by Gill Griffin
Dedicated to the memory of F/Lt H.L. ‘Len’ Thorne, A.E. and all of the brave men of Fighter Command who took part in the Second World War and subsequent conflicts.
Photographs from Len Thorne’s personal collection.
Edited and made ready for publication by the author’s daughter and son-in-law, Gill and Barry Griffin.
Any errors are purely ours or Len’s.
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
List of Photographs
The Logbook
Foreword
Introduction
1 Training
2 41 Squadron, Home Base Catterick
3 602 Squadron
4 RAF Duxford AFDU (Air Fighting Development Unit)
5 Development Flight AFDU – RAF Duxford
6 Development Flight AFDU – RAF Wittering
7 Enter the Focke Wulf 190
8 Mustangs and Others
9 The Wind-down
Appendices
1 List of Aircraft Flown
2 Aerodromes at Which I Landed or From Which I Operated
3 Civilian Flying
4 Some Recollections of Those I Have Known
5 Letters of Condolence
Copyright
Cadet Len Thorne, 1940.
Len and Estelle Thorne on their wedding day, 16th September 1941.
Len with Mustang 3 (P51b), 1944.
Len in September 1990, dressed for a church parade in Stratford-upon-Avon.
LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHS
Cadet Len Thorne, 1940
Len and Estelle Thorne on their wedding day, 16th September 1941
Len with Mustang 3 (P51b), 1944
Len in September 1990, dressed for a church parade in Stratford-upon-Avon
Logbook page beginning 15 October 1941
Group photograph of RAF cadets of 3 ITW on Babbacombe beach. Late May 1940
Pilots under training outside Norfolk Hotel, Torquay, 1941
3 ITW, September 1940
Logbook page, July 1941
602 Squadron, 1941
Johnny Niven
Cartoon by Aitkin of Al Deere
F/Sgt Les Scorer
Sgt Sanderson inspecting the cannon shell damage to his wing
Johnny Niven, Jimmy Garden, Sgt Smith and Len Thorne
Logbook extract, 1–3 October 1941
602 Squadron at rest
Len Thorne giving instruction in aero engines to Southwark ATC, February 1942
Len Thorne lecturing on combat manoeuvres to Southwark ATC, February 1942
F/Lt Roy ‘Lulu’ Lane, F/Lt Turley-George and F/Lt Desmond O’Connor
Sgt Paul Green, Sgt Sanderson and S/Ldr Brendan ‘Paddy’ Finucane
Logbook extract, early May 1942
Officer Commissioning certificate
AFDU ground crew with Spitfire Mk II P7292
Len Thorne in Spitfire P7290
AFDU group at Wittering
Tadeusz ‘Teddy’ Kulczyk and Len Thorne with Mustang Mk I
Inter-unit Christmas card to Len from his brother Leslie
LAC Leslie G. Thorne
Air-to-air filming. Spitfire VI
Logbook extract, Summary of Flying and assessment June 1942–December 1942
Len Thorne with Mustang P51b in 1943, Duxford
Certificate for a ‘Mention in a Despatch’, June 1944
AFDU Officers’ Mess Dinner
AFDU Group in front of Tempest Mk 1
Bill Burge and Bud
Len Thorne, ‘Wimpy’ Wade, ‘Susie’ Sewell and Cpl Green on a cold winter’s day, 1944
Len Thorne with crunched ME109G at Wittering, 22nd November 1944
F/Lt Len Thorne, 1945
Certificate for a Mention in a Despatch, January 1946
Visit to Hullavington in 1991 with John Timmis and Ron Rayner
Len sitting in ME109G at Duxford air show, 1996
Visit to Old Warden
Swapping memories with Stuart Waring and Andy Sephton at Old Warden
Len with Connie Edwards and Spitfire MH415 in Texas, 2000
THE LOGBOOK
Below is a photograph of a page in Len Thorne’s logbook dated October 1941. The left-hand side has been copied almost exactly in the following pages of this book but the right-hand leaf has had to be condensed so that both can be displayed on one sheet. There are columns for Single-Engine and Multi-Engine aircraft, sub-divided into Day and Night Flying. This is further divided into Dual or Pilot in single-engine aircraft and Dual, 1st or 2nd Pilot in multi-engine aeroplanes. There are also columns for Passenger, Instrument or Cloud flying. These have all been condensed to three columns, Dual, Pilot or Passenger. The detailed notes on the right-hand leaf have been incorporated into the story told in the text.
The summary boxes occur at the end of each month. They give details of the hours flown on each type of aeroplane and are signed by the pilot, the officer in command of a ‘Flight’ and the squadron leader. In this case the O/C ‘A’ Flight was F/Lt Norman C. Macqueen, DFC. Six months after this, on 4th May 1942, he was killed when his aircraft was hit by tracer fire from an ME109, while he was flying with 249 Squadron over Malta. The 602 squadron leader who signed above was Al Deere. Some of the figures in the flying columns were written in red. This denoted night flying.
FOREWORD
This book was first conceived almost accidentally. Len Thorne was a Second World War fighter pilot. He still had his wartime logbook and it was one of his proudest possessions. It was originally to have gone to his younger daughter, who lives in Texas. When he was in his 85th year he decided that he did not wish it to leave England and so it was willed to the Imperial War Museum at Duxford. Because he could not keep his promise to give the logbook to his daughter, he felt guilty. This led him to make a handwritten copy of the book to give to her. When it was completed and handed over, he thought he should also give a copy to his elder daughter. She persuaded him that his reminiscences should be formalised so that we did not lose this first-hand history. Len found that the exercise of writing out his logbook had brought back many memories, so he created another manuscript copy, this time annotated with all his memories of the events which took place during his wartime RAF career and many of the people he had known. This book is the result.
It shows him to be one of the unsung heroes of the Second World War. He completed two tours of front line duty as a fighter pilot, when their life-expectancy was between two and four weeks. He then went to AFDU, the Air Fighting Development Unit, where he spent the rest of the war combat-testing new British, American and captured enemy aeroplanes.
Yet he was never decorated. He had been recommended for a medal and the citation had been written up but a change of commanding officer sent his medal elsewhere. I would not say he was bitter about it but the fact that he had no decoration did leave a scar. He was twice ‘mentioned in dispatches’, once for flight testing various Allied planes but mostly for flying comparative combat trials and demonstrations in the Focke Wulf 190A-3. His second mention was for flight testing, under operational conditions, the Spitfire Mk XXI in comparative trials against RAF, FAA and USAAF fighters to evaluate its suitability for service use and to prepare and submit a detailed report.
This was the man who held air speed records, setting a straight and level speed of 455mph in a Mustang, which made it the fastest operational airplane in the world at the time (see the entries for 5th March 1943 and 28th January 1944). He also made the first flight of a Spitfire as a fighter-bomber on 30th November 1942. Then, in late 1944 and early 1945 he was involved in the early operational testing of the Gloster Meteor Mk III, so his flying extended into the jet age. He always talked of himself as a ‘hack’ p
ilot, an ordinary Joe. Perhaps his lack of a medal left him with a feeling that he had done nothing special. He was always happy to talk about his time in the Royal Air Force but it was more to tell you about the aircraft and the people he had met than about himself.
Herbert Leonard ‘Len’ Thorne always denied being a Battle of Britain pilot. In British military eyes the ‘Battle’ started at the end of July 1940 and was over at the end of October 1940. He gained his ‘wings’ on his 21st birthday, 13th April 1941, went to the Operational Training Unit at Hawarden and was then posted to 41 Squadron, a front-line fighter squadron, starting active service on 11th June 1941. He always maintained that he missed being ‘one of the Few’ by six months. However, the Luftwaffe was still making bombing raids and by the end of June the RAF was sending attacking sweeps over occupied France and Belgium. The life of a fighter pilot was still measured in minutes in the air.
He flew and was friends with many of the top ‘aces’ of the war and his personal memories of these heroes add to our historical knowledge. Among others he talks about are Al Deere, Brendan ‘Paddy’ Finucane, T.S. ‘Wimpy’ Wade and James ‘One Armed Mac’ MacLachlan. He explains air combat tactics clearly. He describes technical details of the aeroplanes coherently and his lifelong love of those beautiful machines and of flying shines through.
This is the story, told through the medium of his pilot’s logbook, of a man who so loved flying that, after making a full recovery from a cancer operation six months earlier, he performed an aerobatic display to celebrate his eightieth birthday.
This was no ‘hack’ pilot. He was an extraordinary one.
* * *
After his time in the RAF, Len returned to work for High Duty Alloys in Slough and Redditch. He later moved into rivet manufacturing with Pearson and Beck, a local Redditch factory. He moved on to Black and Luff, which became a subsidiary of Bifurcated and Tubular Rivet Company of Aylesbury, rising to the position of executive Managing Director of the Midland Division of that company.
He became a Freemason in Slough in 1948, being initiated into Industria Lodge No. 5421 and when he moved permanently to Redditch he joined a local Lodge, Ipsley Lodge No. 6491 in the Province of Warwickshire. He was also a member of Bordesley Abbey R.A. Chapter No. 4495, meeting in Redditch and in the Province of Worcestershire. He remained a Freemason for the rest of his life. He died just before he was due to receive his 60 Years Certificate.
He was a member and Past President of the Redditch Probus Club and delighted in telling anyone who would listen that his very ‘correct’ wife Estelle liked to explain the acronym as ‘Poor Retired Old B***s Useless for Sex’. Len and his wife were also active members of the League of Friends of the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch. They worked together in the coffee shop for many years until Estelle became ill. Following her death in 1997 Len continued for a short time in the coffee shop, now working with his daughter Gill. He was also a member of the Committee and edited the League’s quarterly newsletter.
He was a very gregarious man and was a member of the Bromsgrove branch of The Royal British Legion. He joined the Stratford branch of The Air Crew Association and became President and he was a life member of the Spitfire Society. For several years he was Chairman of the civilian committee of Studley ATC, 480 Squadron.
Len died on 6th June 2008 – D-Day. His interest in and love of flying never died. In his last letter, to the chairman of the local Spitfire Society, four days before he died, he wrote ‘My interest in the Spitfire will never wane.’
Like many other pilots and ex-pilots, Len Thorne was deeply moved by this poem. He had a copy of it on a bronze plaque in his lounge.
High Flight (An Airman’s Ecstasy)
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air…
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee
No. 412 squadron, RCAF.
Killed 11 December 1941
INTRODUCTION
I was born on 13th April 1920 in the village of Waddesdon, Buckinghamshire, the fifth child born to Benjamin and Lydia Thorne. My sister Doris was fifteen years my senior, my brother Leslie thirteen years older and Gwen ten years older. My other sister, Sybil, died in infancy. I attended the C. of E. school in the village. Waddesdon is the site of Waddesdon Manor, a Rothschild home, now part of The National Trust. Mother and father were the landlords of The Five Arrows Hotel in Waddesdon. Sadly, my father Benjamin Thomas Thorne had died in 1927 and three years later my mother married a Birmingham man, Ernest Massey.
In 1931, having passed a scholarship, I moved to Aylesbury Grammar School. After Father’s death my stepfather Ernest helped my mother with the hotel and garage business but in the year I started at grammar school, his health, too, became a problem and they were forced to give up the hotel and also the garage business which had been started by my father before the First World War. They moved to Birmingham. I remained at Waddesdon for the remainder of my year at Aylesbury, living with my ‘second mother’, Auntie Betty, one of my mother’s younger sisters. At the end of that year I moved to Birmingham and for a brief six weeks attended Saltley Secondary School. In late September 1932, further deterioration in my stepfather’s condition caused another move to Tewkesbury and I became a pupil at Tewkesbury Grammar School, where I spent two happy years. In the summer of 1934 my stepfather died, leaving mother in a very poor condition both financially and in health. It was decided that she would go to live with my younger sister Gwen at Poletrees Farm and for a time there was a strong possibility that, like my stepbrother, Gordon Massey, I would go into the Licensed Victuallers School, a type of orphanage, at Slough. My elder sister Doris, married to Percy Climer, a policeman, refused to accept this and I went to live with them and spent my final two grammar school years at Slough Secondary School. In 1936, having passed the Oxford School Certificate examination, I went to work as a junior clerk at High Duty Alloys, at the main factory on Slough Trading Estate and in 1938, I moved to the newly built shadow factory at Redditch.
I volunteered for aircrew training on Sept. 6th 1939 at the recruiting centre in Dale End, Birmingham. Because I was employed by High Duty Alloys Ltd., a company heavily engaged in production of aircraft components, I was deferred for three months. I was called to Cardington in January 1940 for medical and educational tests and accepted for pilot training as a cadet, rank AC 2. I again returned to Redditch, to await final call up. This came in May 1940 and summoned me to the receiving wing at Babbacombe in Devon.
Three weeks later I moved to No. 3 ITW at Torquay. With forty-nine others, I was billeted in the White House Hotel, situated high up the bank at the end of the harbour. During our stay we experienced some enemy bombing but suffered no damage. During the raids, mostly at night, we had to go down into the cellars; these cellars still contained an excellent store of wines but to our disappointment all were behind locked grills and remained untouched. My memory of ITW is of much polishing of buttons and buckles and much blancoing of webbing and, on evenings off, drinking Devonshire rough cider, all we could afford. Our officers and NCO instructors were a fine and efficient bunch of men, with whom we got on well. The WO in overall charge of 3 ITW was a super-efficient NCO who, we understood, had been transferred from the army. I remember his name as Warrant
Officer Edsal, a much-feared disciplinarian who was not popular. Of course we were viewed as objects of interest and, dare I say, admiration, by the young ladies of Torquay. I expect the uniform had something to do with the attraction. Naturally, we took advantage of this whenever possible and I remember a pretty little girl who worked in the big store, Bobby’s, in the High Street. It was strongly rumoured that to discourage our amorous activities, our tea was laced with bromide or some such chemical. If this was true it did not work on me!
After successful completion of the ITW course towards the end of September 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain, I was posted to No. 7 EFTS (Elementary Flying Training School) at Desford near Leicester, where I would be taught to fly the DH 82, De Havilland Tiger Moth, a small biplane training aircraft.
Group photo of cadets under training at Babbacombe, late May 1940. Top row, Jonnie Timmis, shot down in September 1941 and became a POW. 2nd row, George Winter, crashed October 1941. Third row, Doug Hartwell shot down or lost, 1941, circumstances unknown and fourth from left, Len Thorne. Bottom row, John Walters from Studley, shot down in North Africa 1941/42.
Pilots under training outside the Norfolk Hotel, Torquay, 1941. Len Thorne far left.
Pre-war, Desford had been a rather expensive private flying club owned by Reid and Sigrist, the instrument makers. At the end of 1939 it was taken over by the Air Ministry. The civilian flying instructors were ‘invited’ to stay on and those who did so were commissioned into the RAF. The school facilities were palatial, with a central block of buildings housing a large lounge with an adjoining dining room and kitchens. We cadets were treated like young gentlemen: pre-war habits had not yet died out. We had our own rooms in the nearby living quarters and even a batman to every four cadets.
A small number of the boys on this course were from wealthy backgrounds and had university or public school educations. These chaps were destined to become commissioned officers if they successfully completed the flying courses. The majority, like myself, were grammar school boys. To us, after the bare rooms of commandeered hotels at Torquay, Desford was pure luxury. Having entered the service as AC2s (Aircraftsman Second Class), popularly referred to as the lowest form of animal life in the Air Force, those of us who had passed the physical and ground training examinations were promoted to LAC (Leading Aircraftsman).