by Ian Clarke, Alberta Culture and Multiculturalism May 10, 1991
Freddy Clarke was born into a Barbadian family of colonial politicians of parents whose health and careers would have a profound influence on his life. In 1929, at the age of twelve he arrived in Calgary with his family who returned to live in Crescent Heights on the north hill where they had originally settled in 1911. It was there his father had established the medical practice that he would sacrifice in 1914 by joining the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps for overseas service. As plagued by the cash-poor depression economy as each of Dr. Clarke's patients, the family was still able to send the young graduate of William Aberhart's Crescent Heights High School, east to Winnipeg in 1935 where he entered a classics and humanities programme in St John's College.
Despite having come to Calgary to escape the debilitating heat and humidity of his tropical home, Dr. Clarke was struck down by a massive stroke in 1936. Without his degree, Freddy was forced to return to Calgary to support the family and took a job at the Alberta Wheat Pool. Freddy's parents returned to Barbados in 1937. His father would die there less than four years later, while his son was serving overseas with the Royal Canadian Air Force in England. Without a car, or the apparent need for one, Freddy had never acquired a driver's licence, but in 1938 he began flight training with the original Calgary Flying Club, then known as the Calgary Aero Club, at the old Renfrew aerodrome. It was a childhood dream that he had nurtured since the day in the mid-twenties when the Island of Barbados had been visited by,
"Captain Lancaster in an Avian was island-hopping down there. It was a tremendous thrill. He came and landed on the golf course. It was tremendous. Of course there were lots of aircraft in this area when we came to Calgary in 1929" (1)
Within the year he had soloed in the Club's Gipsy Moth. Building up his hours as quickly as a Wheat Pool salary would allow, he had earned his pilot's licence by June 1939. Left to his own devices, when war broke out in September of the same year, Freddy and a few of his flying club chums signed up for the RCAF. Conceivably, they might have been overseas for the last months of the Battle of Britain, had not a careless recruitment officer used their sheaf of applications as a door stop. Somewhat anxious that they had been turned down for flying service, the bewildered recruits inquired as to their status only to find that carelessness at the recruitment centre had delayed their induction by half a year. On the other hand, a number of Americans had come to the Calgary Flying Club and had been given "provisional Pilot Officer" status by the RCAF:
"and there we were waiting to try and get in the air force, waiting for word, we had applied right off the bat. Eventually we did get and we found out . . . that they had found a whole pile of applications stuck behind a door with about an inch of dust--mine and a whole bunch of others. War broke out the 3rd of September, and I got in the 1st or 2nd of June." (2)
In the late spring of 1940, toward the end of the "Phoney War" in western Europe, the RCAF finally found the missing applications and in early June, Clarke and the other who had applied with him in September of '39 joined the ranks of the RCAF Reserve. (3) Ironically for the new aircrew-in-training, the Calgary Aero Club, one of seventeen like it in the country, became the No. 5 Elementary Flight Training School in Lethbridge. (4) Imbued with their good fortune in having learned to fly at the parent flying club only months before of the outbreak of war, the new aircrew-in-training were less than enthusiastic to find out that the Air Force would not recognize their private licences. (5)
It was in many ways a time of repetition and retraining for the young pilots, but it was intensive and highly professionalised. It also gave them a new experience with the well powered De Havilland Tiger Moth biplane, equipped in this training version with a sliding weather canopy.(6) The Tiger Moth added the thrill of torque to the manoeuvrability of bi-plane performance and gave the students more than enough aircraft to test their young mettle. Between July 25th and the end of September, Clarke put in more than 42 hours under instruction and more than 28 solo hours in the Tiger Moth. The routine of practising the obligatory "sequences" was broken a series of test flights, the twenty and fifty hour tests and a cross- country flight. Still, Lethbridge was merely the first stop-over in a lengthy odyssey that would take many of them overseas and into combat. After graduation the class gathered itself for the most serious phase of their training in Canada. Number Three Service Flying Training School at Camp Borden near Barry, Ontario was dedicated to the next phase of flight training which included the separation of the men into the various flight crew streams. It was after this advanced training that Clarke was streamed into army cooperation flying and posted to Canada's amy co-op squadron in England, thus guaranteeing his opportunity to fly fighters operationally. (7)
The first real traces of a Canadian air force had originated with the Canadian Expeditionary Force in Europe, 1914-1918. Because of the seniority within the military, the air force as such was closely tied to the concept of army support. (8) After a less than stellar performance during the war, and reestablishment back in Canada, in 1924 the prefix "Royal" was attached to the CAF and the RCAF was born. Like its interwar predecessors it was largely responsible for civil aviation.(9) Through the early years of the Depression, appropriations for the air force shrank as government policy retreated under the first onslaught of fiscal collapse. By 1935, the Bennett Conservative government had reversed its course and in a vain effort to win the electorate began a programme of public spending to alleviate the most drastic symptoms of the Depression. The air force in particular benefitted from the increased spending and the Liberal victory under Mackenzie-King in 1935 ensured that the RCAF would continue to expand as a "purely military organization." (10)
It was at the beginning of this new military era that No. 2 Army cooperation squadron was formed, presaging one of the RCAF's most important roles during operations over France and the rest of northwestern Europe commencing with the Dieppe Raid in August 1942.(11) Throughout this period, the RCAF was driving for increased independence, and in 1938 it moved from under the army Chief of the General Staff to a direct reporting relationship to the Minister of National Defence through the Chief of the Air Staff.(12)
The recruits who had survived elementary flight training at establishments like Lethbridge, graduated to the advanced schools in Ontario. In early October Clarke arrived in Camp Borden where he was assigned to No. 1 Intermediate Training Squadron where for two months he flew his first mono-winged aircraft. No. 1 Intermediate used the N. A. Yale, a fixed undercarriage version of the Harvard, and a considerable step up from the Moth series of biplanes on which he had begun his flying career. After a one hour familiarization flight as a passenger, Clarke began a complex series of flights that included an altitude test, formation flying, instrument instruction, night flying, and complex cross-country navigation flights over unfamiliar terrain in western Ontario.(13)
In early December 1940, after he had completed his intermediate training, his Officer Commanding rated him as an average pilot, as had his elementary training instructors in Lethbridge. This was to change in the advanced training component of his RCAF service in Canada. Through a month and a half, while assigned to training in "G" Flight of No. 2 Squadron, Clarke acquitted himself well on the retractable undercarriage fitted N. A. Harvard, including over thirteen solo hours and two reconnaissance training flights out of Collingwood. It was also the first time since taking his private license back in Calgary that he was required to practice forced landings, a skill that would save his live within the next two years. On January 20, 1941 he completed his advanced flight training with an "above average" rating as a pilot and an "average" rating for his navigational skills.(14) In two months the newly commissioned Pilot Officer was in a Westland Lysander above Old Sarum, Wiltshire in England doing a familiarization flight with Pilot Officer Brown of Britain's No. 1 School of Army Cooperation. The Advanced Flight Training graduates were all granted leave before embarking for England. Most of the westerners came home for final good-byes only to return to Halifax by train. A delay in the sailing date for their troop ship forced the young pilots to spend more leave days at the Eastern Air Command base near Halifax. Clarke was able to pass the time with maternal relatives who had settled in Nova Scotia. Clarke and a number of his class mates from western Canada were posted to No. 110 "City of Toronto" (Army Cooperation) Squadron stationed at Odiham, Hampshire. Processed at Uxbridge, the new pilots were posted to the squadron's old home at Old Sarum, where it had first been located on arrival in England in February 1940.(15) Within the week he was compelled to fly three successive dual training flights with the Chief Flying Instructor, S/L Campbell-Voullaire, an officer as protective of his school's aircraft as he was of the men who flew them.(16) Apparently Campbell-Voullaire approved of what he saw. During the next fifty days, Clarke flew ninety-four times and managed to log over sixty-two solo hours on the Lysander.
The training included intensive reconnaissance and aerial photographic skills as well as basic air-to-ground and air-to-air battle tactics. Perhaps most importantly, because of the emphasis placed on the RCAF's army cooperation tactical reconnaissance role, "close tac R" and "low tac R" were a particularly important part of the training for the Canadians at Old Sarum. Pin pointing features and objects, vertical and oblique photography, artillery ranging, direction finding and low and high level dive bombing as well as fighter tactics filled the two months of intensive work. The night flying would help a year and a half later when Clarke and his wing man took off in the early hours of the Dieppe raid to perform the first of their two reconnaissance sorties. Despite some difficulties with Morse code and wireless telegraphy, and a less than stellar performance in ranging the ground artillery onto target, his army cooperation schooling was marred by a lone incident in air-to-air gunnery practice when Sergeant Mayes managed to shoot off the Lysander's radio antennae.(17) Having survived the intensity of the training regimen at Old Sarum, and the imperious eye of the eccentric Campbell-Voullaire, Clarke was finally posted to an active squadron in mid May of 1941. He joined the first organized unit of the RCAF ever to set foot on English soil, No. 110 "City of Toronto" (Army Cooperation) Squadron (Auxiliary).(18) Only two months before 110 had been renumbered No.400 Squadron. Appropriately enough the squadron had first arrived at Campbell-Voullaire's Old Sarum before moving on to Odiham, Hampshire in June of 1940.(19) They were still there when Clarke joined "A" Flight under Flight Lieutenant G. H. Elms, but by the time "A" Flight had moved on to fighter tactics training and ops at Middle Wallop in October, he had been sent on to Croydon in the formation of 400's sister squadron, No. 414. (20)
Clarke's first month with 400 Squadron did not go particularly well. Hitting power cables on one low level practice area search, and breaking his tail wheel in a forced landing having lost his way from Gatwick to Odiham on the same day would have done little to endear him to Squadron Leader Campbell-Voullaire. Yet it was back to the Army Cooperation School that Clarke had to return, not to upgrade his skills but to participate in the conversion from Lysanders to the new Curtiss Tomahawks with which 400 Squadron would soon be equipped.(21) The C.O. performed two flying checks within a week at the end of May. Since the second only lasted a scant five minutes, barely long enough to take off and land downwind, apparently there was nothing wrong with Clarke's flying skills.(22) Six flights in a Harvard to familiarize himself once again with the characteristics of a single engine, low-wing monoplane included circuits and landings as well as aerobatics. This led to six flights, all under an hour each, in a Tomahawk, the first three practising circuits and landings and the last three devoted more to the joy of flying his first real high performance fighter aircraft. The elation was short lived. Within hours Clarke was flying back to Odiham in one of 400 Squadron's Lysanders with Jack Amos, a Pilot Officer from North Battleford in the second seat. It would be nearly a month before Clarke was given another turn on a Tomahawk. Meanwhile he began the serious business of learning the skills of a tactical reconnaissance pilot.
As junior members of the squadron the newly attached pilots ferried airmen and soldiers to various airfields in southern England while building up hours in formation flying, dive bombing practice, towing drogues for anti-aircraft units, aerial photography, and the detailed routines of close, contact, and tactical reconnaissance. On July 2 on a practice reconnaissance flight Clarke's radio/telephone (r/t) failed foreshadowing the problems that would plague him the day of the raid on Dieppe. On the fourth a more serious problem occurred in the same aircraft when the throttle stuck open at 1,650 rpm leaving him in the air for three hours trying to ride the aircraft down. Three days later he spent an hour and twenty minutes working with the same problem on the same aircraft.(23) The rest of July passed almost uneventfully, a considerable amount of time being devoted to the drudgery of towing drogues for ground and air gunnery practice, a task relegated to the junior officers of the squadron. On the 24th, in the company of one of the squadron's administrative officers while touring the coast of Wales at zero feet, Clarke felt the aircraft shudder as one of the heavily cowled main wheels struck a swell. With considerable energy and quickness he pulled the aircraft into a steep climb while Flight Lieutenant Herbertson remained blissfully unaware of the danger to the aircraft and to himself. (24)
August opened somewhat more auspiciously as Clarke was given a Tomahawk for the day. The exercise went considerably deeper into combat tactics than he had been allowed to go before. In five separate flights he practised air to ground strafing, air-to-air rear quarter attacks, and air-to-air beam approaches. Later in the month, a new posting gave him even better opportunities to fly the single seat fighters. On August 13th, along with a flight's complement of pilots, ground crew and other support staff received orders to proceed to Croydon where they were to form the new 414 Squadron at Croydon, a move that would alter the entire course of his life. It was from Croydon that he would meet his future wife, and it was with 414 Squadron that he would both participate in the Dieppe raid and eventually lose his best friend, Cliff Horncastle. Clarke was posted to 414 only two days after its inception. The RCAF's twelfth squadron formed overseas and the second army cooperation squadron, 414 was known as the "Sarnia Imperials." Like its sister squadron, 414 would be redesignated as a fighter reconnaissance squadron in June 1943,(25) not long after Clarke had completed his last operational flights in preparation for a new posting to 39 Reconnaissance Wing as Flight Lieutenant, Ops.(26)
Two Tomahawk "flips" with his new squadron later in the month, one in which he had to contend with an "oil gusher," not an uncommon complaint in the P40s, seemed to bode well for his advancing status as a pilot.(27) It was, at the same time, an indication of the progress being made in converting the two army cooperation squadrons from Lysanders to the more operationally useful and certainly more powerful Tomahawk. By September, Clarke and at least two others from the original group at Lethbridge, Jack Amos and Cliff Horncastle, had achieved full-fledged fighter pilot status with the new squadron. Amid a certain amount of ferrying that needed to be done to bring the squadron up to operation strength with the new aircraft, Clarke added twenty-four hours to his Tomahawk totals with a considerable amount of formation flying. These included squadron formations, formation landings, section formations, and low level practice. Other than managing to bury a propeller on one landing after formation practice, the flying seems to have gone as planned.(28)
Having quadrupled his time on Tomahawks in September, Clarke doubled it again in October, adding another 20 hours to his cumulative totals. The first part of October began with great excitement, although the squadron had still not performed its first operational flight of the war. In Tomahawks he participated in a "vic" formation fly-past for the Duke of Kent, and practised section attacks on armoured divisions, low flying aerobatics, low flying formations, and section "vic" formations with landings. It was a new high point for the squadron, but it was short lived. In fact, 414 would not fly its first operational mission until June the next year. This appears to emphasize the dedication of the Canadian army cooperation squadrons to "obtain . . . photographic reconnaissance for Allied invasion planners."(29) Since no tactical invasion planning occurred in Europe until the summer of 1942, the Tac R squadrons remained, in effect, in a continuous training mode until the planning of the Dieppe raid required their photographic assistance.
What had been rather exciting in October began to prove somewhat routine and potentially somewhat tedious in November. Clarke's hours on the Tomahawk slumped from a previous high of twenty-two to fifteen, and in December to little more than eight. At one point he even resorted to the use of the squadron's Tiger Moth for forty-five minutes of low flying practice.(30)
The period between October 1941 and August 1942 may have been something of the doldrums for the squadron but it was a high point in Clarke's flying career. Both he and the squadron were introduced to the new North American P-51 1A Mustang, but he was also promoted to the command of "A" Flight, 414 Squadron in January. At the same time, Pilot Officer Hollis ("Holly") Hills, an Californian with the RCAF, joined the squadron at Croydon. Hills would figure prominently in the incidents over Dieppe later in August.
February passed rather laconically. Clarke flew under fifteen hours total as leader of "A" Flight, only fifty minutes of which were devoted to Tomahawks, although he does seem to have staked out some claim to RU G and RU A along with RU F for "Freddy" which he came to rely upon.(31) Nevertheless, in March it was the carburettor heater in RU F which failed on landing after a formation practice that forced him to make a particularly difficult landing approach in a nose-up, stall attitude from which both he and the aircraft survived. A week later he was participating in a formation flight for the benefit of General Bernard Montgomery, a fitting demonstration for the commander of the Commonwealth armies in Europe. Before the month was out, P/O Clarke had been promoted to Flight Lieutenant, a rank more befitting a flight leader.
In April, the idiosyncrasies of the Tomahawk cost the squadron the use of RU A. After another bout of formation flying, F/L Clarke experienced an oil pump failure and proceeded with emergency procedures to make a forced belly landing in a farmer's field near Cliddesden.(32) The aircraft was unserviceable for a considerable length of time but it was repaired and flew again, although F/L Clarke's later experience with RU A was in a Mustang and not the Tomahawk which he had been forced to belly land.
By mid May 1942 it had become clear that the general tenor of squadron training had changed abruptly. This could have been a response to the new offensive strategies being adopted by fighter and bomber command in mid 1942, but for the Canadian army cooperation units it had to mean something more. Devoted as they were to support of invasion planning, it is obvious in retrospect that the pressure to open another front against the Germans in Europe, and the desire to use a major foray against the fortified French coast as a fact gathering experiment, was about to bring the reconnaissance squadrons into action over France. Of twenty two flights that month nineteen were made in Tomahawks. Many of these dealt with tactical reconnaissance in poor weather and "weather tests" with low flying practice. Formation flying with cover in sets of two presaged the squadron's precise role over Dieppe on the morning of August 19th.(33)
For F/L Clarke in particular, and for the squadron in general, June signalled a quantum change in training. Although many were of shorter than usual duration, he flew fifty-six times, far more than any previous month during this extended training period. An intensive series of air to air tactics consumed most of his time on Tomahawks for June. Then, at mid month,the first Mustangs arrived at Croydon most of which appear to have been from the AG series and among the first 100 or 110 to have been produced. After two weeks of familiarization exercises, F/L Clarke and two others in "A" flight participated in 414 squadron's first operational sortie, a "dusk patrol" along the coast in which no raiders were seen.(34)
The Mustang was a successor to the Tomahawk that had been identified as such even as the Purchasing Commission was ordering the RAF versions of the Curtiss Hawk. Unlike the supercharged Merlin engine versions of the Mustang 1B, the 1A was not as effective at altitude, but in a low level tactical reconnaissance role, these disadvantages would be largely nullified. Some pilots complained of the large and obtrusive gun site and its brutal plate of armoured glass. Even with the same effective power plant as the Tomahawk, the Mustang's superior design made it 50 knots faster. It was a crucial advantage over the Tomahawk that the Mustang would take into combat over Dieppe against Germany's superior fighter, the Focke-Wolfe 190.(35) It was made doubly critical in view of the preponderance of FW 190 in the aerial combat, as if the Me 109F barely existed.
On July 30, less than three weeks before the raid F/L Clarke took Mustang AM167 up for a practice flight but shortly into the flight the radio burned out and he had to abort. This tendency if it was such, would cost Clarke dearly on the 19th. Like July, August continued with relatively light flying duties. On the 6th he flew a practice "contact recce", a system which was intended to provide direct tactical support to ground troops. Then, at night, during the evening of the 18th, Clarke and his squadron flew to Gatwick in preparation for the Dieppe Invasion.(36)
The squadron had a limited, singular task to perform as outlined in the battle plan. The rumour of the presence of an armoured division on leave from the eastern front and stationed in Amiens south of Dieppe, dictated that 414 would fly set patterns on the routes between Dieppe and Amiens. Early in the morning of the 19th of August, before sunrise, flying Mustang AG 655, Clarke took off as leader of "A" flight with P/O Hills flying cover. They were the first up of any of the four Mustang squadrons, two RAF and two Canadian. With Hills weaving above and behind, Clarke was to perform a road reconnaissance and to report on the movement of any armour toward the beech. Hills was to protect him as he concentrated on this task. Searchlights at the coastal installations allowed Hills to see the other Mustang quite readily; but once they had crossed the French coast just south west of the town of Dieppe, Hills could see nothing on the ground or in the sky, including his leader. Trying to finish the mission alone he was unable to see any of the mapped roads, nor did he see any sign of the armour. Hills "returned to Gatwick, alone and with no damage."(37)
Meanwhile F/L Clarke was having much the same experience. Without cover he proceeded as best he could to track the road to Amiens that would run in behind Dieppe in a southerly direction. Dieppe, at least, was marked by a considerable amount of fire and the searchlights of the artillery positions searching for the Boston medium bombers that had been sent against them. As twilight bloomed on the northeastern horizon, having seen nothing of the armoured division, the lone Mustang turned back toward England on a course that would take him over an anti-aircraft position. Flying at zero feet F/L Clarke fired a short strafing burst at the emplacement without enough time to record his hits, if any, and proceeded out over the channel. In the distance, coming off the English coast he spotted a spec that rapidly grew into a German FW 190. Both aircraft streaked past one another without firing a shot and F/L Clarke continued on to Gatwick in the belief that they were both simply glad to be making it back in one piece.(38) He would not receive so happy a reception on his next sortie later that morning.
Originally scheduled for only one sortie over Dieppe, Clarke and Hills accepted responsibility for another in the mid morning during a particularly chaotic moment in the squadron. Without the cover of night, it was particularly important that the relationship between the observer and his cover be maintained at all points during the mission. Observing radio silence according to the standing orders, they had no way of knowing that F/L Clarke's Radio/Telephone had failed him once again. As they crossed the channel, it became readily apparent that they had become part of the greatest air battle yet fought over Europe.(39) As they neared the coast west of Dieppe Hills spotted a flight of four FW 190s to the right at 1,500 feet, on a course that would take them directly overhead the two Mustangs as they crossed the beach. Hills broke silence and called twice, the second time after F/L Clarke had turned left toward the Amiens road but directly under the Germans, giving the ideal attack advantage. Realizing that he would have to take extraordinary action, P/O Hills swung wide to his leader's left:
"This put me right over town dusting the chimney tops. I believe the 190s had lost sight of me as I had stayed under them. My plan was to cut off the lead FW before he could open fire on Freddy. My timing all went to pot when a crashing Spitfire forced me into a sharp left turn to avoid a collision. That gave the FW pilot time to get to firing position and he hit Freddy's Mustang with his first burst. . . . Glycol was streaming from the radiator but there was no fire. I was able to get a long shot at the leader but had to break hard right as the number two man was having a go at me. He missed and made a big mistake sliding by my left side. It was an easy shot and I hit him hard. . . . I knew that he was a goner. . . "(40)
F/L Clarke was oblivious to the action that was unfolding above his head until the first shells slammed into the oil cooler of his aircraft's Allison engine: The next thing I know is there is `all Hell and corruption' going by. . . . I'd been hit. . . . The radiator was shot up, my instruments on either side of me were gone. The armour plating saved me. So I jettisoned the hood hoping that it hadn't been jammed with the shots, and it wasn't. And I thought, `They're right, it's nice--not windy in here at all.'. . ."
Instinctively he had twisted his aircraft into a hard climbing right hand turn: "I got about 800 feet. That's all she'd get." Without his radiator he knew that it was only a matter of time before the engine seized completely. Although the pilots had been offered the inland race track as a potential crash landing site, he had no intentions of risking capture, and preferred instead to take his chances in the channel. He would never have made it had it not been for the timely return of Hills to the scene of his leaders's obvious distress. Assuming the FW now tailing the stricken Mustang was hoping for the capture of an intact Mustang, Hills saw him begin to slide in behind for the kill to stop Clarke short of the channel. "I had to try to stop him so I gave a short high deflection burst at him. I was hoping to get his attention and it worked. He broke hard left into my attack."(41)
As P/O Hills attempted to mix it with the German, proving that the Mustang could at least out turn the Focke-Wolfe, Clarke continued in his struggle to reach the water. It was a perilous moment, considering that no one had been known to "ditch" a Mustang and survive, principally because of the large air scoop under the belly hat acted as a rather unfortunate rudder, directing the nose of the aircraft immediately toward the bottom. This did not happen in Clarke's case. Unfortunately it is still unknown as to exactly what did happen in the last seconds of the crash landing. F/L Clarke's memory has survived only to include the moment above the water at 10 feet, an airspeed indicator reading 90 knots, and the moment when he woke up in the bottom of a landing craft:
I limped out to the water. Just as I crossed the coast that prop . . . seized as solid as a . . . . There I am down wind, across the trought. . . . Everything's ag'in ya. Using my trim to keep my tail down, the last thing I remember is about 90 miles an hour on the clock, trying to get that tail down. I wanted the tail to hit first to kill the speed before she flopped in, because it would just go in if you hit the air scoop. The next thing I remember I came to in a landing craft. . . . I hit the gun site I think. The perspex was coming out of [my forehead] until ten or fifteen years ago. They say a young army guy hit the water with his arms going and got me out of the aircraft. I would give anything to have known who he was.
With the other wounded F/L Clarke was transferred to the Destroyer HMS Calpe which was itself under extremely heavy attack for most the late morning and early afternoon while they tried to retrieve those whom they could. After being treated for the wound to his head he finally returned to Purley where he and Holly were billeted in a requisitioned house:
"About five the next morning, my door burst open. I was grabbed in a bear hug by what smelled like a huge clump of seaweed. It was Freddie Clarke, rescued by the Amphibious forces as I had [told the squadron]. . . on my return from the mission. His head sported a huge bandage covering the severe cuts he had received in the ditching. We had been warned that ditching a Mustang could be hazardous to your health."(42)
1 Interview with Squadron Leader F. E. Clarke, RCAF, Ret., Calgary, February 20, 1991.
2 Ibid., S/L Clarke recounts the difficulty that the seemingly interminable wait for a response from the air force to their application created: "There I was, working at the wheat pool, not really getting interested in anything too much, and everybody saying `Hey Ace, when are you going to get into the air force?' It was all you needed.
3 R.C.A.F.--R. 188, "Royal Canadian Air Force Certificate of Service, Issued to Officers," to Flight Lieutenant Frederick Edsall Clarke, July 4, 1945.
4 Frederick E. Clarke, "Royal Canadian Air Force Pilot's Flying Log Book," R.C.A.F. Form R-95, entry preceding July 25, 1940. "They were there two classes in Lethbridge and then moved to High River because it was too windy in Lethbridge." Interview with F. E. Clarke, February 20, 1991.
5 Interview with Frederick E. Clarke, Squadron Leader, RCAAF, Ret., March , 1991. The "seventeen civilian flying clubs then in Canada" were called upon to provide elementary instruction but when the newly licensed pilots arrived in Lethbridge, the level of instruction at Number Five School of Flight Training seemed little more advanced that the courses they had just completed at the Renfrew Aerodrome. Actually having flown, I had my license, they didn't give us any special treatment. You started out as though you had never been on an aircraft before. . . . They put you through the regular Air Force issue avenue of training." Interview with F. E. Clarke, February 20, 1991.
6 Samuel Kostenuk and John Griffin, RCAF Squadron Histories and Aircraft, 1924-1968, (Toronto: Samuel Stevens Hakkert and Company, 1977), pp. 18-19. Kostenuk and Griffin point out that in the year before the outbreak of the war the RCAF had turned out only 45 pilots despite an official strength of 4,061 "officers and aircrew." The British Commonwealth Air Training Programme, on the other hand called for the administration of 40,000 "trained personnel" and the training of 20,000 aircrew plus their groundcrew support each year that the BCATP remained in effect. As for the cost of supplying weather canopies from a government that had always been parsimonious about air force expenditures, a relatively urgent training schedule had been established in order to equip the RCAF, the other Dominion air forces and the RAF with combat-ready pilots. The weather was not going to disrupt th at schedule any more than was absolutely unavoidable, careless recruitment officers notwithstanding.
7 Interview with F. E. Clarke, May 9, 1991. Neither fighters nor army cooperation were Clarke's first choice. Because of the commercial viability of multi-engine training and the popularity of flying boats as the aircraft of choice in the airline industry, he had hoped for a coastal command posting.
8 A little more than a month after the outbreak of World War I, the Minister of Militia authorized the formation of a "Canadian Aviation Corps." The CAC comprised two officers and one mechanic, none of whom were qualified to fly the Burgess-Dunne biplane or any other aircraft. Unfortunately, when the Burgess-Dunne disintegrated in the damp of Salisbury Plain in England, the CAC vanished along with it. See: Kostenuk and Griffin, RCAF, p. 1. Until 1918 Canadian pilots served with the Royal Flying Corps, and army oriented air force, which toward the end of the war was finally designated as the Royal Air Force, still strategically tied to ground operations, but tactically independent as a result of the clashes with the German air corps. Canadian Air Force (CAF) organization in the last months of the war proceeded rather sporadically, and it was not until a week after the Armistice had been signed in November that Numbers One and Two squadrons were formed. Then, in June 1919 they received orders to disband and were succeeded by the Canadian Air Force Packing Section, created to crate the airplanes and equipment for shipment back to Canada. The CAF was reestablished back in Canada in 1920, but it had no permanent, operational existence.
9 This time, however, an operational squadron (Number 2) was located in Alberta at High River some thirty miles south of Calgary. The High River Squadron survived only two years when another reorganization reduced the RCAF to three bases, one each in Ottawa, Camp Borden and Vancouver.
10 Kostenuk and Griffin, RCAF, p. 17.
11Christopher Shores, History of the Royal Canadian Air Force, (Toronto: Royce Publications, 1984), p. 28. No. 2 had been preceded by No. 10 (Army Co-operation) Squadron (Auxiliary) at Toronto in October 1932, becoming the "City of Toronto" Squadron in 1935. Similar Army Co-operation squadrons appeared in the Auxiliary in Winnipeg, Calgary, and Vancouver at the same time. Then in the militarization period, No. 10 became 110 Squadron. Mobilized on the day war was declared and brought into the Active Service, it was assigned to overseas duty with the Canadian First Division in France and Belgium. Three squadrons made up this first contingent of RCAF pilots and groundcrew. Two of them were Army Co-operation squadrons flying Westland Lysanders.
12 Kostenuk and Griffin, RCAF, p. 18.
13 See: Frederick E. Clarke, "Royal Canadian Air Force Pilot's Flying Log Book," R.C.A.F. Form R-95, entries for October 8, 1940 to November 26, 1940.
14 See: Frederick E. Clarke, "Royal Canadian Air Force Pilot's Flying Log Book," R.C.A.F. Form R-95, entries for December 5, 1940 to January 20, 1941.
15 Kostenuk and Griffin, R.C.A.F., p. 40.
16 Despite his eccentricities, Campbell-Voullaire was well respected for his skills and his experience. Decorated with a Distinguished Service Order and a Distinguished Flying Cross for his participation in the Battle of France as an army cooperation pilot, he was eminently qualified to instruct the young Canadians.
17 Interview with Frederick E. Clarke, Acting Wing Commander, RCAAF, Ret., March , 1991. The incident never made it into Clarke's log book.
18 The Historical Section of the Royal Canadian Air Force, The R.C.A.F. Overseas: the First Four Years, (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1944), p. 6.
19 Kostenuk and Griffin, RCAF, p. 80.
20 See: Frederick E. Clarke, "Royal Canadian Air Force Pilot's Flying Log Book," R.C.A.F. Form R-95, entries for August 24, 1941 ff.
21 The Tomahawk was a close cousin of Curtiss's more famous Kittyhawk, the P40 made famous by General Charles Chennault's "Flying Tigers" in China. It was a relatively powerful single seat fighter, fitted with an oil cooled, in-line, Allison engine, capable of 370 knots. Like the North American P-51 Mustang 1A that followed it, the Tomahawk was developed especially for the Royal Air Force, to RAF specifications. It became a particular favourite of pilots like Fred Clarke who were more than six feet tall, primarily because of its extraordinarily spacious cockpit. The British Purchasing Commission had seen the Tomahawk's prototype, the Curtiss P40 Hawk and orders for the RAF version began in 1940 bringing 1740 aircraft across to Britain despite the American neu trality embargo. The Tomahawk's Allison was particularly suited to low-level tactical reconnaissance and attack, but the engine was not supercharged and did not function well at altitude. This problem plagued the P-51 Mustang 1A with a similar Allison, but the streamlined design of the Mustang made it a superior aircraft even for low-level work by minimizing the loss of efficiency due to drag. See: William Newby Grant, "P-51 Mustang," in Classic Aircraft of World War II, (Greenwich, Ct.: Bison Books, 1981), pp. 272-73.
22 See in particular: F. E. Clarke, Log Book, for May 19, 25 and 31, 1941.
23 See in particular: F. E. Clarke, Log Book, for July 4 and 7, 1941.
24 Ibid, July 24, 1941.
25 Kostenuk and Griffin, R.C.A.F., pp. 80 and 104.
26 See: F. E. Clarke, Log Book, for May and July, 1943.
27 See: F. E. Clarke, Log Book, for August 26 and 27, 1941.
28 Ibid., August 1941. The note about "put[ting] the prop in] on landing occurs on September 19. 29Kostenuk and Griffin, R.C.A.F., p. 104.
30 See: F. E. Clarke, Log Book, for November and December, 1941. The reference to the Tiger Moth appears on December 12th. On Boxing Day he carried out more low flying practice in a Miles Magister, but finished off the month with two and a half hours of low flying, fighter tactics, formation and cloud flying as well as R/T work in a Tomahawk. "I remember the first time I tried to fly a Tiger Moth in England after I had been flying the fighters, and I couldn't get it back down on the ground. I couldn't fly it slowly enough to land it at first. I floated clear across Croydon aerodrome--had to go around and readjust my sights and come back in." Interview with F. E. Clarke, February 20, 1991.
31 The two army cooperation squadrons had only been assigned squadron identification numbers in October of 1941. No. 400 Squadron used the SP series while 414 was assigned RU.
32 F. E. Clarke, Pilot's Log, April 14, 1942. Fred Clarke recounts the story that when his oil pressure disappeared he waved of his wing man, Stuart "Chappy" Chapman, who simply continued to follow him down assuming that they were continuing with low level formation practice. Only when he saw the propeller of RU A's propeller quit and begin to scrape through the earth did he realize that practice was over. Clarke meanwhile clambered out of his aircraft to be greeted by a little boy who came running across the field to ask, "Is it true that you've had an engine failure, and had to do a forced landing in this field?" "Oh yes," came the response through paroxysms of laughter.
33 Ibid, May 1 to May 30, 1942.
34 See Kostenuk and Griffin, R.C.A.F., p. 104; and F. E. Clarke, "Log Book," June 30, 1942.
35 The allied air forces became intimately familiar with the capabilities of the FW 190 when a Luftwaffe pilot mistakenly landed at the RAF aerodrome at Pembrey. It confirmed their worst fears. On the 9th of August the report issued by the RAF on the captured aircraft emphasized its "exceptional flying characteristics," the superlative search view from its well protected cockpit, and its outstanding aileron controls. It surpassed the Spitfire V in every respect, . . . only the new Spitfire IX really compared favourably. As cited in: John P. Campbell, "Air Operations and the Dieppe Raid," Aerospace Historian, (Spring, March 1976), p. 10.
36 F. E. Clarke, "Log Book," July and August, 1942. See in particular the entries for July 30 and for August 6.
37 Hollis F. Hills, "Mustangs at Dieppe," unpublished manuscript, (np, nd), p. 1.
38 Interview with F. E. Clarke, March , 1991.
39 "Starting at sea level and going all the way up to contrail level, the sky was full of Fighters in one massive dogfight. I was busy but in hurried glances counted eleven parachutes at one time." Hollis F. Hills, "Mustangs at Dieppe," p. 2.
40 Hollis F. Hills, "Mustangs at Dieppe," p. 3.
41 Ibid.