The RAF's Kiwi Warriors

In May 1938, 22 year old Wairarapa-born law student Alan Gawith and seventeen other enthusiastic, adventurous and, some might say, naive young men boarded the SS Arawa in Wellington for a six-week journey to Scotland’s Elementary Flying Training School at Scone airfield. They were there to join the Royal Air Force (RAF), become officers and to defend the British Isles against the inevitable upcoming air war.

Alan Gawith may have had second thoughts about embarking on his epic journey if he knew he would not return to New Zealand for over seven nerve wracking years. Even then he was among the lucky ones. ‘As far as I could make out, only about three of us arrived home after the war. One or two stayed over there, but the casualty rate was high,’ he said.

At the end of the course, which they all passed, Mr Gawith was posted to No.23 Squadron, a night fighter squadron based at Wittering (100 miles north of London) and had just converted to Blenheims. Most people think of Blenheims as bombers but, as Mr Gawith explains: ‘They [the RAF] had no proper night fighter aircraft and they wanted something with a bit more range than a Hurricane. Spitfires – you didn’t see them in those days. They hadn’t arrived on the scene. I had been trained on single seaters and the Blenheim was a twin-engined thing. [It was] a big hefty medium bomber, converted to a night fighter by sticking four extra Browning guns in the pod underneath it.’

In England he met up with his ‘sweetheart of years standing’ Elliot Wallace. Both keen trampers they had met on the slopes of Mt Taranaki. On 4 October 1939, a month and a day after war with Germany was declared Elliot and Alan were married. The marriage and honeymoon were done on a 48-hour leave pass.

Night fighting was dangerous business. Mr Gawith tells the story of a night flight to nearby Digby airfield that illustrates just how close to dying he had come:

‘I hadn’t long been back on regular night flying when I was sent up to Digby one evening to do a searchlight run, so that the searchlights could practice. I was going along quite happily and got to the end of a run, doing a triangular course then turned around and somehow got into a screaming power dive from about 6,000 feet. My poor gunner was busy trying to get out the back, but the slipstream was too strong – I noticed 330 miles on the clock, which wasn’t quite the treatment for a Blenheim. Bits flew off it and the cover over my head flew off and all my maps went. Eventually I looked out and saw the horizon and managed to straighten up and pull out of the dive at about 1500 feet, and I wasn’t sure whether I was the right way up… fortunately I was the right way up.

‘Then I had to find my way back to base without any maps or radio – the wireless mast had gone as well. I couldn’t talk to my gunner even. But I had a rough idea which way to go and knew that the flying training school – Cranwell – was not too far from my Base, so if I could find Cranwell… Eventually I found it and starting from north and just going a few degrees different each time I found my Base – which was not lit up – and landed. ‘

Night fighters were not in the thick of the battle of Britain mainly because their equipment was so out of date and inadequate. They flew night interception patrols but with little effect. At the time British airfields were under savage attack when a lone German raider jettisoned his bombs on London. The raid was the excuse Churchill needed to switch to dropping bombs on Berlin. The Germans retaliated by switching their bombing to cities instead of airfields. The change in tactics gave Fighter Command just enough breathing space to survive.

‘It was divine intervention I’d say. Fighter Command got a few days just to fill up the craters on the runways and rest. Whether you were flying or working on the ground – you were working around the clock and had been for so long that exhaustion had just about collapsed Fighter Command. Another day or two and it would have been all over,’ Mr Gawith says.

While the night interceptors were largely ineffective the Squadron played a major role in taking the fight to the enemy when, after December 1940, they began intruder operations. ‘We went out over the channel to find and patrol around the enemy Bases when the bombers were returning,‘ said Mr Gawith.

In his citation for the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) it says: ‘on other occasions he’s carried out attacks on aerodrome buildings, dropping his bombs at a low altitude in the face of heavy ground fire.’

The Squadron was meant to find the airfield from which the bombers were operating and try to shoot down the bombers when they were coming home, and if we couldn’t do that we were to drop our bombs and cause a lot of trouble.

In intruder operations the most success I had was something I knew nothing about. I couldn’t find a target for my bombs but dropped them on some lights well out down the runway and went off home. But the bombs upset the communications system for the whole fighter wing and put it out of action.

I didn’t realise it quite at the time but it was terribly hard for my poor wife. She nearly had a mental breakdown later on. And I have realised since that she’d had a terribly hard time of it all the way. I hadn’t had time to think about that – the service always came first. That was the deal when we got married.’

In another anecdote he recalls landing at an airfield that was not his Base to a very hostile reception. He and his crew were marched off and kept under armed guard for some time until they were able to telephone their CO who confirmed their identity. It seems a few weeks earlier the Base attracted a lost German bomber crew who landed and ambled into the crew room before, much to their surprise, realising it was a British Base. They were able to scurry back to their aircraft and take off. Mr Gawith’s reception was understandable in the context of jumpy Base guards.

At the age of 91 Mr Gawith’s interview with Air Force historian Bee Dawson reveals a clear and, at times amusing, account of the trials and tribulations of a Kiwi airman flying for the RAF.