The North West Frontier of India

My father on a sortie to bomb Narakki, North West Frontier, January 1939. Stalling speed (slots extended at leading edge of top plane). Load: 4 x 112 lbs, 4 x 20 lbs.

After completing his flying training at Abu Sueir in Egypt, my father was posted to No. 39 light bomber Squadron, stationed at Risalpur on the North West Frontier of India. He arrived there, after the two-week journey by boat and train, in early December 1937.

Now, at last, almost seven years after starting his apprenticeship at Halton, he was at the heart of the work of the RAF — flying with an operational squadron.

+ + + + +

My father was not a talkative man, but on a few occasions when I was home from boarding school with friends, he would have a beer or two and begin to yarn, as he put it. More often than not, he would recall these 20 months on the North West Frontier, from December 1937 to July 1939. For the young pilots, it was a grand adventure, at the twilight of the golden age of flying.

The Squadron

A squadron on the Frontier was a small and tight community, with a few pilots supported by technical staff.

• At full strength, each squadron was led by a Squadron Leader (usually with that official rank), and divided into three Flights (A, B, and C) with five pilots each, three of whom were officers, and two Sergeant Pilots. The Commanders of each Flight usually had the official rank of Flight Lieutenant.
• There were four or five aircraft in each Flight, and they were maintained by about a dozen fitters (engine mechanics, principally), and riggers (in charge of the alignment of the aircraft, the bracing and control wires, etc.) under the overall charge of one or two non-flying Sergeants. The fitters and riggers volunteered to also serve as air gunners, flying with the pilots, for a pittance of extra pay.

There were three RAF bases in the North West Frontier Province: Kohat, Peshawar, and Risalpur. My father’s squadron, No. 39 (B = Bomber), was based at Risalpur along with 11 (B) and 5 (AC = Army Cooperation) Squadrons.

When flying, the officers and Sergeant Pilots were more or less on an equal footing, although the officers would generally get more opportunities to fly, were more likely to regularly fly the same aircraft with the same crewman, and to get plum assignments when they came up. But once on the ground, officers, sergeants, and other ranks all lived separate lives. Each of the three groups had its own mess, with very significant differences in amenities and protocols. And, to my knowledge, only the officers led an active social life with their army peers, and with RAF families and others in the cantonment.

The Planes

At this time, and right up to a few months before the beginning of the Second World War, all the light bomber and army cooperation squadrons on the Frontier were equipped with open-cockpit biplanes, either Westland Wapitis or the somewhat more modern, but still obsolescent, Hawker Hart (or its variant, the Hawker Audax). My father was very familiar with this type from his time in Aden and at Abu Sueir.

The Hart was designed by the great Sidney Camm who went on to design the Hawker Hurricane, among many other well known types. It looked sleek, the Rolls Royce Kestrel engine was dependable, and by all accounts it was a joy to fly.

These planes were recognizable in all their most visible features — open-cockpit biplanes, with fixed undercarriage — as of the same ilk as First World War aircraft.

It was well understood by the RAF leadership that these aircraft were out of date, and were no match for the rapidly expanding Luftwaffe.² But the young pilots, reared on stories of the aces, loved them.

The Political Situation

The North West Frontier Province was “the RAF’s most operationally-active pre-War theatre.”³ Six out of the eight RAF squadrons in India were stationed there.⁴ Why?

It “was the one area where the British Raj could suffer a knockout blow from either external Russian invasion or internal revolt”.⁵ The geopolitical great-power rivalry in Central Asia was known by some British Indian diplomats in the nineteenth century as the Great Game, and this term was popularized by Rudyard Kipling in his 1901 novel Kim. The 40,000-square mile area between the plains of the Indus River and the Afghan border was only nominally under British control. The local tribes were, and still are, fiercely independent.⁶ The British pushed roads and railways up the valleys, and established isolated forts, but these routes and outposts were always subject to attack.

Periodically, the British launched punitive expeditions. Winston Churchill took part in such an expedition in 1897.⁷  After the First World War, the RAF took over some of these duties and enabled a more limited use of ground forces. This policy, which was not full “air control” (as practiced by the RAF in Iraq during the interwar years, where the RAF operated essentially without the army), but more a combination of air policing and army support, was the RAF’s primary function in India.

Uniquely in the Empire, the RAF in India was under the full control of the (British) Indian government, rather than the government in London. RAF personnel were paid by the Indian government, and all major decisions with regard to disposition of forces and operational initiatives were approved by Delhi. The RAF was, in most cases, subordinate to the (British) Indian Army, and the Army was often ambivalent about the role of the RAF in what had been traditional Indian Army activities.⁸

The Faqir of Ipi

During my father’s time on the Frontier, and for long after the end of the British Raj in 1947, the leading tribal leader on the North West Frontier was the indomitable Pashtun freedom fighter (not a term the British or Pakistan governments would have thought appropriate, even had it existed then) Ghazi Mirzali Khan, better known as the Faqir of Ipi. He had first caused significant trouble for the British in 1936.

“Among the enemies of the British Empire on the eve of the Second World War, the Faqir of Ipi was unique. He was the most determined, implacable single adversary the British Raj in India had to face . . . At one point nearly 40,000 British and Indian troops were reported to be in the field trying to capture him, while he remained elusive as ever, always succeeding in evading the tight net put around him. And yet, his own force of armed tribesmen probably never exceeded one thousand men, armed with rifles and a few machine-guns, and occasionally one or two pieces of antiquated cannon . . . When he died in 1960, The Times [of London] of 20 April described him as ‘a doughty and honorable opponent . . . a man of principle and saintliness . . . a redoubtable organizer of tribal warfare.’ ” ⁹

The activities of the Frontier squadrons at this time were largely determined by the Government of India’s reactions to the Faqir’s acts of terrorism (as a 21st century government would call them).

The Work

A pilot’s working life on the Frontier in the late 1930s was divided into periods of active operations against the Faqir and his allies, and others of relative tranquility. During the intervals of relative peace, there were regular reconnaissance flights — patrolling for three hours in different sections of the region — photo-reconnaissance for mapping or intelligence purposes, checking on stores of petrol at remote emergency landing grounds, communication exercises with isolated outposts, bombing and gunnery practice, and so on.

Active operations were mainly what was called “proscription”, and punitive bombing. After a tribe (or group of villages) had done something the British authorities considered out of line, which generally involved either an attack on a British Army outpost or column, or protection of the Faqir of Ipi, the British would lay out terms, and threaten destructive action if these terms were not agreed to. This would be communicated to a conference of elders (a jirga) by the local British Political Agent (who was almost always fluent in Pashto). If these terms were not agreed to, aircraft would usually drop warning leaflets announcing the imminent bombing of the villages in question, and a day or so later destroy some or most of the houses. They would also often prevent the villagers from farming by dropping delayed-action bombs on their fields.

The active campaign season generally coincided with the cooler weather, from October through May. In the hot months, from June through September, when temperatures even at night were in the 90’s F (30’s C) and higher, and the situation was usually peaceful, pilots and airmen took leave or did ground training in rotation at cooler hill stations. All of the memoirs have accounts of people driven clinically insane by the heat.

My Witnesses

There are several memoirs and some amateur film by contemporaries (or near-contemporaries) of my father. Here are my witnesses, four officers and one “erk” (as airmen below the rank of corporal were called, in RAF slang):

• Pilot Officer/Flying Officer Tony Dudgeon, 11 Squadron, Risalpur, March 1936-August, 1939 (Acting Flight Lieutenant and Flight Commander, November 1938). Memoir: The Luck of the Devil. Cranwell cadet. Later Air Vice-Marshal Tony Dudgeon, CBE, DFC.
• Aircraftman Stanley Humphrey, Workshops, HQ Flight, Risalpur, January-November 1936. Memoir: Press On, Regardless. Direct Entry. Later Sergeant Stanley Humphrey.
• Pilot Officer/Flying Officer David Lee, 60 Squadron, Kohat, February 1933-March 1935, and 39 Squadron, Risalpur, April 1935-November 1936 (Flight Commander, A flight from October 1935). Memoir: Never Stop the Engine when it’s Hot. Cranwell cadet. Later Air Chief Marshall Sir David Lee, GBE, CB.
• Flying Officer/Flight Lieutenant Robert Milward (seated, third from left in the photo above), 39 Squadron, Risalpur, December 1936-August 1939 (Flight Commander, B flight from December 1938). Amateur film. Short-Service Commission, I believe. Later Wing Commander Robert Milward, DFC. Milward continued to be my father’s Flight Commander in Singapore and Aden.
• Pilot Officer/Flying Officer Geoffrey Morley-Mower, 27 Squadron, Kohat, November 1938-December 1939; 28 Squadron, Kohat, December 1939-June 1940. Memoir: Flying Blind. Short-Service Commission, I believe. Later Wing Commander Geoffrey Morley-Mower, DFC, AFC.

All five men, like my father, were in their early 20’s at the time.¹⁰ Both Humphrey and Lee left the Frontier a year before my father arrived. My father probably flew with all three of the others at one time or another, and he certainly flew regularly with Milward for over two and a half years. Milward and my father would have known each other well professionally, but almost certainly not socially, since Milward was an officer and my father a sergeant.

From the young pilots’ point of view, what mattered was the quality of the flying. Flying was their passion. Morley-Mower wrote:

“Hitler’s ravings and the dovelike responses of Britain and France, which we read about in the Frontier Mail at breakfast time, hardly made a trace on our consciousness. It was as if a silent movie were being played in a corner of a room in which we were doing something of supreme importance, like making love or fighting a duel. The only thing that mattered to us was to get airborne in our dawn-of-flying machines and to be permitted to cruise over the moonscape of this exotic frontier.” ¹¹

Ein kleiner Bildungsroman

My father came of age in the RAF during these few months. When he arrived on the Frontier in December 1937, he was fresh out of flying school. By the end of March 1939, he was a fully-fledged squadron pilot, seasoned on active operations, and with a major medal recommendation on its way up the chain of command.

He arrived as the Squadron was preparing for what the Operations Record Book (ORB) described on the 4th of December, 1937 as “a long distance training flight.” ¹³ They finally left for Singapore on the 10th of January (the pace of things was slow in those pre-war days), and did not return until the 25th of February. But my father was clearly too green to go along on this risky, multi-stage trip. Instead, he began, very gradually, to learn the ropes. His first flights (as recorded in his Log Book) were mostly alone, with the back seat empty–presumably so that, if he had an accident, only one person would be hurt. On the 20th of December, he took his first longer flight with the more experienced Sergeant Robinson at the controls: the “Northern Area Recco.” (Sergeant Robinson is on the far right of the front row of the B Flight photo, above.)

David Lee remembers:
“For the purpose of showing the flag and ensuring that the tribes remained constantly aware of the presence of British forces, all the Frontier squadrons participated in a regular series of demonstration flights, planned to cover the whole Frontier at frequent intervals.”

“The Frontier was divided into three areas . . . [the] Northern area comprised the region to the north of the Khyber Pass up to the foothills of the Himalayas, inhabited largely by the Mohmand tribes. From the northern periphery of the Peshawar plain the ground rose steadily, intersected by narrow defiles and deep gorges through the territory of the Wali of Swat until the high peaks of the Himalayas marked the boundary of the area. . . . It was a desolate and awe inspiring area but, strangely enough, a relatively friendly place as those unfortunate enough to come down in it found to their relief. When Joe Shaw from Risalpur was forced down on one occasion by engine failure due to carburetter icing on his Hart, he landed upside down in six feet of snow and both he and his air gunner escaped injury. He was looked after extremely well by the Wali of Swat personally and eventually made his way back to the station, but his airplane was quite inaccessible and was never recovered.” ¹⁵

1938

In the first quarter of 1938, my father continued his limited, routine flying. Then, in April, the Squadron was ordered to bomb certain villages in northern Waziristan “for harbouring Sher Ali [an ally of the Faqir of Ipi] and his followers for the past 4 months, and for supplying him with men to carry out his attacks on the Scouts”. During these attacks earlier that month, one British officer and three Indian soldiers had been killed.

The Squadron temporarily re-located to the main forward base at a crenellated fort called Miranshah deep in the tribal territories and near the Afghan border.¹⁶

Morley-Mower remembers Miranshah:
“Miramshah remains encapsulated in my memory, like a dream from a different century. Its location was as remote as a Cistercian monastery, and it shared other elements with a religious house. There were no women. The outer gate clanged shut at sunset. The P.A. [Political Agent–these were British India officials, fluent in the local languages, and usually very knowledgeable about and sympathetic to, the situation of the tribes. PAs often felt the military intervened prematurely.] was as kind and strange as any abbot. The war against outlaws was a game which claimed fewer lives annually than the London-Brighton road. The flying was the best I’ve ever enjoyed. Much of it being close to the ground in wild country with the hills providing interest and danger . . . . dropping mail at the Tochi forts whose names will always be a part of my personal poetry. Ghariom, Bichi Kaskai, Datta Khel, Kar Kama, Ladha, Damdil, Spinwam, Sara Rogha.” ¹⁷

On the 20th of April, my father flew in the back seat for a bombing operation against the village of Pondia Khel, and on the 23rd he flew his first operation as pilot, in another bombing of the same village. He carried out several blockade flights the next month, intended to prevent the villagers from returning to their normal life. On the 23rd of May, the Squadron returned to Risalpur. My father must have returned with the road party, since his Log Book does not show his return by air (an example of the pecking order in action — he was the most junior pilot).

The hot weather had returned, and the campaign season was effectively over. After some routine flying in June, he went up to the Hill Depot at Lower Topa in the Murree Hills for several weeks.

Stanley Humphrey remembers the journey to the Hill Depot (using his alias “Ginger”):
“. . . the custom of sending a third of the strength of the camp for two months “rest”, on a hill station at Lower Topa commenced. Ginger went with the second party, travelling by train to Rawalpindi and then in a fleet of lorries up into the Murree Hills, nearly 8,000 feet up. This part of the trip was very educational. The scenery was beautiful and once the lorries started climbing in low gear, there was never a gradient that would permit the driver to change up again. The road had been cut from the side of the hill and wound a twisted route ever upward. At times it was possible to look down across a valley and see the tail-end of the convoy over a thousand feet below. . . . After several hours they passed through the town of Murree where there was a brewery and half an hour’s travelling on the Kashmir road brought them to Lower Topa camp. A footpath, which contained more steps, both up and down, than level stretches, led them to their allotted bungalow.” ¹⁸

+ + + + +

When my father returned to Risalpur in August, “punitive air action” began in the Bannu District, and he took part in bombing operations three times that month. But in September and October, “Owing to the European crisis the only flying allowed between 16.9.38 and 10.10.38 was that necessary for Meterological test climbs and Tribal Area Reconnaissance.” And, on the 29th of September, “A warning order was received . . . the squadron might be required to proceed to Singapore at 48 hours notice.” Things in Europe had quietened down by late October after the signing of the notorious Munich Agreement,¹⁹ and on the 24th, my father flew north over the high Lowarai Pass to the landing ground at Drosh.

Tony Dudgeon remembers the flight to Drosh:
“The vic of three Harts in close formation looked beautiful as they slipped over the saddle, 2000 ft above it and half a mile from either side. The machines were doped silver with polished aluminium cowlings reflecting the sunlight. They had squadron markings of twin scarlet bands round the fuselages [11 Squadron–39 had a single band]; the spinning propellers were blue for “B” flight, as were the painted discs of the wheels contrasting with the black rubber of the tyres; the RAF roundels were a glossy red, white and blue. Those three splashes of mixed color, heaving gently in the up- and down-draughts, were against a back-drop of that cobalt-blue sky belonging to high flyers, the gleaming white snow and ice, and blue-grey shadows; the Himalayas are vast, the machines were tiny–the beauty was exquisite. Nosing down, we dived towards Drosh, two miles below and ten miles ahead.” ²⁰

Dudgeon goes on to describe the tricky landing at Drosh:
“. . . having had a good look at the situation, one by one we pushed off down the valley for a mile or two, high enough for a safe and relaxed turn back between the hill-slopes and straighten up on the line of landing. Then, rumbly-rumbly gently along the rising valley, using a whiffle of engine or sideslipping as necessary to adjust for height, and getting lower and lower. One go, one only, and it had to come out right. For an inexperienced pilot, like me, it felt like flying into a bottle. All too quickly the hills seemed to crowd in from either side. The looming bulk of the fort directly in front was coming up much too close for comfort. Finally, over the edge, drop her fully stalled–and get the brakes on. It was an approach that made the hands go sticky.” ²¹

My father was developing his flying and operational skills rapidly. In early November, the Squadron flew south to the RAF base at Karachi (Drigh Road) for the annual two-week Armament Training Camp (air-to-air and air-to-ground firing, and related skills). In December, one flight went to Miranshah for punitive action against some villages for harbouring the Faquir of Ipi, but my father stayed at Risalpur, flying reconnaissances, met climbs (taking temperature readings at specified altitudes), and other routine flying duties.

1939

The first three months of 1939 were my father’s final initiation in Frontier operations in the Hart. The punitive action against the villages of the Madda Khel continued, with unprecedented intensity. From the 17th of January through the 24th of February, he flew every day, sometimes several times a day, mostly on bombing operations (the photo at the top of this page shows him on one of these). March was just as intense.

“With the Army largely confined to road protection duties, harassing Ipi required 300% more sorties in February/March 1939 than the previous year. The GoI [Government of India] simultaneously imposed a successful, forty-three day air, ration and financial “blockade” on the Madda Khel.” ²²

“. . . . . In April, AOC (India) [Air Officer Commanding] assessed that constant aerial harassment and action against Ipi’s supporting tribes had nullified his influence, leaving the tribes wanting peace.” ²³

“Ipi returned to Kharre [his home district at the time] in July, but immediately crossed back into Afghanistan after leaflets re-imposing proscription were dropped. When he returned, his new location was immediately proscribed, forcing him back into Afghanistan in September.” ²⁴

I like to think this photograph was taken when my father heard he had been recommended for the Distinguished Flying Medal (DFM). Other than the Victoria Cross, the DFM was the highest award at that time for an RAF pilot of my father’s non-commissioned (i.e., non-officer) rank, for “an act, or acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty whilst flying in active operations against the enemy”. It was relatively rarely awarded in the inter-war years, although thousands were awarded in the Second World War.²⁶ He won it twice. His first was “in recognition of gallant and distinguished operations in Waziristan for the period 1st January, 1939, to 31st December, 1939” presumably for his part in the intensive operations against the Faqir of Ipi that year, when he flew 81 operational sorties in three months.²⁷

For the next three months — April through June, 1939 — my father did no flying at all. For about two months of this time, he was no doubt at the Hill Depot, escaping the heat of the plain. For the other four weeks, he must have been involved in ground exercises and training. In any case, the whole Squadron was limiting their flying at this time. Following are excerpts from 11 Squadron’s Operations Record Book²⁹ (39 Squadron’s ORB is unfortunately missing for all of 1939, and for the first few weeks of 1940, but 11 Squadron was also at Risalpur and in the same Wing):

April: “Flying this month has been reduced to a minimum in order to reserve flying hours for any possible reinforcement flight in the event of war. Consequently, practically no training has been done.” May: “Flying was restricted throughout the month by Headquarters Order to maximum of 1 hour per aircraft, per day.” June 13th: A group of officers and airmen left for Egypt to collect Blenheims. (My father did not go along.) “The Harts are prepared for reinforcement and only test flying is being done at Risalpur.” Change was coming.

Beau Geste . . . or Ruthless Oppressor

This was not all public-school fun and games. The punitive bombing operations against defenceless villages were remorseless. I know of no contemporary record of the local reaction, but it is easy to imagine.³⁰

Following are typical records of this period from 39 Squadron’s Operations Record Book:³¹

18 April 1938: Nine aircraft to Miranshah. After three days of bombing “an intelligence summary put the total destruction in the Maintoi area as 10 houses, and in the Baddar Algud as 13 houses, 6 towers and the home and belongings of Abudulla Jan . . . Delay bombs . . . were again dropped in fields and nullahs alongside villages, fused to explode at intervals during the night.”

26 April 1938: “On this day blockade action was continued, and it was found that in the village of Abdur Rahman Khel, which was just in the area, the inhabitants were living, complete with their children and cattle, as normal. This village was attacked heavily during the day with anti-personnel bombs. Delays again dropped in suitable places in the evening.”

Whatever the pilots may have imagined (if they thought about it at all), this was brutal imperial enforcement. But no doubt, like most privileged groups, they did not reflect on the order of things. And they were, indeed, privileged. These swaggering young men in their flying machines would not have survived without armies of servants to do their laundry, make and serve their meals, move the still air in the hot weather, and do most of the heavy work around the base.³² 

Even the most junior airman was waited on hand and foot. Aircraftsman Stanley Humphrey remembers his first morning at Risalpur, in 1936:
“In the morning, he [Humphrey’s alias, Ginger] was awakened by a gentle shake and opened his eyes to find a bearded Indian in a turban bending over him with an open “cut-throat” razor in his hand. Ginger was petrified until the Indian asked, “Shave, Sahib?” The man in the next bed informed him that he could be shaved in bed every morning, for four annas a week [Humphrey earned this in less than an hour].” ³³

+ + + + +

In the late 1930s, there was a growing awareness in India, even in the insulated British cantonments, that imperial rule might not last forever. There was agitation from the Indian National Congress led by Gandhi, and the Government of India Act of 1935 provided for at least provincial autonomy. But the smugness of the rulers was generally undisturbed. Contemporary accounts are ripe with self-congratulation. In the preface to a 1934 RAF memoir of flying in the British colonies in Africa, the invited dignitary writes: “Tens of thousands of our countrymen . . . will rejoice to know that men like the author and his comrades, uphold unselfishly and fearlessly the great traditions of our race.” ³⁴ .

This is in the same vein as Churchill, who wrote about the 1897 campaign he participated in on the North West Frontier:
“. . . unborn arbiters, with a wider knowledge, and more developed brains, may trace in recent events the influence of that mysterious Power which, directing the progress of our species, and regulating the rise and fall of Empires, has afforded that opportunity to a people, of whom at least it may be said, they have added to the happiness, the learning and the liberties of mankind.”³⁵

The Faqir of Ipi and his people disagreed.

The End of the Golden Age

The 1920s and 30s have often been called the Golden Age of flying. The machines were simple, and could land anywhere there was a patch of open, more or less level ground. Sometimes in England, word would get out that a particular field was full of mushrooms — and pilots would fly over, land in the thick grass and gather their fill.³⁶ Wireless was in its infancy. The pilots usually flew without contact with the ground, and couldn’t report in even if they’d wanted to. The skies were open and uncrowded: even at London airport in 1939, you could fly around the control tower to announce your presence, and wait for a green light to land.³⁷ In the desert, pilots might have an engine or other technical problem, make a forced landing, sleep under the wing (they often carried a bedroll, food and always water), and figure out how to resolve the situation in the morning.³⁸

In addition to this independence, the job had enormous cachet. In the civilian world, flying was a rich man’s diversion. The RAF was known as “the best flying club in the world” — because they paid you to play this rich man’s game every day, all over the world. Like all clubs, it was exclusive. In 1935, in the UK, there were only 627 first-line (i.e., not reserve) RAF pilots.³⁹ In the whole of British India, a country then the size of the United States now, there were fewer than 150.⁴⁰ And RAF pilots had a reputation which young men yearn for, as daredevils, because flying was indeed dangerous and required skill. Many would-be pilots died in training, and many more in accidents later. At the same time, they were at the forefront of change: the aeroplane was modernity exemplified. On top of all this, for many of these callow young men, there was poetry in being able to move in three dimensions, with your head in the open air. Jobs in the civilian world looked like pure drudgery.

In Pilot’s Summer, a classic memoir of 1930s RAF flying, Frank Tredrey wrote:
“. . . it is my habit, when gliding in with the motor throttled back with only the steady whine of the air over the wires left, to jack up my seat and put my head out to one side. Then you get the sharp, steady eighty miles an hour stream of air in your nostrils and a faint scent you’ll get nowhere else in the world–the smell of wind a thousand feet above the earth–and it does smell. . . . When I’m a lean and slippered pantaloon and all the battles lost and won, those smells or their memory will set the young blood coursing again. Would I shine my pants on an office stool for my daily bread? Not I!” ⁴¹

I think all the pilots in the late 1930s knew this golden age was coming to an end.

+ + + + +

This combination of the Great Game and the Golden Age of Flying ended for my father on July 29 1939, when he said goodbye to open-cockpit biplanes and converted to the Bristol Blenheim Mark I.

Tony Dudgeon remembers:
“The pilots were taking an enormous technical leap. They were to quit their simple biplanes with only one engine, a wooden propeller, undercarriage which stuck out in the breeze, cockpits with not too many complicated instruments and controls. They would transfer to monoplanes, with two engines, metal propellers with swiveling blades, undercarriages which went up and down, a host of other innovations they had never seen before . . .” ⁴³

And Morley-Mower:
“The Bristol Blenheim was an advanced modern light bomber and very different from the underpowered boxkites I had been flying, but it didn’t attract me in the least. Wapitis and Hawker Hart variants had an aura of romance about them. The very sight of them, propped up expectantly on their fixed undercarriages, told of the pioneer days of aviation. The Blenheim seemed characterless.” ⁴⁴

It was the end of an era, and 39 Squadron’s adaptation was anything but painless.

Previous page: Abu Sueir Next page: Siam

Notes:
Several photographs on this page are from the album of Corporal John Herbert Wintle, who served with my father in 39 Squadron in India, Singapore and Somaliland. With many thanks to Corporal Wintle’s niece, Janice Wells (née Wintle).

1. Surprising they got such recent releases. Imagine all those lonely young men listening to the dreamy lyrics of the hit song in the second film Thanks for Ev’rything (music and lyrics by Harry Revel and Mark Gordon, recorded by Artie Shaw and his Orchestra, vocal by Helen Forrest).
2. In July 1938, Thomas Inskeep, the British Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, reported on RAF India’s “deplorable obsolescence which rendered it un-employable against modern aircraft.” Quote from Andrew John Charles Walters, Inter-War, Inter-Service Friction on the North-West Frontier of India and its Impact on the Development and Application of Royal Air Force Doctrine, Ph.D. thesis, University of Birmingham, June 2017, p. 285. https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/7681/1/Walters17PhD.pdf, accessed 13 February 2021. This is a rich resource not only for the specific topic of the thesis, but, more generally, for RAF interwar operations on the Frontier.
3. Andrew John Charles Walters, op.cit., p. ii.
4. Chaz Bowyer, RAF Operations 1918-1938, London: William Kimber, 1988, p. 217.
5. Walters, op.cit., p. ii.
6. In the 21st century, this same RAF squadron, no. 39, “flew” drones over this same frontier: Graham Chandler, “The Bombing of Waziristan, ” Smithsonian Air and Space Magazine, July 2011, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-bombing-of-waziristan-162104725/, accessed 26 July 2022.
7. Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life, London: Odhams Press, 1947 (first published 1930), pp.120-146.
8. Walters, op.cit., Chapter 7 “Control and Constraints”-Challenges to the Application of Air Power, pp. 298-350.
9. “The Faqir of Ipi and the British in Central Asia on the Eve of and during the Second World War”, Milan Hauner, first published in the Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 16, No. 1, The Second World War: Part 1 (January 1981), pp.183-212 and reproduced with permission on khyber.org at www.khyber.org/publications/021-025/faqiripi.shtml, accessed 3 June 2011. See also “Remembering the Faqir of Ipi,” Rahim Nasar, Asia Times, April 16, 2020, https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/__trashed-50/, accessed 4 January 2021. See also an informative but patronizing New York Times article from February 9 1955 by the renowned C.L. Sulzberger (nephew of the publisher), https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1955/02/09/88127240.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0, accessed 8 January 2021.
10. Air Vice-Marshal A. G. Dudgeon, CBE, DFC, The Luck of the Devil, Shrewsbury: Airlife Publishing, 1985; Stanley Humphrey, Press On, Regardless, Bristol: Camelot Books, 1990; David Lee [Air Chief Marshal Sir David Lee, GBE, CB], Never Stop the Engine when it’s Hot, London: Thomas Harmsworth Publishing, 1983; 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; Wing Commander Geoffrey Morley-Mower, DFC, AFC, Flying Blind, New Mexico: Yucca Tree Press, 2000, p.61. These memoirs and film are rich sources for the work and social life of the officers, and, in Humphrey’s case, the “erks,” but I have not yet found any first-hand accounts by sergeant pilots who served in India.
11. Morley-Mower, op. cit., p.61.
12. Milward, op.cit., Reel 3, 08:47 to 09:26.
13. Unless otherwise indicated, quoted descriptions of the Squadron’s activities through December 1938 are from the pertinent month of 39 Squadron Operations Record Book (ORB), Form 540, The National Archives of the UK (TNA): AIR-27-406-5.
14. rom https://gillww1.wordpress.com/2012/09/01/gtg-on-the-north-west-frontier-1915/ accessed 3 January 2021. Original source unknown. Note that the Afghan border is called the “Durand Line,” after Mortimer Durand, a diplomat in the Indian Civil Service who established this as the border in 1893 in negotiations with the Emir of Afghanistan. It cut the Pashtun areas in two. British forces were forbidden from crossing the Line, and the Faqir of Ipi and others retreated into Afghanistan when harassed by the British. More recently, Taliban Pashtus went in the other direction (into Pakistan) for refuge from the Americans, although they were (are) still at risk of being picked off by drones.
15. Lee, op.cit., p. 46.
16. Sometimes written “Miramshah” or “Miram Shah.”
17. Morley-Mower, op.cit., p. 160.
18. Humphrey, op.cit., p. 59. David Lee has a very informative chapter on the Hill Depot, op.cit., pp. 75-86, and see also Ken Delve, The Winged Bomb: History of 39 Squadron RAF, Midland Counties Publications, 1985, pp. 48-49.
19. The Munich Agreement (to some, the Munich Betrayal) is probably the best known instance of Britain and France’s appeasement policy in the face of Hitler’s inexorable expansion of German interests in the late 1930s. The Agreement was precipitated by the Sudeten Crisis, when Hitler took aggressive steps to acquire German-speaking Sudetenland, a large part of Czechoslovakia. He got what he wanted, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned to London Airport waving a piece of paper which he claimed represented “Peace in our time.” But, of course, “our time” turned out to be just 12 more months.
20. Dudgeon, op.cit., p. 82.
21. Ibid, p. 83.
22. Walters, op.cit., p. 276.
23. Ibid, p. 278.
24. Ibid.
25. My evidence for the time and place: The medal ribbon. I’m sure this is the North West Frontier campaign medal, awarded to everyone on active operational duty on the Frontier. (“On the Frontier, if our station took part in operations, everyone got a campaign medal. If you spent only one day on a station “at war” you qualified. It was known as the “Sweeper Medal” because everybody, but everybody, got it. Staff officers from Delhi used to come and visit a station “on ops” for a day, if they had not got the medal already.” Dudgeon, op.cit., p. 66.) My father received this with both the 1936-37 and the 1937-39 clasps. This must have been the first award, which he would have presumably started wearing in 1938. He’s not wearing tropical kit, so this was taken during the cooler months. And there’s a glimpse of the same structure in the left background in a few frames of Robert Milward’s film of Miranshah. He was at Miranshah in 1938, but for a limited time, and some of it was in the warmer months–so I conclude this was taken in early 1939, when he was at Miranshah for weeks on end during the cooler weather.
26. But only 60 airmen received it twice.
27. Supplement to the London Gazette, 25 October, 1940, p. 6177.
28. Milward, op.cit., Reel 3, 09:27-11:20.
29. 11 Squadron Operations Record Book (ORB), Form 540. The National Archives of the UK (TNA): AIR-27-157-1. Unless otherwise indicated, quoted descriptions of the Squadron’s activities for 1939 are from the relevant month of this source.
30. The 1996 documentary Birds of Death, directed for Channel 4 by George Case, includes on-camera comments by several Pashtuns about the bombing of their villages (they were young children in the 30’s). It also includes on-camera comments by Tony Dudgeon (cited several times on this page), and film of Frontier operations from the 1930s which I believe is by Robert Lister. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4g5pFggpVQ, accessed 22 March 2021. Group Captain Lister was with 20 Squadron at Peshawar in 1937. A BBC documentary based on his film and commentary is excerpted at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00774v6, accessed 22 March 2021. Dudgeon’s and Lister’s comments are illustrative of the attitudes of the RAF at the time.
31. 39 Squadron Operations Record Book (ORB), Form 540. The National Archives of the UK (TNA): AIR-27-406-5.
32. There are scenes in Milward’s film (op.cit., Reel 3) of a corporal standing by with a rifle, casually smoking, while locals unload ammunition boxes into the store, and of the Indian mess servant serving drinks and canapés to the officers at Miranshah.
33. Humphrey, op.cit., p. 53.
34. HW, . . . something new out of Africa, London: Pitman & Sons, Ltd, 1934, p vii (Preface by Major-General The Right Honourable Lord Mottistone, CB, CMG, DSO.) HW was the pseudonym of Air Commodore Ernest Leslie Howard-Williams, MC.
35. The final sentence of Winston Churchill’s first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, London: Longmans Green, 1898.
36. Frank D. Tredrey, Pilot’s Summer: A Central Flying School Diary, Second edition, Tiger & Tyger, 2000, p. 137 (first edition, Duckworth, 1939).
37. Group Captain Edward Mole, Happy Landings, Airlife, 1984, p. 203.
38. Ernest Folley, Oral History, Imperial War Museum, IWM 4699, Reel 5.
39. John James, The Paladins, London: McDonald & Co., 1990, p. 251, Table 10c.
40. Eight squadrons, with about 15 pilots each, at full strength. James, op.cit., p.249, Table 9A.
41. Tredrey, op.cit., p. 119.
42. Milward, op.cit., Reel 3, 15:40 to 16:28.
43. Dudgeon, op. cit., p. 120.
44. Morley-Mower, op.cit., p. 120.