After my father’s forced landing at Berbera on the 12th of August 1940, he was evacuated by hospital ship to Colaba Military Hospital in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. The surgeons were successful in saving his right arm, although it was significantly weakened. I vividly remember the deep pits in his shoulder and upper back where the doctors had dug out metal fragments.
I can only partially reconstruct the 14-month period between my father’s arrival in Bombay in August 1940 and his reporting for duty at No. 1 Service Flying Training School (SFTS), in Ambala, India in October 1941. There are sporadic entries in his official Record of Service (effectively, his personnel file — much more detailed than his own record shown above). He was checked in to the Aircraft Depot, India on 25 August 1940, the Hill Depot at Lower Topa on 11 May 1941, and then Ambala on 22 October. He must have been in hospital, convalescing, and then on progressively more full-time duty, most likely in his armourer trade. Since there is no indication he was reporting to any unit other than the Aircraft Depot until May, I presume he must have moved to the Depot (Drigh Road, Karachi) after hospital in Bombay. This was the RAF’s primary maintenance base in India, and also responsible for various administrative and training functions. My father had been based there for two weeks in November 1938 for a training course with 39 Squadron.
From his movement record, it seems he went to the hill station at Lower Topa for the hot months, as he had with 39 Squadron — but did he really stay there for five months, from May to October?
Return to flying
What is certain is that, from late October, he was at No. 1 Service Flying Training School (SFTS), in Ambala, on the border of Punjab. This School had opened the year before. Many of the future leaders of the Indian and Pakistan Air Force earned their wings there.
Over the next six months, he had a succession of medical evaluations:
FIT. A4B. 10/11/41.
Fit A.2.B. 24/1/42.
Fit A2 B Poss A.1. 24.4.42. (I’m not certain about my transcription of the all-important abbreviation before “A.1.”.)
(A = Fitness for Air Duties and B = Fitness for Ground Duties. 1 = full flying duties. 2 = limited flying duties. 3 = combatant passenger (piloting excluded). 4 = non-combatant passenger.)
On 29 January 1942, just five days after his evaluation as fit for “limited flying duties”, my father returned to flying, no doubt to his great delight. That same month, he was “Recommended for Commission Technical (Armt.) Branch.” I believe he must have refused that commission, in order to continue to fly. For the next four months, he once again flew Hawker Harts (or the Audax variant), with either Indians or British in the back seat. For many flights, the duty shown in his log book is “Formation Leading”. I’m not sure of his function, but perhaps he was helping to train air gunners.
Home
He left Ambala on the 21st of May, 1942 to return to the UK. He had been away — in Egypt, India, Singapore, Aden, British Somaliland, and back to India — for over five years. What a homecoming it must have been, and how much had changed. Some cities had been devastated by bombing, and the whole country was mobilized for war.
He no doubt had a long leave at home in Cwmbran, but in August, he was back flying — Lysanders, in an Operational Training Unit (OTU) at Harwell in Oxfordshire. The next month, he had the great honour of being presented with his DFM and Bar by the King, at Buckingham Palace. He probably hoped to return to operations, but the evaluation of “Poss A1” did not stand. On 3 November 1942, he was evaluated “A2. B. Non Operational Single engine Aircraft only.” At the end of December, he began his training to become a flying instructor, and was commissioned as a Pilot Officer. He spent the rest of the war on various bases throughout England.
He stayed in the RAF after the war, flying until early 1948 when, by the standards of the peacetime RAF, he was far too old at 32 to continue. He had accumulated a grand total of 2,679 flying hours, of which almost 2,000 were as an instructor. He then served as an armament officer on several bases, in the UK and Germany, and retired from the service in 1964 as a Flight Lieutenant.
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The fight with Sottotenente Veronese and Sergente Maggiore Omiccioli at the Tug Argan Gap in August 1940 ended Sergeant Hogan’s life. It also severely injured my father, but it may well have saved him from dying in a later battle. Forty-eight of the Halton brats who passed out with my father in December 1933 died during the Second World War.1 Of these, 38 were pilots (and most of the others were Observers, or other aircrew). “Tell them of us, and say, for your tomorrow we gave our today.”
- https://www.oldhaltonians.co.uk/in-memeriam-1939-1945, accessed 3 August 2022.