36. Pilot Officer - later promoted to Flying Officer – Butch. ‘My dog “Butch” has grown incredibly’, Pat wrote home, ‘and now likes to fight as well as fly, although he doesn’t yet display much intelligence.’ (Stephanie Bladen, Dimity Torbett)
37. Pat with Butch. (Bill Hughes)
38. Butch on top of the fuselage of a Blenheim next to the gun turret. When nobody was looking Pat took the pup flying in his Blenheim (it was one of those well-kept secrets that everybody knew about) and in his letters home to his Mother, he would tell her the many flying hours Butch had accumulated. (Bill Hughes)
39. Vincent ‘Bush’ Parker after his release from Colditz. After the war he stayed in the RAF but on 29 January 1946 he was killed in a tragic accident when the Hawker Tempest he was flying crashed into a hillside, cause unknown. He was deservedly Mentioned in Despatches the following 13 June. (Colin Burgess)
40. Ron Lees, the Australian CO of 72 Squadron. He remained in the RAF after the war and on 3 February 1966, after thirty-five years of distinguished service, he retired as Air Marshal Sir Ronald Beresford Lees KCB, CBE, DFC & Bar. (RAAF Museum)
41. Desmond Sheen seated in the cockpit of his Spitfire. Out of the twenty-four RAAF cadets who chose to journey to England to join the RAF early in 1937, just three flew Spitfires during the Battle of Britain: Pat Hughes; Gordon Olive; and Desmond Sheen. This particular aircraft was Spitfire Mk. I, K9959/RN-J of 72 Squadron, Sheen’s regular machine until he joined the Photographic Reconnaissance Unit (PDU) in April 1940. His personal emblem was a brown boomerang in a white circle. (Desmond Sheen)
42. Junkers Ju 88s. In 1940 the Ju 88 was the latest and fastest German bomber. Originally designed as a dive-bomber, it proved to be one of the most versatile types in the Luftwaffe arsenal and was always regarded by those Allied pilots who encountered it as a formidable opponent. (MAP)
43. Ju 88 under fire. (RAAF Museum)
44. Tally ho! At 6.15 p.m. on 8 July 1940, the three Spitfires of Blue Section, 234 Squadron, led by Pat Hughes intercepted a Junkers Ju 88 twenty-five miles south-east of Land’s End. Pat’s two wingmen were New Zealander, P/O Keith Lawrence as Blue 2, and Sgt George Bailey as Blue 3. (AWM)
45. Gladiator N5585 of 247 Squadron depicted with the ‘Anzac Answer’ emblem. The sketch is based on the diagrams in Francis Mason’s book, Battle Over Britain. (Dennis Newton)
46. Pat Hughes and 234 Squadron at St Eval. The extra details on the photograph were added by Keith Lawrence who, with Pat, took part in 234 Squadron’s first credited victory on 8 July 1940. He was also flying with Pat when the Australian was killed in action during the first huge daylight attack on London on 7 September 1940. Pat is seated on the left. (Keith Lawrence)
47. Pat Hughes at dispersal, as usual wearing his dark blue Royal Australian Air Force uniform. (Dimity Torbett)
48. Messerschmitt Me 109E. The Me 109 and Me 110 aircraft referred to by the Allies were actually the Bf 109 and Bf 110 respectively. (MAP)
49. A Messerschmitt Me 109E damaged to the extent that its port undercarriage has dropped down. Me 109s made up the majority of Pat Hughes’ victories. (AWM)
50. Messerschmitt Me 110. Although fast and well armed with two 20 mm cannons and four 7.9 mm machine guns in the nose firing forward and one flexible 7.9 mm machine gun in the rear cockpit, it failed as an escort fighter when confronted by Fighter Command’s fast and far more nimble Hurricanes and Spitfires. Later in the war the type was developed into a highly dangerous night fighter. Pat Hughes claimed three Me 110s in his most successful combat on 4 September 1940. (AWM)
51. Pat Hughes with a couple of pilots from 234 Squadron’s ‘B’ Flight. (Stephanie Bladen)
52. Pat in happier times at a picnic at St Eval in August 1940, before he found himself in the position of temporary commander of 234 Squadron. Pat led 234 into some of the heaviest fighting of the Battle of Britain. (Bill Hughes, Dimity Torbett)
53. Pat Hughes photographed the day before he was killed in action. Despite the smile, it seems evident that he was feeling the effects of stress and fatigue by this stage. In the intense, bitter fighting three days before 7 September 1940 he was credited with destroying six, possibly seven, enemy aircraft. (Bill Hughes, Keith Lawrence)
54. F/Lt Dick Reynell, the other Australian pilot killed in action on 7 September 1940, was shot down by Me 109s. His parachute also failed to open. (Marjorie Horn)
55. Dornier Do 17s over London on 7 September 1940. The curved road on the left is Silvertown Way where it becomes North Woolwich Road. West Ham Speedway is directly underneath the bombers. The first bombs fell on the capital’s dockyard areas of Woolwich and the Isle of Dogs at around 5.20 p.m. (AWM)
56. The London docks area ablaze late on the afternoon of 7 September 1940. That night, the code word ‘Cromwell’, Alert No. 1, was issued. This was the alarm signalling that the anticipated German invasion of England had begun. Fortunately, it was a false alarm. (AWM)
57. A Spitfire breaks away from an attack on a Dornier Do 17. The mission that day for the crew of Dornier Do 17Z (2596), F1-BA, of Stab KG 76 was to photograph the bombing of London docks. Its crew was Lt Gottfried Schneider, Ofw Karl Schneider, Fw Erich Rosche and Uffz Walter Rupprecht. On the return flight, the Dornier was attacked repeatedly by RAF fighters. Among these may have been the Spitfire of P/O Ellis Aries of 602 Squadron who claimed a Do 17 destroyed, and a Hurricane flown by F/O George Peters of 79 Squadron. (ww2images.com)
58. The site of Pat Hughes’ grave in the churchyard of St James’ Church of England in the parish of Sutton-on-Hull. (Stephanie Bladen)
59. Dornier Do 17Z (2596) crashed down into a stream at Sunbridge near Sevenoaks at around 6.00 p.m. on 7 September 1940. The tail fin was found some distance from the main wreckage. (After the Battle Collection via Winston Ramsey)
60. The flying helmet of Fw Erich Rosche, wireless operator of Dornier Do 17Z (2596). Erich Rosche managed to bail out and was captured but the rest of the crew perished. At his capture, Rosche was relieved of his flying helmet and oxygen mask, items which became the highly prized souvenirs of a Sevenoaks resident, or residents. (After the Battle Collection via Winston Ramsey)
61. Tool kit found at the crash site of Dornier Do 17Z (2596). (After the Battle Collection via Winston Ramsey)
62. Dornier engine cowling clasp with a .303-inch shell casing embedded in it. Over the years two excavations were carried out at the site of the Dornier crash and they made numerous remarkable finds. (After the Battle Collection via Winston Ramsey)
63. Portrait of Kay Hughes c. 1942. By then Kay was a WAAF. (Stephanie Bladen)
64. Kay when she was presented with Pat’s posthumous Distinguished Flying Cross at a ceremony in June 1942. (AWM)
65. Pat Hughes’ name in the Australian list on the Battle of Britain Memorial, London. (Author’s collection)
66. Pat’s memorial plaque on the stone wall at the front of All Saints Church, Kiama, New South Wales. It was placed there by his sister Muriel ‘Midge’ Tongue. (Author’s collection)
APPENDIX 1
NEW SOUTH WALES: THE ANCESTRY OF PAT HUGHES
In the early 1900s, to be a fifth-generation Australian of British descent was rare. You belonged very much to a minority group. Paterson Clarence Hughes, born on 19 September 1917, was one of those rare few – but he was rare in more ways than one.
Pat Hughes’ ancestor was John Nichols (sometimes spelt ‘Nicholls’ or ‘Nicholds’) who had arrived in New South Wales in 1788 with the historic ‘First Fleet’ from England. He’d had no choice in the matter. He was a convict.
As far as the Hughes family is concerned, Pat’s story began in London at the Old Bailey on 21 April 1784 when John Nichols, estimated age twenty-nine, was accused of ‘Theft: Simple Grand Larceny’. It was alleged he stole merchandise from his employers to the value of £15 0s 6d.
Much of the world that John lived in was violent, callous and crude. This was Georgian England, the turbulent realm of ‘sad, mad’ King Ge
orge III. Dirt and disease flourished amid the trappings of elegance and luxury. London was a metropolis polluted by slums where crime, cruelty, filth and sickness abounded. Such conditions were accepted by most as part of the nature of existence, like the weather or the four seasons of the year. Londoners were hardened to it. Some were even entertained by such sights as the insane in Bedlam Asylum and the whipping of half-naked women at the Bridewell; or the hangings at Tyburn, where the corpse of a young boy or girl might be seen dangling from a rope between the bodies of a highwayman and a murderer. Penalties for even minor crimes were harsh and uncompromising. They could range from death to transportation to distant colonies.
With one word – ‘Guilty!’ – John Nichols was sentenced to transportation to Africa for seven years.1
England lost her American colonies early in King George III’s reign. For a century beforehand, surplus criminals had been shipped to Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, but that changed in 1776. The American Revolution brought the convict transportation system to North America to an abrupt halt. Afterwards, the newly constituted United States of America refused to tarnish its principles by returning to the practice. As a result, the English gaols became pitifully overcrowded.
For an expedient short-term solution to the problem, until something more permanent could be resolved, the British Parliament passed the Hulks Act of March 1784. More and more convicts were ‘temporarily’ incarcerated in ships moored along the River Thames, in Portsmouth Harbour and elsewhere. These ‘hulks’ were mostly old ex-navy vessels that were no longer seaworthy. At first they were operated by private contractors. The numbers detained on them varied with their size and capacity but averaged from 275 to 300 per vessel. The first Thames hulks were moored off Woolwich and on the bank opposite. In the eighteenth century, there were marshes along the northern shore and few people lived there. On the southern side was the ‘Woolwich Warren’, a hotchpotch of workshops, timber yards, foundries, warehouses, barracks and firing ranges. Despite their growing numbers, the hulks were soon overcrowded. By the time John Nichols was sentenced, overcrowding in the gaols and on the hulks had already become so serious that Parliament decided to renew the transportation system. But to where?
A House of Commons Committee looking at alternatives concluded that criminals might be transported firstly to those parts of Africa that belonged to the Crown; secondly, to the provinces and islands still subject to the Crown in America; or lastly, to other parts of the globe that would not violate the territorial rights of any other European power. Courts were encouraged, therefore, to condemn convicted criminals to sentences of transportation to Africa at almost every session. John Nichols’ destination was to be Cape Coast Castle in West Africa, despite the fact that an experimental transportation of 300 prisoners there in 1782 had ended disastrously when more than half of them died. Even so, preparations for transporting convicts to Africa were still going on at the end of 1784.
John never went to Africa.
The African solution was doomed to failure and John was imprisoned instead on the penal hulk Censor. This was an old frigate purchased from the Admiralty by Duncan Campbell in 1776, the first of his hulks on the Thames. She initially housed 183 prisoners but Campbell successfully contracted to accommodate 240 on her from October 1784. Likewise, another of his hulks, the Justitia, originally housed 125 but this was increased to 250. As well as prisoners, each ship had around twenty officers and guards on board.
As convict numbers increased, so did the number of floating prisons. Like a floating shantytown, hulk after hulk, hung with bedding, clothes, and rotting rigging, lined the river. On hot, still days the stench of the prisoners contaminated the air from bank to bank.
Because of the hulks’ isolated position, convicts were less able than prisoners on shore to have special treatment, particularly visits from relatives and friends. Normally they were stationed on the south shore of the river, but sometimes because of unrest they were anchored off the north side to make escape attempts more difficult. Escapes to the more populous Woolwich waterfront were more common than to the north shore through the forbidding marshes. Few convicts tried for freedom that way.
Whether John was sent directly to a prison hulk or first to a gaol is not known, but he is erroneously recorded as being aged twenty-four (rather than twenty-nine) and on the Censor from at least 11 July 1785.
Around the same time, major dredging of the river was needed to overcome a drift of the channel toward the centre. John may have been a member of a chain gang clearing the river by raising sand, soil and gravel, or in another gang working to build docks, quays and yards for the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich.
Meanwhile, the authorities were urgently reassessing how to deal with their overcrowding dilemma. They were down to their last alternatives. One suggestion was to establish a convict colony on the other side of the world at Botany Bay, about a seven-month voyage away from England on the east coast of New Holland.
As early as 1779, Sir Joseph Banks, who had sailed nine years earlier with James Cook aboard the Endeavour, had recommended this as a likely site for a penal colony to a House of Commons Committee. Then in 1783, a plan for resettling colonists who had remained loyal to England during the American War of Independence came to the attention of the Home Office, presided over by Viscount Sydney, the Secretary of State for Home Affairs in His Majesty’s Government. It was realised that, rather than being for free American loyalists, Botany Bay could be an excellent destination for the mushrooming number of convicts sentenced to be transported.
A decision was finally made and on 18 August 1786, Lord Sydney wrote to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury:
I am … commanded to signify to your Lordships his Majesty’s pleasure that you do forthwith take such measures as may be necessary for providing a proper number of vessels for the conveyance of 750 convicts to Botany Bay, together with such provisions, necessaries, and implements for agriculture as may be necessary for their use after their arrival.2
Lord Sydney’s letter finally set in motion the organisation of the historic ‘First Fleet’, which was destined to give birth to a new nation.
Commodore Arthur Phillip, a retired naval officer, was placed in charge of the enterprise. Born in London on 11 October 1738, Phillip had joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman in 1755, seen active service in the Seven Years’ War, and then retired on half-pay. After some years as a farmer he later served, with the Admiralty’s permission, as an officer in the Portuguese navy. He rejoined the Royal Navy in 1778, and then retired again in 1784 on half-pay. Now, two years further on, he was chosen not only to form a fleet and establish a penal settlement at Botany Bay, but also to act as governor of the new colony.
Phillip dealt methodically with the numerous problems before him. During the remaining months of 1786, the personnel and vessels for the expedition were gradually assembled. The Navy Board chartered five transports – the Alexander, Charlotte, Friendship, Lady Penrhyn and Scarborough – and three victuallers (stores ships) – the Borrowdale, Fishburn and Golden Grove. It soon became obvious, however, that these eight vessels and the two warships, HMS Sirius and HMS Supply, would not be adequate, and a sixth transport, the Prince of Wales, was added to the expedition. Of the six transports, the Scarborough had been built in 1782 at the port from which she derived her name; the Alexander at Hull in 1783, the Charlotte in 1784 on the Thames and the Friendship at Scarborough the same year; and the Lady Penrhyn and the Prince of Wales, both in Thames yards, in 1786. Of the three storeships, the Fishburn and the Golden Grove had been built at Whitby in 1780, the Borrowdale at Sunderland in 1785.3
Meanwhile, convicts nominated for transportation at Woolwich were employed raising ballast for the voyage, and those on board the prison ships at Portsmouth and Plymouth had the task of picking oakum and spinning rope-yarn. Those from other parts of Britain were moved in preparation to the hulks at Bristol, Leith, and Harwich.
On 24 February 1787, after spending almos
t three years on the Censor, John Nichols was transferred to Portsmouth prior to being loaded aboard the Scarborough with 207 other male convicts. Among these men were James Ruse, who had been sentenced to death for stealing, but this had been changed to transportation for seven years; William Thompson, convicted for stealing clothing to the value of 5s; Philip Farrell, a pickpocket accused of stealing a handkerchief valued at 1s; and Thomas Griffiths convicted of stealing items to the value of 80s.
The Scarborough was a two-decked, three-masted vessel, rigged as a barque, having an extreme length of 111 feet 6 inches, an extreme breadth of 30 feet 2 inches, and a height between decks of 4 feet 5 inches. Only the Alexander was slightly larger. The Scarborough was the first transport to reach the fleet’s assembly point at Portsmouth but she had not been ready to receive prisoners. It was found that her security hatches were faulty so on 12 January carpenters were employed to make the appropriate alterations.
The first convicts had already been embarked at Woolwich, males on the Alexander and females on the Lady Penrhyn, on 6 January 1787. The Charlotte and the Friendship embarked their prisoners at Plymouth, and the Prince of Wales and the Scarborough at Portsmouth, where the fleet assembled in March. A few late arrivals were also added to those aboard the Alexander and the Lady Penrhyn.4
A Spitfire Pilot's Story: Pat Hughes: Battle of Britain Top Gun Page 28