Fly Past

April 2018 FLYPAST 67

SPECIAL DELIVERY 100 YEARS OF THE ROYAL AIR FORCE

Above left

A page from Joe

Churchill’s logbook

showing the types

he fl ew. Clockwise

from top left: Tiger

Moth, PT-27 Kaydet,

Harvard II, D-Day

striped 295 Squadron

Stirling IV ‘8Z-X’ with

magnifi cent Indian

chief nose-art and

Albemarles behind;

Horsa II and 295

Squadron Albemarle.

Left

The cover of Flt Lt

Churchill’s logbook.

Below left

Rae Churchill at 32

Elementary Flying

Training School,

Bowden, Alberta,

Canada – enclosed

cockpit Tiger Moths

behind.

our operations and this fact was

entered as ‘U’ in our logbooks.

“RAF intelligence gave us random

routes to avoid defended enemy

areas and we had to fly low to avoid

German radar. Low-level night

flying was very dangerous work

because of trees, powerlines, tall

buildings and [the] tops of hills.

“On one late mission in a [Short]

Stirling, I scraped the tree tops once

with my wingtip and it really scared

me but I don’t know if the crew

realised what had happened.”

AGENTS AND TROOPS

“All drop zones were coded to

obscure their geographical locations

and known only to the navigator

in case we were shot down and

interrogated. Agents coming aboard

wore balaclavas, so we never saw

myself as pilot and three others. Of

those, two were navigators. One was

the map reader and the other one

was for overall position operations.

“We operated in moonlight, two,

three or four days either side of the

date of the full moon which was

essential for visibility as we did low-

level flying. Low cloud meant we

were sometimes unable to complete