A grim souvenir for the new fighter pilot
Post no. 14 from the memoirs of Tempest pilot Flt Lt Jack Stafford, DFC, RNZAF
AT THAT moment a ground crew member approached the dispersal. Murph went to meet him and returned with a jagged piece of steel in his hand, three or four inches long, all edges and points. It was grey-black in colour and it looked sinister, murderous and pitiless. “This was just removed from your aircraft's spinner, Staff”, he said. I took it silently and studied it, a chunk of German flak.
“Wouldn't look too good in your eye for a wart, Staff”, said one of the pilots. This initiated a dozen more smart remarks, most offering suggestions as to where else it might have been stuck. The laughter was away again. My jaw ached, my sides ached, for everything seemed so funny.
With all the squadrons stood down, everyone slowly drifted away to the mess. I was swollen with pride, for I felt that I was now a fighter pilot. Not much of a fighter pilot, but a fighter pilot just the same. Sure, it was only the smallest of small shows, but we had intruded into enemy occupied territory and returned.
It was the first step in my operational career. I was a fighter pilot in 486 Fighter Squadron, 11 Group, Fighter Command, RAF Tangmere. Sure I was proud! We went into the mess and I shouted everyone to a drink, and everyone shouted me. We ate. I was becoming drunk as we left the station in a couple of cars for The Ship, a favourite watering hole just outside Chichester. It was a lost night, but even now I remember how it started.
I treasured that piece of flak for many months. The war dragged on and the combat became grimmer and grimmer as the months passed. Such souvenirs lost their importance as life became less secure and more precarious. I soon lost that piece of flak.
From this point Jack Stafford's memoirs take on a darker note as he sees his friends falling around him. As D-Day loomed the Typhoons of 486 Sqn increased their ground attack operations, specialising in train-busting with their four 20mm cannon. The Germans responded by mounting quadruple cannon on flat trucks, several in a train, so each aircraft attacked into four times its own firepower. The pilots then launched attacks from different directions, so splitting the defences. By D-Day the railways which should have carried reinforcements to Normandy were paralysed, but at terrible cost to the RAF.
In early 1944 Jack Stafford was posted to Hatfield as test pilot for de Havilland airscrew development. He remained there for several months before rejoining 486 (NZ) Sqn, by this time re-equipped with the Hawker Tempest to combat the V1 flying bombs. Our next post joins him on the south coast of England, where he would destroy
eight V-1s between June 19 and August 29.