WW2 100 – 10 July 1942 – ‘His Last Flight into the Sunshine’: Pilot Officer John Alastair Seabrook (1920-42), Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, 250 Squadron
Continued from 14 March 1942 – ‘A born leader of men’:
MAJOR GENERAL LANCELOT ERNEST DENNYS MC and Bar (1890-1942)
1st Punjab Regiment, Indian
Army
https://budleighpastandpresent.blogspot.com/2020/11/ww2-7514-born-leader-of-men-major.html
El Alamein War Cemetery Image credit: Commonwealth War Graves Commission
John’s name does not appear on Budleigh Salterton’s War Memorial, but the Commonwealth War Graves Commission records tell us that he was the son of Henry Herbert Parks Seabrook, and of Dorothy Seabrook, of Budleigh Salterton, and that he is commemorated in the El Alamein War Cemetery.
St Mary the Virgin parish church, Broomfield, Essex, seen from the west. Image credit: John Salmon/Wikipedia
I searched hard for local mentions of John’s family without success. Finally, via Google, I found myself reading about various Seabrooks in an online history of the village of Broomfield, Essex. Thanks to the impressively organised Broomfield Parish Council website you can read chapters from a scholarly and readable book by historian Ken Searles entitled Broomfield Buildings and People.
Butlers, in the village of Broomfield. Reproduced courtesy of Broomfield Buildings and People by Ken Searles
Home was one of the village’s most prominent and historic
houses. ‘There are few properties in Broomfield whose origins go further back
in time than those of Butlers,’ wrote Ken Searles. The
Seabrooks were an Essex farming family. Henry Herbert Parks Seabrook’s first wife Elizabeth
had died in 1899, aged only 28, and Dorothy was his second wife. It was
in Broomfield that John was born – apparently on 22 February 1920 according to
one record. He seems
to have had an elder brother, Arthur Reginald Seabrook, who died in November 1963,
aged 57.
Henry Herbert Parks Seabrook died in 1937, aged 68, but his widow seems to have lived on in Broomfield, at Butlers, until after John’s death in 1942. She would then have moved to Budleigh Salterton, which accounts for the record of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. She died in 1962, aged 72.
Broomfield War Memorial Image credit: www.tracesofwar.com
John’s name, without further details, does appear on a list of 18 men from Broomfield who died in WW2, published online at www.chelmsfordwarmemorial.co.uk Of those 18, 11 are fully profiled with a biography and accompanying photo; the remainder, including John, merely have a link to the bare details published by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
A poster advertising
the RAFVR. Image credit: Imperial War Museums
For one reason or another, John decided to join the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR), which had been formed in July 1936 to supplement the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. The purpose was to provide a reserve of aircrew to draw upon in the event of war. The Auxiliary Air Force, which had been formed in 1925 by the local Territorial Associations, was organised by squadron and used local recruitment similar to the Territorial Army Regiments. When WW2 broke out in September 1939 the RAFVR comprised 6,646 pilots, 1,625 observers and 1,946 wireless operators.
During the war, the Air Ministry used the RAFVR as the
principal means of entry for aircrew to serve with the RAF. All those called up
for Air Force Service with the RAF, both commissioned officers and other ranks,
did so as members of the RAFVR under the National Service (Armed Forces) Act
1939.
I
have not been able to gather information about John’s pre-war activities in the
RAFVR but at the time of his death he
was serving with No. 250 Squadron RAF, having been given the Service Number 129946. His
squadron had started life as a Royal Air Force reconnaissance and anti–submarine
unit in WW1, being formed on 10 May 1918 at Padstow, Cornwall, for coastal
reconnaissance duties over the Bristol Channel and its approaches. It flew
anti-submarine patrols until the Armistice and disbanded on 31 May 1919.
SS Duchess of Richmond. Built
in 1928 by John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland, as an ocean liner for
Canadian Pacific Steamships, Duchess of Richmond was requisitioned as a
troopship. She was renamed Empress of Canada in 1947
The Squadron was reformed in March 1940 as a training unit. In November 1940, it was sent abroad, embarking at Liverpool on SS Duchess of Richmond, sailing round the north of Ireland, then zig-zagging south through the Atlantic to avoid enemy ships. They called in at Freetown, Cape Town and Durban. They were allowed off the boat for the first time in Durban, then embarked the next day and sailed up to Tawfiq at the south end of the Suez Canal. From there they were taken by train to a transit camp in the desert, and then crossed the Sinai Desert to Aqabah in Palestine.
Image credit: www.rafht.co.uk
On 1 April 1941, No.250 reformed at RAF Aqir from K Flight as No.250 (Sudan) Squadron. The Squadron's badge, seen above, was adorned with a River Eagle, a bird native to Sudan, and the motto ‘Close to the sun’.
A
Messerschmitt BF109 Image credit:
Wikipedia
Equipping the Squadron with a fighter aircraft to match the enemy’s was a priority. During the early years of WW2, the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt Bf109 was one of the world's finest single seat fighters. Its basic design provided the potential for it to take new engines and armament so that it remained the backbone of the enemy’s fighter air force.
The Bf109E was an improved version of an aircraft designed by Willi Messerschmitt in 1935. It had proved to be a superb fighter during early combat trials in the Spanish Civil War. Only when German fighter pilots met the Spitfire in combat did they find an aircraft in some ways equal to their own. The Bf109E was as fast as the Spitfire, faster than the Hurricane but could out-climb both.
The American-built Tomahawk fighter was thought to be a suitable match for its German adversary, and by the end of April the Squadron had received enough Tomahawk aircraft to become operational on defensive duties in Palestine. Built by the American Curtiss-Wright Corporation, the Curtiss P-40, known as Tomahawks by the RAF, were single-seat, all-metal fighter and ground attack aircraft that first flew in 1938.
John would lose his life, not in Palestine, but in the air battles which took place from 1-27 July 1942 over the deserts of Egypt and Libya, during what became known as the First Battle of El Alamein, part of the Western Desert campaign of WW2.
Military operations in the campaign had begun in June 1940 with the Italian declaration of war and the Italian invasion of Egypt from Libya in September. Operation Compass, a British five-day raid in December 1940, had led to the destruction of the Italian 10th Army, and Benito Mussolini had sought help from Adolf Hitler, who sent a small German force to Tripoli. In the spring of 1941, Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps in Operation Sonnenblume forced the Allies into a retreat to the Egyptian border. The port of Tobruk, held by Allied forces, was under siege from April to November 1941.
No. 250 Squadron was one of the many units engaged in air battles as part of the Desert Air Force (DAF), an Allied tactical air force created under RAF Middle East Command in North Africa in 1941 to provide close air support to the British Eighth Army against Axis forces. Throughout WW2, the DAF was made up of squadrons from the Royal Air Force (RAF), the South African Air Force (SAAF), the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) and other Allied air forces.
No.3 Squadron, for example, part of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), was given an army co-operation role, and like No.250 Squadron became part of the Allies' Desert Air Force, supporting the 8th Army. Naturally they shared many similar experiences of the air war, and I have found it useful to refer on occasion to Neil Leybourne Smith’s impressive History of 3 Squadron AFC, RAAF (First published as a Video-History © 1989) and accessible at www.3squadron.org.au
In May 1941, a detachment of 250 Squadron had begun offensive sweeps over Syria, but in June it began operations in the Western Desert and by late 1941 it was one of 16 squadrons of aircraft in the Western Desert Air Force: nine fighter, six medium bomber and one tactical reconnaissance, fielding approximately 1,000 combat aircraft. In November/December 1941, the Axis forces were defeated and Tobruk was relieved with the success of Operation Crusader.
Kittyhawk Mark I, AK596, on a landing ground
while being air-tested in the Western Desert. Image credit: Imperial War Museums. Kittyhawk
was the name that the RAF gave to the advanced variants (D, E, F, K, L, M and
N) of the American Curtiss P-40 fighter plane. Tomahawk was the name given by the RAF to the earlier
variants (A, B and C) of the plane
No.250 Squadron was withdrawn in February 1942 for defensive operations, following the decision to replace its Tomahawk aircraft with the new Curtis P40E Kittyhawk IA. The new aircraft did not fly that much faster than the Tomahawks, but as Neil Leybourne Smith points out, the lethal density of their six wing-mounted 0.5-inch machine guns certainly beat the Tomahawks' firepower.
Additionally, the new aircraft could operate as fighter-bombers, as seen in the above photo. In April, John and his fellow-airmen began three weeks of intensive training to prepare for a new campaign in which they'd been ear-marked to fly their new aircraft.
This meant learning the techniques
of dive-bombing - to counter the ever-increasing numbers of enemy in the desert
who were already experts in the tactic.
Like the Tomahawks, the Kittyhawks’ robust construction was able to withstand a terrific amount of combat punishment and this factor alone made them ideal aeroplanes for the Desert War, particularly with experienced ground crews that could continue an already extraordinary record of maintaining and modifying the Squadron's aircraft.
Dust and sand were ever-present trouble-makers, often responsible for destroying engines even after relatively short use. In the air, the Kittyhawk Mark Is (P40D/P40E) could cope well with most of the enemy aircraft they met, but their heaviness stopped them from being as fast in speed or climb as the Messerschmitt 109F-2s which were then appearing in the desert skies in increasing numbers.
Early 1942 saw the Allies driven back by Rommel and defeated in the Battle of Gazala, which took place in May/June 1942. Axis troops captured Tobruk on 21 June in what was the second largest capitulation of British Army forces in the war after the fall of Singapore. But Axis supply lines were over-stretched and Rommel failed to press home his advantage. The First Battle of El Alamein would end in stalemate on 27 July 1942.
Italian anti-aircraft
battery at Marsa Matrouh in June, 1942
For all the aircrews in this grim desert war, the barren landscape, hostile skies and anti-aircraft fire were bad enough. Additionally, the to-ing and fro-ing in the Western Desert campaign, with what must have seemed to be an endless series of advances and retreats, placed immense strain on the air forces of both sides. Neil Leybourne Smith refers to the missions that were flown constantly to provide air cover for the hard-pressed British land forces, but sometimes aircraft couldn't return to the airfield they'd left because the Squadron had retreated to another location while they were flying. 250 Squadron found itself operating from a succession of at least six airfields in 1941, and at least nine in 1942, excluding ‘various landing grounds’. January of that year saw four moves in one month.
Some
moves were carried out during dust-storms, others at night. Each move meant
tremendous effort and danger for the ground crew, often under enemy
fire. Besides the personnel casualties, many transport vehicles were
damaged. Anything that couldn't be packed and moved, or was still unserviceable
at the time of departure, had to be destroyed. The History of 3 Squadron AFC, RAAF mentions that at one stage 48,000 rounds of .303 ammunition had to be
sacrificed.
Neil Leybourne Smith portrays the strength of the
opposing Allied and Axis air forces in the Western Desert war as quite evenly
matched. Against the Allies, the Luftwaffe flew
the equivalent of about ten fighter squadrons of Bf109Fs with
some Bf109Gs, plus Bf110s and about the same number of Stuka Ju87
dive bombing squadrons, plus the equivalent of another seven or eight
squadrons made up of Ju88 fighter-bombers, He111 bombers, and Ju52
transports with some transport gliders.
An early Macchi C.202, apparently photographed in Libya
Image credit: Wikipedia
The Italian air force added the equal of at least another ten squadrons of mainly Macchi MC202s, with some CR42 and Ju87 Squadriglia (Squadrons) actively operating as well. These were the opposing air forces which would be supporting their respective ground forces in a fight that would go down in history as being the great decisive battle of the African campaign, the outcome of which was to be a significant turning point of the entire war. It was to become known as the Second Battle of El Alamein, when Allied forces were finally victorious.
A German soldier near a crashed Curtiss Kittyhawk I fighter from No. 260 Squadron, Royal Air Force, in North Africa, 1942. Image credit: Australian War Memorial under the ID Number: P03091.003
John did not live to see the victory. In that summer of 1942 the desert skies were thick with swarms of aircraft from both sides as they targeted each others’ troops and landing grounds. By the end of the day, on Friday 10 July, 250 Squadron had lost five of its Kittyhawks to German and Italian pilots.
According to the research of Christopher Shores and Giovanni Massimello in their History of the Mediterranean Air War, John’s Kittyhawk I AK657 ‘V’ was shot down by an Italian Macchi MC202 at Ghazal Station, as was a second Kittyhawk I, piloted by Sergeant Walter John Mortimer, a Barnstaple man. The two pilots had set off at the same time in separate aircraft, and were recorded respectively at the time as Missing and Killed in Action. Another of the Kittyhawks was shot down by a Macchi MC202, and two others by Messerschmitt Bf 109s.
John’s promotion to Pilot Officer with effect from 8 July 1942 was announced in the London Gazette. He was 22 years old.
Image credit: Kirrages/Wikipedia
In
the El Alamein War Cemetery, a personal inscription, requested perhaps by his
mother, reads ‘His Last Flight into the Sunshine’. Surely a reference to 250 Squadron’s
motto?
From Ken Searles’ research into the village of Broomfield, which I quoted at the beginning of this post, it seems that John’s widowed mother Dorothy Seabrook may have lived in Budleigh for as long as 20 years. Perhaps someone in our town, in the distant past, learnt from Dorothy about her brave Pilot Officer son even though he did not live in Budleigh and is not remembered on our War Memorial.
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