Denis Barnham - Malta Spitfire Pilot: Ten Weeks of Terror, April–June 1942

Malta Spitfire Pilot is about the air war in Malta and my husband Deniss part in it. More than sixty years have elapsed since he wrote about his ten weeks on the island during the critical months of April, May and June in 1942. When this book was first published in 1956, every adult reader had strong memories of the war, and could relate to the events. Precious few of todays readers share this direct experience. Yet, and to my astonishment, interest in the war years is still very much alive and the period has not yet been consigned to ancient history.

My own memories of 1942 are still vivid; and of all the events of that extraordinary year, none was more important and agonising to me than those weeks when the Battle for Malta was raging. All of us in England was aware of the significance of what was happening there, though I must confess that I was much more worried about my husband than the implications of Malta succumbing. If the island had fallen, no doubt we would still have won the war, but it would have taken longer, and the loss of life would have been higher. After the war, Denis often thanked God that the Germans and the Italians hadnt realised how close they were to victory. There were days when they could have landed on Malta virtually unopposed. At those times, hardly any of our airplanes were still flying and stocks of food, ammunition and water were virtually exhausted. It was a close-run thing.

Ancient history or not, this is a personal record of a crucial period. Much of the text has been taken straight from the diary that Denis kept during the battle, written within hours of the events he describes; and Denis made the deliberate decision, when he set out to write this book, not to water down his emotions. In consequence, the text is embarrassingly personal at times. He was a meticulous artist and he wrote as he painted: bold ideas and sweeping thoughts followed by carefully crafted infill to bind it all together. I spent many evenings in the period 194951 acting as an audience of one as Denis developed the text out loud. He wrote in longhand and my job was to correct his terrible spelling and to type draft after draft from his handwritten manuscripts. The book was both a labour of love and a personal catharsis.

Denis had three great loves in his life: aviation, painting and (a bad third) me. The first two passions started early in life. His mother told me that as a child he was known as Buzz Buzz for his habit of pretending to be an airplane. By the age of 10, (at Holyrood School in Bognor), he was filling scrapbooks with photos and beautifully drawn sketches of airplanes. At his next school (Repton) he walked off with all the art prizes, and spent his spare time making model aircraft. It surprised no one when he pestered his parents, who ran a prosperous market gardening business at Hampton in Middlesex, into giving him a studio at home where he could paint pictures . and flying lessons. He learnt to fly at the age of 16 at Hanworth near Feltham, in a C3o Autogiro as he persuaded his mother that this was safer than a fixed-wing aircraft! He received his official licence to fly all types of land rota-planes in January 1937, a few days after his seventeenth birthday. Five months later he gained admission to the prestigious Royal Academy School of Painting in London, and seemed set for a career as an artist. Then the war intervened, and in September 1939 he left the RA Schools to join the RAF Volunteer Reserve.

1940 saw Denis in Rhodesia, first at the Elementary Flying Training School at Belvedere flying Tiger Moths; then on to Cranbourne to fly Harvards. Then back to England. He left Rhodesia at the end of December, and celebrated his twenty-first birthday (on 3 January 1941) at Cape Town in South Africa, on top of Table Mountain. His UK destination was 57 OTU at RAF Hawarden near Chester, where he learnt to fly Spitfires. From there in April, Denis was posted to Lincolnshire, to 65 Squadron at RAF Kirton-in-Lindsey. Kirton at that time was a joint Army-RAF camp, and a cosmopolitan place. Troops and pilots were there from all over the world, including a significant number of Australians and Americans who had come to join squadrons of their countrymen that were being formed at the camp.

It was at Kirton that Denis and I met on June 28 1941 at a dance at the officers mess. I was accompanying my father, a professional soldier since before the Great War, who was based at Kirton where he commanded 39 Anti-Aircraft Brigade. At the time, I had just come out of the ATS (the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the forerunner of todays Womens Royal Army Corps) and was working nearby for the Rural Food Control Office in Brigg. For his part, Denis was flying Spitfires most days over the English Channel and northern France.

We had a whirlwind romance. Denis proposed to me the day after we met. I told him not to be silly. He persisted. I relented, and we were married six months later in January 1942 by the Bishop of Lincoln at St. Andrews Redbourne, a charming little church, alas now desanctified. We saw a lot of each other during our engagement, even though Denis had been posted to 609 Squadron at Biggin Hill a few days after we met. He was now flying what are described in his logbook as offensive sweeps but frequently, he would borrow a Spitfire and come up to Kirton to see me.

Denis stayed with 609 Squadron until the end of 1941, when he was posted to 154 Squadron at Fowlmere near Duxford and where, after we were married, we were billeted in the local vicarage. His involvement with 154 lasted for only three months as in March, Deniss old squadron leader at 609, John Bisdee, was transferred to 601 Squadron, and he pulled strings for Denis to join him as one of his flight commanders. And so on about March 23 we moved back to Lincolnshire, to Digby where 601 was based; but not for long as within a month, the squadron was in Malta.