PILOTS OF THE

There were many inspirational acts during the world wars, but none more so than those of men who left behind peace in the sun, pushing past barriers of race before ever taking on the Germans. JOHN NICHOL tells of two such men in a new book...

DURING the First World War, Jamaican-born William Robinson Clarke became the first black pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, the Army’s air arm, and a shining example to those who followed. On the morning of July 28, 1917, he was attacked by enemy fighters while flying reconnaissance over thewestern Front.

“About five Hun scouts came down upon me, and before I could get away, I got a bullet through the spine,” he later recalled. “I managed to pilot the machine nearly back to the aerodrome, but had to put her down as I was too weak to fly any more.”

Despite such heroism, the 1917 Air Force (Constitution) Act restricted RAF entry to men of pure European descent. However in 1940, after the loss of 3,000 aircrew, policy changed and many from the Caribbean and Africa willingly left the safety of home to join up. In the long run, around 5,950 people of colour volunteered for the RAF; 5,500 as ground crew and 450 as aircrew.

But it wasn’t an easy path. At the time, few white Britons had seen, let alone met, black people, and though prejudice wasn’t widespread, ignorance and insensitivity could create misunderstanding and conflict.

WILLIAM ‘Billy’ Strachan left school in Kingston, Jamaica, in December 1939 and worked as a Civil Service clerk. Like many, he regarded Britain as the Mother Country and a spirit of adventure and desire to stop an evil regime inspired him to join the RAF.

Passed fit at Up-park Camp, HQ of the British Army since 1774, Billy asked when he’d be sent to the UK. “They laughed and told me to find my own way there,” he said.

So he went to the Jamaica Fruit Shipping Company and persuaded them to give him passage for £15. He arrived in Bristol docks on a wet Saturday in March 1940, having spent a large part of the voyage flattening tin cans to provide metal for the war effort.

After buying a ticket to London, he had £1. Next day, he presented himself at Air Ministry HQ, Adastral House in Holborn: “What do you want?” a corporal asked him. “I’m here to join the RAF.”

“P*** off!”

The 18-year-old’s plan to serve the King was not going well. A passing sergeant asked him where he came from. “Kingston,” he answered. “Well, son, you’ll have to go to your local recruiting office there.”

There was a difficult moment then a young officer who had overheard realised Billy didn’t mean Kingston, Surrey. Soon he found himself the only non-white airman training as a wireless operator in Blackpool.

The others were amazed he should have left the warmth and peace of the Caribbean for cold, damp, wartime Britain.

Having trained and flown 30 operations on Wellingtons, Billy had the chance to be an instructor. But “I was cocky and selfassured, in perfect physical and mental condition, and, being young, quite arrogant!”.

So he decided to retrain as a pilot. While learning, his Tiger Moth crashed. Billy suffered a fractured hip and broken nose and cheekbones and was in a coma three weeks. There was one consolation. He’d met Londoner Joyce Smith at a dance before the crash and they married, Billy on crutches.

Like most airmen, Billy had the regard of the British public but there was always the awareness of being black. During pilot training at RAF Cranwell, he had his first batman, a member of the mess staff appointed to look after him. “I instinctively called him ‘sir’. ‘No, sir,’ the batman hastily corrected. ‘It is I who call you sir’.”

Training complete, Billy took charge of his first Lancaster, leading an all-white crew.

But as the number of operations increased, the stress was getting to them. On his 15th sortie as skipper, flying past Lincoln Cathedral, Billy’s nerve went.

“It was a foggy night, with visibility down to about 100 yards. I asked my engineer to make sure we were on course to get over the top of the cathedral. He replied, ‘We’ve just passed it’. I looked out and suddenly realised it was just beyond our wingtips. It was sheer luck we hadn’t collided with it. I hadn’t seen it at all – and I was the pilot! That was the last straw.”

In view of his record, no action was taken; but Billy’s Lancaster days were over.

ANOTHER early volunteer was Cy Grant, son of a Moravian Church minister, who arrived to join the RAF in 1941 from Guyana in South America. “I was one of the first Guyanese to be selected to serve as aircrew, and how proud I was,” he said.

Having made the hazardous convoy journey across the Atlantic in freezing weather with the constant threat of U-boat attacks, Cy arrived at the Air Crew Reception Centre in St John’s Wood, London. He experienced the jolt of alienation when a middle-aged Englishman expressed surprise at his command of the language. “Many were not aware that literacy in British Guyana then was much higher than in Britain,” he wrote.

Transferred to a training unit, where “there was strict discipline but a relaxed and friendly atmosphere and no hint of colour prejudice”, Cy first took to the sky in a Tiger Moth biplane.

“This was something special for a young lad fresh from the Colonies... the rush of air in the open cockpit plus the noise of the aircraft itself – none of which dulled one’s senses to the wonderful scenery of the English countryside.”

About the time he was about to go solo, Cy was told he had been selected to be a navigator. It was a bitter pill to swallow but, like Billy Strachan, he had “personally never experienced any racism in the RAF... A war was on and I was wearing a uniform. People were generally very friendly”.

Having completed training in February 1943, Cy joined with Alton Langille, his French-canadian skipper. On June 19, they were ready. Their first raid was Mühlheim, near Frankfurt: 24 Lancasters from his squadron joined 473 bombers heading for the Ruhr. Cy’s aircraft was straggling, arriving with targets already ablaze.

As they released their bombs, flak burst through the empty bomb bay. Still behind the rest of the stream, the rear gunner yelled over the intercom that a fighter was