Blood, Sweat and Courage

41 Squadron RAF, September 1939-July 1942; 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 Tornado GR4's and Eurofighter Typhoon FGR4's.

The author of "A Ruddy Awful Waste" (Fighting High, 2016), "Blood, Sweat and Valour" (Fonthill, 2012), "Greycliffe; Stolen Lives" (Navarine, 2003), and numerous magazine articles, Steve Brew has had a passion for 41 Squadron RAF for many years. This has grown into a strong affiliation with the current Squadron, its past pilots and ground crew, and their families.

He has been involved in the recording and promotion of the Squadron’s history for over a decade, and his website, 41 (F) Squadron RAF at War and Peace, April 1923-March 1946, has been online and regularly updated since early 2003.

Steve 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 WO1 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, Steve Brew has assisted in the preparation and organisation of, and actively participated in, a number of 41 Squadron events held at RAF Coningsby. Three of the larger events were the unit’s Centenary in 2016, its 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 has helped the Squadron bring together hundreds of pilots and their families to remember their service and sacrifices, and to celebrate the proud history of this illustrious Squadron.

However, Steve Brew recognised a need for creating an accurate and a definitive History of the unit, as none existed.

He therefore set about his task in a thorough and chronological manner, which has seen him access literally thousands of documents in archived collections across the globe. These 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, and periodicals.

Most importantly, 41 Squadron has allowed him 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, Steve Brew has sought to corroborate details by consciously seeking out primary source documents, rather than accepting previously published data on face value. He has sought to complement this data with the addition aid of logbooks, letters, diaries, memoirs, and personal interviews with pilots and their families.

Steve Brew has also consciously made a point of obtaining sign-off from pilots and/or their families, as the case may be, 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 him 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: "Blood, Sweat and Courage".

The result is a definitive and comprehensive account of 41 Squadron’s History between September 1939 and May 1945.

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© Steve Brew, 2014