The RAF in the Mediterranean Region
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ROYAL AIR FORCE HISTORICAL SOCIETY JOURNAL 38 2 The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the contributors concerned and are not necessarily those held by the Royal Air Force Historical Society. First published in the UK in 2007 by the Royal Air Force Historical Society All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing. ISSN 1361 4231 Printed by Advance Book Printing Unit 9 Northmoor Park Church Road Northmoor OX29 5UH 3 ROYAL AIR FORCE HISTORICAL SOCIETY President Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Michael Beetham GCB CBE DFC AFC Vice-President Air Marshal Sir Frederick Sowrey KCB CBE AFC Committee Chairman Air Vice-Marshal N B Baldwin CB CBE FRAeS Vice-Chairman Group Captain J D Heron OBE Secretary Group Captain K J Dearman Membership Secretary Dr Jack Dunham PhD CPsychol AMRAeS Treasurer J Boyes TD CA Members Air Commodore H A Probert MBE MA *J S Cox Esq BA MA *Dr M A Fopp MA FMA FIMgt *Group Captain N Parton BSc(Hons) MA MDA MPhil CEng FRAeS RAF *Wing Commander D Robertson RAF Wing Commander C Cummings Editor & Publications Wing Commander C G Jefford MBE BA Manager *Ex Officio 4 CONTENTS THE POST-WAR RAF IN THE MEDITERRANEAN – AN 8 OVERVIEW by Air Cdre Henry Probert THE RAF IN PALESTINE 1948-49 – THE WRONG PLACE, 12 AT THE WRONG TIME by Sqn Ldr Bruce Williamson THEATRE AIR TRANSPORT OPERATIONS IN THE MID- 24 1950s by Flt Lt Denis Burles OPERATION MUSKETEER – A PERSONAL VIEW by AVM 32 George Black THE RAF REGIMENT by Air Cdre Micky Witherow 39 MALTA by Air Cdre J C ‘Ian’ Atkinson 48 GIBRALTAR 1945-82 by Air Cdre Henry Probert 60 OPERATING FROM ‘THE ROCK’ by Wg Cdr Clive Blount 65 CYPRUS AND CENTO by AVM Nigel Baldwin 71 CYPRUS – CANBERRAS by Wg Cdr Barry Dove 77 CYPRUS AIR DEFENCE- SOME REFLECTIONS by Air Chf 89 Mshl Sir Michael Graydon CYPRUS AND THE VULCAN by AVM Nigel Baldwin 97 Op PULSATOR – BUCCANEERS OVER BEIRUT by Air Cdre 106 Ben Laite DISCUSSION 121 THE MEDITERRANEAN BASIN AS A TRAINING ARENA 126 by Wg Cdr Jeff Jefford FEEDBACK 131 OPERATION SHALLOW – KINESHMA; 57°40'N, 42°20'E by 133 Wg Cdr Geoffrey Richards; edited by Gp Capt Ian Madelin BOOK REVIEWS 145 5 SELECTED ABBREVIATIONS AAR Air-to-Air Refuelling agl above ground level AHQ Air Headquarters AOG Aircraft On the Ground APC Armament Practice Camp ASOC Air Support Operations Centre CAA Civil Aviation Authority CATCS Central Air Traffic Control School EAF Egyptian Air Force enosis Literally ‘unity’, in this case, the union of Cyprus with Greece EOKA Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston (National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters) FS The French Navy does not apply an HM- or USS-style prefix to its vessels, but it is common international (eg NATO) practice to annotate them as ‘FS’ - for French Ship. ICAO International Civil Aviation Organisation IED Improvised Explosive Device IS Internal Security LAA Light Anti-Aircraft LGB Laser Guided Bomb MCU Marine Craft Unit MEAF Middle East Air Force MEDME Royal Air Force Mediterranean and Middle East MPC Missile Practice Camp MRS Master Radar Station NEAF Near East Air Force NKVD Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) OCU Operational Conversion Unit ‘PM’ Member of Princess Mary’s RAF Nursing Service (PMRAFNS) RTTL Rescue and Target Towing Launch SAR Search And Rescue SBA Sovereign Base Area SEAC South East Asia Command SMLE Short Magazine Lee Enfield UNFICYP United Nations Force in Cyprus ‘243’ MHz Emergency radio frequency reserved for survival equipment and operations but, since a listening watch was routinely maintained, also available as a convenient, if unofficial, ‘chat’ channel. 6 MEDITERRANEAN THEATRE MEDITERRANEAN 7 THE RAF IN THE MEDITERRANEAN THEATRE POST-WW II RAF MUSEUM, HENDON, 12 APRIL 2006. WELCOME ADDRESS BY THE SOCIETY’S CHAIRMAN Air Vice-Marshal Nigel Baldwin CB CBE FRAeS Ladies and gentlemen – good morning. It is a pleasure to see so many of you here – well over 100 – so that encourages us that we made the right decision to revert to mid-week events, rather than holding them on a Saturday. Several of you, I know, are not members of the Society but are here as the guests of friends. If you like what you see, please don’t hesitate to join us! Let me give my usual thanks to Dr Michael Fopp, the Director of the RAF Museums, and his staff for the use of their splendid facilities and their usual warm welcome and help. I say this every time we meet but we would be lost without you. In covering the RAF activities in the Mediterranean since the end of WW II, your Committee made a conscious decision not to spend much time on the 1956 Suez campaign. The Society covered that operation in one of its earliest seminars, in October 1987, and the day’s events were published as Proceedings No 3. Copies are now hard to come by and, by current standards, the reproduction was poor. Nevertheless, that particular seminar included some notably authoritative contributions made by participants and we have decided to re-set the text and re-issue that volume in the spring of 2007 as Journal 39. Our Chairman for today is Air Chf Mshl Sir Michael Knight. He retired from the RAF some seventeen years ago and immediately rejoined as a flying officer in the RAFVR to spend eight years flying young ATC and CCF cadets. He is also an honorary air commodore in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. Since then, amongst a plethora of distinctive appointments, he has been Chairman of Cobham plc, the Page Group and Cranfield Aerospace Ltd, and President of the Royal International Air Tattoo and of the Air League. We are most grateful to him for coming all the way from Devon to chair our day. Sir Michael – you have control. 8 THE POST-WAR RAF IN THE MEDITERRANEAN – AN OVERVIEW Air Cdre Henry Probert A Cambridge history graduate, Henry Probert joined the RAF Education Branch in 1948. During the 1960s he served in Singapore and on the Staff College Directing Staff before becoming, in 1976, Director of RAF Education. After ‘retirement’ in 1978 he spent the next eleven years as Head of the Air Historical Branch. He is the author of three notable books, his most recent being his acclaimed biography of Sir Arthur Harris. My task this morning is to provide a brief background for the many and varied activities of the RAF in the Mediterranean over the best part of half a century and to point to its achievements. It’s a subject that was ably covered by Sir David Lee in Wings of the Sun, the last of the three invaluable post-war volumes which he contributed to the AHB history programme under my direction. Had he still been with us he would have wanted to introduce this subject himself, and what I and others will be saying today will draw considerably on the book he left behind. Essentially the post-war story divides into three contrasting periods of time. The first of these, lasting slightly over ten years, witnessed the clearing-up of the legacy of the Second World War, during which the RAF had operated in most areas around the Mediterranean, developing a wide variety of bases. Many of these were no longer necessary and had to be disposed of, and there were also political issues, most of long-standing, which needed to be resolved if possible. Most notable of these was the dispute between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine for which the UK was still responsible under its United Nations mandate. Here the locally based RAF had much to do in co- operation with the other Services in trying to prevent illegal immigration and in preserving law and order on the ground, but by June 1948 all was seen to be of no avail and withdrawal became inevitable. All David Lee could conclude about this episode was that ‘the RAF did the best of a bad job’. 9 Meanwhile the safeguarding of Britain’s interests in Middle Eastern oil was coming to dominate our policy in the area. Amid increasingly gloomy predictions about the size of the world’s oil supplies it seemed essential to protect the Suez Canal route and therefore to resist Egypt’s growing demands for independence. Otherwise it would be impossible to preserve our long-standing military facilities in the Canal Zone, including the RAF’s major airfields and its Headquarters. In 1951, however, Iran nationalised the Abadan Oil Refinery, Egypt abrogated its 1936 Treaty with the UK, and there were serious civil disturbances. In 1952 King Farouk was expelled by General Neguib (or ‘Negwib’ as Churchill called him), and in 1954 Britain agreed to depart. By 1956 the withdrawal was complete and Colonel Nasser seized the Canal. This prompted the ill- fated Operation MUSKETEER (which we covered in our first seminar eighteen years ago and whose proceedings are to be re-published.) For the RAF in Egypt these had been unhappy years; preparations for withdrawal amidst local hostility are always difficult. But during the second period of the post-war story the Service’s deployments in the Mediterranean were to be much more straightforward. Its Headquarters moved from Egypt to Episkopi, in Cyprus, and a new airfield was constructed nearby at Akrotiri to supplement the existing one at Nicosia.