeast London, Driver Len Stainer and his Fireman, Jim Foote had just signed on for duty to take the 12.53 am train from Cannon Street to Dartford. En route to Cannon Street, they had stopped their engine at Borough Market Junction in order to clear incendiary bombs from the line before proceeding. If this wasn't enough, they then continued into Cannon Street and arrived just as bombs began to fall on that station. A large fire was started and Driver Stainer and Fireman Foote, together with the crew of another locomotive decided to pull out of the station in an attempt to save their trains from catching fire. As they moved onto the bridge over the River Thames, the men heard the sound of even more bombs coming down and the men instinctively ducked for cover on the footplates of their engines. It transpired that a bomb had struck the boiler of the other crew's engine, turned part of their train over and blasted their own engine. Fortunately, the crew of the other engine were unhurt but in an act of incredible bravery, Len and Jim then tried to extinguish the fire on their own train before being beaten back by the intense heat. Len Stainer then uncoupled his engine from the burning train and pulled back across the bridge to the south side, where the four men watched the station burn until dawn. To quote Len Stainer "It was just as if Hell had been let loose."

Later in the war, although the bombing had diminished, the railways played their part in the invasion of Europe by running troop trains galore and transporting all manner of ammunition and equipment to the Channel ports in preparation for for D-Day. Even after the invasion, locomotives and personnel were sent across the Channel to France to get the ruined French rail network up and running once again.

Even then, it was still not quite all over as the Terror Weapons in the shape of the V-1s and V-2s caused further death and disruption, especially in London and the Southeast but finally victory came in May 1945.

It should be remembered that even on VE Night, there were still over 12,000 people sheltering in London's Tube stations and the Deep Level Shelters but the final happy duty for the beleaguered transport system was to bring home the evacuated schoolchildren from the country back to London. The war was over and a long period of rebuilding and re-equipping was to follow.

Published Sources:

London Transport at War, Charles Graves - LPTB 1947
SR150 The Southern Railway, David St John Thomas & Patrick Whitehouse - David & Charles 1988
The Great Western Railway, Patrick Whitehouse & David St John Thomas - David & Charles 1984
War on the Line, Bernard Darwin - The Southern Railway Company 1946
By Rail to Victory, Norman Crump - The London & North Eastern Railway Company 1947

The Dreaded Telegram

Despite living in southeast London, I am a member of a cricket club in Middlesex. I won’t bore you with the reasons for this self-imposed weekly commute across London but suffice to say, my history hobby has crossed over into my sporting leisure time as well.

Inside the pavilion of Ickenham Cricket Club is an unassuming brass memorial plaque to the five members of the Club who laid down their lives during the Second World War. Soon after joining the Club I began to think a bit more deeply about these men; who they were, the circumstances of their deaths and how the awful realisation of this must have affected those left behind – the parents, wives, girlfriends, team mates and friends. Although I didn't realise it at the time, this interest in the men behind the names on the plaque was shared by the Club Chairman, so between us over the past year or so, we have tried to delve into the past to discover who these men were and how they ended up making the ultimate sacrifice.

Apart from the everyday stress of living through the Blitz, many Londoners and many civilians from every part of the United Kingdom shared with civilians on both Allied and Axis sides the additional torment of having a loved one serving in one of the fighting services. These parents, wives and girlfriends would go about their everyday lives with the secret dread of receiving a telegram or letter that began in the case of British service personnel with the words “The Secretary of State for War regrets……”

Of the five names on the Ickenham plaque, four of them were flyers – one with the Fleet Air Arm and three from the RAF whilst the other, despite misleading information on the plaque was a Corporal in the British Army who died at El Alamein. For the purposes of this article, we shall concentrate on just one of those names, although this is in no way meant to detract from the other four men who perhaps we shall return to at a future opportunity.

Dennis Stephen James was born on 26th August 1922, the son of Mr & Mrs Frank James of Uxbridge, Middlesex. He was educated at Bishopshalt School, Hillingdon from 1934-39 and was a keen sportsman who played football and cricket for his school and was subsequently a member of Uxbridge and later Ickenham Cricket Clubs, for whom he was described as a very good middle order batsman.

Aeroplanes and flying always seemed to fascinate him. His mother recalled him seeing a plane flying over the family home when he was about 4 years of age and Dennis saying to his mother, “One day, Mummy, I shall drive one of those!”

This interest in flying increased and whilst at school, he made a study of the subject and also that of aircraft recognition and read every book on the subject that he could get hold of.

It was no surprise that the day after his 18th birthday he volunteered for the RAF and was called up for service in September 1940 and after his basic training was sent to Southern Rhodesia for his flying training and where he also gained his Sergeant’s stripes. Although he originally qualified as a bomber pilot, he volunteered to make the switch to fighters and had been the youngest member of every squadron to which he was posted.

By July 1942, Dennis was serving with 122 (Bombay) Squadron, based at RAF Fairlop as part of the famous Hornchurch Wing under the overall command of Wing Commander Brendan ‘Paddy’ Finucane, who was one of the ‘Few’ from the Battle of Britain and one of the RAF’s aces with 32 kills to his name.

In 1942, RAF Fighter Command was on the offensive, making fighter sweeps known as ‘Rhubarbs’ over German occupied Northern France and on 15th July, 122 Squadron was part of a very large scale ‘Rhubarb’ against a German Army camp near Etaples in the Pas de Calais along with 81 and 154 Squadrons. Sergeant Pilot James was flying Spitfire Vb BM329 when it was brought down by flak near Boulogne. The Squadron’s War Diary reports that his colleagues did not see what happened to Dennis’s aircraft but he did not form up at the rendezvous point prior to returning to England.

It was subsequently discovered that Dennis’s Spitfire was hit by flak but unfortunately he had crashed without having baled out. He is buried at the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Boulogne Eastern which is the final resting place for 5,743 British & Commonwealth casualties from both World Wars.

Two other Spitfire pilots were lost during the same operation, including Dennis’s Wing Commander, Paddy Finucane who crashed into the sea and of whom Dennis was intensely proud to serve under. Indeed in one his last letters home, Dennis had written an enthusiastic letter in which he stated his pleasure at serving under such an illustrious commander.

One can only imagine the anguish that Dennis’s parents felt when they received the dreaded telegram. They also received a letter from his Squadron Leader stating how proud of him he was and how he and all his friends missed him.

Squadron life went on. The day after the operation over Etaples, 122 Squadron moved from Fairlop to Hornchurch and a party was held to celebrate the fact at which no doubt a glass or two was raised to Dennis’s memory and to the others lost. According to the Squadron War Diary "It was – in so far as this chronicler can remember – an excellent party!”

No doubt it was an excellent party – squadron colleagues couldn’t afford to get too close or too sentimental otherwise they wouldn’t be able to function. It would be a case of ‘Old so and so bought it’ and then they would get on with the grim business of prosecuting the war knowing full well that they could be next but trying not to think about it too closely.

Dennis Stephen James’s parents would not have known or cared about any of this – they had lost a son, in common with so many other parents in this long and terrible conflict.


Published Sources:

Uxbridge Gazette 24th July 1942
Commonwealth War Graves Commission Official Website
Aircrew Remembrance Society Official Website

Unpublished Sources:

122 Squadron Operations Record Book "War Diary" - Public Records Office, Kew