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Spitfire Pilot, 92 Squadron, Desert Air Force (DAF), Italy (1944 — 1945)

A ‘Spit’ Pilot’s thoughts…

Flight Sergeant/Warrant Officer Stanley (Mike) Widdowson: Spitfire Pilot, 92 Squadron 1944 — 1945.

Prologue

This is an account of my Father’s RAF service with the DAF (Desert Air Force). He was a Spitfire pilot with 92 Squadron in Northern Italy during late 1944, and until the end of the war in May 1945. He was an ordinary Yorkshire lad who, like many of his generation, was called upon to do extraordinary things during WW2. He acquitted himself well during the fighting and, most importantly and remarkably, he actually survived. This survival, he said, was ‘largely down to a bit of skill, and a lot of luck’. After the war he remained in the RAF Volunteer Reserve until the mid 1950s when he decided to train as a teacher. He eventually became a headmaster of a ‘special needs’ residential school during the 1970s.

He was a very humorous and incredibly patient man, a gifted teacher, a very determined character, and a great Dad. He died of a heart attack in 1980 and, amongst all the usual things, he left my brother and I a tin trunk containing his flying kit, personal letters, flying log book, and a detailed diary describing his time in the RAF. As children and teenagers, he had told us many stories about ‘flying his Spitfire in Italy’, and we had listened wide-eyed to these amazing adventures, but I can also remember him impressing upon us the following sentiment:

‘It is up to your generation, and the next, to ensure that we never again have to fight a war like this last one. The RAF crew were amongst the brightest chaps our country could offer, and it is terrible to think of all the men that were lost; men who could otherwise have been teachers, doctors, scientists, and the like. These were people who could have done something worthwhile with their lives, and made this world a better place to live in. We have lost the cream (the best) of our generation’.

For my brother and I, this statement encapsulates the tragedy of war, and still resonates down all the years since his death.

The following account is the distillation our joint efforts (my brother and I) to bring to life our Dad’s time flying Spitfires with the Desert Air Force (DAF), and his personal experiences of the war in Italy. The accounts of the operational sorties given in the later chapters are have been copied as near ‘verbatim’ as is possible from his personal diary. I have made minor amendments or alteration only for the sake of clarification or continuity where necessary, and have occasionally added in useful anecdotal information he had related to us.

A background to 92 Squadron, DAF, and the conflict in Italy

It certainly took a long time to train a pilot, and they were a such a valuable resource to the war effort that much was done to rescue ‘downed pilots’ and, if not badly injured, to re-patriate them quickly to their squadrons, and back into the fray. This was certainly to be part of Dad’s experiences.

After a brief 2 week posting to 72 Squadron DAF (Desert Air Force), Dad was transferred to 92 Squadron of 244 Wing DAF, arriving ‘on station’ on 26th December 1944. This squadron had an exemplary war record, and had earned formidable reputation during 1944 for the accuracy and potency of its ground attack sorties against enemy positions and armour in Italy. By the end of 1944, the squadron was considered the foremost fighting unit of 244 Wing. The motto of 92 Squadron was ‘Aut pugna aut morere’, which translated reads ‘Either fight or die’. This motto is written in large letters in the front of Dad’s personal diary and, sixty years later, having read it all in detail it seems a remarkably apposite sentiment for what was to happen to him over the coming months, and up until the end of the war.

His first operational flight (‘op’) was flown on 19th January 1945 as part of an attack on enemy fuel tanks at Cavazere in Northern Italy, and he recalled being ‘mildly surprised that they shot back at us, and quite accurate ‘ack-ack’ (anti-aircraft fire) too!’ From January, to the end of the war in early May 1945, Dad flew a total of 150 hours on Spitfires (mostly Mk IXs and VIIIs), 95 hours of which were on ‘ops’. The January — February of 1945 was a particularly harsh winter, some of which the pilots spent under canvas scattered around the make-shift landing strips at Fano and Bellaria. When the weather allowed, they flew up to two or three ‘ops’ per day, usually of 30 — 90 minutes duration. During this time his Squadron leader was Major J. Gasson (SAAF), who was an accomplished and experienced Spitfire pilot of some distinction; Gasson was awarded the DSO in February 1945 for his courageous leadership of 92 Squadron in the ground attack role.

Dad also flew on ‘ops’ with Group Captain ‘Cocky’ Dundas, who was by this time commanding officer (CO) of 244 Wing DAF. Dundas was a highly experienced pilot, and a Battle of Britain veteran. Some of these ‘ops’ are vividly described in Dundas’ autobiography ‘Flying Start’. Many of these were particularly dangerous ‘Rover Paddy’ missions. In these, the Spitfires were carrying 500lb bombs, and directed by a ground control operator (code-named Rover-Paddy) who was placed with the advancing troops. This operator identified and pin-pointed the target and radioed it to the circling Spitfires in order that they could drop their bombs on key targets, just a few hundred yards ahead of the advancing allied ground troops. After the bomb dive, the Spitfires would pull-up, turn, and hurl themselves around and back to the target to make low-level straffing runs at any transport, armoured personnel carriers and anti-aircraft gun emplacements. If the aircraft were hit during these runs, there was no time for the pilot to successfully bale out, and crash-landing was often an unsuccessful option. Under these circumstances it is perhaps worth remembering that the Spitfire was originally designed as a fighter-interceptor, and ground attack was not its natural role. Nevertheless, the aircraft was so manoeuvrable and fast that, armed with four .303 machine guns and two 20 mm cannon, it could deliver a potent and deadly strike flying at near ground level. It is also revealing to note that during the period of 9th — 25th April 1945, when 244 Wing were in the forefront of the attack against the German ‘Gothic Line’, and striking targets along the Senio River, and the Po valley, Dundas recalls the following in his book:

‘Anti-aircraft fire resulted in 55 of our aircraft being destroyed, 41 were so badly damaged we couldn’t repair them and another 31 were hit, but were repaired by our ground crews. So, altogether, 127 or our aircraft were hit by ground fire. As we would have started with 90 — 100 aircraft on 244 Wing, the enemy strike rate against us was over 100%.... The maximum pilot strength on a squadron was 18 men, but in practice it was usually 15 or 16. Of those, nearly 15% were given as dead or missing during these three weeks, and a good deal more had either baled out or force-landed’.

In fact the loss rate on 92 Squadron during this grim period was actually greater than it had suffered five years earlier when it was one of the key squadrons at the height of the Battle of Britain. There can be no doubt that flying heavily bomb-laden Spitfires on ground attack sorties against a determined, disciplined, and dug-in foe was a very dangerous occupation. Consequently, many brave and skilled pilots of 244 Wing were lost over Northern Italy during the last hard-fought months of WW2. Many of these men are now buried in the war cemeteries dotted around the Po valley, Ravenna, Venice, and Bologna, but many more still remain undiscovered along with their aeroplanes beneath the waves of the Adriatic Sea.

Official reports indicate that during the last three months of the war, 92 Squadron accounted for 117 heavy guns destroyed, and another 143 damaged; 20 mechanised transport destroyed, and 16 damaged; 9 river barges destroyed, and 42 damaged; 11 locomotives damaged or destroyed; 14 armoured vehicles destroyed and 54 damaged; 4 tanks destroyed, three of which were the fearsome ‘Tiger’ tanks. This is a formidable tally, and yet represents only a fraction of the enemy armour and transport accounted for by the squadrons that comprised 244 Wing DAF. Whilst it is certainly true that much less has been written about the Italy campaign, as compared with the advance through northern Europe following D-day, there can be little doubt it that the Italy campaign was an equally grim and bloody struggle to victory.

This then is the background of the conflict into which my Dad was pitched, young, eager, and determined to ‘do his bit’. The following entries are taken directly from Dad’s flying logs and have been combined with his detailed dairy which he kept throughout his operational service with the DAF and 92 Squadron. There is considerable material in these documents, probably worthy of a book in themselves, and so it is only possible to provide a glimpse of the remarkable times that he and his fellow pilots lived through. Accordingly, I have provided the dates and locations of the missions in which he participated in the hope that, in a wider context, they might be of some future historical value. I also hope these documents will help serve as an acknowledgement of the hardship and sacrifice that these young pilots managed to endure.

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