A Spitfire Pilot - Part 26
Postings in and out and in again.
It wasn’t really all milk and honey at Biggin, because during the time we were there we lost several very nice chaps and good pilots. In fact some we lost before I even met them. I went on leave for a week once and when I came back, two chaps had been posted to us, one had been shot down and one had crashed on coming back and he hadn’t even unpacked his gear.
We had a supernumerary Squadron Leader attached to us for a while, a Sqn Ldr Tidd, who came to us to get some experience before he took over another squadron and about the first sweep we went on, to St Omer, we just lost him, no one saw him go. We imagined he might have gone down in the Channel, so we searched the Channel later on, but no sign of him, so he was written off.
After one trip I landed and came back to dispersal to be greeted by my chums with the news that I’d been posted to an OTU. I wasn’t at all amused as I was having a great time at Biggin and the whole thing suited me down to the ground. So I rushed in to see Bob Oxspring and explained that I had no wish to go to an OTU and he and “Tiny” le Petite, who was our Adj, grinned at each other and said,
“Don’t worry Robbie, other arrangements have been made.”
In fact they posted poor old Pilot Officer Jones, who by that time had got ten operational hours in and they sent him back saying he was a most experienced chap and would be a great help at the OTU!
72 Sqn leave 11 Group for the North – July 1942
At the end of July we were told that we were being moved up north for a rest, which didn’t really surprise us because we’d been down in 11 Group since I’d joined the squadron in December 1941, and they’d been down since the previous July and we thought we’d go up north for a rest and then come back again all fit and keen to start again. I went on leave for a week and someone else flew my aircraft up to Ouston and Bob Oxspring asked that if I was bringing the car up, could I bring some of his gear? Well, I agreed to that, no hassle, and as this now became an official trip, the Station Adjutant nearly busted a gut when I told him how many coupons I’d need to get the car from Biggin Hill to Newcastle. But he grudgingly gave them to me in the end.
By the time I’d driven to Ouston, the squadron had moved to Ayr, which meant getting more petrol coupons and going from Ouston to Ayr, which I managed alright, without even a puncture. Now after this, there was some rumour going about that we might be sent abroad and most of us were most unhappy about this, because we thought the Second Front must be starting in the fairly near future and we obviously have to go into France and there’d be so much fun flying over the Channel with lots to do and lots of chances to fire the old guns, that none of us, as I say, were particularly keen on being shunted off to the Far East or wherever. So George Malan and I did all we could to get out of it and George had a word with “Sailor”, who by that time was running an air-gunnery course near The Wash. As it happened there was nothing we could do about it and we were stuck and we learnt afterwards that whatever pilot Bob Oxspring wanted for this trip abroad, they were his, without argument, so there was nothing we could do about it.
Bob Oxspring was posted down south for a few days while the Dieppe do was on and he took a few pilots with him, including George Malan and other chaps who hadn’t seen much action so far and when George came back, he was complaining bitterly of Bob Oxspring’s leadership. Apparently they’d been told to patrol at a certain height and not go higher or lower at any time. Well a Dornier flew underneath them, about a thousand feet below apparently, and instead of sending down a section and getting rid of the Dornier, Bob Oxspring just watched it fly away and George was really quite mad about it and he reckoned if I’d have been there I might have forgotten to tell Bob I was going and just go, as we did in North Africa later on.