3 Squadron RAAF in WW2

Part 1

At the outbreak of World War II, number 3 squadron RAAF would be sent to the Middle East tasked with supporting the 6^th Division of the Australian Army and would spend the entire war in the Mediterranean theatre, and became part of the Allies’ Desert Air Force (later the First Tactical Air Force), supporting the 8th Army. It would go on to be the highest-scoring RAAF fighter squadron during the war.

PART 1

JULY 1940 - DECEMBER 1941

On the 24th of July, 1940, 3 Squadron’s 21 officers and 271 airmen of other ranks departed from Fremantle on board the "Orontes", heading toward the Middle East.  It would be the first RAAF Squadron to leave for the front.

 The Squadron arrived at Tewfik in the Middle East on the 23rd of August, 1940 under the command of Squadron Leader Ian McLachlan.

They moved first to Ismailia, then later to Helwan near Cairo.  The squadron was attached to the RAF headquarters in the Middle East, and by mid-September, stationed near Cairo, they were equipped with two flights of Gloster Gladiators and one flight of Lysanders. These outdated aircraft would have to serve the squadron until Hurricanes were made available. Gladiators were the last, and the best, of the British biplane fighters; they were descendants of Sopwith Pups, Camels, and SE-5As, all of which performed effectively during the closing years of the Great War. The Gladiators were robust and highly manoeuvrable, to which 3 squadron took full advantage.

On the 19th of November, 1940, 18 Italian Fiat CR-42s, attacked four 3 Squadron Gladiators carrying out a tactical reconnaissance mission. The squadron lost its first pilot (Squadron Leader Peter Heath) during the ensuing dog-fight, and claimed three enemy aircraft destroyed and another three probably downed.  The Italians, however, claimed they suffered no loss, and six Gladiators "shot down" and two "probables". A curious statistic given there were only four Gladiators in the fight!

During the early days of December, the Squadron carried out strafing and dive-bombing attacks in the Sofafi area and continuous offensive patrols over Sidi Barrani and Halfaya, before moving to a location near Sollum, on the Egyptian border. 

Between the 3rd and the 5th of January, 1941, the battle for Bardia raged and 3 Squadron helped the 13th Corps win this first big victory of British General Archibald Wavell’s Libyan campaign, by spotting for the Artillery and efficiently conducting its Army co-operation functions.  Over 40,000 prisoners, 400 guns, 130 tanks and 700 motor trucks were captured during this campaign. 

The now-disorganised Italian Army was on the run, chased by the Allies, including 3 Squadron, who moved to Gambut, about 32 miles from Tobruk, on the 8th of that month.  From there, many artillery reconnaissances of the Tobruk defences were made, during the build-up and the actual taking of Tobruk by the Allied forces on the 21st of January, 1941 - a milestone in the Western Desert war because of its strategic shipping value.

On this same day, the first of the Squadron's Hawker Hurricanes was released from a base maintenance depot to the Squadron's new advanced landing ground at Bir Hacheim.  Flying Officer Gordon Steege was one of the first to fly the Squadron's Hurricanes.

The Squadron would cover Tmimi to Martuba while forward troops were fighting in the Derna-Mechili areas of Cyrenaica.

The Australian 6th Division captured Derna on the 30th of January 1941 and that same day Wing Commander McLachlan received the Distinguished Flying Cross.

By early February, a few of the long-awaited Hurricanes were operating in the squadron.  The Italians were in full retreat and were pushed back to Benghazi where they surrendered on the 7^th of February. 

The Squadron relocated forward to Benina about 12 miles from Benghazi.

Squadron Leader Peter Jeffrey was appointed the new C.O. on the 13th of February 1941. The Squadron operated from Benina for a little over six weeks and during this time met the strength of the Luftwaffe for the first time.  On the 15th of February, Flying Officer J. H. Saunders was the first in the Squadron to shoot down a German aircraft, a Junkers JU-88, in his new Hurricane.

In North Africa, 3 Squadron were up against a variety of enemy aircraft at this time.  The main Italian fighter was the Fiat CR42 - the best of a family of agile fighters that could fly at almost 300 miles per hour at 30,000 feet for over 450 miles.  The Luftwaffe had the JU-88, a fast light bomber with superior armament. And the famous JU87 Stuka dive bombers were also active in the theatre.  The Stuka was a precise bomber but relatively slow with a maximum air speed of 232 miles per hour. It was this slow speed that helped 3 Squadron bring down eight of the 12 Stukas they surprised on the 18th of February 1941, near Agedabia.

The Luftwaffe also had the Messerschmitt Bf 110 fighter-bomber operating in the Western Desert. With its twin 1,270 horsepower Daimler Benz liquid-cooled and inverted V12 engines, it was capable of flying at a maximum 349 miles per hour, which was almost as fast as Britain’s fastest fighter, the Spitfire and certainly faster than the 310 mph of the Hurricane. As a long-range fighter, with its two 20mm cannon and four 7.9mm machine guns built into the nose, and a single 7.9mm machine gun operated by the observer, it was a formidable opponent.

Nevertheless, the metal-framed Hurricane was a robust fighter that could out-climb even the Spitfire, reaching 1,500 feet in under a minute.  It had a service ceiling of 34,000 feet and a 460 mile range.  Armed with eight .303 Browning machine guns, which could lay out 200 bullets a second onto a target.

On the 31st of March 1941, within two weeks of arriving in Africa with his specially trained desert armoured division known as the Afrika Korps, Rommel launched a surprise attack on the Allied positions at El Agheila, ignoring advice from the German General Staff to refrain from making any attack. 

The Allied troops could not hold against Rommel's fresh new forces, and withdrew to Got El Sultan, and then further back to Martuba.  Aerial combat was hectic over the following weeks as 3 Squadron protected the retreating Allied army from heavy German air attack.  Almost every day in early April, as the ground crew was retreating by road, the Squadron's pilots were busy shooting down Stukas, which were continuously striking the retreating British ground forces. On a single day, the Squadron brought down no less than ten Stukas without loss to the Squadron.  

Thomas Canning (Eric)

The day before we evacuated Ajdabiya we were subjected to an air raid, we had got a message from base to expect an attack at eleven o’clock, the bombers were escorted by fighters. We had got this message early in the morning and 3rd Squadron was to fly up and give cover, fighter cover. We hardly believed the accuracy of this sort of intelligence, but it was found out to be accurate because 3rd Squadron had flown from Benghazi, one hundred miles north and took up position in the sun a bit before eleven o’clock. Flew around in the sun invisibly and at about quarter to eleven over came two Messerschmitt 110s, and 3rd Squadron descended on those and shot down one and it went into the earth and exploded about a mile away from us. The other was hotly pursued. It pushed its throttle through the gate and took off at great speed and out distanced the pursuing Hurricane. 3rd Squadron had virtually been flying for an hour and a half and still had one hundred miles to return and had limited fuel supply, so it formed up and flew on back. A few of us took a vehicle and went over to where this plane had hit the earth, and before we got there overcame fighter bombers and we turned to go back but they out distanced us to go back on our guns. And they laid their bombs right across the anti-tank defenders’ position, the Royal Horse Artillery were defending us with ack-ack [anti-aircraft] guns and took off unmolested. 3rd Squadron in the meantime was heading its way back to its base. I remember Squadron Leader Jackson looked at his fuel in the Hurricane and discovered that his needle was on empty and he turned to come back just in time to see the bombs drop. By the time he landed back on the airstrip we got back to our gun, three bombs had gone off within a nine yards radius of us, and our ears would have sung if we had been on it and we would have been uncomfortable. The gun next to ours, the gun layer was dead, his clothes were burning, and his ammunition was alight. The officer in charge was wounded, two others were wounded on the gun. Just as Jackson landed and taxied by us. Jackson fueled up and went off and the other two pilots that made these claims, one was dead within a week and the other one in six months, and Jackson was ultimately killed weeks later over Port Moresby. The three active participants of that squadron were dead in no time, in just a few months.

These constant air cover sorties were done while airfields were continually moving back from the enemy advance. Some missions during dust storms, others at night. During the retreat, anything that couldn't be packed and moved, or unserviceable, had to be destroyed.  At one stage 48,000 rounds of .303 ammunition had to be sacrificed. To save an aircraft from being abandoned, Pete Turnbull took off in a Hurricane with a bullet-holed tyre, stuffed with blankets and grass to harden it. These were old Hurricanes that 3 Squadron had inherited – Thomas Trimble explains:

Sometimes we didn’t have much interception work, usually what we tried to intercept were German reconnaissance airplanes, but it was just too high, the Hurricanes couldn’t go that high. These were the early Hurricanes, the Battle of Britain ones. We got airplanes that had been in the Battle of Britain that had flown for about one hundred hours. They’d been sent out to Africa, and they’d flown right across Africa and up the Nile and the RAF used. The Hurricane that was allotted to me had something like one hundred and twenty hours out of it.

We reckoned that if they flew for one hundred and eighty hours they had it. The service airplanes are not designed to last a long time in war because you might get a brand new one and lose it on its first flight. You don’t want to waste your money or your effort. Then Rommel came in and we kept going back as hard as we could.

We were moving every day from landing ground to landing ground. You’d start off in the morning at one landing ground, the troops would get you airborne and you’d finish your patrol further back and you’d might get another patrol in and you might go a bit further back. We were running out of parts for the airplanes, and we were losing them, we were losing the odd pilot.

During those first weeks of April 1941, Rommel's Afrika Korps had driven most of the Allied forces right out of Cyrenaica back into Egypt, except for the English and Australian forces left isolated in Tobruk.  The Australian 9th Division and the remnants of a British armoured division formed a 23,000-strong garrison at Tobruk, completely cut off from the rest of the Allied forces. They needed all the air support they could get, so on the 16th, four of 3 Squadron's Hurricanes landed inside the Tobruk perimeter and remained there to assist the besieged Australian troops defending the garrison.

About that time, I Gruppe of the German Jagdgeschwader 27, consisting of 3 Staffels of ex-Battle of Britain pilots, arrived at Am el Gazala with their single-seater Messerschmitt Bf 109E fighters. One of those pilots was Oberfahnrich Hans-Joachim Marseille, a young man destined to become one of Germany's top fighter pilots.  Many 3 Squadron pilots were to fight against him and his Gruppe during the next 17 months. 

The Bf109E's, arriving in steady numbers, were considered superior to the Hurricanes in speed, rate of climb and armament.  Their Daimler-Benz inverted V12 engines gave them a 360-mph speed at 20,000 feet - at least 50 mph faster than the Hurricane.  This was one of many reasons that influenced the Allied Command to recall 3 Squadron to Aqir, in Palestine on the 3rd of May for re-training and re-equipping with the relatively new American Curtiss P-40B Tomahawk.  Powered by a 1,150-horsepower Allison engine, the Tomahawk's speed and performance was closer to that of the 109.  It was a fairly manoeuverable machine which performed well at low altitudes and suited the Desert conditions quite well.

Flying Officer Bobby Gibbes, a 5-foot 4-inch, 25-year-old ex-salesman, had joined the Squadron on the 14th of May 1941, and would go on to lead the squadron, and become one of the top-scoring Australian pilots during the two years he would serve with 3 Squadron.

Bobby Gibbes

When we got the Tomahawks, the boys had been flying Hurricanes mainly and the Hurricane’s a very forgiving aeroplane, you could be fairly rude to a Hurricane and it wouldn’t bite you. But the Tomahawk, it was a different kettle of fish and it would turn around and bite very smartly. And the boys damaged something like twenty-four Tomahawks learning to fly them at Lierdam and I was one of the new boys so I wasn’t given the chance of going on a Tomahawk for quite a while, they let me fly an old Gauntlet for a while but when I, the time came for me to go on, I had only ever quite critical of these pilots for ruining these beautiful aeroplanes. And when the time came for me to go up they all, they all watched and I heard later some of them said, “We hope that little bastard prangs.” but fortunately I didn’t.

By the 8th of June 1941, 3 Squadron were ready to fly again, and operations re-commenced in Syria against the Vichy French Armee de l 'Air who flew older Morane fighters, some Glenn Martin bombers and the more popular Dewoitine D520 fighters. No.3 Squadron's Tomahawks, flying from their temporary airfield at Jenin, brought down many of these nimble little French fighters during their patrols and during escort missions for Blenheim light bombers attacking enemy convoys on the Damascus-Beirut road.

Bobby Gibbes

In Syria we were up against the Vichy French, they were normal French Air Force, but they had to come on the Vichy side and they were quite brave people, we got quite a few of them of course. I think we shot down twenty-three aeroplanes in Syria, before the show fell. I think I got one Dewoitine I shot at a couple and shot at some JU88’s which were over the fleet one day out of Haifa. We could have got the whole of the, all the 88s, except the navy put up such a barrage that we had to go around and some of them got away. But we got about three or four of them.

After the Blenheims dropped their bombs, the Tomahawk pilots guided them out of the area before returning to strafe the road, which the French called "Nightmare Road" because of the intense, heavy low-flying strikes the Squadron made.  By the 12th of July, the Vichy forces fighting in Syria had quit and their signing of a truce marked the end of the Squadron’s Syrian campaign, almost one year to the day since leaving Australia.  The campaign had given the Squadron's pilots the opportunity of strengthening their teamwork while they were collectively destroying or damaging 31 enemy aircraft in that five-week period.

From the 13th of September until early November 1941, the Squadron’s twelve Tomahawks patrolled the Sidi Barrani - Mersa Matruh area and along the coast line as far as Tobruk where Allied forces had been hemmed in. 

Bobby Gibbes

We were doing patrols over the wire, we couldn’t get as far as Tobruk because we didn’t have the range to do that if we copped a fight, we wouldn’t be able to get back so we couldn’t, we weren’t of much help to Tobruk boys for quite long time until the army advanced and then we were able to help them a bit, but basically, by escorting bombers, bombing around the perimeter of Tobruk and so on stopping enemy forces.

When we could get over Tobruk, it looked like a huge rabbit warren with all the burrowing that’s gone on around it. I think that the Tobruk boys were always pleased when they saw our aeroplanes instead of the enemy aeroplanes and one day we had a bit of a combat and I was flashed a Macchi 200. Oh I forget now it might have been G.50 and he went in just near Tobruk and the Tobruk boys confirmed him for me, which I was very pleased about, because I didn’t see him go in but they did.

On one occasion, during a heavy dust-storm, one Tomahawk exploded when Flying Officer Stratten slammed into an unmanned aircraft that an RAF pilot had stupidly left on the edge of the strip.  Stratten's life was saved by Corporal Whittington who soaked himself in fire-fighting foam and dragged the unconscious pilot from the flames.  For this heroic act, Whittington was awarded the British Empire Medal.

In early November 1941, 3 Squadron and 112 Squadron, RAF, were paired up to form No.2 Wing, with Peter Jeffrey appointed as Acting Wing Commander and newly-promoted Acting Squadron Leader, Alan Rawlinson the replacement C.O. for 3 Squadron. 

Their first move westward was to Madelena and air combat in this new campaign commenced in mid-November, 1941.  The fighting was intense, and November 22nd became a "black day" in the Squadron's history, when five pilots were killed and two taken prisoner after their Tomahawks had been shot down over the Bir Gobi and Bir Hacheim regions.

There had been several combats that day against the new Messerschmitt Bf109Fs, and, in some of these dog-fights, there were up to four 109F's to a single Tomahawk, with one particular combat lasting for a record one hour and five minutes.  Only dusk forced the enemy to withdraw, leaving the weary 3 Squadron pilots to limp home with landing lights on, some force-landing short of the strip and others running out of petrol while taxiing in. 

At the end of November, the Squadron had claimed 39 enemy aircraft destroyed or damaged in just a few flying days, bringing the Squadron's tally of enemy aircraft destroyed to 106.  The first of the Desert squadrons to destroy 100 enemy aircraft and the third or fourth Empire Squadron to reach their 100 in the entire war. 

Thomas Trimble

When 3 and 1 and 2 Squadron had gone out as a wing and we’d been attacked by 109s [German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter planes] several times on the way out to the area that we were suppose to patrol. I’d seen one or two 109s shot down and then as we got close to Tobruk we were attacked by maybe about twenty-odd 109s and because we were following 112 Squadron we weren’t leading the wing that day. We unfortunately went into a turn with 112 Squadron and we thought that they were just going to turn but instead of that they continued to turn and went into what is sometimes called a “defensive circle”, and naturally we were part of the wing and we went in with them. We got stuck there and we stayed in it for sixty-three minutes. In that sixty-three minutes I saw one fellow just a bit up from here he was hit by a 109 and he got out into his parachute, and I saw his parachute and by the time I had gone around the circle I wasn’t looking for him. Another chap who was just up in front of me and slightly lower, at about my height was rammed by a 109. The tactics of the 109s was to sit above us and then dive through us in pairs and they’d shoot on their way down. We were going around in circles. The bloke that was hit by the 109 and as he was hit half of one wing was sheared off and the 109 just disintegrated into a shower of sparks, like a cone that was gradually expanding and so in that time I saw this one fellow shot down here and the one up there.