“King of the Few”

“KING OF THE FEW” The Story of Adolph “Sailor” Malan On a clear day in 1960, the following conversation took place between the pilot of a South African Airways passenger aircraft and Heathrow Airport’s ground control. Pilot: London Ground this is Springbok 319. I have a special request. Tower: Go ahead Springbok 319. Pilot: After take-off, I request clearance to do a low level circuit in London. Tower: Springbok 319, that is indeed an unusual request. What is your reason? Pilot: I wish to show the Sailor his London. Seated behind the two pilots was a man. His piercing blue eyes overshadowed by the creeping symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease. His thin, stark body showed no signs of the strong, virile presence that once was. Sailor Malan was nearing 53. The age at which he would die. In the last just war of the 20th century a farm boy from the rugged bush land of South Africa took to the bloody skies of World War Two Europe and made history. Embraced as a savior, a hero, ‘one of the few’ by the embattled island of Britain and its King, yet considered a traitor by his own country. Born in 1910 in Wellington, South Africa, Group Captain Adolph ‘Sailor” Malan would fight three battles in his life. One would end with victory over Germany. Another would end in defeat as he attempted to take on South Africa’s apartheid government. The third would end in death with Parkinson’s disease stealing the remains of a once gallant, quiet and historic life. Hard on his men, hard on himself, Malan took on the mantle of fighter pilot and all the aggression and determination it required. Underneath all of this was a humility and sense of principle – he was not a braggart. The man once referred to as the greatest fighter pilot of all time would be denied a military funeral by his own government and only be acknowledged for his greatness in 1991 after apartheid had been wiped from South Africa. ‘Sailor’ however would make his name known to the world as a Spitfire pilot in RAF. He would end the war as the second highest scoring ace in the RAF, would fundamentally alter tactics employed by fighter pilots all around the world and amass a collection of medals and decorations from grateful nations throughout Europe. Able to pick out enemy planes at incredible distances, Malan’s keen eyesight was honed while hunting and tracking animals as a boy in the South African bush. As a child his individualism led him to leave home at thirteen to become a cadet on a training ship in Simon’s Town. He spent the next several years sailing the seas to London, Rotterdam and New York. The harsh life on board would prepare Malan well for the discipline and focus needed in the RAF, as well as in the training of young, inexperienced pilots thrust into battle with little or no time in a Spitfire or Hurricane fighter plane. After years at sea it was the quest for a ‘stable’ job that led Malan to join the RAF. After all, he had met a beautiful woman called Linda on a trip to London and with marriage in the air he needed to ‘settle down’. As a student pilot Malan showed his natural ability to shoot and kill effectively. He helped win many gunnery and flying competitions and by the time he received his first posting he had already made a name for himself. He was posted to 74 Squadron, the one and only squadron he would be attached to for the duration of the war. The Squadron’s motto ‘I fear no man’ would come to symbolize Malan’s single-minded determination when it came to air combat. Malan’s war started controversially with a little know incident. The battle of Barking Creek was one of the first friendly-fire incidents of the war and Malan’s exact role in it will not be known for a while as the court-martial records are sealed. It was over the skies of Dunkirque that the legend of ‘Sailor’ Malan began to take shape. Battling German fighters and bombers at 21 000ft Malan steered his Spitfire in for his first kill and entered the history books forever. Malan’s gun camera footage still exists today and much of it was used in propaganda films during the war. It was during the battle of Britain, however, that Malan endeared himself to the British public and the world. He took to the skies over Southern England and it’s burning cities and soon earned the reputation as a ‘cold, calculating killer’ - something completely opposite to the quiet, unassuming man everybody knew him as. His fierce determination led him to return time and again into the skies to defend England, regardless of the exhausting toll it took on him. Indeed on the very night his son was born German bombers pounded London, and Malan, taking it rather personally, readied his Spitfire and took off into the night. His son best describes what happened next... ‘On the night I was born my dad shot two planes out of the sky’, he was one of the first, if not the first do so. He once referred to air combat as ‘entering a dark room with a madman waving a knife about’. His ‘Ten rules for Air Combat’ became a mantra for fighter pilots and were posted in many fighter bases across England. By 1942 he was the highest scoring ace in the RAF. He had toured America to teach its pilots to fight and his medals had grown in number. He had given many interviews and BBC broadcasts, but shunned the limelight and the label of ‘hero’ that had been thrust upon him, as he once told his son, ‘Jonathan, there were others’. One of the scariest things he said he’d once done was to ask Winston Churchill to be his son’s Godfather – something Churchill readily agreed to. By war’s end Malan longed return to South Africa with his family. The Nationalist Party under D.F Malan (a distant relative) had grown fat on exaggerating the divisions between English and Afrikaans speaking people in South Africa. Indeed many considered South Africa’s involvement on the side of the allies during the war as treacherous. Malan returned to a South Africa brimming with political upheaval. He took on a job as mining magnate Harry Oppenhiemer’s personal and political secretary. Politics for Malan was a dirty business. A far cry from the clear, defined enemy one had in combat. He grew tired of the political gaming and posturing and with a loan from Harry Oppenhiemer he returned to the bush to farm, he settled in Kimberley. It was not long however before he was dragged back into the political world. Now in government, and with its Apartheid policies being implemented, the National Party took the country by the throat and introduced legislation to remove coloureds from the voters roll. As a hero to some Malan was asked to lead the opposition to this new act. He led the Torch Commando, a group of ex-servicemen determined to stop the government’s policies. At its peak the Torch Commando had 250 000 members. Malan would organize meetings and give a famous speech on the steps of Johannesburg's City Hall. The Nationalists would break up meetings and denigrate Malan as a ‘Veraaier’ (traitor) in the government-run press. Malan stood firm and organized white political opposition into one broad front. He had had a taste of fascism during the war, he knew its evils and his aim was to get the Nationalists out of power. This was not to be. It was all a political game, the underhanded nature of the government and the support it had led Malan to conclude that the only way to overthrow the government was through war. He had experienced war, he knew the cost, he knew what it would do to the people of the country – he was not prepared to fight another one. He felt he could best serve his country by returning to the bush to farm, and by doing so feed the country, even with a government that despised him. Malan would eventually find the quiet life he had been seeking for so long, yet he was constantly plagued by nightmares of the war – he would never talk about his experiences, even to his son. War had also left him ill. He had begun to slur his words, lose balance and farmhands would have to seek him out on his farm and bring him home because he had collapsed. He flew to London and a doctor gave him the news. As a direct result of the pressures of combat Malan had begun to suffer from Parkinson’s Disease On his last trip to London he would visit with comrades-in-arms and while seated in the latest jet fighter in the RAF he would hear the familiar dragon-like roar of a Spitfire as it flew over to honour of him. Malan died in 1963 at the age of 53. The ambivalent, antagonistic South African government would still not honour him, so it was left to friends, family and fellow airmen from all over the world to do so at his civic funeral. All the great pilots of the war from Douglas Bader and Johnny Johnson to Al Deere and many others would consider him one of the greats, if not the greatest.

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