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A few old warriors will be arriving be at the Earl of Doncaster Hotel next Friday who have a few yarns to spin between themselves. They don't usually talk about them to outsiders very much and their reunion will be a modest, low-key event.
"We used to have days out, but now the old boys prefer just to have a nice dinner among their chums," says Air Commodore Graham Pitchfork.
"There are now as many attending from the families as there are veterans. We'll keep going along until it gently fades away."
The former pilots and groundcrew coming to the Doncaster hotel are the remnants of a unique RAF squadron whose story began at the end of January 1939 when a flight of the RAF's front-line fighters came winging in to South Yorkshire. These Gloster Gauntlet aircraft were only four years old, although in photographs they appear to our eyes more like something from the First World War. They arrived at Finningley to equip a brand new RAF "auxiliary" squadron, number 616. In no time at all, its part-time civvy recruits found themselves in a full-time war and once the shooting started, the pace of change hotted up.
The squadron became airborne in these Gauntlet biplanes with fixed undercarriages that seem to have been modelled on a golf trolley – and came back down in a different world. It seems almost like a sequence from a science fiction time-shift: take-off is in an open cockpit behind a propeller and landing is in a Gloster Meteor twin-engine jet.
The full story of 616 Squadron is now told in a book by Air Commodore Pitchfork, a Sheffield man who also commanded RAF Finningley. He was in charge of the base in the late 1980s before it became Robin Hood International Airport. The squadron he writes about was conceived in the early 1930s when the regular RAF squadron strength was boosted by 21 auxiliaries. They sought to appeal to capable young men who in previous times might have done their bit as part-timers in the armed forces by saddling up and joining the local yeomanry.
The first local chap to sign up as an auxiliary pilot was called Ken Holden from Selby, who climbed into his first Gloster Gauntlet at Finningley in March 1939. More of Ken later.
They had two weeks' summer camp at RAF Manston in Kent and became a fully-fledged operational flying squadron as war broke out. Re-equipped with the new Spitfire Mark Is, they made their first war patrol in January 1940. By high summer, 616 were in the thick of the Battle of Britain. Later, with pilots which included "Johnnie" Johnson, the RAF's top-scoring fighter ace in the war, they were one of three units that formed the legendary Tangmere Wing near Chichester in Sussex commanded by Douglas Bader. From March 1941 Bader led the wing, flying with 616 in his personal Spitfire. Other squadron Spitfire's were painted with "Bader's Bus Company".
As the war progressed, 616's first pilot, Ken Holden, moved upwards through the ranks to join the plans division of Fighter Command.
By 1944, Britain had a secret weapon in the air war, a revolutionary fighter powered by jet engines. Which unit should have the glory of first crack at it? Ken Holden suggested 616.
Two of their pilots turned up at Farnborough on May 26, 1944 to find two prototype Meteor F1s. The men were given a sheet of "pilot's notes" and climbed into the cockpits to study them. According to Flying Officer Mike Cooper, what followed seems laid-back in the extreme. They were asked, "any problems?"
"No." "Then fly the bloody things."
Flying Officer Cooper and his colleague went up in the Meteors by day and then returned to fly Spitfires to prepare for
D-Day. They were not entirely impressed with the jets, reporting they were heavy on controls with a poor rate of climb. After five flights over three days they were judged to be fully-qualified jet pilots.
The Meteors were ready for combat by July and went into action against "divers", the unmanned VI flying bomb. The 616 Intelligence Officer's log reports: "Today the Meteors go into operation. History is made! The first British jet-propelled aircraft flies in defence of Britain against the flying bomb."
At first the Meteors were shot at by our anti-aircraft gunners who mistook them for VIs. On August 4, Flying Officer TD "Dixie" Dean spotted a V1 near Tonbridge and attacked. His cannons jammed, so he manoeuvred his wing tip under the wing of the flying bomb and flipped it over so it exploded in open country. The Meteor suffered a dented wing tip.
By this time in 1944 the Luftwaffe had a jet fighter too – the Messerschmidt 262. But Hitler had other plans for them and the revolutionary British and German jets never went head-to-head.
Graham Pitchfork, now retired, set up the RAF Aircrew Association and became its archivist. "I established this archive because it's essential these unique activities shouldn't be disappear," he says.
"The men talk into the tape recorder and then it's in there forever available for future generations.
"You have to understand these men accepted what came along. They were losing chums and had a fatalistic approach about what they did. It's difficult for us to appreciate. They were so bloody modest afterwards and without recording and writing about them, it wouldn't be told."
His story reveals the desperate haste in which the auxiliary squadrons were brought into being, 616 was the next to last to be formed. "There was a mad rush to get expansion schemes going in the 1930s once it became apparent that the Luftwaffe had not only re-re-formed but was of quite considerable strength.
"During the Battle of Britain 616 was badly hammered. It re-grouped and after five months went to Tangmere which coincided with the new fighter strategy. Until then we had waited for the Luftwaffe to come to us. Now we were going over there to escort a small number of bombers essentially used as bait to entice the Luftwaffe fighters into the air.
"Douglas Bader formed a close relationship with 616, he became synonymous with the squadron – he led them and belonged to them. It was quite a glamorous period. It didn't achieve a great deal in the wider context for the war, but it was good for morale.
"With the Meteors, it's a mystery why 616 had the honour of being chosen to be the first, but the Ken Holden explanation is entirely plausible. There's no other reason. It wasn't the Bader connection. He'd been a prisoner three years by then and his influence was long gone.
"Maybe the air chiefs were too tied up with the impending D-Day to have any other thoughts. Only a few piston-engined aircraft were fast enough to catch the VIs, and the Meteor had moderate success against them. But it never really had an opportunity to prove itself in air combat and so we don't know what would have happened if it had mixed it up against the Messerschmidt 262.
"The Germans had a lot of them and they could have been a potential winner if they had been thrown against the US Air Force's daylight bomber formations. I have a feeling that the old 'meat box' would have been hard-pressed, but Hitler switched his jet fighter to a bombing role and it disappeared off the fighting scene.
"It's true the 616 pilots were underwhelmed by the Meteor at first. But when the Mark I of any aircraft comes out, it's just beyond the development stage and relatively quickly the next one comes along. I flew Buccaneers. By the time the last version came out, you could have called it by another name – it was a different aircraft." Very little of this glorious wartime chapter took place at Finningley. As one squadron member said: "We went on two weeks summer camp in Kent just before the war broke out and came home six-and-a-half years later." The book also tells the stories of 616's "evaders and escapers" seven of them all-told. The first to make it back home was Sergeant Douglas "Cuthbert" Crabtree from near Halifax. On July 3, 1941, over the French coast, his new Spitfire was attacked by some Messerschmidt 109s.
Sergeant Crabtree bailed out at 3,000 feet, landed in a cornfield and was captured by a German patrol who locked him in a farmhouse. He escaped in the night, was given shelter by French farmers and made his way to Marseilles, later crossing the mountains into Spain and arrived in Plymouth, via Gibraltar, on a Sunderland flying boat, on August 26. During his odyssey, Sergeant Crabtree made notes on cigarette paper hidden in the lining of his cap about German defences and the attitudes of the French population, which was passed on to MI9. For this he was Mentioned in Despatches and he returned to fight in the North Africa campaign.
"Many airmen evaded capture, just like Crabtree, but only 29 RAF men in total escaped from POW camps in Germany and got back to the UK, and two were from 616. That indicates the spirit those guys had. For a squadron of single-seat aircraft for seven to come back was amazing." In 1957, 616 was disbanded. Finningley's runway was extended to 3,000 yards to accommodate the Vulcan and Valiant nuclear bombers.
Graham Pitchfork was station commander 1987-9. "They were my happiest two years in the RAF. In those days it was the biggest flying training base in Europe with 90 aeroplanes. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was a major rationalisation and we didn't need as many bases. Finningley closed in 1994. We didn't see it coming.
"I've never flown from Robin Hood airport, but I'm very impressed with it."
The RAF's First Jet Squadron by Graham Pitchfork, The History Press, 16.99. To order from the Yorkshire Post Bookshop, call free on
0800 0153232 or go online at www.yorkshirepostbookshop.co.uk. Postage and packing is 2.75.
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