(The Customer gets the goods).
Aller anfang ist schwer. Number two was easier and they soon got the hang of it. In the end they assembled enough to equip four RAF Squadrons (45,82,84 and 110), two IAF (briefly RIAF) Squadrons (7 and 8), and a number of Calibration and Special Duty Flights. There must have been several hundred in all.
It went through Marks I - III (with no external differences). I never got to fly a Mk IV, but was told it was much better (I believe they restored the Angle of Incidence at the behest of the USAAC, which would make it a better aircraft, but (IMHO) a worse dive bomber).
All wore the blue and white roundels and fin stripes of South East Asia Air Command ( a red centre might be mistaken for the Japanese "Rising Sun" marking).
The Squadrons which got the things were old Blenheim units in West Bengal, which had been flown out from the UK via the Middle East in '42 when an invasion of India seemed imminent. The Japs had come up from Singapore through Malaya and Burma without slowing, and there wasn't much to stop them now. I think they only halted on the Indian borders having outrun their supply lines. Perhaps they decided to consolidate what they had already won, (which was pretty well all South-East Asia plus a big chunk of China), before taking on any more. It was anybody's guess.
For whatever reason, they called a halt on the India/Burma frontiers (and were never to come much further West). Front lines of a sort stabilised, panic subsided and the Blenheims were flown back to the Middle East, where they would be more use. But only their junior pilots (and an odd navigator) ferried them, leaving their Squadron and Flight Commanders, and the remaining crews, stranded in India with nothing to fly.
The next step was obvious. It would be nice to think that AHQ Delhi planned it all, but booze-ups and breweries spring to mind ! It was a "no-brainer" to put these windfall aircraft and unemployed crews together. Even so, they still needed replacements for the pilots who had gone back to the Middle East. Another happy accident (as we first thought) supplied them. The story went like this:
In the summer of 1942, it had been decided to form a Spitfire Wing in India. The Spitfire and Hurricane OTUs in the UK were trawled for 36 new pilots to fill most of the junior posts, a W/Cdr Ritchey was to command the Wing; he would travel out with them. The Squadron and Flight Commanders and a nucleus of experienced pilots would travel out separately with the ground crews. All would come together with the Spitfires sent by sea at the same time. We would then fight a Battle of India against the Jap invader. It was a nice idea.
How much of this tale we were actually told, who was doing the telling, and how much was rumour and wishful thinking, I cannot say now. The Wing Commander was a fact. The 36 pilots were facts. The rest seems to have been a fairy tale. Crucially, there were no Spitfires at all !
So the pilots were shared out between the four ex-Blenheim squadrons. As I've said, I ended up in 110 (Hyderabad) Squadron. It seems that in WWI, the Nizam of that State (by repute then the world's richest man) had dipped into petty cash to buy a whole squadron of DH9s for the R.F.C. In return, his name was included with the Squadron number; his crest (a tiger's head) was painted on their plywood sides.
One such crest had been cut out of a crash and was carried round everywhere by the Squadron as a sort of talisman. The artist had given the animal a mournful expression, the troops called it "The Constipated Tiger". (I believe a later Nizam was equally generous to the RAF in WWII, but they did not,
AFAIK, collect another "trophy"). As to the "Tiger" panel, it must be stored somewhere still if the white ants didn't get at it.
All this took place in a bit of a rush, we'd landed in India a week before Christmas, done our duty as "waiters" at Worli, spent a few days on the train, and by New Year '43 I'd met my fate for the next three years, It looked like a double-decker bus with wings.
More in a day or two,
Goodnight, all,
Danny42C
There's a thing !