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RAAF at War 1939 1945 in the
Middle East
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Gloster Gladiators from No. 3 Squadron
(RAAF) fly in loose formation over Bardia in the Middle East on return
from a sortie against the Axis forces. |
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After the fall of France in 1940, war erupted into the Mediterranean when Italy joined Germany and attacked in North Africa. A British army (including Australia's 6th Division) gathered in Egypt to oppose the Italians. With the 6th Division had come the RAAF's
No. 3 Squadron which had sailed from Sydney in the Orontes on 15 July 194o and arrived in Egypt on
23 August. The Squadron, armed with old-fashioned Gladiator Lysander and Gauntlet aircraft, were soon in action in the campaign which drove the Italians out of Cyrenaica. |
| In a brilliant feat of flying, Squadron Leader R. H. Gibbes (left) saved Pilot Officer Rex Bayley from certain capture by the Germans during the Desert campaign.
Shot down during a strafing run behind the enemy lines Pilot Officer Bayley managed to land safely but was in imminent danger of capture when Squadron Leader Gibbes landed his single-seater Kittyhawk nearby. |
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| Under heavy machine gun fire the two men jammed themselves in the tiny cockpit, took off in a flurry of dust, and flew to safety. |
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Although carrying RAAF markings, this Fiat CR 42 Treccia of the Italian air force never became a front line Australian aircraft. The
Treccia was captured by members of
No. 3 (RAAF) Squadron at Martuba, Western Desert, in January 1941, after a Royal Air Force pilot had forced his Italian counterpart to land. |
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With their Tomahawk fighter-bombers in the background, members of No. 3 (RAAF) Squadron line up at their base in the Middle East for a group photograph. |
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| Fifty bomb symbols, each represent ing a successful operational mission, adorn the fuselage of a RAAF Baltimore bomber before its crew carry out their last operational trip
from a Middle East base. From left to right the crew are: Wing Com mander M. Moore
(Taree, New South Wales), Flying Officer D. Surtees (Bristol, England), Flying Officer
G. Hissey (Sydney, New South Wales), and Flight Lieuten ant J. Howard (Bega, New South Wales) |
| In 1941, No. 3 Squadron was joined by
No. 450 Squadron which remained closely associated with the famous
No. 3 until the end of the war in Italy in May 1945. No. 451 Squadron was formed in 1941, and at the same time considerable numbers of individual Australians arrived to enter RAF squadrons. |
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More RAAF squadrons were formed in the Middle East in 1942 -
No. 459 as a naval co-operation squadron and No. 462, equipped with Wellingtons, which bombed enemy ports and bases.
No. 458 was also sent from England to the Mediterranean area, serving as a Wellington night torpedo squadron and sinking five enemy ships and a submarine within four months.
However, of the seven RAAF squadrons in the theatre only
three (Nos 3, 450 and 451) were truly Australian in character; two (Nos 458 and 459) were almost entirely non-Australian.
The face of a fighter pilot during the 1939-45 War. Ready to climb into the cockpit of his aircraft is Flight Lieutenant Bill Leeds, a member of
No. 3 Squadron, which at the time was based at Kairovan, Tunis. |
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| Heavily weighed down with a full bomb load, a Mustang of the Aus tralian 'Desert Harassers' takes off from a forward airfield in Italy
to bomb German artillery positions. |
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| RAAF war-time ground crew, soon after their arrival at an airfield just outside Rome, were temporarily perplexed when they came across this Savoia aircraft with a RAAF badge emblazoned on its fuselage' together with the inscription 'Pt. Cook'. They later learned that the aircraft had been flown to Australia in 1926 by an Italian
pilot named Di Pinedo who had had the markings inscribed on the plane to mark the
occasion. |
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| Ground crew watch as a crane hoists bombs
into position to 'bomb up' a RAAF squadron Halifax operating out of of
an airfield in the Middle East. |
In the Middle East the RAAF's Air Ambulance Unit helped to pioneer the techniques of medical air evacuation of wounded from the battle areas. The unit, equipped with de Havilland 86s and a Lockheed Lodestar took part in the Middle East campaigns from 1941 until 1944, when it was withdrawn to Australia.
RAAF men fought in Syria in 1941, they fought against the furious onslaughts of German and Italian air power at Malta, and they fought in support of the allied advance in North Africa and thence into Sicily and Italy. Some
150 Australians also served in 1944 with the transport, fighter and bomber units of
the Balkan Air Force which supported liberation movements in Balkan countries. Many Australians of No. 148 Halifax Squadron lost their lives in long and difficult supply-dropping flights in support of the Polish rising in August 1944.
About 65 per cent of all aircrew recruited in Australia served at some time in Europe or the Mediterranean. Approximately 25 per cent lost their lives in operations there.
- In all, over 6,500 Australian airmen and officers lost their lives in (or in transit to and from) the European and Middle East war theatres, a figure representing about 20 per cent of all Australian war deaths in all services and all campaigns of the 1939-45 War.
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| In sticky mud on a rain-drenched airfield in the Middle East, armourers of a RAAF Wellington bomber squadron haul their ordnance into position to 'bomb up an aircraft in preparation for a night raid over the Italian mainland. |
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| Two of the young Australians who
flew as fighter pilots in the Middle East. At left is Flying Officer E.
C. House, D.F.M., who came from Gnowangerup, Western Australia, and at right, Flying Officer J. T.
Minahan, from Waverley, New South Wales. |
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| A D.H. 86 of the RAAF's No. 1 Air Ambulance Unit operating in the Middle East. This Unit helped to pioneer the air evacuation of wounded from the battle areas to the rear where wounds and injuries could be more effectively treated. The Unit took part in the Middle East campaigns from 1941 to early 1944, when it was withdrawn to Australia. |
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| An Australian fighter pilot, Pilot Officer S.
Youl, from Melbourne, Victoria, takes a few moments off to write up his log book at the side of a forward airfield in North Africa. |
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