Blood, Sweat and Courage

41 Squadron RAF, September 1939-July 1942; A Biographical History

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A few brief months after its formation, 41 Squadron was deployed to France equipped with the F.E.8 pusher in October 1916, in the dying days of the First Battle of the Somme. Over the remaining 24 months of the Great War, the Squadron participated in the Battles of Arras, Messines, and Cambrai, the German 1918 Spring Offensive, and the Battle of Amiens.

By the time of its return to the United Kingdom in early 1919, the Squadron boasted a well-earned reputation with a respectable record of victories and accolades. The pilots were credited with destroying 111 aircraft and 14 balloons, sending down 112 aircraft out of control, and driving down a further 25 aircraft and five balloons. They were awarded no less than four DSOs, six MCs, nine DFCs, four Mentions in Despatches, and two French and two Belgian Croix de Guerre; two of the ground crew also received Military Medals.

At least 185 pilots from Britain, the Commonwealth, and the United States served with the Squadron during World War I. Of these, 39 were killed in action or died on active service, 48 were wounded or injured, and 20 became Prisoners of War. Their Battle Honours are ‘Western Front 1916-1918’, ‘Somme 1916’, ‘Arras and Cambrai 1917’, and ‘Somme 1918’.

41 Squadron was formally disbanded on 31 December 1919, but re-formed again at RAF Northolt on 1 April 1923, under an Air Ministry scheme to expand the RAF by fifteen squadrons for home defence, increase the size of the Reserve, and purchase 500 aircraft.

Upon its re-birth, the Squadron consisted of just one flight of six World War I vintage aircraft, but would grow significantly in size and fly seven different aircraft types before the outbreak of World War II: the Sopwith Snipe, the Armstrong Whitworth Siskin III and IIIA, the Bristol Bulldog IIa, the two-seat Hawker Demon I, the Hawker Fury II and finally the Squadron’s first monoplane, the famous Spitfire I.

The inter-war years were an exciting and colourful time for 41 Squadron, during which approximately 200 pilots served with the unit. This generation of pilots and ground crew experienced all manner of activity in addition to their training, such as competitions, air displays and aerobatics, a deployment to the Aden Protectorate on air policing duties, and the development, growth and maturity of the Royal Air Force.

In 1929, eleven of the Squadron’s pilots flew their aircraft to Calais to rendezvous with the French aviation pioneer, Louis Blériot, and escort him back to Dover in a re-enactment of the first aerial crossing of the English Channel 20 years earlier. During 1929-1930, the Squadron trained their Royal Highnesses, the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) and Prince George (later the Duke of Kent), to fly and, between 1930 and 1935, they played host to a myriad of other British and foreign royal, government and military dignitaries.

These included an official visit by the French Armée de l‘Air, when the Squadron’s pilots rendezvoused with four twin-engined mono-plane Marcel Bloch 200 bombers – then the cutting edge of technology – over the English Channel in June 1935 and escorted them back to Northolt. One particularly noteworthy visitor was Japanese General Matsui Iwane who, after World War II, would be held accountable and executed for the 1937 ‘Rape of Nanjing’, in which his armies murdered an estimated 300,000 Chinese civilians.

British dignitaries included their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of York, who were escorted to Brussels, the Prime Minister, J. Ramsay MacDonald, the Chief of Air Staff, Marshal of the RAF Hugh Trenchard, the AOC-in-C ADGB, Air Marshal Sir Edward Ellington, and the AOC Fighting Area, ADGB, Air Vice-Marshal Hugh Dowding.

They also hosted hundreds of students of the country’s Army and Navy colleges, all of whom visited the Squadron for familiarisations, lectures and flying demonstrations.

In 1930, following the R.101 Airship disaster in Beauvais, France, 41 Squadron pilots and ground crew formed a part of the Guard of Honour for the Lying-in-State of the 48 victims in the Palace of Westminster. Amongst the dead were the Secretary of State for Air, Brigadier General Lord Christopher Thomson, and the Director of Civil Aviation, Air Vice-Marshal Sir Sefton Brancker.

However, the Squadron had also suffered its own setbacks and losses during the inter-war period, recording no less than 55 accidents in the air or on the ground. Eleven men were killed and three injured in flying accidents, three injured in airscrew accidents on the ground, and one pilot killed and a second injured in automobile accidents. Although no Battle Honours were granted nor any decorations awarded during this time, the era produced ten Air Commodores, nine Air Vice-Marshals, two Air Marshals and two Air Chief Marshals.

On 30 December 1938, the Squadron was issued with its first Spitfires, thereby becoming the third RAF squadron in history to receive them.

By early February 1939, the unit had received a full complement of twenty Mark I Spitfires, which cost the Government the princely sum of £129,130 for the lot! The pilots and crews then spent much of 1939 familiarising themselves with the new aircraft and its new technology, handling and procedures.

Throughout the inter-war period, but most intensively following the 1938 European Crisis which saw the German annexation of the Sudetenland, the Squadron busied itself with a demanding regimen of flying training.

This included Home Defence exercises, dog fights, practice attacks, low level attacks, firing exercises, bomber affiliation exercises, turns, dives, formation flying, battle flying, battle climbs, oxygen climbs to 30,000 feet, cross-country navigation exercises, night flying, cloud flying, reconnaissance patrols, beam approach landings, air exercises, group operations, R/T range tests, Pip-Squeak practice, and many other activities.

The darkening clouds over the Continent, and a foreboding of what was to come, leant an urgency to the task.

The Declaration of War on 3 September 1939 meant that all their training would now be put to the ultimate test. But had it been enough? Were they ready for the challenges that lay before them? They were about to find out.

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© Steve Brew, 2014