The Rafwaffe nickname sometimes makes people think of cloak-and-dagger work. In reality, No. 1426 Flight’s value was plain and immediate. Recognition and tactics were not academic problems when a split-second identification might decide whether a pair of Spitfires turned inside a Focke-Wulf, or whether a bomber gunner opened fire on the right machine in the right place. The Flight sat at the point where intelligence, test flying, training, and morale met. It gave Allied crews the closest thing to a rehearsal.

What follows is a deep, joined-up history: how the Rafwaffe Flight formed, where it operated, what it flew, how it kept those aircraft serviceable, and what happened on the road.

History of No. 1426 (Enemy Aircraft) Flight RAF – aka the Rafwaffe

A unit born from opportunity

The RAF had been examining enemy aircraft since the early war years, with the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough acting as the main centre for technical evaluation, and the Air Fighting Development Unit running tactical trials. The missing piece was something more direct and more human: a way to put those machines in front of operational crews in a controlled setting, rather than leaving recognition to silhouettes, still photographs, and second-hand tales.

No. 1426 (Enemy Aircraft) Flight was formed at RAF Duxford on 21 November 1941. The choice of Duxford made sense. It was already tied into Fighter Command development and trials work, and it had the sort of infrastructure and local airspace that could support unusual flying without disturbing front-line business.

The Flight’s first line-up was modest and, by later standards, almost quaint: a Heinkel He 111, a Messerschmitt Bf 109, and a Junkers Ju 88 were among the early machines flown in RAF markings (hence becoming aircraft of the Rafwaffe. The job was not to hoard trophies. It was to circulate knowledge. Once a new type had been acquired, repaired, and wrung out for technical and tactical data, it could be handed to 1426 Flight so crews across Britain could see it with their own eyes.

By March 1943 the Flight moved from Duxford to RAF Collyweston, near RAF Wittering, and it is Collyweston that became most closely associated with the “Rafwaffe” in its mature period.

RAF Collyweston was not glamorous. It was useful: a satellite airfield, with room to park an eclectic collection of airframes, and close enough to established RAF infrastructure for support. Local memory has it as Collyweston’s last wartime claim to fame, precisely because German aircraft in RAF markings were not something Stamford villagers expected to see circling overhead.

From capture to classroom

A common misunderstanding is that 1426 Flight did all the serious testing itself. Much of the heavy technical work sat elsewhere. Farnborough in particular remained central for captured aircraft, especially as the war went on and systems such as radar and electronic homing became a battlefield of their own.

There was, broadly, a pipeline.

First came acquisition: forced landings, navigational mistakes, aircraft found abandoned, captures by Allied troops, and occasional defections. Then repair and examination, often with the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough and specialist work at other sites as needed. Tactical trials followed, usually with development units. Finally came demonstration and familiarisation, which is where 1426 Flight made itself useful, operating aircraft in RAF markings and taking them to the stations that needed to see them.

If you could have stood by a dispersal and watched the Rafwaffe Flight arrive, you would have understood its purpose instantly. These were not museum pieces. They were working aeroplanes, gathered so pilots, gunners, and ground staff could inspect the details that mattered in combat: cockpit layout, blind spots, armament positions, undercarriage stance, cooling arrangements, and the small cues that make recognition instinctive.

The airfields: where the Rafwaffe lived and travelled

A Flight that toured by definition left footprints all over the country, but its home bases and regular haunts are clear enough to sketch.

RAF Duxford (1941 to early 1943)

This was the starting point, tied into Fighter Command development flying.

RAF Collyweston (from March 1943)

Collyweston became the operational base for the touring period. It hosted the mixed collection and the maintenance effort that kept the aircraft flyable. It also provided something else: a degree of discretion. A small satellite field was a good place to run unusual aircraft without turning the station into a circus in the modern sense.

Royal Aircraft Establishment Farnborough and associated sites

Even when the Flight’s “address” was elsewhere, Farnborough appears repeatedly in the wider story as the place where captured aircraft were examined, modified, photographed, or used for trials and filming. Some aircraft also spent time at other airfields for specialised work, including night flying and radar trials.

Southern bases during the build-up to D-Day

As the invasion approached, the need for recognition and tactical understanding intensified, especially among units preparing for operations over the Continent. The Flight’s aircraft were used to familiarise Allied units in the south, including by flying past stations and formations so crews could see the silhouettes and attitudes of aircraft in motion.

Tour stops and dispersals

Surviving movement notes for individual aircraft show the touring nature of the job, with visits to a range of RAF and USAAF stations. The aircraft could arrive with friendly fighter escort, both for safety and to prevent fatal misunderstandings.

Tangmere and the end of 1426 Flight

By January 1945 the Flight’s role was winding down. The unit disbanded, and its function and some aircraft passed into the Enemy Aircraft Flight of the Central Fighter Establishment at RAF Tangmere.

The aircraft: the Rafwaffe’s flying collection

The Flight’s strength was never large in conventional terms. What made it remarkable was variety: fighters and bombers, single-engined and twin-engined, early-war and late-war, with oddities that arrived through sheer chance. Some types were famous because they survive today; others came and went, broken up for spares once the RAF had extracted what it could from them.

Messerschmitt Bf 109s: the spine of the collection

The Bf 109 was central because it remained the Luftwaffe’s standard single-seat fighter for much of the war. The Flight operated both early and later variants, giving RAF and Allied pilots a chance to compare what they were meeting in the air.

One early example was an E-model, a type closely associated with 1940. It offered something immediate: a chance to see the aircraft that had fought the Spitfire and Hurricane at close quarters, to understand how compact it was, how the cockpit sat, how the undercarriage legs gave it that particular stance on the ground, and how its systems were laid out.

The later G-models mattered in a different way. They were more powerful and often more heavily armed, and they appeared in a wide range of theatres. One well-documented aircraft in RAF hands was rebuilt from wrecked airframes and parts, then assembled and brought back to life in Britain. Its service with the “Rafwaffe” included comparative trials and mock combat against a range of Allied fighters. Those exercises were not parlour tricks. They were about knowing what an enemy fighter could do in a turn, in a dive, on the climb, and how quickly it could change direction.

The touring programme built around such aircraft combined ground inspection with flying display. It is easy to imagine the effect on a young pilot who had only seen a Bf 109 as a black dot or a gun-camera flash. Seeing it land, taxi, and park in front of him made the threat real, but also measurable.

Focke-Wulf Fw 190s: the hard lessons of 1942

The Fw 190 had given the RAF a rude shock when it appeared. It rolled quickly, hit hard, and for a period it outclassed many RAF fighters in certain manoeuvres and heights. Captured examples therefore had immediate value.

The RAF acquired Fw 190s through a mixture of forced landings, navigational mistakes, and battlefield recovery. Some were flown for trials and later used for familiarisation, including at Collyweston. At least one later Fw 190 in RAF hands arrived after a pilot became lost on a night operation and landed at an RAF airfield by mistake. That sort of accidental capture was typical of the “Rafwaffe” story. Chance delivered the aircraft, but organisation turned chance into training value.

Junkers Ju 88s: the bomber and the night fighter

No enemy type better fits the “enemy aircraft” concept than the Ju 88, because it came in so many forms: bomber, reconnaissance platform, torpedo aircraft, and night fighter. For 1426 Flight, it offered the big, unmistakeable twin-engined silhouette that bomber crews needed to recognise at a glance.

One Ju 88 in Rafwaffe hands came via a navigational error after a night raid, landing on a British airfield and being quietly absorbed into the evaluation system. Another, more famous, was a night fighter that ended up on British soil with advanced radar equipment. That aircraft was of great intelligence value. It went through technical evaluation and specialist trials before later joining the 1426 Flight “circus”, where it was used for familiarisation in the run-up to the invasion of Europe. In the summer of 1944, it was also used for film work, reflecting the way captured aircraft fed into training and instructional material.

Heinkel He 111: an early prize, and a grim reminder

The Heinkel He 111 had been a symbol of the air war over Britain in 1940. Captured examples therefore had obvious training value. But operating ageing enemy bombers was not safe. The history of the “Rafwaffe” includes fatal accidents, including the loss of a He 111 on a flight that killed the pilot and several passengers. It is a reminder that this work, though often described as a circus, carried hazards every time the wheels left the ground.

Messerschmitt Bf 110: the twin-engined fighter

Captured Bf 110s served both for recognition and for studying the handling of twin-engined fighters. They were useful for showing bomber crews what a twin-engined attacker looked like in different attitudes, and for examining features that distinguished it from similar silhouettes at range.

Henschel Hs 129: rare and worth showing

The Hs 129 was a specialised ground-attack aircraft, armoured and purpose-built. It was not common in the west, which made any captured example worth examining and worth showing. Its inclusion in the “Rafwaffe” story speaks to the Flight’s remit: not simply to familiarise crews with the most common enemy types, but also to give them a chance to see the oddities that might appear as the war shifted theatres and roles.

Messerschmitt Me 410: speed and sting

The Me 410 was a fast twin with the potential to be dangerous as a bomber destroyer and reconnaissance platform. Having one in RAF hands helped fill out the recognition picture and gave a basis for understanding an aircraft that could be misidentified at speed if you did not know what to look for.

Fiat CR.42 Falco: a biplane in the modern war

One of the most curious stories in the enemy aircraft programme is the Italian Fiat CR.42, a biplane fighter that ended up in RAF hands after a forced landing. It was repaired, examined, and flown in British tests, including mock combat. In the context of 1426 Flight, it serves as a reminder that “enemy aircraft” was broader than Germany alone, and that the RAF was willing to extract lessons even from types that seemed out of date.

The support aircraft: the unglamorous backbone

You cannot run a touring Flight on captured machines alone. Aircraft had to be ferried, spares collected, people moved, and the day-to-day practicalities handled. A small pool of RAF types provided that backbone, doing the work that never makes the photographs: the errands, the liaison trips, the transport of specialists, and the routine movement that kept the “circus” on the road.

How the touring programme worked

A 1426 Flight visit was an organised show-and-tell.

The aircraft would arrive, sometimes escorted by friendly fighters. That escort had a practical purpose. German silhouettes in British skies were a recipe for confusion, and nobody wanted a training sortie ending in a friendly engagement. Escort also helped with the optics on the ground: it reassured everyone watching that what they were seeing was controlled.

On arrival, crews could inspect the aircraft at close range. Pilots asked about cockpit ergonomics, visibility, engine response, and handling quirks. Gunners looked at gun positions and arcs of fire, and tried to understand how an enemy aircraft might manoeuvre to get its weapons on target or to escape. Ground staff looked at access panels, servicing points, and the way systems were packaged. These things were all tactical knowledge, just expressed through metal rather than a lecture.

Flying demonstrations followed. Nothing taught recognition like seeing an enemy type approach in a shallow dive, pull up, and bank away, showing its upper surface, its planform, and its underwing details in a sequence that resembled combat. The Flight’s aircraft also fed into training films and instructional work, because film could reach units that the “circus” could not.

The programme was not purely RAF-facing. Britain was full of USAAF units by 1943 and 1944, and American crews benefited from being able to inspect and watch the enemy aircraft they would meet over Europe.

Maintenance: the unglamorous miracle

The most impressive part of the “Rafwaffe” story may not be the flying at all. It is that the flying happened.

Maintaining captured aircraft was a constant fight. There was no smooth supply chain. Parts were often scarce, documentation incomplete, and the aircraft themselves were sometimes patched together from multiple examples. Some were rebuilt from wrecks, repaired with improvised components, and kept alive by ground crew who had to learn on the job with limited references.

Snags were constant: ignition problems, fuel system quirks, magneto issues, vibration, canopy and sealing troubles, and the peculiarities of German engineering when serviced by RAF methods and materials. A captured fighter might fly beautifully one day and refuse to behave the next. A captured bomber might need days of work for every hour in the air. Each sortie was therefore not only a training mission but also a maintenance gamble.

Even paint schemes were part of safety. These aircraft needed to be unmistakable. They wore RAF serials and markings, and sometimes additional high-visibility identifiers, because the only thing worse than confusing a captured aircraft with an enemy was doing so at the wrong moment.

Notable events, episodes, and losses

A history of 1426 Flight is incomplete if it only lists serials and airfields. The unit’s defining moments show why it mattered and what it cost.

Intelligence turns into training

The capture of advanced enemy equipment, particularly radar-fitted night fighters, created immediate intelligence opportunities. Technical specialists stripped those aircraft for information, tested the systems, and learned how the enemy was detecting and intercepting Allied aircraft at night. But the story did not end in a laboratory. Some of those same aircraft later toured to give aircrew a better sense of what they might face, and how to recognise it.

The spring 1944 “circus” tempo

The run-up to D-Day brought urgency. Units needed to be sharp on recognition and confident in their tactical understanding. The “Rafwaffe” tours at that time combined demonstrations with comparative flying, showing what an enemy aircraft could do when pushed, and what its limitations were when an Allied pilot made the right choices.

Accidents and the price of unusual flying

Enemy aircraft flying carried risks beyond the normal. Spare parts were scarce, systems were unfamiliar, and some aircraft were already old or worn by the time they entered RAF hands. Fatal accidents occurred, and the deaths of pilots and passengers underline a point that is too easily forgotten when we look back at the photographs: this was dangerous operational work, not showmanship.

One particularly painful loss involved a pilot killed when flying a captured Fw 190 that suffered an engine fire. That sort of death also stripped the Flight of experience. The men who could fly these aircraft well, and could talk about them clearly to operational crews, were specialists. They were not easily replaced.

Why it mattered

If you strip away the oddity of German aircraft wearing RAF roundels, 1426 Flight’s purpose was simple: reduce surprise.

Recognition training is about speed and confidence. A silhouette chart can teach shape, but it cannot teach scale as it looks through Perspex at 300 mph. It cannot teach the sound of an engine, or how a twin’s undercarriage sits when it is half-down, or what a fighter looks like when it rolls hard and shows its belly. A touring Flight could.

The Rafwaffe also did something subtler. It pulled the enemy down to size. Seeing a Ju 88 parked on your own station, climbing into its cockpit, asking a pilot what it felt like on approach, turns “the enemy bomber” into an aeroplane with strengths and weaknesses. That demystification matters when crews are about to cross the Channel.

The end of the road and the surviving legacy

By early 1945 the strategic situation had changed. The Luftwaffe was weakened, Allied forces were established on the Continent, and captured aircraft were no longer rare prizes. The Flight’s wartime role declined, and it disbanded, with its function passing into post-war structures that handled enemy aircraft within the Central Fighter Establishment.

What remained were the artefacts and the paper trails. Several “Rafwaffe” aircraft survive today in museum care, and the survival of those airframes has shaped modern understanding of the unit. They are tangible reminders of an unusual wartime practice: flying the enemy’s machines, not for bravado, but to teach people how to beat them.

The post The Rafwaffe: A History of No. 1426 (Enemy Aircraft) Flight RAF appeared first on WW2 Airfield Control Towers & Aviation History.

It is an episode that sits neatly at the junction of three wartime stories that do not often meet in the same paragraph: Orkney’s very practical home defence, the Royal Navy’s growing air arm, and an American-built fighter scoring what is widely described as its first combat victory in the European theatre.

Why Scapa Flow mattered, and why the Luftwaffe kept coming back

By late 1940 the Home Fleet’s anchorage at Scapa Flow was still one of the Royal Navy’s key assets and, therefore, a recurring problem for German planners. Orkney’s wartime defences were layered, ranging from anti-aircraft batteries and barrage balloons to coordinated fire plans and fighter cover from airfields in the islands and on the mainland.

This was not theoretical. The islands had already seen air attack and loss. A well-known early-war incident saw anti-aircraft guns on Hoy hit a Ju 88, often described locally as the first German aircraft shot down on British soil by anti-aircraft fire (there is also the Humbie Heinkel to consider here). Raids in March and April 1940 underlined that Orkney was not too far north to be touched, and that the defences would be tested repeatedly.

By Christmas 1940, the Luftwaffe’s need was not only to strike Scapa Flow but to look at it: to photograph, to assess changes, to learn where guns, balloons, nets and boom defences were placed, and to see what ships were present. 

The Junkers Ju 88: fast enough to get there, vulnerable once caught

Online sources record that a Junkers Ju 88 was shot down at Sandwick on 25 December 1940 while on a reconnaissance mission connected with Scapa Flow’s defences.

The aircraft brought down is usually identified in loss records as a Ju 88A-5 coded 4N+AL, with a Werknummer given in Luftwaffe compilations, assigned to 3.(F)/22, part of Aufklärungsgruppe 22. That unit operated Ju 88 reconnaissance aircraft from bases in Norway, making northern Scotland and Orkney reachable across the North Sea.

Whatever the exact track that day, the broad shape of the mission is consistent across Orkney and squadron-focused accounts: a lone Junkers Ju 88, engaged in photo-reconnaissance off the north of Scotland, was detected and fighters were sent up to deal with it.

The intercept: six Martlets scrambled, two got in

The most detailed narrative attached to named airmen describes a little after 2pm as the key moment. Six Grumman Martlets of 804 Squadron were scrambled over Orkney to pursue the Ju 88. Two pilots, Sub-Lt (A) T. R. V. Parke and Lt (FAA) Rodney H. P. Carver, made the interception and put rounds into the German aircraft.

The damage described is telling because it reads like a fight that was decided by systems and aerodynamics rather than instant destruction: the starboard radiator was hit; a port engine oil pipe was damaged; the tailplane took strikes. With cooling compromised, oil leaking, and the airframe no longer clean, the Ju 88 was forced into a crash landing rather than being able to run for the sea.

Crash-site summaries place the landing near Flotterson, just south of Loch Skaill in Sandwick. The air gunner is described as badly wounded, which matches the aircrew accounts.

There is an important point here that gets lost when people retell it as a neat “shot down” story. This was not a mid-air break-up and a smoking plunge into the sea. It ended with a survivable forced landing on farmland, which is why the next part of the story belongs to local men on the ground as much as to pilots in the air.

On the ground: stopping the burn, taking prisoners

German crews were trained to deny the enemy intelligence and equipment where they could. A Ju 88 sitting intact on a Scottish field was both a prize and a risk: a prize for anyone wanting cameras, films, maps, radio gear, and codes; a risk if the crew managed to set it alight.

The account most often repeated in connection with this crash is that armed local farmers, Thomas Harcus and his son Leslie, both in the Home Guard, prevented the crew from setting fire to the aircraft. The Germans were then taken into custody, with the wounded man receiving treatment, before the survivors were moved on for interrogation.

The crew was:

• Lt K. Schipp (pilot)
• Fw H. Schreiber
• Uffz H. Spörtl (the name is sometimes rendered Johann or Johannes in compilations)
• Obgefr K. Rotter (the wounded gunner)

Loss records broadly support the outline: the aircraft was lost at Sandwick on 25 December 1940, the crew were taken prisoner, and Rotter was wounded.

The Martlet angle: an American-built fighter makes its mark over Britain

There’s more to the story though. Yes, it was Christmas Day, a solitary intruder, and a clean outcome that leaves a crashed aircraft on British ground with prisoners beside it.

However, it also carries a technical footnote that has grown into a popular “first”. The Grumman Martlet, the British name for early Wildcats, was an American-built fighter. It is widely believed to be a US aircraft’s first combat victory in the European theatre when a British pilot in an American Martlet destroyed the Junkers Ju 88 over Scapa Flow. 

We can assume this to be the first combat victory by a US-built fighter in British service during the war.

Who were Parke and Carver, and what happened next

Rodney Harold Power Carver was a pre-war naval officer who had lived through the Fleet Air Arm’s shifting arrangements with the RAF and was with 804 Squadron at RNAS Hatston from late 1939, becoming ‘A’ Flight Commander in 1940. After Orkney he went on to command another fighter squadron and was awarded the DSC for his part in Operation Pedestal, later receiving a CBE and retiring as a Captain.

Thomas Robert Verner Parke’s story is shorter. He entered the Air Branch of the Royal Navy in May 1939, joined 804 Squadron at RNAS Hatston in July 1940, and was killed on 7 July 1941 when his Fulmar failed to return after being launched from HMS Pegasus in poor weather, crashing into high ground on the Mull of Kintyre.

Knowing that does not change what happened over Sandwick, but it does change the tone. The Christmas Day fight was not a neat “first” in a display case. It was a moment in the working life of two young naval aviators doing an unglamorous job: guarding an anchorage at the edge of the map.

A short note on why this little story lasts

People remember it because it has shape. A dark winter, a holiday, a lone aircraft crossing the sea, a scramble, damage that forces a landing rather than a disappearance, and then farmers with rifles stopping the crew from torching the evidence.

It is also a reminder that “defending Scapa Flow” was not just concrete, guns and paperwork. It was pilots at short notice, Home Guard on wet ground, and a strand of American industry arriving in British service months before the United States entered the war.

The post Christmas Day Intruder: The Ju 88 Shot Down at Sandwick, Orkney  appeared first on WW2 Airfield Control Towers & Aviation History.

Tragically Gleed did not live out the war to see the Allied victory he contributed to. When he was killed in action in April 1943, he left behind a record that combined combat success, leadership, and an unusually reflective written account of air fighting.

Ian Richard Gleed

Early life and the road to the RAF

Ian Richard Gleed was born on 3 July 1916 in Finchley, north London. He went to Tenterden Preparatory School and later at Epsom College. Like many young men of his generation, he grew up in the shadow of the First World War and tale of aviation bravery could be what drew him to flight. 

He learned to fly privately before joining the Royal Air Force, making his first solo flight in November 1935 at Hatfield. This matters because he joined the RAF not as an untested volunteer but as a man already comfortable in the air.

He joined the RAF on a short service commission in March 1936. After training, he was posted on Christmas Day 1936 to No. 46 Squadron, then flying the Gloster Gauntlet. These were the RAF’s last biplane fighters, already obsolescent by European standards, but the squadron provided Gleed with something more valuable than speed: time. He learned his trade in a peacetime air force that emphasised formation discipline, navigation, and the unglamorous routines of service flying.

The move to Spitfires and a narrow escape

In September 1939, shortly after the outbreak of war, pilot Ian Gleed was posted as a flight commander to No. 266 Squadron, which was reforming at RAF Sutton Bridge to fly the new Supermarine Spitfire. It should have been a straightforward progression, but in February 1940 he came close to being killed before ever facing the enemy.

On 18 February 1940, while testing a Spitfire, the aircraft broke up in mid-air. Gleed was thrown clear, lost consciousness, then recovered just in time to pull his parachute ripcord. He survived but was grounded for several weeks and initially restricted to dual flying only. For many pilots, such an accident ended a flying career. Ian Gleed returned to operations.

France 1940: baptism of fire

On 14 May 1940, just days into the German offensive in the west, Gleed regained full flying status and was posted to No. 87 Squadron in France as commander of “A” Flight. The situation was already deteriorating. RAF fighter squadrons were flying multiple sorties a day, often from airfields under attack, against a Luftwaffe that enjoyed numerical and tactical advantages.

In the space of three days, between 18 and 20 May, pilot Ian Gleed was credited with multiple victories against German fighters and bombers. These claims must be read in the context of the time. Air combat was fast, confused, and often fought at low altitude. Confirmation standards were uneven. What matters is not the exact arithmetic but the pattern. Gleed arrived in a battered squadron and quickly established himself as an effective combat leader.

No. 87 Squadron was withdrawn to Britain shortly afterwards. France was lost, but for Ian Gleed the experience proved formative. He had seen what modern air war looked like when things went wrong, and he had learned quickly.

The Battle of Britain and Hurricane operations

During the Battle of Britain, No. 87 Squadron operated primarily from airfields in the west and south-west of England, including RAF Exeter. This was 10 Group’s war, different in character from the better-known fighting over Kent and Sussex. Interceptions were often rushed, warning times short, and formations scattered by geography and weather.

Gleed flew the Hawker Hurricane, the RAF’s workhorse fighter of 1940. He became closely associated with one particular aircraft marked with a cartoon of “Figaro the Cat” on the fuselage, an image that has since become inseparable from his story. In fact, one of the most iconic photos of him features this Hurricane with him sat in the cockpit at RAF Ibsley. Such personal markings were not trivial. They signalled ownership, pride, and a bond between pilot and groundcrew.

As the daylight battle merged into the Blitz, Ian Gleed also took part in night fighting and intruder operations. This was among the most demanding work a fighter pilot could do in 1940 and 1941. Aircraft lacked airborne radar, navigation aids were basic, and interception relied on searchlights, ground control, and a good deal of luck. Gleed scored victories at night during this period, a testament not only to skill but to nerve.

On 13 September 1940 he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. The citation language was typical of the time, but the award reflected both courage and sustained operational effort during the most dangerous phase of the air war over Britain.

Squadron command and offensive operations

On Christmas Eve 1940, Gleed took command of No. 87 Squadron. He was just 24 years old. Youthful squadron commanders were not unknown in wartime, but the appointment still spoke to confidence in his judgement and temperament.

Under his command the squadron undertook a mixture of defensive patrols, night intruder sorties, and offensive operations over occupied Europe. These included attacks on enemy airfields in northern France, where aircraft could be destroyed on the ground. Such missions were hazardous and often unpopular, particularly at night, but they reflected a growing RAF emphasis on taking the fight back across the Channel.

Gleed continued to fly operationally as commanding officer. He was not a desk-bound leader. This mattered to the men he commanded, especially in a period when fatigue and loss were constant companions.

Wing leader and tactical influence

In November 1941 Gleed was promoted to wing commander and appointed wing leader, first at RAF Middle Wallop and later at RAF Ibsley. This marked a shift in his role. As wing leader, he was responsible not just for his own flying but for coordinating multiple squadrons, often flying Spitfires on fighter sweeps and bomber escort missions over northern France.

This was the era of offensive operations, when Fighter Command sought to draw the Luftwaffe into combat and maintain pressure over occupied territory. It was also a period when discipline mattered as much as aggression. Ian Gleed was known for emphasising the importance of staying with escorted bombers rather than breaking formation to pursue enemy fighters. It was sound advice, though not always popular with pilots eager for combat.

For his leadership and fighting spirit he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1942. By then, he was recognised not just as an accomplished pilot but as a thinker about air combat, someone capable of shaping how others fought.

Writing the war: Arise to Conquer

In 1942 Gleed published ‘Arise to Conquer’, a personal account of his experiences as a fighter pilot. It stands out among wartime memoirs for its clarity and restraint. Gleed wrote about fear, responsibility, and the mental strain of combat without sliding into melodrama. He did not pretend that air fighting was glamorous, nor did he reduce it to statistics.

The book was written under wartime constraints, both official and social. Like many public figures of the period, aspects of his private life were shaped for public consumption. Even so, the work remains valuable because it captures how a thoughtful, experienced pilot understood his job while the war was still being fought.

Headquarters work and the pull of operations

By mid-1942, Gleed was posted to headquarters roles at Fighter Command, serving as Wing Commander Tactics and later Wing Commander Operations. It was the sort of appointment often given to men expected to influence doctrine and training. For someone of his experience, it made sense.

It did not satisfy him for long. Like many combat leaders, Gleed wanted to return to operations. When the opportunity arose to serve in the Middle East, he took it.

The Mediterranean and 244 Wing

Gleed arrived in the Middle East on 1 January 1943. After a short period gaining desert operational experience with No. 145 Squadron, he was appointed wing leader of 244 Wing on 31 January. The context was very different from the air war over Britain.

By early 1943, Axis forces in North Africa were being squeezed into Tunisia. Air fighting focused increasingly on disrupting evacuation efforts and transport routes, particularly around the Cape Bon peninsula. Gleed flew Supermarine Spitfire Mk VBs, leading his wing on patrols and interception missions against German and Italian aircraft attempting to withdraw men and supplies.

This phase of the war was fast-moving and unforgiving. The Luftwaffe, though weakened, still fought hard, and losses continued on both sides.

Death over Cape Bon

On 16 April 1943, while leading a patrol over the Cape Bon area, Ian Gleed was shot down and killed. He had attempted to reach the coast, but his Spitfire crashed on sand dunes near the sea. 

He was initially buried at Tazoghrane and later reburied at Enfidaville War Cemetery. He was 26 years old.

As with many air combat losses, the precise circumstances are difficult to establish beyond doubt. Attribution of his loss to a specific enemy pilot has been suggested but remains uncertain. What is clear is that he was killed while leading operations at the height of his powers.

Achievements and assessment

Pilot Ian Gleed is generally credited with 13 confirmed aerial victories, along with additional probable and damaged enemy aircraft. As with all such tallies, the number should be treated as indicative rather than absolute. His success is better measured by its consistency across different theatres and roles.

He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) and the Distinguished Service Order (DSO), and held the rank of wing commander by the age of 25. He commanded both a squadron and a wing, wrote a significant wartime memoir, and influenced tactics at Fighter Command level.

Legacy

Gleed’s grave lies at Enfidaville War Cemetery in Tunisia. His headstone bears a line that reflects both resilience and humility: 

“One who held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake.”

Beyond the formal record, his legacy rests in three places. First, in the memory of those who flew with him and under him, who saw him as a leader willing to share risk. 

Second, in ‘Arise to Conquer’, which remains one of the more thoughtful personal accounts of the RAF fighter war. 

Third, in the enduring image of a Hurricane with a cartoon cat on its side, a reminder that behind the ranks and statistics were individuals with humour, fear, and resolve.

The post Ian Gleed (DSO, DFC) – The Life & Times of a RAF Fighter Pilot appeared first on WW2 Airfield Control Towers & Aviation History.

That short summary is the easy part. The real story sits in the gaps between “routine” and “accident”, and it tells you a lot about Bomber Command’s winter of 1939: long-range patrols at the edge of performance, incomplete information, and a system still learning how to keep its own aircraft alive.

Why Hampden L4072 was up there at all

In December 1939, Bomber Command was doing a great deal of maritime work. It was partly politics and partly necessity: early-war limits on bombing, and a very immediate fear of German surface raiders and mine warfare. Hampdens, fast by the standards of the mid-1930s, were used on armed reconnaissance and shipping searches from the start of the war. 

The “Hampden Patrol” was one expression of this. No. 5 Group’s Lincolnshire squadrons, including 49 Squadron at RAF Scampton and 44 Squadron at RAF Waddington, were among those tasked to provide aircraft for these northern maritime sorties while continuing other commitments. 

The order: sink ‘Deutschland’ off Norway

The 49 Squadron Association’s summary (drawing on the squadron’s Operations Record Book narrative) sets the scene with unusual clarity. At 21.00 on 20 December the squadron received instructions to bomb the Deutschland ship, reported near the Norwegian coast, and then to return to the Scottish base of RAF Leuchars. Next morning, 12 Hampdens of 49 Squadron took off from Scampton, met 12 Hampdens of 44 Squadron over Lincoln, and the combined formation headed out over the North Sea, passing over Skegness. On reaching the Norwegian coast, they turned north and spread out line abreast to hunt for the ship. The search came to nothing, and at the limit of range the aircraft turned back for Scotland. 

That last phrase, “the limit of their range”, matters. It is the quiet reason why a diversion to a fighter station in Northumberland could become a life-or-death decision.

The return: sleet, separation, and fighters in the wrong places

The same account describes the return flight being made in sleet and rain showers, with visibility reduced. The two squadrons became separated. The Scampton element made landfall in Northumberland, was intercepted but correctly recognised as friendly, and most aircraft landed at RAF Acklington by 15.47. 

Meanwhile, the Waddington element crossed the coast farther north than intended, near the Firth of Forth. That was the seed of the day’s better-known incident when Spitfires flying from RAF Drem (602 Squadron) shot down two 44 Squadron Hampdens after misidentification. 

Hampden L4072 was not one of the aircraft attacked over the Forth. It was one of the Hampdens that reached Northumberland and tried to get down.

RAF Acklington in 1939: why it was there, and why crews went to it

RAF Acklington had reopened in 1938, initially for training activity, and became a designated fighter station at the beginning of the war. 

For a Hampden crew arriving back from Norway in worsening weather, that mattered. Acklington was a known, guarded field on the coast with Fighter Command eyes on it. It was also close enough to be reachable when the planned Scottish destination was slipping out of reach.

The crash of Hampden L4072: “short of fuel” becomes a chapel roof

On approach to RAF Acklington, 49 Squadron’s account is blunt: one aircraft was “short of fuel” and “having problems”. Piloted by Sgt Edward Marshall, it crashed into the Church of Christ at North Broomhill on the edge of the aerodrome. Marshall was seriously injured, P/O James Melville Dundas Irvine was injured, and two members of the crew were killed. 

Accident compendiums broadly align on the core facts: fuel exhaustion on approach, crash into the Church of Christ at North Broomhill (often tied to Togston Terrace, near Amble), two RAF fatalities, two injured survivors. 

The crew were:

• Sgt Edward Marshall (pilot) – injured
• P/O James Melville Dundas Irvine (navigator or second pilot) – injured 
• Sgt Samuel Hainey Potts (often listed as observer) – killed 
• AC1 Edward Henry Humphry (wireless operator/air gunner) – killed 

The two dead are traceable in the formal record. Sgt Potts (service no. 580464) is buried at Chevington Cemetery, age 23. AC1 Humphry (service no. 539268) is recorded by the CWGC data as buried at Consett Blackhill and Blackhill Old Cemetery, age 20. 

A local memorial plaque at St John the Divine, Chevington, also records the loss, naming the aircraft and noting it “struck the Church of Christ, North Broomhill” while diverting to RAF Acklington. 

The church was later demolished.

Where, exactly, did Hampden L4072 hit?

Different sources describe the site slightly differently, but they agree on the essentials: the Church of Christ at North Broomhill, close to the aerodrome boundary, associated with Togston Terrace/Amble in local geography.

There is one awkward point worth treating with care. Some secondary compilations and local discussion suggest a civilian casualty on the ground when the church was struck. However, we can find no reports of this being the case.

What the Hampden brought to the job, and what it did not

It is tempting to paint the Hampden as either a sleek pre-war thoroughbred or a death trap. Reality sits between.

The Mk I was designed as a fast, manoeuvrable bomber with a slim fuselage and relatively light defensive armament compared with later wartime bombers. Early-war doctrine leaned on speed and handling to reduce vulnerability, but experience quickly showed Hampdens were not safe against fighters in daylight and later work moved heavily towards night operations. 

For maritime patrol work in winter 1939, the Hampden’s problem was often less about air combat and more about arithmetic: distance, wind, weather, and the basic limits of fuel. The 21 December mission was flown far enough that the formation turned back “at the limit of their range”. When you combine that with sleet showers, separation, and diversion to an unexpected airfield, the final approach becomes the worst moment to discover you are short.

The human aftermath: the two who did not come back, and the two who did

The RAF’s formal commemoration is straightforward.

• Sgt Samuel Hainey Potts lies at Chevington Cemetery. 
• AC1 Edward Henry Humphry lies at Consett Blackhill and Blackhill Old Cemetery and is also remembered through the squadron association’s records. 
• Both are listed on the Chevington church plaque that gathers losses around RAF Acklington. 

The two survivors were not “lucky” in any simple sense. Sgt Marshall was badly hurt. P/O Irvine survived this crash but was later killed in another flying accident in May 1940 (a separate Hampden loss). 

Why this matters?

Hampden L4072’s crash into the church is sometimes mentioned as an appendix to the Firth of Forth friendly-fire incident, but it deserves its own line in the ledger because it shows the wider conditions of that day.

The RAF did not lose L4072 to enemy action. It lost it to the compounded strain of a long maritime sortie flown on thin margins: a mission planned to the edge of range, a weather system that broke up formations, and the need to divert into a fighter station circuit with little fuel left to spend. 

In late 1939, this was a pattern. The air war had not yet settled into the later, grim routines of 1943 and 1944. It was still feeling for method. L4072’s story is one small, very specific example of what “learning the war” looked like in real time.

The post Handley Page Hampden L4072: A Wartime Crash on a Village Church  appeared first on WW2 Airfield Control Towers & Aviation History.

Manchester was hit on the nights of 22/23 and 23/24 December. Across the two raids, an estimated 684 people were killed and more than 2,000 injured.

Why Manchester was on the list

It is tempting to explain Manchester’s Christmas Blitz as “industrial bombing” and leave it there. But Manchester’s attraction to the Luftwaffe in late 1940 came from an awkward mix of geography, industry, and infrastructure.

The city sat behind the coastal targets that were taking a hammering that autumn, especially Liverpool and Birkenhead. Yet it functioned as an inland port, tied to the sea by the Ship Canal, and it was plugged into the national system by rail. Trafford Park, just to the west and south-west, concentrated war production and heavy engineering in one dense patch of factories and warehouses.

Major firms clustered at Trafford Park. A V Roe (Avro) was closely associated with Manchester and, by extension, the wider story of bomber production that would later dominate the region’s wartime identity. Ford’s Trafford Park plant turned out aeroengines on an immense scale. Metropolitan-Vickers’ works on Mosley Road, a key industrial site, was among those badly damaged in the December raids.

That is the strategic logic. The human logic was crueller: raids aimed at industry still splintered into homes, streets, stations, and civic buildings once bombs started falling in built-up districts.

A tactic built around disruption

By December 1940, the Luftwaffe was learning what did and did not work over Britain. One shift was the growing use of pathfinder methods to “light” targets. The idea was straightforward: make the aiming point visible in darkness and bad weather, then overwhelm a city’s fire and rescue capacity with incendiaries and follow-up explosives.

Another shift was operational rhythm: hitting a city on consecutive nights, to compound the damage and choke the recovery effort. In Manchester’s case it worked. Fire services did not refresh instantly. Water mains did not repair themselves overnight. Roads blocked by debris and unexploded bombs did not reopen just because the sun came up. A second raid landed on a city already stumbling.

The Christmas Blitz of Manchester

Night one: Sunday 22 to Monday 23 December

The first raid began on the evening of 22 December and ran deep into the morning of the 23rd. It lasted roughly from about 7.45pm until close to 7.00am. The weight of attack was substantial: around 272 tons of high explosive were dropped, with incendiaries used in very large numbers to ignite multiple fires at once.

The raid’s emphasis fell heavily on the western side of the city and the industrial districts, including the docks, Trafford Park, and neighbouring Salford. But no raid stayed neatly inside industrial boundaries once it began. Bombs hit transport arteries and the ordinary fabric of the city.

Fire, and the problem of not having enough firemen

Incendiaries started hundreds of fires, and warehouses and commercial premises were particularly vulnerable. They held combustible goods, were often built in ways that encouraged fire to spread and could burn fiercely enough to be beyond quick control.

Manchester’s experience had an added twist of timing. In the days before the raid, many firefighters and civil defence workers from Manchester had been sent to assist Liverpool after heavy attacks there. When the first Christmas raid began, a significant portion of that manpower had not yet returned.

The pattern became brutally familiar. High explosive broke roofs, windows, and water mains. Incendiaries multiplied fires across a wide area. More explosives complicated firefighting and rescue, blocked roads, and made access dangerous.

Where the bombs fell

Transport infrastructure was hit in ways that mattered far beyond the city limits. Both main railway stations were struck, as was the main bus station. Major roads, including routes through the central area, were blocked by debris, craters, and unexploded bombs.

Those blockages turned the air raid into a logistics crisis. Getting ambulances through. Getting crews to a fire. Moving the injured to hospitals. Getting workers to factories that were still trying to operate. By the first morning after the raid, Manchester was not just damaged, it was partly severed.

Water supplies were affected, and electricity had to be rationed.

Manchester Cathedral: a landmark hit in the dark

One of the most referenced moments of the Christmas Blitz is the damage to Manchester Cathedral. On the night of 22 December, it was hit in the north-east corner by a parachute mine, a weapon designed to produce an enormous blast effect.

The consequences were immediate and severe. The blast lifted the lead roof and dropped it back. Windows and doors were blown out. Furnishings were displaced and damaged. Parts of the interior were wrecked, including the High Altar area, which was left in ruins.

Some of the structural consequences were permanent. The Cathedral’s Ely Chapel was destroyed and never rebuilt, and later repairs and rebuilding altered what visitors see today.

If you want a single example of how the Christmas Blitz reached beyond factories and stations, the Cathedral is it: a centuries-old building struck not because it had military value, but because it sat in the geometry of a city being attacked with blast and fire.

Night two: Monday 23 to Tuesday 24 December

The second raid came the very next evening, striking between roughly 7.15pm and midnight. It was shorter than the first night but still heavy, dropping around 195 tons of high explosive, again accompanied by incendiaries.

The key point is not just the tonnage. It is the timing. This second raid struck while fires were still burning, roads were blocked, and repairs to water and power were incomplete. The result was cumulative damage that felt, to people living through it, like the city being held down.

The city centre as a target by default

Manchester’s compact commercial core and the warehouse districts suffered badly. Blocks of commercial and warehouse premises were burnt out or shattered. Within about a mile of Albert Square, large areas were left in ruins.

Even if you treat such measurements as a way of visualising destruction rather than a surveyor’s final word, the meaning is clear: this was not a handful of isolated bomb sites. It was whole tracts of the city turned into broken blocks and scorched shells.

Casualties

The figure most often given for the two-night Christmas Blitz of Manchester is around 684 deaths, with more than 2,000 injured. Published injury totals vary, and exact counts are complicated by boundaries, delayed recovery of bodies, and later revisions.

A careful way to put it is this: the death toll was in the hundreds and the injured in the thousands, with 684 dead widely cited as the best overall estimate for the two nights.

How people sheltered, moved, and coped

The stories that survive from the Christmas Blitz are often about small choices that became life-and-death decisions: whether to go to a shelter, whether to stay in bed, whether to cross a street while the all-clear had not sounded.

At a city level, survival and recovery depended on systems: wardens reporting incidents, rescue teams digging out, fire crews attempting to get ahead of the blaze front, engineers trying to restore water and power, transport staff improvising diversions around bomb craters and blocked streets.

Manchester’s surviving bomb maps and civil defence paperwork, later preserved in local archives, let you trace that experience street by street. They show not only where high explosive fell, but where mines and incendiaries landed, and how quickly the damage spread across neighbourhoods.

‘Manchester Took It, Too’: showing the aftermath

Within the rubble and smoke, there was also a conscious effort to show that the city was still functioning. One of the most striking artefacts is the short film ‘Manchester Took It, Too’, (view on YouTube) which recorded bomb damage and the immediate aftermath.

These films sit in an awkward place. They are valuable visual evidence of damage and clearance, but they are also shaped by wartime messaging: resilience, continuity, “carry on”. Used carefully, they help you see what written sources cannot show: the scale of debris, the half-standing facades, the emptiness of streets that were normally crowded.

What we can’t say for sure

Exact casualty totals remain sensitive to definition and boundary. Incendiary numbers can be counted in different ways. And while Trafford Park and the docks were part of the logic of attack, it is hard to separate “intended” from “inevitable” once bombs begin falling over dense urban districts.

Why this still matters in Manchester

It matters because the Christmas Blitz is not just a wartime anecdote. It reshaped parts of the city centre, altered buildings that still stand, and left scars that can be traced in maps, rebuilding decisions, and surviving photographs.

Manchester Cathedral’s wartime damage and later repairs are part of that story. So is the wider evidence preserved in bomb maps and local records, which allow residents and researchers to reconstruct what happened, and where, in unusually concrete detail.

And it matters for a simpler reason, too: it is one of the clearest examples of the Blitz reaching far beyond London and into the industrial cities, where bombing became as much about breaking a region’s functioning as about hitting any single factory.

The post The Christmas Blitz of Manchester, 22–24 December 1940 appeared first on WW2 Airfield Control Towers & Aviation History.

It is a stark example of what the RAF’s air defence system was still learning to do in the “Phoney War”: turn an early-warning plot into a correct identification, fast, in foul weather, with everyone primed to expect the enemy.

The operational backdrop: “Deutschland” and the long North Sea day

By late 1939 Bomber Command was already being used for maritime work as much as anything else. Politics and policy limited bombing over Germany in the war’s first months, while German surface raiders and the threat to shipping were immediate problems. The result was a steady diet of armed reconnaissance, searches and mining. On 21 December a combined Hampden force was ordered out to look for the German “pocket battleship” Deutschland reported off the Norwegian coast.

The mission was not small. Twelve Hampdens from 44 Squadron left Waddington in the morning, joined by Hampdens from 49 Squadron and 83 Squadron. The aircraft met over Lincoln, headed out over the North Sea, then spread out in line abreast along the Norwegian coast in a vain search, before turning back on the edge of their range as the weather closed in.

That last part matters. The return leg was flown in sleet and showers, with visibility down. Formations that had looked tidy over Lincolnshire became separated. People ended up where they did not expect to be, and controllers were forced to make decisions on incomplete information.

The interception: when “unidentified” became “hostile”

On the British side, the east coast of Scotland was on a short fuse. No. 602 Squadron had already been in action against real Luftwaffe intruders over the Forth in October, and Drem was one of the airfields tasked with shielding the Firth of Forth and the naval anchorage at Rosyth.

On 21 December, the separated Hampdens came back in pieces.

Accounts of the day describe how the RAF Scampton element made landfall in Northumberland, where RAF fighters intercepted and correctly recognised them as friendly, and most of those aircraft ended up landing at RAF Acklington. One of the 49 Squadron aircraft, Hampden L4072, was short of fuel and crashed into a chapel at Broomhill during an attempted emergency landing, killing two of its crew. That accident was separate from the Drem shootdown, but it shows the wider conditions of the day: aircraft scattered, tired crews, poor weather, fuel margins gone.

The Waddington element of 44 Squadron had a worse navigational outcome. Instead of reaching the Moray Firth area, they made landfall near the Firth of Forth in error, and were plotted as “unidentified”. Twelve Spitfires of 602 Squadron were scrambled from Drem at about 15.20. Their pilots identified the incoming aircraft as German and attacked.

There was at least one chance to stop it. One account states that Hurricanes of No. 72 Squadron intercepted the Waddington aircraft first and reported back that they were Hampdens, yet the 602 Spitfires were also up and, without at first recognising the aircraft, proceeded to shoot down two of the bombers. That is not a single-point failure. It is several moving parts failing to mesh in real time.

The two Hampdens: serials, crews, and where they went in

The two aircraft lost were Hampden L4089 and Hampden L4090, both of No. 44 Squadron.

Hampden L4089

L4089 was shot down over the sea in the North Berwick area. All four crew survived and were rescued by a fishing boat:

• P/O Ronald John Sansom (pilot)
• Sgt Edward Littleton Farrands (navigator)
• Sgt Harry Rowland Moyle (air gunner)
• AC1 John Erwin Lyttle (wireless operator/air gunner)

Local-history work notes later confusion about which airframe lay where, suggesting L4089 may have ditched in Aberlady Bay at high tide and been salvaged. Without the original salvage paperwork, it is best treated as plausible rather than settled.

Hampden L4090

L4090 was the aircraft with the fatality. It ditched in the Forth and three crew were rescued in a dinghy by a fishing boat and landed at Port Seton. One man drowned:

• P/O Patrick Fraser Dingwall (pilot)
• Sgt John Anthony Mawson Reid (navigator)
• Sgt William Kenneth Lodge (air gunner), injured
• LAC Terrance Gibbin (wireless operator/air gunner), drowned

Gibbin is buried at Kirkleatham (St Cuthbert) Churchyard.

Who fired: the 602 Squadron pilots named in the record

Three 602 Squadron pilots are commonly named in connection with the shootdown:

• F/Lt John Dunlop Urie
• F/O Norman Stone
• F/O Archibald Ashmore McKellar

McKellar’s name tends to stand out because he later became a noted fighter pilot and was killed in action in November 1940. But the important point here is not biography. It is the system the pilots were working inside. They were launched against “unidentified” aircraft at a time when the RAF was still building the habits, equipment and procedures that later became routine.

Why the RAF got this wrong

It is tempting to pin friendly fire on one cause, because it feels tidy. The surviving accounts point to several pressures piling up at once.

Winter weather and navigation errors

The returning force flew through sleet and rain showers with reduced visibility, and the formations became separated. When the 44 Squadron group arrived near the Forth rather than the north-east coast, it entered an area where fighters were already being primed for interception.

A young air-defence system working at speed

Fighter Command’s early-warning and control system was powerful, but it was still bedding in under wartime pressure. Even if plots were good, they did not automatically tell you what an aircraft was. Controllers needed confirmation, and pilots had to make visual judgements, sometimes from poor angles, at speed, in poor light.

The RAF had already suffered a notorious early-war friendly-fire episode, the “Battle of Barking Creek” in September 1939, which exposed how easily a chain of assumptions could end with RAF fighters shooting RAF fighters. The Hampden shootdown sits in the same family of problems, just over water, with bombers instead of fighters.

Recognition: the Hampden’s silhouette

The Hampden’s narrow fuselage and twin-engine outline could be misread, particularly head-on or in broken cloud. One squadron history notes that the Hampden was often confused with the German Dornier Do 17. That does not mean every Hampden was doomed to be mistaken for a Do 17. It does mean that if you already believe you are intercepting the enemy, and you only get a few seconds of imperfect view, the eye can be pushed into the wrong answer.

Identification technology not yet in place

IFF coding was introduced very shortly afterwards, on 1 January 1940, to help identify RAF aircraft within the air defence system. That does not mean “no IFF, therefore friendly fire”. But it helps explain why visual recognition and radio procedure carried such weight in December 1939. If those pieces did not line up, the system defaulted towards hostility.

Communications and procedure friction

A particularly painful detail in the secondary accounts is the suggestion that one RAF fighter unit had already identified the aircraft as Hampdens, yet a second unit still attacked. If that is accurate, it implies a message arriving too late, not reaching the right place, not reaching the pilots in time, or not being believed. Any one of those is plausible. Only the original Operations Record Books, their appendices and any surviving signal logs will pin down which mattered most.

One later source suggests the Hampdens may not have identified themselves correctly as “friendly”. That may be true, but it is not as well supported as the core facts. It belongs in the “possible, not proven” bracket unless the contemporary paperwork can be checked.

The ditchings: what survival looked like in 1939

Both crews got their aircraft into the sea rather than simply losing control and cartwheeling in. That is not luck; it is skill and discipline.

A Hampden ditching was not a neat “water landing”. It was an emergency controlled crash into freezing water, with a slim margin between climbing out and being pinned or injured in a sinking airframe. For L4089, a fishing boat got all four men out. For L4090, three made it into a dinghy and were landed at Port Seton; one did not make it. The human detail that survives in local accounts is often the rescue craft. It was fishing boats and small coastal vessels that turned RAF survival equipment into actual survival.

A small, grim footnote appears in later retellings: the next day, Hampdens are said to have flown over Drem and dropped toilet rolls onto the squadron huts. It may be true, it may be mess-room folklore that stuck. Either way, it reads like brittle humour from people who could not unsee what had just happened.

What changed afterwards, and what didn’t

It would be comforting to say: “This happened, and then it never happened again.” That is not honest. Friendly fire and mistaken identity did not vanish. What did improve, over time, was the layering of safeguards.

Technical aids to identification and control matured. Procedures hardened. Recognition training improved, reporting and plotting got more rigorous, and the system learned how to handle “unknowns” without reflexively treating them as targets.

But the deep lesson of 21 December 1939 is that air defence is a judgement business as much as a technology business. The aircraft, the sea, the weather and human fear do not care what the rulebook says.

Timeline

• Morning: Hampdens of 44 Squadron depart RAF Waddington; aircraft from 49 and 83 Squadron join for a search off Norway for the reported Deutschland.
• Late morning to early afternoon: search conducted; no contact; return begins as weather worsens.
• Mid-afternoon: formations become separated. Many aircraft make landfall in Northumberland and later land at Acklington; one 49 Squadron Hampden crashes at Broomhill due to fuel shortage.
• Around 15.20: 602 Squadron Spitfires scramble from RAF Drem to intercept “unidentified” aircraft near the Firth of Forth.
• Shortly afterwards: Hampdens L4089 and L4090 are attacked and forced to ditch.
• Rescue: L4089 crew all survive; L4090 crew lose LAC Terrance Gibbin, who drowns before he can be freed.

Sources

• East Lothian at War, “Friendly Fire 21 December 1939” (local narrative, ditching area notes, later confusion over wreck locations)
• Martin’s Aviation Pages, “21 December 1939” (mission overview, aircraft serials, crew lists, pilots named; includes pointers to ORBs/AIR files)
• Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC), casualty record for LAC Terrance Gibbin (death and burial details)
• 49 Squadron Association, “21st December 1939 Search for the Deutschland” (mission narrative, weather, dispersal, interceptions, Acklington landings, Broomhill crash context)
• East Lothian at War pages on RAF Drem / No. 602 Squadron and pilot notes (context for Drem and 602 operations; McKellar background)
• Reference accounts of the “Battle of Barking Creek” (6 September 1939) as early RAF friendly-fire context
• 44 Squadron history page noting Hampden misidentification with the Dornier Do 17 (recognition context)
• RAF Museum, radar/air defence timeline noting the introduction of IFF coding on 1 January 1940 (identification technology context)
• Aviation Trails, “21 December 1939” (secondary commentary and the toilet-roll anecdote; treated as unconfirmed where appropriate)

The post Friendly Fire over the Forth: The Day Spitfires Shot Down RAF Hampdens appeared first on WW2 Airfield Control Towers & Aviation History.

That wider story sits behind a brief, brutal entry in the RAF’s accident records.

Bristol Blenheim Mk IF L6612

On Thursday 19 December 1940, Bristol Blenheim Mk IF L6612 of No. 29 Squadron RAF took off from RAF Wellingore on a training flight, bound for RAF Digby. During low flying connected with AI radar practice, the aircraft encountered a downdraught near Leadenham, struck trees at the edge of a small wood on the escarpment, and crashed. All four crew were killed. 

This is what we can piece together about the flight, the unit, and the men.

The aircraft, the squadron, and the job they were training to do

The Blenheim began life as a light bomber, but the Mark IF was adapted as a long-range fighter and, crucially, became one of the RAF’s early platforms for night fighting and radar trials. No. 29 Squadron was among the units pushing those tactics forward, operating from RAF Digby and its nearby satellites, including Wellingore.

AI radar work in 1940 was still a developing art. Crews had to learn how to work as a team in darkness: ground controllers vectoring fighters into the right patch of sky, the onboard operator interpreting a crude display, and the pilot flying precise headings and heights while trying to keep the aircraft within limits. Training sorties were essential and they were often flown in marginal winter conditions, sometimes at low level, with little room for error. 

The flight and the Blenheim crash near Leadenham

The clearest summary of what happened comes from local incident logging: Blenheim L6612 was “caught by a downdraught whilst low flying for airborne intercept radar practice,” struck trees “at the corner of a small wood on the escarpment,” and then crashed into the ground, killing all on board. 

Another compiled record places the departure at RAF Wellingore and the intended destination as RAF Digby, consistent with the way Digby operated with satellites under its control. 

A downdraught on rising ground is a particularly nasty trap at low level: the aircraft is suddenly forced down, and if there isn’t height in hand, the pilot may not have time or space to trade speed for lift and clear obstacles. That appears to be the core of this accident—an abrupt loss of height at the worst possible moment, on the edge of high ground and trees. 

The crew: four stories behind one loss

Sgt Sydney Stokoe (pilot)

Sydney Stokoe was from Gateshead, born 28 December 1915. Before the war he worked as a draughtsman, and he held an Aero Club certificate gained at Newcastle in February 1939—an important detail, because it shows he was already committed to flying before the RAF had fully expanded into wartime scale. ([Battle of Britain Monument][5])

He joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve around August 1939 and was called up on 1 September 1939. By about 1 September 1940 he was with No. 29 Squadron at Wellingore, and he flew his first operational sortie later that month. ([Battle of Britain Monument][5])

He was 25 when he was killed in L6612. His grave is at Heworth (St Mary) Churchyard, County Durham. ([Battle of Britain Monument][5])

Sgt Edwin Jones (air gunner)

Edwin Jones was born in 1913 and came from Askam-in-Furness. He joined the RAF in September 1935 as an aircraft hand, later re-mustering as an airman under training to become an air gunner—one of the many men whose “ground-to-air” journey reflected the RAF’s urgent need to expand aircrew numbers. 

By June 1940 he was serving with 29 Squadron at Digby. He was killed in L6612 on 19 December 1940, aged 27, and is buried at Barrow-in-Furness (Thorncliffe) Cemetery and Crematorium. 

Sgt Albert Alfred Wilsdon (air gunner)

Albert Alfred Wilsdon was born in Bradford on 22 February 1910. He joined the RAF around 1929–30 and later trained as an air gunner. In July 1937 he married Nellie Leadenham, and the couple had twin sons, Anthony and Terence, born in 1938. 

His service with No. 29 Squadron is particularly notable because it links him to one of the squadron’s better-known operational moments. Posted to the unit on 9 August 1940, he flew as gunner with P/O J. R. D. “Bob” Braham and was involved in an interception on 24 August 1940, when their Blenheim engaged a Dornier Do 17; they were later credited with the victory. 

Like the others, Wilsdon was killed in the crash of L6612. He is buried in Doncaster (Rose Hill) Cemetery. 

Sgt Iorwerth Walter Watkins (observer)

The fourth member of the crew, Iorwerth Walter Watkins, served as the aircraft’s observer. In the Blenheim night-fighter context, that role could encompass navigation and the demanding workload of supporting interceptions—exactly the kind of crew coordination that AI radar training was designed to build. 

Watkins was just 19 when he died. CWGC records list him as the son of William and Sarah Jane Watkins of Pontllanfraith, and he is buried at Woodfieldside (Jerusalem) Chapelyard in the UK. 

Why this Blenheim crash still matters

It’s easy to treat wartime flying accidents as footnotes compared with combat losses. But for units like 29 Squadron in late 1940, training flights were not routine “hours building.” They were rehearsal for a new kind of fighting, in conditions that were frequently worse than combat: low cloud, poor visibility, winter turbulence, pressure to master unfamiliar equipment, and the constant risk of controlled flight into terrain.

The crash of Bristol Blenheim L6612 speaks to that moment in the air war when technology was advancing quickly, but safety margins – especially at low level – were still thin. The RAF needed these crews to survive long enough to become proficient; on 19 December 1940, four men didn’t get that chance. 

The post The Bristol Blenheim Crash Near RAF Digby with the Loss of 4 Crew appeared first on WW2 Airfield Control Towers & Aviation History.

On the memorial at Dunnington Lodge Farm the wording is careful, almost judicial: “THIS J.U.88 IS BELIEVED TO BE THE LAST LUFTWAFFE AIRCRAFT LOST OVER THE U.K. ON A NIGHT SORTIE.”

That caveat matters. The story has been retold for decades, sometimes with the edges knocked off, sometimes with details swapped in from other incidents. Even the aircraft’s identity has been argued over. But the core is solid enough to walk around. A Junkers Ju 88 night fighter, low over RAF Elvington, struck trees and ploughed into Dunnington Lodge at 01:51.

If this Ju 88 was the last plane to be shot down over Britain, it comes 1,954 days after the first, which was the Humbie Heinkel in Scotland on 28 October 1939.

The last German aircraft to be shot down and lost over UK soil

The night the Luftwaffe came back

The crash belongs to Operation Gisela, the Luftwaffe’s late attempt to turn the RAF’s own routine against it. Instead of meeting Bomber Command over Germany, German night fighters slipped in behind the returning stream and hunted around the airfields.

One contemporary squadron account calls it “large scale German intruder operations… over eastern England”, with Ju 88s crossing “at wave top level”. In the same account, a pilot describes spotting German night-fighter beacons on the Dutch coast and reacting immediately: “I dropped to sea level… and we came back just over the tops of the waves.”

By March 1945 the RAF had habits. So did its airfields: landing lights, funnels, the whole reassuring theatre of home. Gisela aimed straight at that softness. Research compiled by the Yorkshire Air Museum describes Ju 88 intruders coming in low over the North Sea, then climbing to meet the returning bombers close to their bases.

Dreher’s Ju 88 and the last minutes

The aircraft most often linked to the “last on UK soil” claim is a Ju 88G-6 coded D5+AX, flown by Hauptmann Johann Dreher, operating with Nachtjagdgeschwader 3.

Accounts place Dreher over RAF Lissett first and connect him with the loss of a 158 Squadron Halifax, PN437 (code MP-X), before he turned towards RAF Elvington, where French-crewed Halifaxes were coming home.

Halifax PN437 did not make it. Local crash records describe the aircraft being attacked in the Driffield area and falling near Sledmere Grange around 00:30, with the crew killed.

At Elvington, one narrative describes Capitaine Paul Notelle in a 346 “Guyenne” Squadron Halifax being warned by the tower and diverted north, avoiding Dreher’s immediate attack.

Then came the low pass that ended the Ju 88. The museum account is blunt: Dreher “clipped a tree and crashed through one section of the building at 01:51am.” Other summaries agree on the essentials: a tree strike during an attack run, a crash into a farmhouse, four crew dead and three people on the ground killed.

Those civilians were the Moll family. Richard Moll (67) died the following day; Ellen Moll (61) and Violet Moll (28) died on 4 March after being taken to hospital.

If you want the smallest possible “what happened”, the York historic record does it in one line: the plane hit a tree and crashed into the farmhouse, killing three members of the family inside.

“Shot down” or simply lost?

People often describe this German aircraft as “shot down”, because it was destroyed during a combat intrusion and because the end result looks, on the ground, like a defeat. But the best-supported accounts lean on physical causes: low-level manoeuvring, trees, impact.

Some retellings introduce confusion over vehicle headlights and the chaos of night, and you’ll sometimes see anti-aircraft fire mentioned in secondary sources. The memorial text itself, though, does not claim a clean “kill” by gunfire. It simply says the aircraft was “lost”.

The most accurate way to put it is this: the Ju 88 was brought down in the course of Gisela, at very low level, while attacking RAF Elvington, and it did not leave British soil again.

The awkward detail people miss: the paperwork is messy

Even if you accept the Dunnington crash as the last Luftwaffe plane to be shot down and lost on British soil, the aircraft’s exact serial details and even aspects of the unit/identity get tangled in the record.

One local research page lays it out plainly: “The full facts of exactly what happened to this aircraft remain somewhat unclear… there are conflicting accounts.” It also notes that D5+AX is the identity given in a National Archives file reference (AIR40/2421), while other serial numbers appear elsewhere.

You can see the knock-on effect in public memorial transcriptions and local summaries too, where codes and Werknummer details don’t always match from one version to the next. That doesn’t make the event doubtful. It shows how late-war losses, hurried intelligence, and decades of copying can drift.

A memorial that points in two directions

The cross at Dunnington Lodge is unusual because it is not only about combatants. It names the crew, and it names the civilians. The local historic record frames the crash as a memorial to “the futility of war” and records the dedication date as 19 June 1993.

The longer inscription, preserved in a national memorial archive, records something else that can be hard to picture in a story like this: former enemies meeting on the same patch of ground. It notes that a wreath was laid by a Luftwaffe night fighter association representative and by Arthur Tait of the Doncaster Air Gunners Association, “bringing together old wartime enemies in friendship”.

That closing gesture doesn’t redeem anything. It does underline why this crash still catches attention. The war was almost done. The targets were no longer cities, or even airfields in any strategic sense, but the soft, lit-up routines of men coming home. 

And the last aircraft to fall in Britain did not land in a field. 

It came through a wall.

The post The Last Luftwaffe Loss on British Soil: The Ju 88 at Dunnington Lodge, 4 March 1945 appeared first on WW2 Airfield Control Towers & Aviation History.

The Po-2 did not just carry the Night Witches to the target. It shaped everything: where they could take off, what they could carry, how they approached, and why German troops gave them a nickname that stuck.

If you want to know more about the Polikarpov Po-2 biplane that the Night Witches flew, read on. It also includes a spec table of the aircraft. 

The aircraft of the Night Witches

“Night Witches” was the German nickname for the all-female crews of the Soviet 588th Night Bomber Regiment, later redesignated the 46th Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment (also known as the “Taman” Guards, after its later honour title). Their work sat in the unglamorous corner of air power: night harassment bombing, close to the front, usually with small loads, repeated many times.

It’s easy to assume they were flying some sort of “special forces” machine. They weren’t. They were given a cheap, sturdy trainer and made it do a night bomber’s job.

U-2, Po-2, and the wartime variants

The aircraft the Night Witches flew began life as the U-2, with the “U” coming from uchebnyy which translates as “training”. It was designed as a simple two-seat biplane for basic instruction, and it spread everywhere: flight schools, liaison duties, ambulance work, odd jobs.

During WW2 it gained military modifications for night bombing. You’ll sometimes see the designation U-2VS used for an armed multi-purpose light bomber form introduced during the war. In 1944, the name changed to Po-2, in line with Soviet naming practice that used the designer’s name (Polikarpov) in abbreviated form.

That naming shuffle explains a lot of online arguments. A 1942 diary might say “U-2”. A museum label for the same basic type might say “Po-2”. They’re usually talking about the same family of aircraft.

Po-2 quick specs 

Below is a practical spec table for the Polikarpov Po-2. Numbers differ a bit depending on which production batch or surviving aircraft a source is using, so treat these as typical rather than absolute.

Two things matter for understanding the Night Witches: the Po-2 was slow, and it carried little. Both are true. But the follow-on point is what people miss: because the aircraft was simple, light, and forgiving, it could be used in ways a faster, heavier bomber could not.

Why a trainer made sense as a night bomber

The Po-2’s reputation in this role comes from a mismatch. In daylight, a wood-and-fabric biplane with open cockpits and modest speed is begging to be shot down. At night, on the Eastern Front, the same features could be turned into a kind of method.

Crews were operating with basic kit, often in cold conditions, with limited instruments compared with more modern aircraft. They also tended to carry small numbers of bombs at a time, with sorties repeated through the night. In other words: short missions, quick turnarounds, and an aircraft that could be kept serviceable on rough forward strips.

It helps to think of the Po-2 less as a “bomber” in the conventional sense and more as a night nuisance platform: cheap to run, easy to patch up, and capable of being where it was needed without much runway or infrastructure.

How the Po-2 shaped tactics of the Night Witches

The famous tactic associated with the Night Witches is the “silent” final approach. Crews would cut the engine near the target, gliding in so that the loudest warning was the rush of air, then release their bombs and head back to rearm.

You can see the logic. A gliding biplane at night is hard to time and hard to hear until the last moments. It also saves fuel and reduces the bright exhaust cues that a running piston engine can give away in darkness. The Po-2’s slow-speed handling gave the female crews time to place the aircraft where they wanted it, even if “where they wanted it” was a patch of blackness over trees, with flak flashes as the only reference.

It’s also worth pointing out the rhythm. They did not win by one pass. They won by repetition. Accounts of the regiment’s operational tempo often mention crews flying a string of sorties in a single night, landing to refuel and reload, then going straight back out. That’s the Po-2 story in practice: modest bomb load, high frequency, steady pressure.

Armament and “how much could it carry”, without pretending it was a Pe-2

You’ll find wildly different bomb-load claims online, usually because people mix “maximum possible on racks” with “what was wise tonight, from this strip, in this weather”.

Technically, the aircraft could be fitted with racks to carry a larger total load, but operational reality often forced smaller loads. A unit flying at night from improvised strips, trying to get airborne reliably and make multiple trips, is not always loading to the theoretical maximum. Wind, temperature, field conditions, and the simple need to keep the aircraft controllable at low altitude all matter.

Maximum loads existed on paper and on racks; the Night Witches’ effectiveness came from frequency, not single-pass weight.

A quick myth-buster: what the Night Witches didn’t fly

Because the Soviet Union fielded more than one female aviation unit, the name “Night Witches” sometimes gets lazily applied to any Soviet female pilot story. The nickname, though, is tied to the night-bomber regiment and its Po-2s. If you see a claim that the Night Witches were flying fast modern fighters, you’re usually reading a mash-up of different regiments and roles.

So why this plane for the Night Witches, and why does it still loom so large?

The Po-2 was not glamorous. It was a mass type, built to be flown by students and maintained with basic tools. That simplicity is exactly why it became a weapon in the hands of an organised unit with a clear task. The aircraft could fly from small clearings and rough strips, creep over the front at night, and keep coming back.

Ask “what planes did the Night Witches fly?” and you get one name. Ask “why did that work?” and you get a better answer: the Po-2’s limitations weren’t a footnote. They were the system.

The post What Planes Did the Night Witches Fly? appeared first on WW2 Airfield Control Towers & Aviation History.

The crash of Bristol Beaufighter (R20996)

Pilot Officer Frederick George Nightingale

Frederick George Nightingale was 26. He had not come into the RAF as a pilot. Born in Reigate in 1915, he enlisted in November 1934 as an aircraft hand, working on aircraft rather than flying them. Over the next few years he worked his way up, applied for pilot training, and was accepted, remustering as an under-training pilot at the end of 1938. 

He completed his course at No. 3 Flying Training School at South Cerney between March and October 1939, and went straight to No. 219 (Mysore) Squadron. 

By the summer of 1940, 219 Squadron was operating Blenheims as night fighters from northern bases such as Catterick. As the battle developed, the squadron’s work and its locations shifted south, into the growing pressure of night air defence. Nightingale soon found himself in action. On 15 August 1940, over the Scarborough area, he damaged a Junkers Ju 88. In October 1940 he was commissioned from the ranks, a ground tradesman turned officer in a remarkably short, intense run.

Sergeant George Mennie Leslie

His observer on the last flight, Sergeant George Mennie Leslie, came from a different place. He was born in Aberdeen on 27 March 1911, son of Andrew and Mary Ann Leslie. In 1937 he married Grace Duncan Milne at St Machar’s Cathedral. That matters because it fixes him as someone with a settled civilian life before his RAF enlistment.

He joined in June 1940 as an aircrafthand but was soon retrained as a radar operator, one of the new specialists needed for Airborne Interception radar in night fighters. After training he was posted to 219 Squadron on 2 August 1940, at the point when regular night work was beginning to bite. 

By late 1940 the two of them, a young but already operational pilot and a newly trained radar operator, were part of the RAF’s attempt to make night fighting work at scale.

RAF Debden and the new equipment war

In the autumn and early winter of 1940, 219 Squadron converted from Blenheims to the Bristol Beaufighter Mk IF. The Beaufighter brought speed and heavy armament, and it was among the first fighters to carry AI Mk IV radar in significant numbers.

Detachments operated from airfields including RAF Debden in Essex, a busy fighter station east of Saffron Walden which hosted multiple squadrons during and after the Battle of Britain.

The radar itself was still new and awkward. Crews were learning to fly on instruments, interpret a glowing tube in the dark, and turn that into an interception. Training sorties combined instrument work, radar practice and formation flying, and they carried their own risks. There are records of other 219 Squadron personnel being detached to Debden for AI courses in December 1940, which fits the broader picture of a unit converting and training hard.

It was in that atmosphere that Beaufighter R2096 went up on 17 December.

The Beaufighter crash at Smiths Green Farm

Beaufighter Mk IF R2096 of 219 (Mysore) Squadron took off from RAF Debden on 17 December 1940 for a training flight. On the return, one engine failed. The aircraft was in the approach phase when it “spun in” and crashed at Smiths Green Farm near the station. The Beaufighter was destroyed and both crewmen were killed. 

Not their first close call

For Nightingale, it was a bleak irony. A year earlier, on 1 December 1939, he had survived an engine failure in an Avro Tutor, K3433. He forced-landed in a field near Grantham; the aircraft stalled and was written off, but he and his passenger escaped unhurt. 

He then lived through the summer of 1940 as a night-fighter pilot, damaging an enemy bomber, only to be killed a few months later on a training flight within sight of his base. 

Leslie’s RAF service was shorter still. He enlisted in June 1940, retrained into a specialist role, and died in December the same year. A civilian life in Aberdeen, then a few compressed months learning a brand-new kind of air war, and then the end of it.

The unseen cost

This is not a combat story. There is no raid intercepted, no victory claim, no dramatic last-minute escape. It sits in the category that wartime histories often skate over: the cost of training, conversion, and new equipment.

By late 1940 Britain was trying to weld together AI radar, heavy fighters like the Beaufighter, and evolving ground control tactics into something reliable. The system was starting to work, but it was not forgiving. Training demanded flying in darkness, on instruments, while operating unfamiliar kit and absorbing instructions at speed. Mechanical failures and human limits did the rest.

Nightingale and Leslie were part of that effort. Their deaths on 17 December 1940 belong to the quiet side of the air war, where progress was measured not just in sorties and results, but in lives lost before the enemy even came into view. The surviving summaries do not tell us what was said in the cockpit, or how close they came to saving it. They do not need to. The facts we have are stark enough: one engine out on approach, a spin over an Essex farm, and two graves in Saffron Walden Cemetery that mark the price of learning to fight at night.

The post The Crash of Bristol Beaufighter (R20996): Nightingale & Leslie appeared first on WW2 Airfield Control Towers & Aviation History.