Photos at RAF Jui, Sierra Leone including RNZAF 490 Squadron

[ah1954]

I bought on eBay last year about 50 black and white photographs in a brown OHMS (On His Majesty's Service) envelope labelled 'Intelligence Officer RAF Jui, For Identification'.  I am doing research on someone who served there in the RAF. 

Four of the photographs show the ASR (Air Sea Rescue) warehouse of RNZAF 490 Squadron, which was based RAF Jui, not far from Freetown in Sierra Leone from March 1943 until August 1945.  Some information about the planes they operated can be read on the walls. No 290 squadron was also based at RAF Jui until July 1943, and several other squadrons sent detachments to Jui, so not all photos may be of members of 490 Squadron. In fact, as the Intelligence Officer was probably British given that I bought the photos in the UK, I suspect that many of the men photographed in groups or singly are British, not from New Zealand, but I could be wrong.

Most photos have an RAF Censor stamp on the back and some are printed on paper labelled 'Crown Copyright Reserved' so they seem genuine. The other photographs are of men posing individually or in groups, photographs of the football pitch and photos of men on the stage at the ASTRADOME, the theatre at the base.  The only person identified is Group Captain Theodore Quintus Studd, who helped to set up the base in 1941 and served there until 1944.  By all accounts RAF Jui was not a particularly nice place to be stationed and the men saw little military action but, as you will see from the photos, they made the best of it.

I have uploaded scans of the best photos to my Google photos site here: 

         photos.app.goo.gl/S5QnoEJpwNxog5Y38

The link can be copied and shared.

If anyone can add any information I would be delighted to hear from them.

[Dave Homewood]

Really interesting photos, thanks for sharing them. I hope you have luck discovering more information.

[davidd]

Very noticeable in many of the photographs taken inside the "ASR" building are many examples of the International maritime "distress" flag, which so far as I can remember was a red field with a central white disc. These flags became somewhat notorious in the RNZAF in Pacific, as they were standard equipment in all RAF-type aircraft dinghies. They were carried by such aircraft as our P-40s in the early days in the Solomon islands, and caused much confusion when these were encountereed by American naval personnel who thought they were some sort of inverted Japanese naval ensign. One shot-down RNZAF pilot thought he was going to be shot by trigger-happy US Naval personel, crew of a crash launch who had been sent out to rescue him (briefly mentioned in J M S Ross's official history if I recall correctly.) These flags were also delivered to the RNZAF in 1946/47 aboard our great fleet of 80 ex-RAF Mosquitos as part of the ASR dinghy equipment, one of the largest aerial delivery jobs in the post-war RNZAF.

The vast bulk of the ground-staff of 490 Squadron would have been RAF, possibly with a small sprinkling of RNZAF, and other Commonwealth air forces.