大象传媒

By the end of April Head Quarters 233 Squadron had been established at North Front with the arrival from England of Wing Commander McCombe to assume full command of his Squadron.
Changes were now beginning to take place in earnest and one of the first really important improvements came about with the implementation of a proper bowser refuelling service. This meant an end to the four-gallon tins and the dump at North Front as in future the very large bowsers that had arrived to do the job would refill from storage tanks in the docks. So at last we were relieved of the tedious and arduous business of refuelling with tins, tractor and small bowser.

A first class fire fighting unit now also became a standard feature of the airfield with all modern equipment and an ambulance to be permanently on hand.
Living quarters for ground personnel had so far not been improved at all although it was obvious with the increase in our numbers that had now taken place a lot would soon have to be done.
We still slept in the flea infested cattle shed and had already paid two visits to the delousing chambers up at the hospital. Those visits took place as the ratio of lice per airman became unbearable when each man with all his belongings would be carted off to the delousing chamber. After stripping completely all our clothes and other belongings were subjected to some sort of heat treatment process, which would kill off all the lice. The treatment was of course done to prevent Typhus disease but probably had the people concerned taken the trouble to clean the place out properly the problem may not have arisen. The place was crawling and even after our removal from the cattle shed by about the beginning of June 42 by which time the usual normal army Nissan huts had been built we found that fleas were still a nuisance as I well remember a dog being introduced as a pet and the thing was lousy everywhere it settled became a patch of fleas by the time it moved off and it finally had to be destroyed.
Freshwater for drinking was a scarce commodity everywhere at Gibraltar and in the town itself drinking water was delivered on a daily basis in small wooden barrels at three pence a time. Whilst at North Front we had all we needed for drinking all personal washing was done with seawater, no hot water, and to wash in seawater a special soap was required. It took some getting used to as can well be imagined as a sort of scum seemed to form on the skin and we were glad to find that in the town some public slipper baths were available.
Another small problem for us for the first few months was the non-availability of any laundry service leaving us to cope as best we could. The armoury lads became quite ambitious over the laundry and managed to acquire a couple of old portable boilers, no doubt left around from the pig farming days, and for a small charge offered to do the weekly washing for all. They marked up the price list and we found that there would be two prices for shirts, Four pence for ordinary shirts and Sixpence for S.O.S. shirts. This was done on account of the "Lavante" a sort of diarrhoea that seemed to overtake most of us from time to time and because of the ill positioning of the bucket loos, many a shirttail got soiled before the distance could be covered, thus the S.O shirts, sixpence. The reason for this stomach trouble, so they tried to tell us, was to do with the winds that blew from the east but probably a more sound reason was the way we were fed. Eventually after about five months our washing was taken into the garrison laundry and so another problem disappeared.
One problem that never seemed to alter was the food and although a proper cookhouse was built the food that was served up to us was grim and in fact became worse as time went by. Everything we received in the food line came via a tin, there was tinned margarine, and tinned bacon, tinned Soya bean sausages and every variety of Mac Konnikies tinned stews and soups that could be imagined. In fact a standing joke was about the ceremony of the Keys, a ceremony regarded by the army garrison as one of their most important duty's on the Rock. Apparently when the command was made for the handing over of the city's keys and the answer was called asking "whose keys" some airman wag amongst the watching bystanders shouted out "Mac Konnikies".
Eggs sold at about one and six each (old money) and were completely nonexistent in the cook house as were all fresh vegetables but the most appalling thing to happen was the complete withdrawal of all flour and bread ration at North Front and replacing it with hard tack army emergency Biscuits. When they tried to give us meat pie made with hard tack biscuits and Mac Konnikies tinned stews it was something this had to be seen, to be believed.
What appalled us particularly about the loss of our bread ration was the fact that all the hundreds of people that came through the border post daily to mess about in Gibraltar could be seen on their return journey each one carrying a nicely baked white loaf of bread under their arm while we sat at our mess tables chewing away at our nice unbreakable biscuits.
Some one pulled a fast one there.
For the first few months in the existence of the Royal Air Force base at North Front, Gibraltar everything was done on a very primitive sort of basis and I think it can fairly be said that the living accommodation for the entire airman stationed there must have been the worst ever. As time went by those early conditions were to take their toll on the health of several of the lads who had to be returned to England for urgent medical treatment.
The amazing thing was that by the time other aircraft began to fly in, say late June-July 42, so much had already changed as to make the earlier picture of deprivation seem just impossible. The urgency with which the mammoth task of changing the place had been undertaken was not entirely connected with the war effort either, as I think there must have been a desire on the part of certain people to make good as quick as possible some of the omissions of the past.
The scale of the task must rate fairly high in the records of the impossible because from the time of starting to assemble even the equipment to do the job at the beginning of April most of the major work had been completed by about the end of July. This had included new Nissan hut sleeping quarters for all ground personnel stationed there, demolishing the old cattle shed and building new cook house and much needed N.A.A.F.I., and the completion of the very necessary runway extension making a runway half as long again with the full length properly resurfaced.
The most spectacular part of the remaking operation from our point of view had been the runway extension. The first requirement in that mammoth task, of course, was the need to obtain a huge amount of suitable ballast, which then had to be transported and dumped into Algerciras Bay up to the level of the existing piece of runway. We were soon to find out how it was intended to accomplish that task but first of all we began to see the equipment arriving.
First to arrive was about fifty large American Stude Baker dump trucks all brand new and some heavy shovelling and lifting machines. A large contingent of army experts then arrived to do the job and quickly set about organizing a round the clock earth moving operation with material] blasted from the face of the Rock itself. So much material was taken that by the time the runway was finished the Rock face had changed its shape somewhat so that whereas before from about half way down the face sloped out in a sprawling fashion it now rose up vertical from base to tip.
To start with in order to break up the very hard rock face blasting took place at regular intervals on a daily basis and for some time we found it necessary to accept the further hazard of being bombarded with lumps of rock of varying sizes while still operating our Hudson's because of course every time blasting took place the whole of North Front got some. The warning hooters would sound for blasting and in order to survive everybody would quickly find the best available cover and from experience we soon found that the best place to be was between the under carriage of a Hudson as after some very large holes had been torn through one or two wings, necessitating weeks of repair work in some cases, we realized that some pretty big pieces of rock were flying around. It then became a routine job that after each blasting to carry out a thorough examination of each aircraft to ascertain just what damage, if any, had been done.
Other explosions were also heard during the month of June as early one morning two very loud bangs had come from the direction of the harbour. Italian frogmen had been active during the night and had placed some under water device to the hull of ships in the harbour. We could see the Olterra across the bay, almost in a direct line with the airstrip, tied up alongside the quay at Algerciras. An Italian merchant ship she had become marooned in this Spanish port since Italy had entered the war with Germany and it would seem that the Italian frogmen who had managed to escape to the Spanish mainland after the September 1941 midget submarine attack on Gibraltar harbour were now using that same ship as their H.Q.
It was doubtful if any great threat was presented by those Italian frogmen when one considers that in the first week of the North African Campaign fifty six allied merchant ships were able to use the harbour facilities unmolested but had any real threat existed it could have been taken care of by a little bit of direct action.
I fail to see why the Spanish government had allowed such work to be carried out from their shores since at North Front our flying operations had to strictly adhere to all neutrality laws and only once did I see those laws broken in an emergency.
As the dump trucks plied endlessly twenty four hours a day between Rock face, via the La Linea road to the ever growing runway extension out into Algerciras Bay so too did the aircrew of 233 Squadron begin to feel that at last some of the hazards of take off's and landing there at North Front were slowly disappearing. Certainly for the' resident Squadron things were becoming much improved all round but as if to underline the still hidden dangers of landing at North Front by the uninitiated as the last few yards of runway were being constructed some urgently needed Beau forts and Wellingtons for the middle east war started to fly through and several of those planes became casualties as they misjudged the length of run and went over the edge. The aircraft that went over the edge were in most cases quickly hauled back on to the runway and where possible made serviceable for flying again but out of shear urgency to get the runway finished any plane rescue likely to hold up the project for any length of time then those planes were just left where they had come to rest to become part of the runway for all time. All the aircrews involved in those crashes had fortunately been able to make a safe escape.
With the runway now completed, a good surface, flare path and better drainage, things began to take on a more efficient Royal Air Force look but the state of those dump trucks told their own story. All the trucks had become just wrecks and fit only for the scrap yard so hard and roughly had they been worked. Many had chassis that bowed to almost touching the ground so large and heavy had been the loads they had been forced to carry. It鈥檚 doubtful even with the much better earth moving equipment of today that a better or quicker job could be done. Well done the Army.
233 Squadron would now become the most formidable war force available in the Gibraltar area, bar none. With anti-U Boat Sweeps still our most important single issue many other very necessary flying jobs also became the lot of our aircrews. Reconnaissance, pathfinders for the air corridors overland, to fly through vital and many aircraft for Montgomery鈥檚 armies in the Middle East and special deliveries that were from time to time required. The survival kit for all our aircrew was modified and it became standard practice for the captain of any aircraft about to take off on a mission to collect a package that contained a considerable amount of money in several different currencies.
One of our missing aircrew had already been buried at North Front after his body had been brought back through Spain. A kind of barter system had evolved at the border post with food or medical supplies being exchanged for the various people that should happen to present them selves for passage into Gibraltar and the body of our airman had been received on the same terms. Somehow we had managed to find the time to practice up our slow marching and all other duties connected with a full military funeral which our c/o Wing Commander McCombe had ordered. I was originally included in the slow marching bit but since as a professional marcher I wasn't a lot of good when c/o Mac saw us at practice he took one look at me and realizing that time was not on our side said, "chuck that one out". Most of 233 Squadron did attend the funeral in full ceremonial dress, that is the ones that were at North Front, and although that small cemetery at North Front was not exactly laid out for such a large congregation, it meant trying to march in between other graves, one of our very gallant aircrew was as elegantly as was possible duly laid to rest, ironically within yards from where he had last become airborne. Later on in the year of 1942 we buried one more young man at his side those being the only two we were able to thus honour out of some thirty or more crews that were lost by 233 Squadron during operations from Gibraltar.
The Spitfires for Malta saga was now in full swing with several attempts being made at flying Spitfires to Gibraltar and thence to be put on board an aircraft carrier for transportation far enough down the Mediterranean as to make it possible for them to be flown off and then to make it under their own steam the rest of the distance to Malta. For the flight to Gibraltar special extra fuel tanks were fitted, which would then be jettisoned as they became empty but sad, to say the whole exercise turned out to be a miserable failure with hardly any of the spitfires ever making the distance. That idea was finally abandoned after a last effort when North Front stood by to receive a large quantity of Spitfires that they said were on the way and at the end of the day only four had made the approach with just two actually touching down. I was standing at the sea wall and watched aghast as two of the four to arrive just dropped into the sea as their last remaining fuel was used up only yards away from the runway. The pilots then had to make a quick exit into their one-man rubber dingy and paddle themselves ashore.

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