Forced Landing in Siam, August 1939

Film by my father’s flight commander, Flight Lieutenant (later Wing Commander) Robert Milward: scenes from the August 1939 flight to Singapore, probably on the first day: Risalpur to Allahabad, and take-off from Allahabad.1

In August 1939, less than a month before Hitler’s invasion of Poland and Britain and France’s declaration of war on Germany, the Squadron left the North West Frontier of India for Singapore. My sources for this three-thousand mile, multi-day flight differ in a number of details, but they have one word in common: “disastrous.” No. 39 Squadron left Risalpur on the North West Frontier of India with nine aircraft. Only four of the original machines made it to Singapore. My father’s was one of the five that did not.2

Risalpur to Singapore (map: Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 26, Atlas, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931 edition)

Annual flights to Singapore by one or more of the Frontier squadrons in India had been initiated in the mid-1930’s, as exercises to demonstrate the ability to reinforce the British colonies in the Far East in the event of a major war. They were always an adventure, and it was typical for one or two aircraft to have engine failure or accidents (occasionally fatal) along the way. In December 1935, eleven of 39 Squadron’s twelve Harts reached Singapore. Ten of 60 Squadron’s twelve Wapitis made it in February, 1936. On the 11th of January, 1938, twelve of 39 Squadron’s Harts left Risalpur, and ten arrived in Singapore on the 16th.3

Those journeys, in open-cockpit biplanes, were meticulously planned and always took place outside the main monsoon season. There were six overnight stops and an additional five refueling stops along the way, and the pilots tried to stay in constant visual contact with the two or three colleagues in their flight, since much of the route was over poorly mapped jungle.

This time, they were flying at the height of the monsoon season,4 in a much more sophisticated aircraft which many of them barely knew how to fly, in just three days, and with several new and green crew members. My father had flown less than four hours in the Bristol Blenheim, and he had been at the controls for only two hours, 20 minutes of those four hours. He had piloted the aircraft with a crew for only 15 minutes. They were tempting fate.

The Plan

Both of the light bomber squadrons from Risalpur — 11 and 39 — made this trip in August 1939. Those who had done this trip before, flying Hawker Harts — for example, my father’s Flight Commander, Flight Lieutenant Robert Milward — had spent the five nights on the way at Cawnpore (Kanpur, the largest city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh), Calcutta (Kolkata, on the Bay of Bengal), Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar), Mergui (Myeik, in southern Burma), and Alor Star, Malay States (Alor Setar, Malaysia). Total flying time was about 30 hours, with an average speed of about 130 mph. The plan this time was to spend nights at Allahabad (now Prayagraj, or Ilahabad, Uttar Pradesh), Rangoon, and Alor Star. Total flying time would be about half.5

Source: 11 Squadron’s Operations Record Book 6

The Journey

6th August: Risalpur to Allahabad, with a refueling stop in Ambala

The pilots’ lack of experience on the Blenheim let them down from the first day. While taxying in at Ambala, one pilot pulled the wrong toggle and raised his undercarriage. There was a spare Blenheim there, and so all stores and equipment were transferred, and the squadron again left with nine aircraft. At Allahabad, the airfield was flooded, and one aircraft swung off the runway and ended up on its back. No replacement was available. The squadron waited a day for the weather to improve. Two of the original nine aircraft were now unserviceable.7

Film by Flight Lieutenant Robert Milward.8

8th August: Allahabad to Rangoon, Burma, with a refueling stop in Calcutta

Again, they ran into severe monsoon weather. My father flew safely to Rangoon and spent two nights there. But Wing Commander Burton Ankers, DSO, the senior officer in charge of both squadrons, flying a 39 Squadron aircraft on the same route the next day, crashed and died along with the two members of his crew. Two technician-passengers (including the representative in India of the Bristol Aeroplane Company) baled out and survived. In one account, Ankers’ aircraft caught fire after being struck by lightning. In another, he decided to fly high (rather than hugging the ground below the cloud), flew into rather than around a storm cloud, and came out in a vertical dive from which he couldn’t recover. In addition, according to one source, another aircraft was made unserviceable on this second day by stresses from a spin after being struck by lightning.9 Four of the original aircraft were now written off or unserviceable.

10th August: Rangoon to Phuket (forced landing)

The ambitious plan for this third day of flying was to fly from Rangoon to Singapore with a refueling stop in Alor Star. The two legs were approximately 790 and 415 miles.

The 790-mile flight from Rangoon to Alor Star was by far the longest of the whole journey. The official specification of the Blenheim Mark 1 gave its range as 1,125 miles, but specifications are always given for ideal conditions. It’s likely that the actual range in these tropical monsoon conditions, with a heavy load, was under 1,000 miles. The plan therefore called for them to fly to within almost 80% of this, leaving a margin of about one hour of flying. This seems far beyond the reasonable safety margin for flying over open water and unfamiliar, sparsely-populated areas, with poor maps, an almost total lack of experience on type, and in severe weather conditions. Remarkably, they almost all made it.10

The first part of that day’s flight was at least an hour over water, from Rangoon in a south-easterly direction across the Andaman Sea. The monsoon weather doubtless continued, and my father’s flight of three aircraft may have got separated from each other in extremely poor visibility. Whenever (and wherever) they saw land, the plan, I assume, would have been simple: follow the coast south all the way to Alor Star.

What is certain is that my father ran out of petrol and made a forced-landing in Bhuket, West Siam (now Phuket, Thailand), about 200 miles north of Alor Star (less than an hour’s flying time). Following are the two records of this in his Log Book: on the daily notation for the 10th of August 1939, he writes that he was flying Blenheim serial number L8516 with four crew, and that they flew “Rangoon – Bhuket (Siam)” and that the flight’s duration was “4.50” with this on the line below: “Forced landing (with undercarriage up) due to shortage of petrol.”

The second record is at the back of the Log Book where he lists all of the places he flew from/to. Here he writes: “Bhuket Is. (Slime Paddock) End of L8516 (West Siam).”

He should have flown over Phuket after about three hours, and had more than enough petrol left to reach Alor Star. What happened that day?

The Challenges of Navigation

David Lee, who made this flight four years before (outside the monsoon season), describes some of the challenges:
“The eyeball was the only navigational aid and map reading was the only method of navigation along the whole route. Whereas the maps of India were reasonably detailed and accurate, those of Burma, Siam and the Malay States were extremely sketchy and far from accurate.” 11

And, specifically, about the flight along the Burmese coast:
“One slightly confusing aspect of this part of the journey was the presence of mangrove swamps along the coastline. On our maps these swamps were depicted as water whereas they appeared to be land when viewed from the air. Only when looking directly downwards could the water be detected between the mangroves. It was extremely difficult in consequence to see the shape and exact position of the coastline, not admittedly a serious problem in good weather but one that could make map reading not exactly easy in reduced visibility.” 12

Further complicating map-reading, there are over 800 islands of all shapes and sizes just off the coast between Mergui and Phuket (the Mergui/Myeik Archipelago), and many more between Phuket and Alor Star.

They were faced with two other self-inflicted handicaps. They had left Risalpur at short notice. Route- and map-preparation had taken David Lee and his squadron weeks in 1935:
“The sheer quantity of maps needed for 4,000 miles posed difficulties in the confined cockpit of the Hart [they would have not had much more room in the Blenheim, since they were carrying two airmen who had to lie or crouch down throughout the flight, and a lot of additional baggage and supplies]. We rejected the idea of using maps on the scale of 1/4 inch to the mile. According to my calculations, this would have required almost 30 yards of map. We finally settled on the 10 mile to one inch scale maps, and even this would mean 33 feet of map. None of us was too happy about using this small scale. . . . In the end we compromised by having one set of smaller scale maps for the pilot only in each aeroplane and a number of the larger scale ones of the potentially difficult areas in the rear cockpit with the air gunner . . . With much labour and scissors and paste, we made up books of maps, one for each pilot. Each sheet was cut with the track to be flown as a black line down the centre with some 50 miles on either side of it. These sheets were about 10 inches wide and a foot or so long. They were pasted on to thin cardboard with eyelet holes at the top and then fastened together with large rings, making a book of 32 pages which could be turned over easily with gloved hands.” 13

Obviously, with short notice, the maps the Blenheims carried would have been much less well studied and prepared.

In addition, the crew members (the Wireless Operator/Air Gunner in the central turret, and the Observer/Navigator on the pilot’s right) were assembled at short notice and were almost completely inexperienced.

Tony Dudgeon, a Flight Commander in 11 Squadron, flying about two days ahead of my father that August, remembers:
“Early during the first day we found that our green, recently acquired navigators and wireless operators were wholly unreliable. They had not been trained for and had no experience of the different terrain, the landmarks, the type of maps used and the very primitive radio aids. They became confused and got lost almost at once. Most of us, therefore, kept down fairly low [which, incidentally, decreases the aircraft’s range], underneath any poor weather and doing all our own map reading and navigation as we did in the Harts.” 14

Clearly, my father got lost. One possibility is that he initially flew past Phuket (perhaps noting what looked like possible areas for a forced landing) without positively identifying it, and then continued past Alor Star, backtracked and still did not find it, and so flew all the way back to Phuket.

The Challenges of Forced Landing over Tropical Forest

The primary danger of this journey was a forced landing.

The RAF Pocket Book 1937 (which would no doubt have been carried on the aircraft) has an informative section on “Flying Over Jungle Country” including this advice on “Forced Landing in Jungle”:
“The following types of surface should normally be chosen in preference to wooded areas:- (i) Open water, close to the bank. (ii) A river, close to the bank. (iii) A road. (iv) A railway.” 15

Another contemporary, Group Captain Frederick Richardson, probably the RAF’s leading expert on navigation at the time, remembers the challenges of a forced landing in jungle:

16

The famous long-distance flying pioneer Alan Cobham chose a seaplane for his exploratory 1926 flight from England to Australia for precisely this reason:
“. . . from Calcutta until one reaches Australia it would be impossible to land an aeroplane anywhere other than on a prepared landing ground owing to the total absence of open spaces, for the entire route is covered with dense tropical jungle, forest and mountains. Therefore, if one was caught out in a monsoon rainstorm with an aeroplane and was unable to fly on, the situation would be very awkward, whereas with a seaplane, owing to the fact that the whole coastline of Burma abounds with sheltered bays and inland creeks, one could take refuge immediately until the weather cleared.” 17

The Italian pioneer Francesco de Pinedo had chosen a seaplane for his 1925 Rome-Australia-Tokyo-Rome flight for the same reason.18 And, for this and other reasons, “by 1939, flying boats dominated long distance international air travel.” 19

Tony Dudgeon, who commanded a flight of 11 Squadron on this same journey in August 1939, vividly describes the challenges of a forced landing in the jungle:
“Over Assam, Burma, Thailand and Malaya, there are two consecutive problems, should you come down inadvertently. The first is a tough one: it is getting down alive. The second is even tougher: it is staying alive afterwards and reaching help. . . . If [you] glided down, the big branches might fillet the wings off [your] aircraft and the fuselage would streak like a plummet to the earth below. On the other hand, [you] might get stuck up there, and then getting down 200 ft would be a pretty problem, even if [you] were uninjured. . . . . Assuming the first hurdle had been surmounted and [you] were on the ground, alive and mobile, what next? . . . It would mean struggling through near-impenetrable jungle, only to reach a coastline bordered by mangrove swamps, populated by crocodiles, leeches and poisonous water-snakes. Furthermore, even then you still could not be seen from the air or from the sea. The prospect lacked attraction. . . as we all did, [I] toyed with the idea that if [I] was coming down, failing the miracle of a clearing or a sandy beach, it might be best to drive the aircraft fast into the treetops. The result would be just as certain and it would have the advantage of being quick.” 20

Perhaps my father had such thoughts as he found no breaks in the tree cover.

The Forced Landing on Phuket

Here’s how Leading Aircraftman (later Squadron Leader) Sid Sills, who was then a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner with 39 Squadron (in another aircraft), remembered what he’d heard about my father’s forced landing:
“One [aircraft] unsure of its position and running low on fuel landed in what the pilot thought was a lush green field. It turned out to be a disused tin mine twenty feet deep and all aboard had to swim for their lives.” 21 Sills’ account from his Oral History, recorded by the Imperial War Museum in 1980, is very similar: “One aircraft got lost, landed in what it th0ught was a beautiful, lush green field which turned out to be a tin tailing–a lake where a tin mine had been, covered with blanket moss–landed in the water, and the crew had to swim for their lives.” 22

Here is Sills’ account of the whole disastrous journey (his memory is frequently verified by other sources, but he begins by getting the month wrong, and misremembers other details):

23

+ + + + +

Phuket’s wealth these days comes from tourism, but for hundreds of years it had been a rich source of tin, often from open-pit mines. These pits (sometimes called “dredge paddocks”) filled with water and slime during the monsoon or when abandoned. Some of these relatively shallow lakes are now surrounded by golf courses. Perhaps one of them still contains the decaying remains of L8516.

Red Mountain Golf Club, Phuket, winds its way through a former tin mine

What happened next? I imagine the crew salvaged what they could of their personal and other equipment, and abandoned the aircraft as a complete write-off. They probably made their way to Alor Star by ferry and road, and from there by rail to Singapore. The next record in my father’s Log Book is for a short gunnery and bombing practice flight on the 28th of August, in Singapore.

Aftermath

The official Air Ministry Flying Accident Card, Form 1180, provides no additional information (in fact, it’s cursory in the extreme).24 My father must have been chastened by this experience, after flying so high just a few months before. No. 39 Squadron probably took years to live down the embarrassment of this flight. They reached Singapore with only four of the original nine Blenheims which left Risalpur — whereas their sister squadron, No. 11, arrived as scheduled on the third day out from Risalpur with eight of their nine aircraft.25

As far as I know at the time I’m writing this, there was no in-depth inquiry. In any case, on their return flight to India, in April 1940, 39 Squadron was not so ambitious. They spent the first night at Alor Star, and refueled at Mergui the next day on their way to Rangoon.26

Previous page: India Next page: Singapore

Notes:

There are significant differences about crucial facts, particularly dates, among the sources for this flight. My principal sources are (citations for all these sources, except the Log Book, are in the Notes below):
Contemporary sources: my father’s Flying Log Book, 11 Squadron’s Operations Record Book (ORB), and Robert Milward’s film. The first two would have been written up at the end of the month (or earlier), from notes. (39 Squadron’s ORB is unfortunately missing for this period.)
First-hand accounts recorded long after the fact: memoir by Dudgeon, Sills quoted by Delve, and Sills’ IWM Oral History. All of these were recorded and/or published in the 1980s.
In cases of disagreement, I have treated the contemporary sources as authoritative.

  1. Wing Commander Robert Milward, Amateur Film: Scenes of the Royal Air Force in Pre-War Malaya and India, and Post-War Scenes in Germany, Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive, MGH 6583/1-10, Reel 8, 00:07 to 01:20.
  2. “Disastrous” and “nine aircraft”: Chaz Bowyer, RAF Operations 1918-1938, London: William Kimber, 1988, pp. 234. “This was to prove a disastrous flight”: Flight Lieutenant Ken Delve, The Winged Bomb: History of 39 Squadron RAF, Midland Counties Publications (Aerophile) Ltd., Leicester: 1985, p.54. “Only four”: my arithmetic, based on a careful evaluation of the sources. Squadron Leader Sid Sills, DFM (then Leading Aircraftman Sills), quoted in Delve (without citation), op. cit., p. 54, says there was a “loss of six aircraft”–i.e., only three made it to Singapore. But I have found no other convincing evidence for this number, and Sills mis-remembers (or mis-states) a number of other key elements of the flight, most obviously (in his Oral History, included on this page) that the flight left Risalpur in June.
  3. “In December 1935”: David Lee (Air Chief Marshal Sir David Lee, GBE, CB), Never Stop the Engine when it’s Hot, London: Thomas Harmsworth Publishing, 1983, chapter 19, pp. 265-307; “Ten of 60 Squadron’s”: Chaz Bowyer, op. cit., pp. 218 and 228. “On the 11th of January”: 39 Squadron Operations Record Book (ORB), Form 540. The National Archives of the UK (TNA): AIR-27-406-5, January 1938.
  4. “Extreme adverse monsoon weather conditions were experienced the whole way.” 11 Squadron Operations Record Book (ORB), Form 540, The National Archives of the UK (TNA): AIR-27-157-1, August 1939.
  5. “had spent the five nights on the way”: David Lee, op. cit., p. 274-287. “Total flying time was about 30 hours”: ibid, p. 292 and 306. “The plan this time”: The Luck of the Devil, Air Vice-Marshal A.G. Dudgeon, CBE, DFC (then a flight commander with 11 Squadron), Shrewsbury: Airlife Publishing, 1985, p.121, and the 11 Squadron fuel consumption, etc. document, included on this page.
  6. 11 Squadron Operations Record Book (ORB) Appendices, 1914-1939, The National Archives of the UK (TNA): AIR-27-161-2, page 231. This is a miscellaneous collection of documents, principally from the end of 1936 to 1939, then May 1930 to 1937, then a squadron history for WWI, then a few documents from 1928, and a document about the squadron badge. It includes only this one page about the August 1939 flight to Singapore.
  7. Two sources agree, more or less, on these two incidents. Squadron Leader Sid Sills, DFM (then LAC Sills, a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner with 39 Squadron), quoted in Flight Lieutenant Ken Delve, op.cit., p.54; and Dudgeon, op. cit., p. 123. And see (listen to) Squadron Leader Sills’ Oral History, included on this page.
  8. Milward, op. cit., Reel 8, 01:33-01:45.
  9. “In one account”: Squadron Leader Sid Sills, DFM (then LAC Sills, a Wireless Operator/Air Gunner with 39 Squadron), quoted in Flight Lieutenant Ken Delve, op.cit., p.54. “In another”: Dudgeon, op. cit., p. 123. “according to one source”: Sills quoted in Delve, op.cit. And see (listen to) Squadron Leader Sills’ Oral History, included on this page. In this History, Sills makes clear he was in Wing Commander Ankers’ flight, and was an eyewitness to this fatal accident — and, indeed, that all three aircraft in the flight, including his own, were struck by lightning. In his account in Delve, Sills says that “a few days were spent in [in Calcutta] awaiting the arrival of replacements, and patching up the rest” — but my father’s Log Book shows he continued on to Rangoon the same day (that is, the day before Ankers’ accident), as planned. So perhaps only the survivors of Ankers’ flight stayed behind. And perhaps this was the rearmost flight: Dudgeon (op. cit., p. 122) states that “Bill Ankers as the senior officer [took] off last”. On the other hand, Dudgeon also states that all six flights (that is, A, B and C flights of both 11 and 39 Squadrons) flew on the same schedule on the same dates. Two more authoritative sources establish that this was not true: my father’s Log Book, and 11 Squadron’s Operations Record Book (op. cit.). Dudgeon (op. cit., p. 123) implies that everyone on board Ankers’ plane died, but this is not accurate: see Flight magazine, August 17, 1939, p.161: “the crash occurred at Kutumba” (about 150 miles east of Allahabad, and 300 west of Calcutta). Two “other occupants of the aircraft, A/C 2 Richard Wallace and Mr. R.C. Tapper, escaped by parachute.” (Tapper was the Bristol company’s engine specialist: Dudgeon, op.cit., p.121.)
  10. All eight of 11 Squadron’s original nine aircraft which took off from Rangoon made it to Alor Star on the same day. Sills says (in Delve, op. cit.) that another aircraft–presumably one of 39 Squadron’s–“quite sure of its position but less sure of its fuel landed on a beach”. In his Oral History (included on this page), he adds that this aircraft was able to take off the next day.
  11. Lee, op.cit., p. 268.
  12. Ibid, pp. 282-3.
  13. Ibid, pp. 268-9.
  14. Dudgeon, op. cit., pp. 122-3.
  15. Royal Air Force Pocket Book, Air Publication 1081, Air Ministry: 3rd edition, June 1937, Chapter VI, Section 255, p. 255.
  16. Oral History, Frederick Charles Richardson, Imperial War Museum, https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80004583, IWM 4623, Reel 2, 14:40 to 15:21, accessed 12 March 2021.
  17. Alan Cobham recounts his journey to Australia and back, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sahja5USVT4 posted 24 November 2008 and accessed 15 January 2021.
  18. Mentioned at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_de_Pinedo accessed 15 January 2021. De Pinedo landed at Phuket in May 1925, during this epic journey.
  19. How World War II Killed the Flying Boat, Bob van der Linden, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, April 6, 2020, https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/how-world-war-ii-killed-flying-boat, accessed 24 March 2021.
  20. Dudgeon, op. cit., pp. 127-8.
  21. Sills quoted in Delve, op.cit., p. 55. Sills incorrectly states that this happened between Calcutta and Rangoon. I think it’s unlikely my father thought he was landing in a “green field.” He deliberately kept the undercarriage retracted. It’s possible he did this because he wanted to slow the aircraft rapidly and reduce the landing distance, but it’s equally likely he knew he was effectively landing on water. This would, after all, be in accordance with his training–see the quotation on this page from the RAF Pocket Book.
  22. See next note for details of the source.
  23. Squadron Leader Sidney William Sills, DFM, Oral History, Imperial War Museum, https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/80004561, IWM 4601, Reel 4, 03:40 to 10:02, accessed 12 March 2021.
  24. Provided on request by the Air Historical Branch, RAF: see https://www.raf.mod.uk/our-organisation/units/air-historical-branch/. The “Place” is recorded simply as “Somewhere in Siam”! The Form notes: “F.L. (with u/c retracted ? deliberate)” Most of this is in pen, but the word “deliberate” is in pencil, apparently written by the same supervisor who annotated “File now”. From the placement of the question-mark, it’s difficult to know if it indicates uncertainty about whether the undercarriage was retracted, or about whether it was deliberate.
  25. The ninth aircraft, piloted by Flying Officer Ellaby, forced landed on the 6th of August, in very bad visibility near Calcutta, and a replacement machine had to be flown in from Risalpur. He finally reached Singapore on the 19th August. 11 Squadron Operations Record Book, op. cit.
  26. 39 Squadron Operations Record Book, Form 540, The National Archives of the UK (TNA): AIR-27-407-1.