Pathfinder Aircrew, their Friends, their Families, and the World they Knew
We are delighted to welcome Sean Feast as a Trustee of the Archive. Sean is a keen supporter of the military with a passion for aviation. Amongst his many books is The Pathfinder Companion, which was published in association with the Pathfinder Collection at RAF Wyton.
With Sean’s arrival, we have set up a Meet the Team page which gives details of who is behind the scenes at the Archive.
Just a quick note, prompted by a comment on our Guy Gibson post yesterday, to say that over the coming months we will be substantially increasing information on the background to the Path Finder Force’s war. This is because the Path Finder Force cannot be seen in isolation from the world in which it operated, which self-evidently had a profound effect on how the Force developed and what its personnel thought about serving in it.
Our tagline has always been:
Pathfinder Aircrew, their Friends, their Families, and the World they Knew
For more about our research aims, see the ‘Sourcing the Archive’ section of The Archive
All the Pathfinder squadrons and units recorded in their ORBs on 8 May 1945 that Victory in Europe had been achieved. Above is our favourite entry.
The full page of the ORB, which is that of the NTU (National Training Unit) at Warboys, is below: (see also Training the Pathfinders)
It is interesting to note that the Pathfinders clearly knew that victory had been declared on 7th May, one day before the public announcement.
Probably at no time in its existence has the prestige of the RAF stood higher than at the end of the Second World War. The huge part that the RAF had played in the Allied victory was emphasised at that time by the fact that it was Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder who was the Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, second only to General Eisenhower himself. The RAF’s Sir Arthur Tedder & the German Surrender
The last of our topical posts for the time being on the type of restrictions and shortages which people put up with during the war. The three items all appeared in the same edition of the Manchester Evening News on 3 November 1943.
The main interest is in the marriage of Cyril Tate – he and three of his fellow pilots managed to get special leave for his wedding, a very unusual dispensation given that all four pilots would be away from duty at the same time. This is a particularly nice photograph of a wartime wedding, with everyone looking very happy.
Then we have the rather feisty Joyce Daisy Munro , who was summoned for going into a restricted area ‘for the purposes of pleasure’:
Lastly, for anyone grumbling because they can’t get any eggs from the supermarket (dried eggs were proverbially disgusting):
The various items on this website about Donald Bennett, the highly gifted leader of the Pathfinders, have now been gathered on one central page: Donald Bennett, The Pathfinders’ AOC. At the bottom of this page is a link to the IWM sound recordings – Donald Bennett, IWM Sound Recordings (1986) – of Bennett discussing his life and RAF career shortly before his sudden death in September 1986.
Two items from the IWM this morning, both from Richard Maddox who is a volunteer at the museum. The first concerns Bomber Command generally. It is a link to Richard’s post on the IWM Volunteer website about the man who is thought to be the oldest flyer in Bomber Command. This was Viscount Stansgate, who trained as a rear gunner and flew operationally in the last year of the war – at the astonishing age of 67.
A Facebook post by David Layne today reminded me of this page: Valentine Card It has been on our website a long time, having first been posted in 2009 and then updated in 2011. It relates to Robert Crowe, a 15 Squadron gunner, who died in July 1944.
The last day of what has been a very good year for the RAF Pathfinders Archive. We have had over 17,000 visitors to the site and 65,000 individual views. These views have been from all round the world, including the most unlikely places, and the only major landmass where we have not set foot is Greenland.
We have been sent a lot of very interesting material, and this page Material Added to the Archive in 2019 contains a quick look at some of the most notable items.
We are most grateful to everyone who has sent anything this year, from the smallest to the largest collections, and if we have not acknowledged you specifically it is only because of the time factor. Next year should see the creation of a rolling acknowledgement page which will make clear how indebted we are to those who continue to send us this priceless material.
With kindest wishes for 2020,
THE RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVE
Jennie, Kris, John and Barry – The Trustees
The information about the Channel Dash in April 1942 has reminded some readers of the attacks on the Tirpitz in 1942, in which aircrew who would one day become Pathfinders also took part. We have posted before about Donald Bennett’s involvement in these attacks. He was shot down on the night of 27/28 April 1942, and made a successful escape through Norway, reaching England exactly one month later. Two months later he was given command of the Pathfinders. See:
Bennett and the Sinking of the Tirpitz
Ian Campbell in Australia sent us yesterday a link to the Australian War Memorial at Canberra which now owns the Mae West which Bennett was wearing when he was shot down. Bennett had buried this Mae West and his parachute under snow once he was safely on the ground.
The museum’s website tells us that a local villager named Fordal preserved the Mae West faithfully (the museum’s text includes three variants of the Norwegian’s Christian name):
Within hours, both were safely recovered and hidden by local villager, Redier Fordal. Most of the parachute materials were salvaged and used by the village, but Reidel kept the Mae West hidden from the Germans until the end of the war. […]
Don Bennett died in 1986. In 1992, Bennett’s widow, Mrs Ly Bennett, visited Trondheim on the 50th Anniversary of the raid and was presented with this Mae West by Reider Fordal, who had kept it safe for 50 years in the hope he could present it personally to Don Bennett. The Mae West was then donated to the Pathfinder Force Association (Queensland) upon Ly Bennett’s death in 2000, before being offered to the Australian War Memorial in 2006.
RAF PATHFINDERS ARCHIVE 