Post by Dave Homewood on Sept 12, 2010 22:53:45 GMT 12
Kiwi "few" remember Battle of Britain
Published: 1:23PM Sunday September 12, 2010
Source: NZPA
Just four of them are left now. Four of the 95 New Zealand pilots who flew in the Battle of Britain 70 years ago this week.
They survived the battle then and they have survived the long years since. One still plays golf regularly. Three of them live in New Zealand.
Alan Gawith, 94, is about to move with his wife from his home in Nelson to a retirement complex where he says he'll have more time for reading.
Bernie Brown, 92, has problems with his balance but otherwise is well. He and his wife watched last year as builders put up a new home for them on the next-door section in Tauranga.
John Gard'ner, also 92 and living in Tauranga, is the most active of them all.
He's plays golf, every Tuesday, and flew out of New Zealand on Friday to attend next week's London celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the battle and the unveiling of the permanent Keith Park statue.
"New Zealanders should be very proud of Park," he said before leaving for England with his wife. "A great man."
Sir Keith, a New Zealander who flew fighters with distinction in World War I, was the man who directed day-to-day operations of Fighter Command as the officer commanding 11 Group's Spitfire and Hurricane squadrons in the key sector covering southeast England.
It was Park, with the backing of Fighter Command chief Sir Hugh Dowding, who engineered the defeat of the Luftwaffe.
The fourth surviving New Zealand pilot of those eventful days of July 10-October 31, 1940 when the future of Britain hung in the balance, is Keith Lawrence who lives on the south coast of England.
When people think of the Battle of Britain it's the pilots they remember, Churchill's "Few", the glamorised young heroes who flew the fighters that shot down the Messerschmitt fighters, the Stuka dive-bombers and the bombers -- Heinkels and Dorniers.
Sometimes they slept in their dispersal huts, waiting for dawn take-offs and the first sorties of a day that might stretch to darkness and involve four, sometimes five flights against usually overwhelming odds.
Breakfast if they were lucky.
They flew with flamboyant scarves around their necks or dressed in polo-neck sweaters under their uniforms. On whacky 92 Squadron the wilder pilots wore corduroy trousers. Some threw on battle dress over pyjamas.
They didn't like the stiff collars of the time because they rubbed their necks raw as they swivelled constantly, alert for the "Hun in the sun".
At night they partied, drank and made love as if there was no tomorrow. Often there wasn't.
It's the pilots then who were the focus, understandably enough. But the gunners and navigators who crewed the Blenheims and Defiants which helped turn back the German challenge over British skies should not be forgotten.
Forty New Zealanders served in this role and some paid with their lives.
In total 135 New Zealanders were entitled to the Battle of Britain clasp, awarded to those who flew at least one operation during the battle. Twenty died, 16 of them pilots.
Five of the 20 were killed in aircraft accidents, two of them newcomer Hurricane pilots killed within five minutes of each other on the same airfield on night training.
Thirty-one of the Battle of Britain survivors lost their lives on air operations later in the war and another eight became POWs. Two were captured during the battle itself.
All four living New Zealand Battle of Britain veterans were Short Service Commission (SSC) pilots, joining the RAF on short four-year terms pre-war when the RNZAF was so small as to have no places for adventurous young men bitten by the flying bug.
They and many others yearned to fly at a time when the RAF was actively recruiting in the "colonies", seeking to build its strength in the face of Germany's threat.
Almost every month from July 1937 drafts of 12 to 18 SSC hopefuls -- selection was the first hurdle, RAF flying training and exams were tough -- sailed for England.
Gard'ner, for example, left New Zealand in December 1938 in a draft that included Colin Gray, who was to become New Zealand's top-scoring fighter pilot. Gawith and Brown went earlier that year, Lawrence at the start of 1939.
Gard'ner was unlucky in a way, posted to 141 Squadron, just one of two flying the hopeless Defiant, a low-wing monoplane, slow, cumbersome and without any forwardfiring guns. Four machine guns in a turret atop the fuselage behind the pilot had a restricted arc of fire. They were effectively defenceless.
On 19 July at 1.30pm nine Defiants lifted off to patrol over the Channel south of Folkestone. An hour later Messerschmitt 109s, unseen, swooped.
In an instant four of the Defiants were in the sea. Another crashed in Dover, another as it approached an RAF airfield. Only three returned, one badly damaged. A recent British magazine called it a "Massacre of the Innocents".
Four Defiant pilots and six gunners died. Two of the dead pilots were New Zealanders, John Kemp, 25, of Wellington, and Rudal Kidson, 26, a King Country sheep farmer. Their bodies were never found.
Although wounded and bloodied, his scalp hanging down his face, Gard'ner ditched his aircraft and struggled to the surface as his machine sank. His gunner died.
He was picked up by a motor torpedo boat, its crew shouting "We gotcha, we gotcha", as they snagged him and dragged him aboard. He remembered no more until he woke up in hospital. The rest of the battle he spent convalescing.
He's gone to London because "it's important to make the journey to attend this symbolic event."
Brown, posted to 72 Squadron at Biggin Hill in September, volunteered for Fighter Command after flying with an army cooperation unit.
He was shot down on his second sortie. A cannon shell ripped into the cockpit, hit him in the left leg and exploded on the throttle box and instruments.
Without control of his Spitfire he had no option and jumped. He landed in a marshy area, found he couldn't stand up and was menaced by a rifle-carrying Home Guardsman who spoke not a word.
His smashed leg meant he never flew operationally again but later instructed and worked in Transport Command.
Of the battle he says, "It was an important victory for the world at that time."
Gawith flew Blenheim and Havoc night fighters for 2-1/2 years before, during and after the battle, on interception patrols and intruder sorties over occupied Europe, shooting up and bombing airfields and other targets and looking for enemy planes.
"By the time I finished my nerves were well and truly shot and I still suffer the effects of that stress even now."
In July 1942 he endured the loss of his younger brother Peter, a pilot on 3 Squadron with a DFM, his Hurricane apparently fatally damaged by a storm of flak while attacking an airfield in Holland. His body was never found.
Lawrence had a "good" war. He is credited with four outright victories and others shared destroyed and damaged.
He shot down two Me 109s during the Battle of Britain while flying with 234 and 603 Squadrons, and the others later in Malta where, as squadron leader, he commanded 185 Squadron.
At 603 he flew with fellow New Zealander Brian Carbury, an outstanding Battle of Britain performer who scored 15 victories in a short time, among the best of the entire RAF, and who was one of only two pilots to tally five enemy aircraft in one day. Carbury was also one of a handful who received the DFC and bar during the battle.
Postwar Lawrence worked in New Zealand for some years but eventually returned to England to live.
Brown flew as a navigator for British European Airways from 1946-70, then returned to New Zealand and bought an orchard in the Bay of Plenty.
Strangely, Gard'ner also operated an orchard in the same area after he came home following 20 years' post-war service in the RAF from which he retired a group captain.
Late in the war Gawith worked as senior RAF liaison officer with the United States 9th Air Defence in London, on the beachhead in Normandy and further inland in France.
He ended the war a wing commander with the DFC and the US Bronze Star.
He had begun studying as a lawyer before joining the RAF, completed his courses on return and joined the family law firm in Masterton. He retired in 1986.
Max Lambert is writing a book on NZ fighter pilots for publication next year.
tvnz.co.nz/national-news/kiwi-few-remember-battle-britain-3773986
Published: 1:23PM Sunday September 12, 2010
Source: NZPA
Just four of them are left now. Four of the 95 New Zealand pilots who flew in the Battle of Britain 70 years ago this week.
They survived the battle then and they have survived the long years since. One still plays golf regularly. Three of them live in New Zealand.
Alan Gawith, 94, is about to move with his wife from his home in Nelson to a retirement complex where he says he'll have more time for reading.
Bernie Brown, 92, has problems with his balance but otherwise is well. He and his wife watched last year as builders put up a new home for them on the next-door section in Tauranga.
John Gard'ner, also 92 and living in Tauranga, is the most active of them all.
He's plays golf, every Tuesday, and flew out of New Zealand on Friday to attend next week's London celebrations marking the 70th anniversary of the battle and the unveiling of the permanent Keith Park statue.
"New Zealanders should be very proud of Park," he said before leaving for England with his wife. "A great man."
Sir Keith, a New Zealander who flew fighters with distinction in World War I, was the man who directed day-to-day operations of Fighter Command as the officer commanding 11 Group's Spitfire and Hurricane squadrons in the key sector covering southeast England.
It was Park, with the backing of Fighter Command chief Sir Hugh Dowding, who engineered the defeat of the Luftwaffe.
The fourth surviving New Zealand pilot of those eventful days of July 10-October 31, 1940 when the future of Britain hung in the balance, is Keith Lawrence who lives on the south coast of England.
When people think of the Battle of Britain it's the pilots they remember, Churchill's "Few", the glamorised young heroes who flew the fighters that shot down the Messerschmitt fighters, the Stuka dive-bombers and the bombers -- Heinkels and Dorniers.
Sometimes they slept in their dispersal huts, waiting for dawn take-offs and the first sorties of a day that might stretch to darkness and involve four, sometimes five flights against usually overwhelming odds.
Breakfast if they were lucky.
They flew with flamboyant scarves around their necks or dressed in polo-neck sweaters under their uniforms. On whacky 92 Squadron the wilder pilots wore corduroy trousers. Some threw on battle dress over pyjamas.
They didn't like the stiff collars of the time because they rubbed their necks raw as they swivelled constantly, alert for the "Hun in the sun".
At night they partied, drank and made love as if there was no tomorrow. Often there wasn't.
It's the pilots then who were the focus, understandably enough. But the gunners and navigators who crewed the Blenheims and Defiants which helped turn back the German challenge over British skies should not be forgotten.
Forty New Zealanders served in this role and some paid with their lives.
In total 135 New Zealanders were entitled to the Battle of Britain clasp, awarded to those who flew at least one operation during the battle. Twenty died, 16 of them pilots.
Five of the 20 were killed in aircraft accidents, two of them newcomer Hurricane pilots killed within five minutes of each other on the same airfield on night training.
Thirty-one of the Battle of Britain survivors lost their lives on air operations later in the war and another eight became POWs. Two were captured during the battle itself.
All four living New Zealand Battle of Britain veterans were Short Service Commission (SSC) pilots, joining the RAF on short four-year terms pre-war when the RNZAF was so small as to have no places for adventurous young men bitten by the flying bug.
They and many others yearned to fly at a time when the RAF was actively recruiting in the "colonies", seeking to build its strength in the face of Germany's threat.
Almost every month from July 1937 drafts of 12 to 18 SSC hopefuls -- selection was the first hurdle, RAF flying training and exams were tough -- sailed for England.
Gard'ner, for example, left New Zealand in December 1938 in a draft that included Colin Gray, who was to become New Zealand's top-scoring fighter pilot. Gawith and Brown went earlier that year, Lawrence at the start of 1939.
Gard'ner was unlucky in a way, posted to 141 Squadron, just one of two flying the hopeless Defiant, a low-wing monoplane, slow, cumbersome and without any forwardfiring guns. Four machine guns in a turret atop the fuselage behind the pilot had a restricted arc of fire. They were effectively defenceless.
On 19 July at 1.30pm nine Defiants lifted off to patrol over the Channel south of Folkestone. An hour later Messerschmitt 109s, unseen, swooped.
In an instant four of the Defiants were in the sea. Another crashed in Dover, another as it approached an RAF airfield. Only three returned, one badly damaged. A recent British magazine called it a "Massacre of the Innocents".
Four Defiant pilots and six gunners died. Two of the dead pilots were New Zealanders, John Kemp, 25, of Wellington, and Rudal Kidson, 26, a King Country sheep farmer. Their bodies were never found.
Although wounded and bloodied, his scalp hanging down his face, Gard'ner ditched his aircraft and struggled to the surface as his machine sank. His gunner died.
He was picked up by a motor torpedo boat, its crew shouting "We gotcha, we gotcha", as they snagged him and dragged him aboard. He remembered no more until he woke up in hospital. The rest of the battle he spent convalescing.
He's gone to London because "it's important to make the journey to attend this symbolic event."
Brown, posted to 72 Squadron at Biggin Hill in September, volunteered for Fighter Command after flying with an army cooperation unit.
He was shot down on his second sortie. A cannon shell ripped into the cockpit, hit him in the left leg and exploded on the throttle box and instruments.
Without control of his Spitfire he had no option and jumped. He landed in a marshy area, found he couldn't stand up and was menaced by a rifle-carrying Home Guardsman who spoke not a word.
His smashed leg meant he never flew operationally again but later instructed and worked in Transport Command.
Of the battle he says, "It was an important victory for the world at that time."
Gawith flew Blenheim and Havoc night fighters for 2-1/2 years before, during and after the battle, on interception patrols and intruder sorties over occupied Europe, shooting up and bombing airfields and other targets and looking for enemy planes.
"By the time I finished my nerves were well and truly shot and I still suffer the effects of that stress even now."
In July 1942 he endured the loss of his younger brother Peter, a pilot on 3 Squadron with a DFM, his Hurricane apparently fatally damaged by a storm of flak while attacking an airfield in Holland. His body was never found.
Lawrence had a "good" war. He is credited with four outright victories and others shared destroyed and damaged.
He shot down two Me 109s during the Battle of Britain while flying with 234 and 603 Squadrons, and the others later in Malta where, as squadron leader, he commanded 185 Squadron.
At 603 he flew with fellow New Zealander Brian Carbury, an outstanding Battle of Britain performer who scored 15 victories in a short time, among the best of the entire RAF, and who was one of only two pilots to tally five enemy aircraft in one day. Carbury was also one of a handful who received the DFC and bar during the battle.
Postwar Lawrence worked in New Zealand for some years but eventually returned to England to live.
Brown flew as a navigator for British European Airways from 1946-70, then returned to New Zealand and bought an orchard in the Bay of Plenty.
Strangely, Gard'ner also operated an orchard in the same area after he came home following 20 years' post-war service in the RAF from which he retired a group captain.
Late in the war Gawith worked as senior RAF liaison officer with the United States 9th Air Defence in London, on the beachhead in Normandy and further inland in France.
He ended the war a wing commander with the DFC and the US Bronze Star.
He had begun studying as a lawyer before joining the RAF, completed his courses on return and joined the family law firm in Masterton. He retired in 1986.
Max Lambert is writing a book on NZ fighter pilots for publication next year.
tvnz.co.nz/national-news/kiwi-few-remember-battle-britain-3773986
