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No. 418 City of Edmonton Squadron

The Intruders

No. 418 City of Edmonton Squadron - The Intruders continued from page 2

There is one thing I should interject into my dissertation, while I stick to the achievements of the aircrew - the tremendous support we got from our ground-crew! They never lived in the luxurious surroundings the officers had. We usually had some beautiful, commandeered, old English house into which we would move our own furniture - while these fellows had to live in Nissen huts. With not too much heat, they were cold, particularly in the winter time, yet they never complained and contributed to a tremendous record in 418 Squadron. Frequently, when we had a maximum effort, out of 25 aircraft we would put 21 on the line, while the adjoining RAF Squadrons would be lucky to put 12, 14 or 15 on their lines. We had some fine fellows with a great esprit-de-corps. To highlight this, I might just mention one amusing incident. The man in charge of one of the aircraft in the flight I commanded at that time, was a Corporal Vallee. I remember he came from Val D'Or. He didn't speak English very well, but he was a real enthusiast, and really proud of his Mosquito. Well, his pilot, I won't mention his name, loaned it to another pilot who had a serious accident on a first tour, and was having trouble settling down on his second tour. Every time he went into Germany, he'd find something wrong with the aircraft and come back. This was not an abnormal thing but this particular night the pilot borrowed Corporal Vallee's aircraft and he went out and as soon as he got to the English coast, he found something wrong. He came back and declared it unserviceable saying that the undercarriage was drooping on it all the time. Well, the next morning, I came into my office and Corporal Vallee came storming in, in his overalls and he was just furious, absolutely furious. He says "F/L so and so, (I won't mention his name) he take my h'aircraft last night and he says the h'under carriage, she's droop. When this morning I jack her h'up apd put it down and she's fine, But she's no dm0 ~ He was very very proud of his aeroplane and that was very typical of all the fellows.

In November of 1944, the Squadron moved to Hartford Bridge accepting a new and final role for the last four months of the war. It was put into Number 2 Group in the Second Tactical Air Force, commanded by the famous AIM Sir Harry Broadhurst and AIM Sir Basil Embry. They were put in a Wing with 29 Squadron and their ]ob was then to attack all kinds of road and rail transport - anything that moved behind the enemy lines - the same role performed by the Squadron when it had been equipped with Bostons. By this time the war, the day fighters, the Typhoons and so on, had very effectively neutralized road and rail transport in the daytime, thus every thing moved at night So the role of the 418 Squadron, was to go out and attack transport, anything they saw and they cer tainly racked up a tremendous score in that period. I picked this out of the Squadrons history the other night: they des troyed and damaged 300 mechanical transport, 15 trains, 13 locomotives and some 20 goods wagons.

I left the Squadron at Hartford Bridge and turned it over to W/C Jack Wickett who was another old friend of mine from Trenton days in the Central Flying School Tommy would remember him quite well. Jack unfortunately only survived a couple of trips before he led one of those daylight raids I talked about with the Wing and was shot down after losing one engine. He was on his way home at low level crossing one of the canals on the border of Holland and Germany, when he was shot down by an ack-ack crew. I would like to relate more about this incident. I met Jack right after he got out of prison camp, after the war, and he told me of his experiences when he was shot down. When he was hit a second time, he said, his undercarriage fell down and he couldn't stay in the air. He saw a plowed field straight ahead and made a belly landing. It turned out that he was shot down by a group of German Boy Scouts. They were called "Hitler Jugend", or Hitler Youth. By this stage of the war, every available man iii Ger many over 18 had been put into the army, and a lot of the ack-ack guns were manned really by these Boy Scout troops. The Mosquito was so feared by the Germans at this point, that it counted for the top score towards getting a "Ritter kreuze", the German Iron Cross. If a pilot or ack-ack crew shot down a single~ngine aircraft he got one point towards a "Ritterkreuze", for a twin-engine aircraft he got two points, for a bomber or a transport - three points, and for a Lancaster or Halifax or a Fortress - four points. But if you shot down a Mosquito, you got five points! With seven points, you got a "Ritterlireuze". Now this fact we did not know at the time and in fact I did not know until Jack told me, was that these kids came running up with their rifles and immediately arrested Jack and his navigator and they were just jumping up and down with excitement. They kept shouting "Ritterkreuze!! Ritterkreuze!!" - because they already had some points and now they had got a Mosquito, and that was five points! Then the Corporal in charge of the ack-ack crew, spotted Jack's three stripes. Jack was a Wing Commander, good for another three points, so one of the lads started jumping again yelling "Ritterkreuze!! mit clusters!! mit clusters!!". An amusing sidelight to an actual experience.

The Squadron ended up at Volkel in Holland, where it finished the war and had to stay like many other Squadrons until it was finally demobilized.

I'd just like to finish up by telling you that 418 Squadron was the highest scoring Squadron in the RCAF during World War II They destroyed 178 enemy aircraft (105 in air-to-air combat), 9 probables and 103 damaged. All 105 aerial victories were achieved by visual contact alone, as the Unit never received any kind of Al (Airborne Interception). They destroyed 83 V-1 flying bombs, over 200 ground vehicles, and 16 locomotives during the short time that the coast was patrolled.

At one stage when I was at Hunsden, we had a Commanding Officer by the name of W/C Gerald Maxwell, RAF, whom a lot of you would remember. He was a World War I Ace with some 32 aircraft destroyed and was highly decorated. One night as I was standing out on the line with him, as the boys were all taking off and he remarked to me "There go the finest pilots and navigators in the world".