Trevor Southgate 2016
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Rich Text Editor, dnn_ctr416_NewsArticles_ucSubmitNews_txtDetails_txtDetails 2016-06-16, 11:17 AM about:blank Page 1 of 54 Rich Text Editor, dnn_ctr416_NewsArticles_ucSubmitNews_txtDetails_txtDetails 2016-06-16, 11:17 AM By Dave O’Malley When Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939, they were not prepared, despite the astonishingly ominous war cloud that had been hanging over Europe and moving in from the east for years. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s delusional belief that he could appease Hitler by throwing Czechoslovakia and Austria under the bus not only sacrificed these nations, but was eroding the honour and moral position of England. When Poland was attacked, Chamberlain was still hoping for a negotiated treaty. As Germany tightened its grip on Poland and then went for Norway, the British leadership was still reluctant to attack German private property such as factories and fuel storage depots. Despite a complete lack of war leadership at the top, for most of the last half of the 1930s, there were men and women who had no trouble reading the writing on the wall. Some were Members of Parliament like Harold Macmillan, Bobby Boothby and Ronald Cartland, while others were young men in their teens, who saw that they would need to stand for something. To stand and, as MP Leo Amery so famously said in Parliament, “Speak for England”. One such young man was George Trevor Southgate, a tall and slender 18 year old from Ealing, a suburb of West London. Enamoured of aviation, Trevor Southgate enlisted in the Royal Air Force, receiving a Short Service Commission as an acting Pilot Officer on 16 May 1938, just as Germans in Sudetenland were beginning their internal campaign that paved the way to annexation by the Nazis. Whether he had politics in mind or was just dreaming to fly, it does not matter. What matters was that Southgate was one of a new breed of young, patriotic and courageous airmen that made up the ranks of the Royal Air Force at the very moment they would be needed most. There were many at the time who felt that the British Army and the Royal Air Force were woefully unprepared, under- about:blank Page 2 of 54 Rich Text Editor, dnn_ctr416_NewsArticles_ucSubmitNews_txtDetails_txtDetails 2016-06-16, 11:17 AM equipped and undermanned. The governments of Great Britain and the Commonwealth were, at the time of Southgate’s enlistment, just beginning to consider the implications of this unreadiness and to begin planning for a possible mass induction and training of airmen qualified for combat. Even with the declaration of war and the spooling up of the colossal war training machine that was the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP), no one, from Churchill on down to newly-winged Trevor Southgate, could ever have predicted the final requirement for men and machines that would be necessary to see the war to its conclusion five years later. The BCATP, or Empire Training Plan as it was known in the Antipodes, and Joint Air Training Scheme in South Africa fed an unprecedented number of qualified aircrew (pilots, navigators, radio operators, gunners, engineers, and bomb aimers) into a war machine whose appetite for youth was insatiable. The numbers in Canada alone boggle the mind— 167,000 aircrew trained, of which 50,000 were qualified pilots. Though the sheer scope of the war made the requirement for trained aircrew massive, it was the startling death toll and attrition that made the final numbers what they were. In Bomber Command alone, some 55,500 airmen were lost on operations, more than 10,000 Canadians. For young men like Trevor Southgate, the future was most definitely uncertain, even at the time of his enlistment. He could never have known, however, the depressing odds of him surviving as a pilot until war’s end. If one factors in the theatres, campaigns and battles in which Southgate flew operationally, his odds of survival dropped considerably. Trevor Southgate would be severely injured flying during the Battle of France; survive 1942 flying in and out of Malta, the most bombed and attacked place on the planet that summer; survive the aerial terror of D-Day; survive the fiery crash of his Dakota at the catastrophe of Operation MARKET GARDEN and evade capture in Holland. Southgate’s story is not only one of survival, but also of professionalism, duty, courage and love of flying. His role in the Second World War is, as he will likely tell you, just one of many hundreds of thousands of stories of sacrifice, skill and comradeship from that tectonic struggle. Over the years of writing down these stories, I have found all of them compelling and remarkable, but Southgate’s is rare in that his operational flying spans the whole length of the war, from before hell broke loose until after it had been put down. In that time, he found himself in the thick of it, flying aircraft with no defensive or offensive capabilities whatsoever. Most pilots who earned their wings went on to operational flying in only one aircraft type, at the most three. A pilot might learn to fly only the Halifax and perhaps transition to the Lancaster, or he might start on the Hurricane and then move to the Spitfire and then by war’s end, the jet-powered Gloster Meteor. Trevor Southgate became a generalist— able to fly a wide assortment of aircraft, many of which were uncommon in the RAF. In addition to time on single- engined trainers and fighters, Southgate would build substantial time on 12 different types of single and multi-engined aircraft—from the four-engined de Havilland Express biplane to the diminutive Percival Vega Gull to the heavy Douglas DC-3 Dakota and Lockheed Hudson. Above all, it is his two brushes with death that define and bookend his astonishing career—one in the opening salvos of the war and the other four years later as the enemy was reeling backwards into the fatherland. Trevor Southgate began his flying training at RAF Yatesbury in Wiltshire, flying the de Havilland Tiger Moth at No. 10 Elementary (and Refresher) Flying Training School (ERFTS). After soloing and gaining a very typical 97 hours on Geoffrey de Havilland’s little trainer, he was given an Acting Pilot Officer’s commission with a one year probationary period. From Yatesbury, he was sent to RAF Montrose in Scotland for his Service Flying Training, where he learned to fly much more powerful Hawker Hart, a former light bomber of the RAF in the inter-war period, now used primarily for training purposes. Its complex Rolls Royce Kestral engine and high performance envelope made it an excellent about:blank Page 3 of 54 Rich Text Editor, dnn_ctr416_NewsArticles_ucSubmitNews_txtDetails_txtDetails 2016-06-16, 11:17 AM advanced trainer. At Montrose, Southgate flew more than 200 hours in the Hart and earned his coveted Royal Air Force pilot’s wings. about:blank Page 4 of 54 Rich Text Editor, dnn_ctr416_NewsArticles_ucSubmitNews_txtDetails_txtDetails 2016-06-16, 11:17 AM about:blank Page 5 of 54 Rich Text Editor, dnn_ctr416_NewsArticles_ucSubmitNews_txtDetails_txtDetails 2016-06-16, 11:17 AM An innocent-faced George Trevor Southgate (left) and former public school chum Stuart Trotter learn to fly on de Havilland Tiger Moths with the Royal Air Force at RAF Yatesbury in Wiltshire—an experience not unlike learning to fly in Canada—cold and wet. Photo: Trevor Southgate Collection A photo of Tiger Moths in 1938 at RAF Yatesbury, home of No. 10 Elementary (and Refresher) Flying Training School (EFRTS) – the time, place and machine of Southgate’s initial flight training. Photo: Terry Fox - Air Britain about:blank Page 6 of 54 Rich Text Editor, dnn_ctr416_NewsArticles_ucSubmitNews_txtDetails_txtDetails 2016-06-16, 11:17 AM Trevor Southgate poses for a photo prior to a mess dinner at RAF Uxbridge, shortly after completing his elementary flying training on Tiger Moths at Yatesbury. Unlike the wartime RCAF where a cadet pilot would carry the rank of Leading Aircraft Man until he received his wings after Service Flying Training, the stripe on his cuff indicates that Southgate was promoted to Acting Pilot Officer on 16 May 1938. This came with a 1 year probationary period. The following 16 May 1939, Southgate was appointed to a full non-probationary rank of Pilot Officer. Photo: Trevor Southgate Collection about:blank Page 7 of 54 Rich Text Editor, dnn_ctr416_NewsArticles_ucSubmitNews_txtDetails_txtDetails 2016-06-16, 11:17 AM about:blank Page 8 of 54 Rich Text Editor, dnn_ctr416_NewsArticles_ucSubmitNews_txtDetails_txtDetails 2016-06-16, 11:17 AM At Number 8 Flying Training School (later No. 8 Service Flying Training School) at RAF Montrose, the Hawker Audax (similar to the Hawker Hart which he also flew at Montrose) was used for advanced wings-grade flying training. Here we see a young Pilot Officer (Acting) Trevor Southgate standing proudly in 1938 before an Audax, the aircraft he would soon win his wings on. More than 800 pilots, including a number of the RAF’s leading aces of the war, received their wings at Montrose from 1936 until 1942, when the school closed down. These names include Canadian uber-ace George “Buzz” Beurling as well as Irishman Brendan “Paddy” Finucane and New Zealander “Cobber” Kain. More importantly, this was the home of 612 City of Glasgow Squadron and our own Warrant Officer Harry Hannah, to whom our Boeing Stearman was dedicated. Photo: Trevor Southgate Collection Trevor Southgate earned his coveted RAF pilot’s brevet on the Hawker Hart/Audax, two variants of the same aircraft of the last group of high performance biplanes in the service of the Royal Air Force. The Hawker Hart was a British two- seater light bomber aircraft of the RAF.