Angus Mansfield - Spitfire Saga

This book is dedicated to the ground crews who so effectively provided the back up to their pilots, these chaps on the Squadron for years gave the Squadron its teeth. Not glamour but at all times complete support.

Rodney Scrase

Parts of this narrative have been published previously in Barney Barnfather: Life on a Spitfire Squadron by the same author. This is inevitable because Rodney Scrase and Barney Barnfather both flew with 72 Squadron. Their log books are of course different but in the period they flew together the ORB and developments in-theatre are the same.

Front cover: Painting of Rodney Scrases Spitfire by Barry Weekley

First published 2010

This paperback edition published 2019

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

Angus Mansfield, 2010, 2019

The right of Angus Mansfield to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9100 1

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

We met at the Operational Training Unit at Grangemouth and Balado Bridge where we both flew the Spitfire. Rodney had been trained in America and I had been a flying instructor at RAF College Cranwell before I managed to wrangle out of Training Command by way of a Night Fighter Training unit. It was easy to pick out the pilots who could fly a steady formation and Rodney was one of the best.

It was quite interesting to find out that we were both posted to No. 611 Squadron to learn all we could about the Spitfire IX before joining a ship waiting on the Clyde with a dozen other pilots. One of these was F/Lt Edward Mortimer Rose DFC & Bar, who had already won a DFC and Bar in Malta. He drew his revolver and fired at a nearby seagull perched on the mizzen mast but he missed! It was Mortimer who collided with Wing Commander Gilroy right over Souk el Khemis just as Rodney and I arrived there two months later. After an uneventful trip to Gibraltar we joined Wing Commander Gomez who was in charge of assembling both Hurricanes and Spitfires that had arrived by sea in wooden crates. We were detailed once or twice to join a party of aircraft on a ferry trip to Oran or to Maison Blanche, the main base for Algiers. We were both pretty pleased to be sent from Gibraltar to Algiers to await a posting to one of the mobile fighter squadrons. We did not have long to wait. We flew to Souk el Arba and then by open truck to a new strip at Souk el Khemis. It was from this truck that we got our first glimpse of two Spitfires spinning into the ground followed by just one parachute. It was our friend from the ship on the Clyde: Mortimer Rose who had collided with the Wing Leader. Many years later Sheep Gilroy blamed condensation on the inside of the cockpit after returning from a sortie at high altitude.

Shortly after joining the famous No. 72 (Basutoland) Squadron we all went back to Gibraltar to be re-equipped with Mark IXs. Rodney and I thought a clever postings clerk in the Air Ministry had planned our route to No. 72 Squadron but we never breathed a word!

I returned to University in 1945 from my prisoner of war camp in Germany and as I walked down Kings Parade I wondered at old friends who had survived. I went one day to try the lunch in the Air Squadron Mess. There in the visitors book was a name I dearly wanted to find. Rodney had written in very small print, his decoration. He certainly deserved it and we have remained friends to this day.

Tom Hughes August 2010

How much I owe to my logbooks. Without the dates and cryptic notes which appear within, the memory of what happened over 60 years ago would be hard to disentangle. So for starters there is the first time I flew in a Spitfire. In my case this was on 16 September 1942. I was on a course at No. 58 OTU Grangemouth.

I had done a 35-minute Spitfire Check in a Master III. My instructor F/O Beardsley felt I was OK to go and I did. The next 55 minutes in a Spitfire Mark 1 was a gingerly completed exercise, doing circuits, pretending I was landing on top of a feathery white cloud and building up my confidence. At that stage there were no aerobatics and certainly no sideslip approach to a landing. But I got over the first stage and my landing was a three pointer. So I was away and my love affair with the Spitfire could truly be said to have begun.