#RAF history

[tmcphotoblog]

Such glorious photo of HM King George VI visiting No. 617 Squadron in 1943.

[bantarleton]

The last of “The Few” turns 105.

Group Captain John “Paddy” Hemingway DFC, AE, is the last verified surviving pilot of the Battle of Britain. He was born in Dublin on 17 July 1919.

He served during the Second World War in the Battle of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Allied invasion of Italy and the Invasion of Normandy. Following the death of Terry Clark in May 2020, Hemingway became the last verified surviving airman of the Battle of Britain. He was shot down four times during the Second World War.

Per Ardua ad Astra - "Through Adversity to the Stars"

[ourwaveofhistory]

RAF Service Part 3 - HQ324 Wing September 1946 (updated)

According to my grandfather's RAF military record, after his posting in Naples he was then relocated to HQ324 Wing. This was located at Tissano in the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region of North Italy, approximately 7 hours drive.

Further detail following second visit to National Archives

Relocation of approximately 650 personnel (including my grandfather) took place through September and October 1946.

However, despite the effective relocation, things were not great at the new camp. During an assessment undertaken by the Senior Medical Officer, the camp was "unsuitable for any RAF units". Sanitation, hygiene and the cookhouses were all noted as "poor" and they were sleeping under canvases. Ambulances were in "constant trouble" and communications were also "very poor" and no messages could be transmitted to HQ.

From November, the unit was relocated 5 miles away to Pozzuolo, but things were only slightly better here. Conditions were still described as "sheer squalor". Personnel were still in over-crowded caravans, unable to bathe, whilst the weather was "extraordinarily severe" making it a "frozen, inhospitable camp area".

To cope with the poor living situation, and whilst renovations were taking place, certain activities were moved to more suitable places. The canteen was set up in "a large building in the village of Pozzuolo" and "cinema facilities..to Udine nightly" (cinema playing a critical role for both relaying information and raising morale). "Liberty runs" were also started nightly in Treviso in early 1947, along with "Venice on Saturdays". Then this delightful bit of detail is recorded:

My grandfather was "other rank"! And the Eden Bar in Treviso only closed its doors recently. (Also of interest here is that plans were only just being made to extend cinema visits to other (lower) ranks. I imagine officers were granted this privelege first).

Treviso however is over 70 miles from Pozzuolo. Nightly runs would have been a significant committment. Maybe some sort of deal was struck with Treviso to allow for a large number of allied forces to let their hair down in their town? Was it deemed safer or more secure than somewhere closer like Udine? This seems surprising given the heavy bombing of Treviso undertaken by Allied forces a few years previously.

I've checked old photos of my grandfather during this time. As I have posted before, we have dozens of photos in our collection, each a crumb in the trail, a piece of the jigsaw.

This photo looks like it may have been taken in either Tissano or Pozzuolo, the architecture being fairly similar.

Unsurprisingly I couldn't identify the exact location, but the windows look similar in style to these tiny villages. I am going to make a tiny leap and say that this was taken during his time in Pozzuolo between November 1946 and June 1947.

From documents obtained from the National Archives in Kew they were still undertaking various exercises, including bombing training, ground weapon training, parachute and crash drills.

As I have mentioned a number of times before, I am no military historian, but I am curious as to why these exercises where still being run after the war had ended. Was it in case a threat re-emerged? Was it for fear of Russia and communism as the cold war loomed? And do I have to start researching the Cold War now 😭?

I really wish I could have had the opportunity to speak with my grandfather about how he felt at this time, torn between his homeland in Yugoslavia and his possible new life in the West.

[my-darling-boy]

God someone please help them they’re lost

[hogans-heroes]

In case anyone tried to whitewash your Battle of Britain lately. I present receipts of the countless Jamaican, Haitian, Indian, and Māori fighter and bomber crews in the RAF. Fully integrated.

[theworldatwar]

An RAF Supermarine Walrus seaplane comes to the aid of a downed pilot - English Channel 1943

[rockyp77mk3]

The RAF had a sense of style. :)

[usaac-official]

A Catalina Mk II of No 240 Squadron based at Stranraer, Scotland, March 1941

[dronescapesvideos]

RAF De Havilland Mosquito IVs 105 Squadron, Marhamn on December 1942.

➤➤ VIDEO: https://youtu.be/yoNk0Ky3lH4

[ghostwarriorrrr]

Royal Air Force - Eurofighter Typhoon

[nocternalrandomness]

P-40’s Shark Teeth Didn’t Originate From The Flying Tigers...Here’s the story....

The AVG Flying Tigers got the idea after seeing a newspaper picture of a P-40 from the No. 112 Squadron of the Royal Air Force. Fighting in Egypt, Sudan, Greece and Crete, they were one of the first squadrons to fly the P-40 and painted them with the shark mouth because they thought the intake looked perfect for it. That’s why they were nicknamed the “Shark Squadron.” Although the idea was theirs to paint the Warhawk, the graphic was not.....

The first documented use of the Shark Teeth nose art was by the Zerstörergeschwader 76 group of the Luftwaffe. Formed in 1939, they flew Bf 110Cs and it was them who were first seen painting their noses with the iconic shark teeth logo. They didn’t have the eyes on them as that was added by the RAF, but the shark mouth appears to be their original idea.

[nerdyhistoryenjoyer]

Backstory of the R. A. F. rug

[bantarleton]

A flypast has honoured the bravery of Britain's last surviving Victoria Cross holder for air action in World War Two, who is now aged 104.

Flight Lieutenant John Cruickshank earned the honour aged 24 for an attack on a German U-boat while piloting a Catalina flying boat.

Despite being badly injured, the pilot and his crew managed to sink the submarine.

A Catalina flew over where he lives in Aberdeen, marking 80 years since he was awarded the Victoria Cross.

It is the highest recognition for valour that can be awarded to members of the British and Commonwealth Armed Forces.

[yorksnapshots]

Stirling Bomber War Memorial.

Installed in October 2015 at Tockwith, North Yorkshire, England.

The bomber was about to land on the nearby Marston Moor Airfield when it crashed in the main street killing the village postmaster, all six crew members and wrecking 19 houses.

[humanoidhistory]

⬆️ Star Wars influence ⬆️

[whencyclopedia]

The Bombing of Berlin

The bombing of Berlin, aka the Berlin Air Offensive or Battle of Berlin (Air), was a sustained bombing campaign on the German capital by the British Royal Air Force and United States Air Force from November 1943 until March 1944. The objective, which failed, was to bomb Germany into surrender and win WWII without the necessity of land operations.

Area Bombing

The commander-in-chief of the RAF Bomber Command, Arthur Harris (1892-1984), had received backing at the highest level for the night-time area bombing (aka carpet bombing) of German industrial targets and industrial cities. The Royal Air Force (RAF) and United States Army Air Force (USAAF) had already conducted a Combined Bomber Offensive and made repeated attacks on the Ruhr industrial area of Germany (Battle of the Ruhr, March-July 1943) and on Hamburg with the utterly devastating Operation Gomorrah (July-August 1943). Typically, the RAF bombed by night and the USAAF by day in these combined operations. As Winston Churchill (l. 1874-1965), the British prime minister put it:

We shall bomb Germany by day as well as by night in ever-increasing measure, casting upon them month by month a heavier discharge of bombs, and making the German people taste and gulp each month a sharper dose of the miseries they have showered upon mankind.

(Liddell Hart, 189)

By the summer of 1943, the Allied leaders began to shift their focus to a future invasion of Continental Europe. The Allies issued the Pointblank Directive in June 1943, which stated that bombing raids in Europe should prioritise Germany's capacity to produce fighter planes, which could be used against ground troops in the D-Day Normandy landings (Operation Overlord) planned for the following summer. Air supremacy had to be achieved before Overlord could get underway. However, Harris remained sceptical of the possibility of hitting small but strategically important targets like weapons factories. This was in some way born out by the USAAF's Schweinfurt-Regensburg raids. The first Schweinfurt raid in August 1943 had not been very successful in damaging the crucial ball-bearing factories, and many aircraft had been lost in the process. (The USAAF returned to Schweinfurt and was more successful in October). Berlin did have key armaments factories, and these could be knocked out with a wider and more indiscriminate bomb-dropping strategy, Harris thought. Berlin was also an obvious transport hub and, of course, a prestige target, too. Harris believed that the heavy bombing of Berlin could ultimately lead to Germany's surrender and so the Allies might even avoid the necessity of dangerous and time-consuming land operations.

There were some flaws in the plan. Berlin was a much bigger city than those bombed previously and so would take many more raids to damage. Harris knew this, and so he called for a force of 6,000 bombers, but this was never possible; the RAF and USAAF combined only had some 3,000 bomber planes at any one time. Berlin was also well-defended with over 100 anti-aircraft batteries. The historian M. Hastings describes Berlin as "the largest and most heavily defended industrial urban area in Europe" (285). As the historian R. Neillands put it, Berlin "was always a difficult target. It lay a long way into Germany, close to the eastern frontier, and was a very big and very flat city, with few physical features…" (217).

Another problem was that in 1943, Allied fighter planes still did not have sufficient fuel range to escort bombers to targets deep in Germany. Finally, the other bombing campaigns, which included the thousand-bomber raid on Cologne in 1942, had not shattered civilian morale despite causing enormous casualties and damage. This had also been true of the German bombing of British cities and the London Blitz earlier in the war. Even if German civilian morale could be broken, in a totalitarian state built on violence, there was probably not much civilians could do to influence policy change anyway. Despite these pitfalls, the Combined Chiefs of Staff gave Harris the green light, and the bombers were sent to Berlin. Crucially, the USAAF, preferring to pursue its own targets like Germany's oil supplies, would not join the raids until near the end of the campaign. The RAF bomber crews would be on their own in their effort to bomb into submission the city they called "Big B".

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