The Royal Air Force and the Dominion Air Forces
The Library on this website has a new article, by Mikkel Planthinn, about the Danish Shoulder Flash, worn on the RAF uniform to indicate that the wearer was from the Allied country of Denmark. Denmark was invaded by German troops on 9 April 1940 and would remain occupied until liberation […]
This month’s feature centres on an article in The Illustrated London News on 18 December 1943. A fabulous charcoal double-page drawing accompanies the piece. The scene is a Nissen hut where the gunners are undergoing their last preparations before the take-off. Some are already fully dressed, wearing their parachute harnesses and flying […]
We have just received this wonderful photograph, taken in 1945, after Ralph Saunders’ return from prisoner of war camp. Ralph was shot down on the Leipzig operation of 20/21 October 1943 when flying with the Painter crew, 97 Squadron. Only two of the crew survived to become prisoners of war. […]
The Queen’s long association with the Royal Air Force began during the Second World War. Our second post celebrating her 70th Jubilee concerns Runnymede in 1953. The Runnymede Memorial commemorates all members of the Air Forces of Britain, the Dominions and the colonies who were lost without trace during the […]
Brock Robertson won his Distinguished Flying Cross for an operation to Hamburg on 24/25 July 1943, just over a month before his death. What the official citation for the award deliberately omitted to say was that Brock’s aircraft had been badly damaged by incendiaries dropped by another aircraft when over […]
Oliver Brock Robertson was an outstanding Canadian pilot who flew with 97 Squadron. He won the Distinguished Flying Cross in unusual circumstances in July 1943, just over a month before his death in action. There is an interesting family background, including his rescue by his adopted brother Donald and Teddy, […]
H2S was a critical part of the electronics war waged by the Pathfinders. The radar equipment transmitted a directional beam of high-energy impulses outwards and downwards towards the ground. Reflections of its own impulses received from the ground were accepted back into the H2S aerial, fed into a receiver, and […]
Following on from the interesting and detailed German eyewitness reports of The Loss of the Robertson Crew, published at the end of January 2022, we have more German eyewitness reports of another 97 Squadron crew, lost in the same month as the Robertson crew. This was the Kenneth Brown crew […]
Winston Johnson’s wartime service was as a navigator/specialist wireless operator. He was involved in top-secret work, some of it with 109 Squadron, a founding Mosquito squadron of the Pathfinders. On 31 January 1945, Winston was posted overseas to the BLA, the British Liberated Area, where he remained until 18 May […]
Although the bombing campaign had received very positive publicity during the war, post-war the tide of public opinion began to turn against the campaign. By extension, this would come to mean that the aircrew themselves. Read the Full Article: Post-War Criticism of Bombing War
Jonah Jones, centre, second row up. Thought to be from the end of war photograph for 635 Squadron. Frederick S “Jonah” Jones, a pilot of 635 Squadron, wrote a poem when he was in training in 1942 at Heaton Park. Heaton Park was one of the training centres encountered early […]
We have just added some interesting and unusually detailed German eyewitness reports of the loss of the Robertson crew after the Nuremburg raid of 27/28 August 1943. Lancaster JA958K crashed at Bubenreuth, near Erlangen, around 16 miles (25.5 kilometres) north of Nuremburg. Five of the crew were killed immediately, including […]
Today we are adding to the Library an article by Tim Willasey-Wilsey, Visiting Professor of War Studies at King’s College London. It concerns Hall Mettam, a member of the RAAF, whom Tim met in Beirut in 1974 just before the civil war which tore Lebanon apart. Hal was flying Boeing […]
A further addition to the library today … A personal account by Stan Hurd of a friend, Geoff Baker, “an ordinary person who went to war that changed his life. It tells the story of his experiences flying a Lancaster bomber for Bomber Command during WWll.” Baker was flying with […]
The wound stripe, which was an unusual emblem on RAF uniforms, was a small gold band or pair of gold bands worn on the left sleeve. The airmen who wore these stripes had recovered from serious injuries incurred during their operational duties. Read the Full Article: RAF Wound Stripes