Blood, Sweat and Valour

41 Squadron RAF, August 1942-May 1945; A Biographical History

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Steve Brew is the Historian for 41(R) Squadron RAF, a Test and Evaluation Squadron based at RAF Coningsby in Lincoln-shire, currently flying Panavia Tornados and Eurofighter Typhoons.

The author of Greycliffe; Stolen Lives (Navarine, 2003) and numerous magazine articles, Brew developed a passion for 41 Squadron RAF over many years. This has grown into a strong affiliation with the Squadron, its past pilots and ground crew, and their families.

He has been involved in the Squadron’s history for over ten years, and his website, The Pilots of 41 Squadron RAF, 1939-1945, has been online and regularly updated since early 2003.

Brew has lived and worked in Australia, Canada, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, and speaks in addition to his English mother-tongue also fluent High German and Swiss German.

His personal connection to the unit is his great uncle Bill Brew’s service with 41 Squadron during World War II. The Squadron was his only operational unit by the time he was shot down over France in August 1941, and he spent the remainder of the War behind wire. This personal link to 41 Squadron has given him the passion to dig deeper than any previous writer.

In his role as Squadron Historian, Brew has assisted in the preparation and organisation of, and actively participated in, a number of 41 Squadron events held at RAF Coningsby. Two of the larger events were the unit’s commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of Britain in 2010, and the celebration of the Squadron’s 95th Anniversary in 2011.

In doing so, he assisted the Squadron in bringing together World War II pilots and their families to remember their service and sacrifices, and to celebrate the proud history of this illustrious Squadron.

Brew has been working on a manuscript for a Squadron History since 2004, and recognised the importance of creating both an accurate and a definitive account, as no such History existed at that time. In order to do so, he has accessed literally

thousands of documents in archived collections across the globe.

Most importantly, 41 Squadron has allowed Brew exclusive full access to its own archive of hundreds of original World War II documents, including personnel details, combat reports, intelligence reports and correspondence.

It must be emphasised that this is a new, untapped source of World War II data, that has never before been available in the public domain and  has not been published; it is not available elsewhere.

However, rather than just being satisfied with dry documentary accounts, Brew has sought to corroborate details by consciously seeking out primary source documents, rather than accepting previously published data on face value.

These sources include ORBs at Squadron, Station, Wing and Group levels, ORBs of training establishments, communiqués, personnel files, escape and evasion reports, liberation reports, combat reports, nominal rolls, periodicals, logbooks, letters, diaries and memoirs, and personal interviews with pilots and their families.

Brew has also consciously made a point of obtaining sign-off from pilots and/or their families on what he has written about them. Permissions have been obtained and sources cited and acknowledged. He has deliberately included as much information on individuals as possible, regardless of the length of a man’s tenure; it has been his aim to give every man his place in history.

Three things struck Brew in particular whilst researching 41 Squadron’s role in World War II: (i) the human cost to the unit of the victory achieved in May 1945, (ii) the physical exertion and sheer hard work by every man on the Squadron, whether pilot or ground crew, and (iii) the raw courage shown by every one of them in the face of a determined adversary. It is from these three elements that he drew his choice of title.

The result is the first definitive and comprehensive account of 41 Squadron’s History between August 1942 and May 1945.

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© Steve Brew, 2012-2014