DZU
I seem to recall asking my father the same question about the wrecked aircraft in the photo, and I think he said it was Italian. (Now there's a challenge!) The landing ground had been in Axis hands and there were wrecked German aircraft there too. But, obviously, the aircraft in question wasn't one of theirs.
Continuing on from my previous post about Arthur getting a roasting from his CO, he had little story about another, and very different style of encounter with a superior. In this case, one who was very much a superior.
Having escaped from Sumatra in the wake of the Jap invasion, and arriving by ship at Karachi (then in India, now in Pakisthan), Arthur was at something of a loose-end; only 132 of 84 Squadron having got out with him, and all of the aircraft had been lost. He was therefore attached to 301 Maintenance Unit at Karachi. One of his first jobs was to take an Imperial Airways flying boat back to Egypt to collect a Hurricane and ferry it down to India, in the company of eleven others. Having arrived in Egypt, he was accommodated on a Thomas Cook Nile steamer, this being used as a 'Transit Officers' Mess'. The following morning a Group Captain arrived and asked 'Are you Ft Lt Gill?'. 'Yes Sir!'. 'Air Marshall Tedder, the C-in-C, want s to see you. Will you report to his ADC at 4 pm'. Arthur duly got himself to AHQ, only to find that this wasn't AM Tedder's HQ. So he eventually arrived a bit late for the appointment at HQ Middle East Air Force. He wrote:
'I was ushered in to AM Sir Arthur Tedder's office, whereupon a silver tray of tea was brought in for the Air Marshal. This he passed to me and another, of rather inferior crockery, was brought in for him. He asked me all about my experiences in Sumatra and whether I knew of the fate of (his friend) AVM Pulford, Air Officer C-in-C, Far East Air Force. I told him that I hadn't seen any Air Officers and, together with the squadron, had been intent on bombing the Japanese invasion fleet, landing areas and airfields until the very end. We had lost 24 aircraft in five weeks'.
Tedder had previously seen 84 Sqn off from the airfield, when it left his command, bound for the Far East (...and oblivion). He very much regretted their, and other squadrons', departure to shore-up the Far East in view of the imminent threat from the Japanese. I've seen RAF newsreel footage of AM Tedder... I guess we all have... and he comes across as a very genial man. The sort of person you would
want to work for. As such, he stands in contrast to Arthur's CO in the Western Desert... who was a
driver rather than a
leader. Arthur must have felt somewhat flattered to have been consulted by Tedder, and to have been treated so cordially.
I rather wonder whether this encounter was to have an empowering effect on Arthur. Some weeks later, it still hadn't been decided what the fate of the remnants of 84 Sqn was to be. Most likely, the personnel would be assigned elsewhere and the squadron would be disbanded. Arthur decided to fly up to Delhi and speak to ACM Sir Richard Pierse and his staff at Air Command India. He argued for the squadron, which had served since 1917, to be reformed and re-equipped, and thus be given a chance to hit back at the Japanese. He was successful and perhaps his earlier meeting with the great man Tedder had been a factor in the whole affair.