Earth Angels Rising

Earth Angels Rising - Introduction & Commitment - Beaudoin - 1

_________________________________________________ Welcome to a hitch-hiker’s literary guide to one of the world’s often top-secret … little-known … long-forgotten … and probably most important aviation feats in earth’s history, one which began in 1938: the conception, creation and launching from Canada and Newfoundland of what soon became popularly-known as the Royal Air Force’s Ferry Command of World War II - the RAF FC.

Who, exactly, set this organization into motion? Civilians. Thousands of them. About 3,500 of them, actually: all dauntless and extraordinary un-armed, non-uniformed, sworn-to-secrecy civilians to do what should have been a military job. These civilians came like earth angels rising from more than 23 nations - and were soon joined by military personnel seconded to them from allied air forces.

Hundreds have asked about women pilots being involved in this operation: unfortunately, no woman was ever permitted to join the civilians and seconded military personnel in this Herculean task of ferrying thousands of bombers across any ocean. A special chapter is dedicated to these women - No place for a lady!

With the first flights starting late in November, 1940, these civilians did what aviation experts of the day declared as sheer suicide and impossible: they flew bombers from North America through the then unknown and unchartered wintery skies of the dreaded North Atlantic Ocean to when and where they were needed most - in England and in France. Their air ministries had ordered more than 10,000 American-made two- and four-engine bombers and needed them delivered - now.

The fastest and shortest way to get them there now was to fly them over the North Atlantic at a time when less than half of the previous 100 attempts to fly it met with success.

At the time, a number of military-only ferry commands did exist in Canada, England and the United States of America but they were limited to moving about their own existing aircraft, within their own countries or to other countries where they had bases, and flying them from their home countries, over the Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic or across Africa, then above the Indian Ocean to their respective overseas bases.

Yet it wasn’t easy to convince England to have them flown across the North Atlantic Ocean either, as is shown in Chapter 1, Setting up RAF Ferry Command, starting in September, 1940 with the first of Canada’s two national railroads, the Canadian Pacific Air Service Department - the CPASD. This is but one of the many new stories about how these three countries started as early as 1938 to set things up in North America to help England defend itself against Germany, even though the USA, with its powerful neutrality act, could not be seen or perceived as openly helping England at the time. Chapter 1 ends with a 26-paragraph letter – reproduced with permission - which Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote on Saturday, Dec. 7th, 1940, pleading for help from American President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Some fancy wink-wink, look-the-other-way action was called for; it all worked, under sometimes great secrecy, at other times when international goodwill was needed, without any secrecy at all, much to the delight of German and Japanese spies in North America. This guide is a lot more than a reference book to this accomplishment.

It is a multiple four-pronged tribute to those forgotten civilians and relates through brief anecdotes and longer narratives about some of their experiences in busting aviation frontiers of the day. These also include stories about some

military personnel from many allied air forces who were seconded to this operation to assist the civilians: once these civilians, the cream-of-the crop of British and North American commercial aircrews had proven that the

impossible could be done, along with some

ultra high-level attempts by skilled and highly-competent women pilots who did all they could, but were forbidden, to join their ranks.


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The book also recognizes today’s civilians who are doing all they can to honour the legacy the earth inherited from their relatives’ and friends’ accomplishments of 75 years ago.

Tribute is also extended to America’s, Canada’s and England’s civilian airlines who supported the RAF FC, along with the United States Army Air Force - USAAF and England’s RAF, which quickly expanded their own existing

military ferry commands, all to supplement what the RAF FC was doing: the whole resulting in the delivery of more than 250,000 fighters and bombers to when and where they were needed. This book is also a commemoration of two important-but-forgotten and overlooked 75th aviation anniversaries - 49 days apart, in November and December of 2015.

The first one occurs on Tuesday, November 10th, 2015, commemorating the first of four night-time take-offs – on Sunday, November 10th, 1940 - of 28 of these bombers across the North Atlantic Ocean from Gander,

Newfoundland - then a British-held territory …

The second anniversary, 49 days later, comes on Tuesday, December 29th, 2015, commemorating the attempted delivery - also from Gander - of a gift from American aircraft manufacturers of Lockheed and Vega in California,

and their 18,000 employees: a twin-engine Hudson bomber christened the Spirit of Lockheed-Vega Employees - Registry T9465. It crashed, without fatalities, on take-off on Sunday, December 29th, 1940 yet showed up in Wick,

Scotland in March 1941. The story of what happened to this plane is within these pages. All civilian and military pilots today who know anything about the RAF FC emphatically recognize the importance of what these civilians of 1940 did: they effectively helped save the world …

… at a cost of nearly 500 lives, however.

So, how could they have been so long-forgotten and largely un-heralded 75 years later?

For many reasons; the least of which is because the records and hard data information about them is scattered all over the map and hard to get at, and most civilians kept their promise of keeping their involvement a secret for many, many years, saying hardly anything about their employment by the Royal Air Force’s Ferry

Command to their children, thousands of who today are still wondering what their parents did during the war. This book explores some of these reasons and provides refreshing new information on who were some of these civilians - and seconded military personnel, along with the women who fought so valiantly to ferry aircraft overseas, but who were restricted to serve in what were known as an Air Transport Auxiliary - or an ATA within their own countries of Canada, England and the United States of America. The civilians hired on to the RAF FC were paid extremely well, captains earning $1,000 per delivery, with other aircrew member receiving $500 (co-pilot if needed), down to $250 per crossing for flight engineers and radio operators. These civilians, considered by many to be nothing more than rag-tag looking mercenaries, were in reality the cream of the crop where civilian aviation in Canada, England and the USA were concerned. They ranged from bush pilots to regional, national and international airline pilots of the day.


_________________________________________________ Crew cards from Canada’s Department of National Defence’s Directorate of History and Heritage show some variances in civilian rates of pay, however, sometimes listing individual aircrew members as earning $1,000 a month instead of $1,000 per delivery, something which cannot be explained today. Military air and military ground crews second to the operation were retained on their military salaries, at times causing some consternation in the cockpits when civilian aircrew were linked with military aircrew in the same aircraft being delivered. Salary levels often came under discussion in the cockpits. There are trainloads full of dramatic and fictional stories about the remarkable deeds done by bomber and fighter pilots in gaining mastery of the skies over enemy territory, all in support of the Allied nations’ armies and navies … in the form of thousands of sometimes heart-warming, other times gut-wrenching books, newspaper and magazine articles, dramatic and fictional movies for television and movie theatres.

But so little about how these airplanes got there!

Find out how and by who airborne deliveries began …

There have been some excellent, easy-to-read scholarly and dramatic books, along with relatively few films about the RAF FC: the known ones - including one fictional murder mystery syndicated in 1942 - are listed in APPENDIX 1 - Finding Aids and Sources.

Small in number, these movies and publications could not fill the back end of a large pick-up truck with stories about the RAF FC civilians and those who helped them set it up. Because these small numbers of books and movies about the

RAF FC do exist, and some of them are now in the public domain and have not seen the light of day since at least 1945, they are reproduced in their entirety as APPENDIXES 1, 2, 3, and 4 - APPENDIX 2 - The Atlantic Bridge, the only official book about the RAF FC APPENDIX 3 - Canada’s Department of National Defence –

Directorate of History and Heritage: DHH APPENDIX 4 - The Clayton-Knight Committee, recruiting American aircrews

without violating American neutrality

Canada - as vital a contribution as it made to WW II - was icily welcomed to international conference tables - Marquis de Queensbury rules saw to that,

nothing else: Allies considered Canada a useful country, basically un-attackable by the Axis nations … an orphan that had to be recognized … and used (well).

Fortunately, it was not abused.

Canada was welcomed to the policy-making table in World War II for three reasons, but had little or no say in almost any policy involving any action on any front of World War II.

First, it was almost un-attackable by either Germany or Japan, thanks to three gigantic oceans which separate Canada from Germany and Japan: the Atlantic on its east coast, the Pacific on its west coast and the Arctic on its northern coast. Neither Germany nor Japan had the air-reach capability to realistically threaten Canada from the skies, which lay far, far away from their homelands.

Second, Canada has already cut its teeth in civil and international aviation pioneering, opening its vast, largely un-explored regions to industry, trade and commerce with bush pilots and the beginnings of national and international commercial air services. Its civilian aviation system had been making one pioneering accomplishment after another, especially where weather forecasting was concerned.


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The unknown weather patterns over the oceans were of vital concern to pilots of long-range aircraft of the day, which did not yet have the refined communications and weather detection instrumentation and technology which exist today.

Pilots then had to rely almost heavily for enroute weather reports on trans-oceanic weather conditions as radioed by ships at sea ... a situation which ended late in 1938 when ships were under advisement not to broadcast enroute weather, which could be picked up by both the German and Japanese air and naval forces. By 1940 ships were ordered to stop broadcasting weather when in transit, making it a virtual nightmare for pilots to navigate north Atlantic Ocean skies as they had to throughout the early stages of WW II.

Third: of equal importance … Canada was welcomed all right, but was treated almost like an unwanted orphan. However, because of the above two factors, it was needed and was thus invited to be present at the policy table, and was politically and strategically seen as having been formally recognized.

It was almost as if it was invited to that policy table by England and the United States of America out of a political interpretation of the now-famous Marquis de Queensbury Rules - formulated on Saturday, Nov. 10th, 1877. They were originally written to try and levy a conduct of fair play in a boxing ring. When applied socially and politically however, these rules meant fair treatment of lesser individuals, especially in a situation needing high-level political and military decisions - which was the case leading to WW II.

So how important was this operation anyway?

“Vital”, according to Jack Burgess, ACA - left then, and today, at right. He is one of the nonagenarians featured in these pages. Jack, from Kirkcaldy, Scotland, served as a 1-tripper, after having been seconded in 1944 from the Royal Air Force into the Ferry Command operation to deliver one B-24 bomber from North America.

In October, 2014, he wrote: “Vital aircraft production during world war two would have been meaningless, without the means of delivering those essential machines to the numerous

world-wide war zones where they were urgently required. He notes that the background story of the RAF FC is an ... “almost-neglected

subject where so many civilians rose to the occasion, and averted a worldwide takeover by evil powers. “My particular contribution has been adequately covered, and I trust it will help to bring … well-deserved credit for the … vast contribution of civilian pilots in our time of need. …”

… “much has been written about the deeds of heroism displayed by Allied airmen during world war two and rightly so. But how many people have stopped to think just how all those planes reached the right war zone at

the right time. Churchill's famous words were uttered when Britain stood alone: ‘Give us the tools and we'll finish the job.’ At that particular time, the tools were waiting on the other side of the Atlantic, and it appeared that the job would There is a little-known reason why Germany and Japan were finally brought to the peace table so World War II could finally end, and it’s not what most of us might think. That reason: Germany and Japan suffered from a centuries-old, short-range mind-fix, a mentality which allowed no room for long-range aircraft.

Short- and medium-range fighters and bombers would do and did do the trick for both aggressor nations.


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North Americans, meanwhile, knew well the advantage of being separated by immense oceans from Germany and Japan: basically, no one had mastery of the skies over these enormous bodies of water.

The North American mind-set was on pushing back aviation frontiers, which Canadian and American bush pilots and commercial airline pioneers did with great and growing successes by the mid-1930s; making it a natural thing to consider building long-range ocean-crossing airliners.

The transition from a many-passenger airliner to a big long-range bomber that could cross oceans was a short hop-skip-and-a-jump on an aircraft designer’s drafting board. Not so in Germany or in Japan, it seems.

Neither Germany nor Japan thought that they would need long-range aircraft.

Anyplace in Eurasia, that enormous land mass stretching from the Pacific Ocean coast of Russia and China straight through to the east, to the English Channel coast of France … is basically ALL land in between.

No ocean to cross, for either Germany or Japan - but two relatively small bodies of water. For Germany, it was the English Channel. For Japan, it was the body of water separating it from the mainland. A medium-range airplane - be it a single-engine

fighter / dive bomber, or a twin-engine light bomber - could handle such a distance with relative ease. These two bodies of water were as easy as pie to cross for Germany to ravage the only two countries of any large population size - England in the western part of Eurasia - and in Africa with its Axis ally of Italy, for Germany … and in China to its north for invasion by Japan.

But what about the Atlantic and Pacific oceans? Another story, completely different there: both Germany and Japan enjoyed, temporarily, mastery of those seas. More important at the time was local air superiority: short- to medium-range fighter aircraft and bombers did the job for the Axis powers: they had no need for long-range aircraft and if they would have had them, they had no staging posts, such as those created across the Pacific by Great Britain and the USA … and established in Greenland and Iceland by these same two countries, along with and a string of airports and staging posts in the South Atlantic, from the Caribbean and down the Atlantic Ocean coast of South America, created largely by American and British international airlines.

Commitment

There is no longer any need to criticize any one individual, or government department for the fact that these individuals - civilian, military, men and women for having forgotten their contributions to WW II. It wouldn’t serve any good purpose anyway these days, 75 years later … for lack of recognition for what these civilians

did in the months leading up to WW II. As it is not likely that any bricks and mortar museum will ever be set up to honour the men and women of what became the RAF’s Ferry Command, these pages may be their final recognition and tribute to their efforts. The commitment component of this book, when published, is to offer it as a nomination for consideration by Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame …“the on-site partner of the Reynolds - Alberta Museum in Wetaskiwin, between Edmonton and Red Deer, Alberta, Canada …” The nomination request will be made for the CAHF to extend its prestigious Belt of Orion award for Excellence to every man and woman who served in any capacity with what became the Royal Air Force’s Ferry Command - in all of its military command structures.


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History of Belt of Orion

The Belt of Orion Award for Excellence was founded by Canada's Aviation Hall of Fame in 1988 to honour organizations, groups, societies or associations who have made outstanding contributions to the advancement of aviation in Canada.

Orion, the son of Neptune, according to Greek Mythology, was a handsome and energetic hunter who possessed the power to walk through the sea and on its surface. Artemis, the Goddess of the hunt, fell in love with Orion, but her twin brother, Apollo, was jealous and sent a scorpion to kill him. In her sorrow and remorse for his death, Artemis placed him in the sky as a constellation.

Orion, the Great Hunter, is a brilliant constellation, second to the Big Dipper on the roster of major constellations. It straddles the celestial equator, and is outlined by a quadrilateral of three brilliant stars--Betelgeuse, Bellatrix and Rigel, and one of lesser magnitude. Inside the quadrilateral are three second-magnitude stars forming the Belt of Orion. The three stars of the Belt point south-eastward to Sirius, the brightest star of the heavens.

What’s in here and who is this book for …

There are a number of never before published stories and anecdotes within these pages: some stories will warm the hearts and cheer the souls. Other stories deal with fatal and non-fatal accidents which are gut-wrenching at worst and

awe-inspiring in their survivability at best. And there are narratives that touch on the many odds-and-ends-and-bits-and-pieces of events and things - such as espionage and civilians who kept quiet

for years because they took an oath to secrecy, and kept this oath … preventing their children from finding out what Daddy or Mommy

did during the war … and of many things that took place during the five full years which the RAF FC operated, under a number of other official names and commands.

Because …

… the appendixes contain more than enough information about the conception, creation and sustainment of this civilian-driven operation, and they show …

… how thousands of American civilian aircrews were recruited … and

… they re-cap rare and out-of-print publications, such as the only official booklet about the RAF FC, and one special book of which only 500 copies were printed about it ... and … these appendices refer readers to where and how they can obtain more detailed background information on

its set-up and operation - … this book also re-caps some of the many synchronic events which began taking place in North America, most of them in Canada, as early as 1938 - the very year in which Germany invaded Poland, the spark that ignited WW II.


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In addition to those synchronous events, another section, titled Odds ‘n Ends ‘n Bits ‘n Pieces, deals with some unusual and interesting incidents known to have taken place during the Ferry Command’s lifetime - such as co-operation with civilian airlines to deliver mail, stowaways, types of cargo and passengers carried to and fro, ammunition for General Montgomery in North Africa to help him defeat Germany’s Rommel, and one particular delivery involving a lightning strike and a monkey mutiny, submitted from memory by John Leeward - LEFT, whose father, Ray - RIGHT - served in the RAF FC as an American civilian pilot.

In 1938, England’s politicians and military personnel knew that the world was heading for hell in a hand-basket if Germany, Italy and Japan - known briefly as the Axis - could not be stopped from continuing their attacks on much of Europe, and parts of Africa and China.

Democracies do not go easily unto war. No one can blame the allied democratic politicians of the day, who sincerely believed that their electorate must have

seen them as having taken every possible precaution, measure and means to avoid war, even to being forced to bend – seemingly naively - to tyrannical promises of peace - if only “we could be left alone” the tyrants might and did claim.

They were left alone. Peace did not prevail. Why not? Tyrannies don’t care. To them, bare-faced lies are like breathing; they come naturally. Tyrants are masters of deception and intrigue spewing nothing but outright bare-faced lies, as was evident by Germany’s re-arming itself and practicing its mastery of the air over Spain during its agonizing civil war years.

Despite the limited amount of public information concerning the RAF FC, it almost doesn’t seem to matter how well this operation would be received today: who would care?

Hardly anyone, it seems, according to a news report published in England’s Daily Mail on-line news web site on February 11th, 2014:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2556423/Most-Britons-dont-know-World-War-One-fought-Western-Front.html

The article, written Dan Miller, reveals the results of a survey of who in England knew what about WW I - which obviously was highly publicised. It is highly likely that a similar situation would exist with WW II, especially with such a little-known thing as the RAF FC:

Highlights of the article say it all: Most Britons don't know that the First World War was fought beyond the Western Front Research by British Council reveals ignorance of the WWI's global scale Less than half of people questioned were aware that America played a part Less than a third associated the war with the fall of the Ottoman Empire Only 11% were aware of its connection with the conflict in the Palestine Calls for the centenary to be used to better understand the conflict

Besides the civilians who conceived, created and sustained what became the RAF FC, little is known about the incredible help provided by some of the world’s larger civilian / commercial airlines to expand the air bridges across the world’s oceans, such as Trans-Canada Air Lines, British Airways Overseas Corporation and what was known as Pan American World Airways, founded by Juan Trippe:

http://www.panamair.org/History/wars.htm



http://www.panamair.org/History/wars.htm


_________________________________________________ From that website alone, it is revealed that …”Pan Am flew more than 90 million miles for the US government carrying military personnel, cargo, ferried bombers and aircraft … Pan Am trained thousands of British military pilots, navigators and mechanics … Boeing 314s were the world’s only aircraft that could carry payloads across an ocean. So the government promptly took over all of Pan Am's over-ocean aircraft, crews and operations. Boeing 314s served by transporting military personnel and supplies to the war zone as well as carry most of the leaders of the Allied Nations to important strategic missions in all continents.” … Pan Am and Ferry Command were featured in the final manuscript of South Atlantic Safari by Captain Donald McVicar, OBE. Written rights have been obtained to

reproduce any or all of the three unpublished manuscripts by this remarkable, and senior, Ferry Command pilot from his son, Gordon, who now lives in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, Québec.

He said that his dad knew almost every in-and-out of the entire Ferry Command

organization, its entire infrastructure, who was who, and wasn’t, and where and when type of thing.

Don had attached a 28-page insert as the last item in his book South Atlantic Safari, as he was the first pilot of record to fly an American-built bomber from one of the original Ferry Command bases into Egypt, through Africa, from North America via South America … along the very network pioneered by Pan Am. Pan-Am and Juan Trippe received very little credit for their incredible accomplishments in setting up this vital third ocean bridge, to the benefit of Canada, England and the USA and the world at large.

While the known existing books on Ferry Command do make references to Juan Trippe and Pan Am, both the ingenious and important roles played by the founder and his airline have been triviliased no less than Ferry Command itself.

The routes pioneered by Juan Trippe and the organization which he created after being asked to do by President Roosevelt … in conjunction with the existing civilian and military personnel, played a more than vital role - they created the South Atlantic and African bridges, leading to the Indian and Indonesian Ocean bridges, to supplement the Pacific Ocean bridges which his airline had already been building between the west coast of North America, Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand.

Few people today know about this remarkable contribution made by Trippe, if or if they even remember him or his spectacular airline.

The Pan Am graphic above right is from the home page of the Pan Am web site http://www.panam.org/ which contains excellent stories about this airline and its vital role in supporting allied air forces of WW II.

http://www.panam.org/


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Another nonagenarian is the subject of the last chapter of this book. He is Louis Lang - at RIGHT, Montréal, Québec. Louis was a civilian radio operator who served in the RAF FC and who, after WW II ended, began waging a lengthy one-man battle against federal bureaucracy in seeking veterans’ benefits and recognition for all who served in the RAF FC. By 1980 he partially succeeded in not only obtaining recognition for aircrews (only) in the RAF FC, but in making it possible for them to obtain benefits and support from Canada’s department of veterans’ affairs. He continues to struggle to see if benefits and recognition can be obtained for all civilians who served in the RAF FC in any capacity, not only as air crew members.

As Louis put it: “RAF Ferry Command had the highest casualty rate of any branch of the service. Virtually half of all crewmen became casualties in air operations which influenced the conduct of the war. They flew some 10,000 aircraft to different theatres of war and opened new air routes around the globe. But in so doing 500 of 1,100 volunteers were killed while 63 died on return flights. Volunteers were from several countries and are recognized as veterans in the United States and Britain.”

Speaking for the now disbanded Ferry Command Association, he insisted that the service provided by Ferry Command is indistinguishable from that of Canada’s Merchant Navy. “To recognize one group without recognizing the other is tantamount to discrimination and a travesty of justice.“ Tribute is also extended to today’s civilians in the only chapter titled with one word: For … the men and women who were children during WW II, and who grew up wondering what their relatives did during the war. These men and women are listed alphabetically, with their accompanying vignettes, anecdotes and in some cases, extended narratives. All civilian employees of the RAF FC were sworn to secrecy and the vast majority of them kept their promise to not speak of their experiences for many years after. This secrecy explains why many of today’s civilians did not learn of their relatives’ involvement in WW II’s Ferry Command for many years. Many of today’s civilians whose relatives served in the RAF FC are doing all they can to preserve the legacy our world has inherited, and a number of them have

been kind enough to share memorabilia from their relatives through these pages.

Among the tributes to today civilians is one For … Bill VanDerKloot, LEFT, a film maker from Atlanta, GA, USA. His father, William VanDerKloot - RIGHT - was the main pilot, among a few others, who flew Winston Churchill over enemy territory on diplomatic missions during World War II, in specially modified B24 Liberator bomber christened Commando. Bill is the founder of VanDerKloot Film & Television, the company which produced a

78-minute documentary, Flying the Secret Sky, dealing with his father’s experiences as Churchill’s pilot, This film aired in 2008 on PBS televisions stations throughout North America: its web site is www.flyingthesecretsky.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consolidated_B-24_Liberator


_________________________________________________ NOTE: As stated earlier in this welcome section, a good number of finding aids and sources are listed in Appendix 1 … for those who are new to the internet and would like to try search engines in rooting out information about what was popularly known as the Royal Air Force’s Ferry Command. It is important to realize that the “official” names of the operation changed over a relatively brief period of time, going from, as seen earlier, a Canadian railway department to another country’s air force with a Transport Command status. The best chances for obtaining some results occur when conducting a search for someone who was either a civilian employee of the Canadian Pacific Air Service department, CPASD, the Ministry of Aircraft Production- BMAP/ MAP, or the British Air Ministry - BAM, or seconded from an allied air force … and “pose” the same question using each of the official names of the operation, as displayed by the insignia on the earlier pages, and here below: … there were also the names ATFERO, and RFO / RFS - Atlantic Ferry Organization and Return Ferry Organization or Return Ferry Service, which either did not have a logo, or if they did, the logos do not show up on any known web site.

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