Devonshire June July 16

SURVIVAL TIME for a fighter pilot who baled out into the
winter sea off the coast of Devon during the early years
of WW2 could be measured in minutes. They had no
dinghies then, only Mae Wests to keep them afloat.
Then they came in again as low as
they dared to drop the self-inflating
dinghy as close as possible to their
target before they climbed again to
circle and signal their position to base.
Nick joined the RAF at 19 and initially
became a fighter pilot with
66 Squadron based in South West
England flying Spitfires as they escorted
bombers across the Channel.
During a 21 day period in July, 1940,
and in much warmer seas, some 220
air crew had perished in Channel
waters. Their deaths brought about
the urgent formation of the Air Sea
Rescue Service.
From that point onwards
no ‘ditched’ airman
would need to rely
on passing shipping for
rescue. Specially developed
high-speed rescue
launches - designed by
T. E. Shaw, or ‘Lawrence
of Arabia’ as he is better
known, at RAF Mountbatten,
Plymouth - were
rushed into service, all
aircraft would finally be
equipped with dinghies
and programmes of survival
training intensified
for pilots and crew.
Devon had an RAF squadron
dedicated to the role
of rescue based at RAF
Harrowbeer north of
Plymouth and later at RAF
Warmwell, near Poole.
Both worked in close
cooperation with the
RNLI and the RAF’s high
speed rescue launches
based along the coast
and between them they
saved many aircrew from
watery graves - British,
American and German
alike.
Nobody knows for sure
how many wrecks lie on
the seabed in Lyme Bay.
From Portland Bill to Start
Point that vast expanse of water is
the final resting place of countless
wrecks. They span the ages and
punctuate the history of our island
nation through storm, mishap, peace,
war and invasion.
But there are aircraft out there too,
most of them warplanes, fighter aircraft,
bombers and most poignant of
all perhaps, some of the aircraft of the
Royal Air Force Air Sea Rescue Service
itself (ARS) whose job it was to find
the airmen who had ‘ditched’ before
the sea could take them.
Here in the South West those brave
men were members of 276 Squadron,
a rescue unit that saved more
than a thousand fliers from almost
certain death by their bravery and
swift actions.
They flew what at first glance appeared
to be an odd assortment of
aircraft but each of them uniquely
qualified for their part. The two Spitfires
with 276 for instance had their
guns removed so that they could get
to where they thought a downed
pilot or aircrew might be as quickly
as possible.
In a special compartment behind
the cockpit they carried a bright
yellow rubber dinghy which could
be dropped when they spotted a
pilot in the water, supported by his
Mae West life-preserver.
But before they dropped the dinghy,
they dropped orange smoke flares
because it was all too easy to lose
sight of that tiny speck of humanity
in the vast greyness of the ocean.
This was the call for the slow-moving
amphibian aircraft based at Warmwell
or Harrowbeer - the Walrus - to make
for the pick-up point where it would
attempt to land amid the waves.
The Sea Shall Not Have Them *
*THE MOTTO OFTHE AIR SEA RESCUE SERVICE
How the lives of more than one thousand aircrew
were saved from the waters of Lyme Bay in WW2
But that vital radio signal also started
a second race. German radio ‘fixers’
based in Brest and Cherbourg, ever
alert to the RAF’s transmissions in
the South West, would quickly make
a ‘fix’ on the Spitfire’s signal and
scramble a flight of ME109e fighter
aircraft to send them racing across
from Normandy to create what havoc
they could.
“This was no time or place for chivalry”,
recalled one of the 276 Squadron’s
pilots, Nick Berryman in his book
of wartime reminiscences, In the
Nick of Time. “Anything that 276
Squadron put up for the rescue was
fair game with the enemy”, he said
in an interview many years later at
RAF Tangmere where he became
the President of the RAF Museum.
His experience there earned him a
new and a very different role that
changed the rest of the war for him:
instead of shooting down aircraft he
spent the next part of a distinguished
career in air sea rescue, saving aircrew
- both Allied and
German ‒ who had been
forced to ‘hit the silk’ or
been forced to ditch in
Lyme Bay.
This is where he first encountered
the humble
wood and canvas Walrus,
an aircraft he said that
was “the most exciting
of any I ever flew”.
As an amphibian is was
neither fish nor foul
and was known affectionately
by those who
flew it as The Shagbat or
even, The Steam Pigeon
because of the clouds
of vapour that came off
the single engine with
its ‘pusher’ propeller
whenever waves broke
over the cockpit: which
was more often than not.
Rescuing ditched pilots
from Lyme Bay and beyond
was the job given
to 276 Squadron, based
initially at RAF Harrowbeer.
near the village
of Yelverton, north of
Plymouth. It was called
‘Harrowbeer’ in order to
distinguish it from the
similar-sounding RNAS
Yeovilton.
Nick Berryman wrote a book of
his wartime reminiscences
In the Nick of Time'
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