The Catalina in Finisterre

The transatlantic crossings by RAF Flight Sergeant Alan Rodgers in World War II were nothing like oceanic travel today.  In a comfortable seat in a fast jet these days we can cross this ocean in 7-9 hours.

Alan Rodgers was a member of RAF Ferry Command.  He made 10 transatlantic crossings for the service during the war. West-bound they would either be by ship or air, the latter probably in an unpressurized Liberator or Lancaster bomber, wrapped for warmth against the freezing cold.  East-bound he was flying in a Consolidated PBY ‘Catalina’ flying-boat from Elizabeth City, North Carolina first to Bermuda then on the much longer leg to Scotland. 

 

 

An RAF crew in front of a PBY Catalina of No. 210 Squadron (Wikicommons).  Note the window in the nacelle area between the wing and main fuselage, the position of the Flight Engineer.

Leading Aircraftsman Lawrence Reynolds

Leading Aircraftsman Lawrence Reynolds was 20 years old when he died.  He was the gunner/ radio operator in a light bomber called a Fairey Battle, the lead aircraft in a raid on bridges crossing the Albert Canal in Belgium on 12 May 1940.  He is buried in Heverlee War Cemetery near Leuven next to the two other members of his crew, Flying Officer Donald Garland, the pilot, and the navigator/observer, Flight Sergeant Thomas Gray.  Gray was 26 and Garland was 21.

 

The crew were part of No. 12 Squadron, RAF and their flight had been based at the village of Amifontaine, France from the previous December.

The Four Chinese Nurses of St. Stephen’s College Hospital.



Stanley Military Cemetery, Hong Kong (Wikimedia)

The plain gravestone at the Stanley Military Cemetery in Hong Kong bears a simple inscription, “Met their deaths at St. Stephens, 25^th December 1941”. Then it lists a number of the known fatalities followed by … “and many unknown Chinese, Indian, Canadian and British Ranks of all units”.  The names of the four Chinese nurses that disappeared on Christmas Day 1941 are among the ‘many unknown’.  Their fate is mentioned in a letter from George H. Calvert, a former member of the Royal Hong Kong Regiment.

The hospital unit at St. Stephens College, a private school in Hong Kong once known as ‘The Eton of the East’, was functioning as a military hospital during the defense of the island. It became the scene of a massacre.  Patients and staff were killed, many by bayonet wounds while in their beds or while trying to protect their patients.

Sections of Japanese infantry known as the Tanaka Butai reached the Stanley area early that morning.  Lt. Colonel Black, a doctor in a white coat and a Red Cross arm band, carried a white flag out to the advancing troops to inform them the building was a hospital.  He was killed, as was Captain Whitney, another doctor who tried unsuccessfully to stop their entry.

David Hornell, Ferdinand St. Laurent and Donald Scott

PBY-5 'Canso' Flying boat in CWHM

 

 

The citation for valour in the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum (CWHM) to Flight Lieutenant David Hornell, VC can generally be found close to the Consolidated PBY-5 ‘Canso’ Flying Boat, the ‘Mary K.’, dedicated in his name and now bearing the livery of RCAF 162 Squadron to which he belonged. Beside it also is a copy of the London Gazette entry of July 1944 recording the posthumous award of Britain’s highest military honour for heroism in the face of the enemy to Hornell.

Three members of the crew died that day.  On patrol in the Atlantic on 24 June 1944 in a PBY-5, they spotted a U-Boat (U-1225) on the surface off Iceland. 

Josef Horak

Wynne Horakova, with photo of Josef

(Radio Praha website; photo www.czech-tv.cz)

Josef Horak was a Czechoslovakian Air Force officer.  During World War II he served in the RAF No. 311 Squadron, first as an air gunner and later as a pilot.  311 Squadron was one of the ‘3-series’ squadrons comprised of Czechoslovakian military personnel, many of whom had escaped after the German occupation.  They fought against an enemy that had taken over their country and their skills and experience were desperately needed by the RAF at that point.

Horak and Josef Stribrny, another Czech pilot, were from the village of Lidice and much of his story is told at the Radio Praha website.  In June 1942, as part of the reprisals for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the SS Officer in charge of the region, Lidice was selected for destruction and was razed completely to the ground.  All its male occupants and some women were shot on site, the remaining women sent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp and most of its children, other than those deemed suitable for ‘assimilation’, were killed in another camp.  It appears that the village was selected because the Nazis knew that it had two airmen serving in the RAF. They made this act known on the radio and it was communicated to Horak by his best friend, Vaclav Student, another Czech pilot.

Ancient and Tattered Airmen

 

 

There is a photograph on various memorabilia web sites of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) showing a group of four older pilots in World War II; the photo above is at the Poetry In Action-Aviation web site section on the ATA. 

ATA pilots were officially civilians, but being responsible for the delivery of aircraft to operating units they had a close link to the RAF and the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm.  Most of the pilots were ineligible for military service, despite the constant need of the RAF for aircrew.  Some were too old or had disqualifying disabilities, others were female in an era where the terms ‘flight crew’ and ‘combat’ meant ‘male only’.  Some of their flights are described in my ebook In a Moon’s Course.

The two in the centre of the photograph did not survive the war.  Douglas Fairweather, second from the left, was a pilot who regularly flew Anson aircraft, small ‘taxi’ and cargo planes often used to deliver and collect the ferry pilots from their departure and arrival points. 

He was also a pilot who flew medical emergency flights and was noted for his ability to fly in marginal weather conditions, despite the requirement that ATA pilots only flew by visual flight rules.  Their aircraft had none of the instruments needed for night or ‘blind’ flying in cloud.  It was on one of these flights in 1944 heading up to Prestwick to collect a patient when he and a nursing officer, K. M. Kershaw, crashed into the Irish Sea.

The Other Brother

T. E. Lawrence

Lawrence of Arabia, Thomas Edward Lawrence (known professionally as T.E.) had four brothers.  His youngest brother Arnold is probably the most well-known of these today.  He was a professor of archeology at Cambridge University and also inherited the enormous job of being T.E.’s literary executor. 

Two younger brothers, William and Frank, were to die in military service during WWI, the same war that brought Lawrence of Arabia to fame.  The other brother, the oldest of the siblings, was Montagu Robert who was known by his second name.