Flt Lt John Dunbar DFC (RIP) Five into four won't go
Taken from two tapes
That has perhaps given you some idea of the set up. We can come back to the rest of my time in the jungle later, particularly the bayonet charge. I would like to get the story of the rescue of Nottage and the rest out there in print, not for myself but for the other pilots. They did an incredible job in dangerous situations and received virtually no recognition. A wonderful bunch of guys. When you look back on it one of the comments made in 'Wings of the phoenix', which was the RAF document, they have a picture of an L5 in it and as they say it was one of the bravest jobs of the war, because in an emergency you knew you couldn't save yourself – you had no parachute, you might just as well fly at nought feet anyway. Look at Dave Proctor who claimed to have the only air conditioned L5 in Burma because of the tears in the fabric at the bottom of his fuselage, caused by hitting branches.
By the way, he claimed to be the only British officer that was shorter than the Japanese.
Anyway, back to the rescue – this was on the 19th May 1945. I was sent for by Major Gibson
who explained that four 'bodies' were to be picked up urgently from a clearing some fifty miles behind the Japanese lines. It turned out to be a Beaufighter crew, the pilot of a Lysander and his passenger, an army major. , across the Sittang River where heavy fighting was taking place. The usual briefing took place at which the signals, comprising strips of white parachute were laid out, which were the letter X if unsafe to land, and the letter U if safe, were made known to us. I had chosen Fg Offs Dave Proctor, Jimmy Norris and Robbie Robbinson.
We flew as low as possible to the Napyawdaw area where we climbed to 2,000ft in order to spot the clearing. We were dead on track but to my consternation, the signal was a letter L. I motioned to the others to orbit while I dived down flat out across the clearing. Immediately troops emerged from the jungle and opened fire 120 miles an hour isn't very fast when you are being fired at! We can only guess that the signal was the result of bravery by a member of 163Force. We will never know. We returned to Pagu and the following day I made a solo visit, making one pass across the clearing at tree top height. There was no signal. Much to our amusement, 136 Force sent a letter apologising and saying they had been 'victim of the ungodly'.
On May 25th we were asked if we would make another attempt to rescue the four 'bodies.' It was unthinkable that they could be left to the Japanese. The following day, with an escort of 12 Spitfires, we returned. We had objected to the presence of the Spitfires, knowing that with our speed of 120mph they would alert the enemy of our presence. Luckily they turned for home some fifteen miles before the clearing was reached.
A letter U was clearly displayed, and all four of us landed safely with no room to spare. To my consternation five men emerged from the trees. A tall man, wearing a full length Burmese skirt and naked to the waste came forward. He had a huge black beard to his navel and that part of his body that was visible was a mass of jungle sores – an emaciated figure , never the less, still imposing. He demanded to know where the fifth aircraft was . It was clear we had a major problem .Each aircraft could take only one passenger, the take off run was short and there was zero wind. One person had to be left behind.
The group consisted of Wg Cdr George Nottage, CO of 177 Sqdn who had forced landed in a paddy field and his navigator, Plt Off Norman Bolitho; Sqdn Ldr Turner who had flown a Lysander with Major King of 136 Force as passenger to pick up Nottage and Bothilo, but had crash landed; and Ali Mohammed, an Indian soldier who had escaped from the Japanese.
They had a con flab and came back and said 'Ok, we'll have to leave the Indian soldier'. We loaded the four of them into the four aircraft, Nottage in mine. I was just about to start up and I noticed the Indian standing beside the plane and just looking at me with this look of despair on his face and it was obvious what he was thinking – to be left to the Japanese after all this.
BB After the war George Nottage and Norman Bolitho wrote up their account of the forced landing. Bolitho refers to the pick up 'The Lysander pilot and I got separated from the others after an encounter and when we thought we spotted them we whistled 'Col Bogey' and were reunited without any 'friendly fire' Several days were spent at the strip waiting for possible pick up by L5 light planes. At first the local Korans sat and waited with us but eventually they gave up. Finally on 26th May at about 11:00 four L5s arrived landed safely, the pilots stopped their engines and calmly lit cigarettes while the special forces people gave them their grocery 'lists'.
To be continued
Last edited by Box Brownie; 29th Sep 2016 at 18:57.